Sentry Knight Tactics

Sentry Knight Tactics is a brutal game. But it seems to happen more by carelessness, lack of QA and balancing - than by design. This seems to be further supported by the about 6 freezes as well as minor bugs found during the playthrough. After a few hours, you will find yourself controlling 4 separate characters, each with 3-4 abilities. You have to select and command and move them individually throughout the fights - although you can issue an "attack with all" order, you cannot select multiple units or move more than one at a time. This is troublesome, as the fights in the game are either slugfests, where you easily dispatch the same groups of enemies repeatedly for up to 30 minutes, or plagued with combinations that will kill one of your 4 units in under 2 seconds if you're not paying close attention, which usually chain-reacts into defeat. Although the game seems visually attractive and polished at first glance, a closer look makes the rushed parts stand out: Terrible controls for microing 4 characters; problematic hitboxes, both in and out of combat; 2 of the 8 available characters are 80% copies of another, with different skill names; lack of real party diversity (there's only one tank - and one healer for 75% of the game); bosses that can 1-hit non-tank characters and change targets randomly after casting certain skills; loot dwindles as monsters become bullet-sponges and shop prices quadruplicate; "unique" effects on legendary items are most of the times completely useless even though items are not procedural; skill trees are laughable, with negligible values and effects all over the place (5% chance to avoid 50% damage! 10% healing on a skill with 30s cooldown!); consumables activate automatically and the vast majority of them are absolutely useless (single use: when you use your 30s skill, reduce its cooldown by 3!). The more you play, the more you find - questionable design decisions are lurking around every corner - spoiling what could've easily been an amazing experience. Perhaps you'd like to push forward, tredge through these issues to follow the adorable characters and their story to the end. Well, that's what I did - and yet here we are.

I'm not usually into strategy games, but this one was cute enough for me to get sucked into, and the dev is a cool guy. The art is great, the gameplay and progression is addictive, and there's a decent amount of different strategies to try when you get stuck. I may have rage-quit on the final boss though, as I didn't want to switch to easy mode.

Cute game burdened by huge short comings and shallow concepts. You have to issue all commands, characters will only attack if being attacked or ar assigned a target manually. Yet another game that refuses to acknowledge that combat formation has any purpose, enemies can walk through your party without worry. Units taking attacked in the back take no extra damage. Speaking of formations, it gets tedious to unravel your party when they are piled on top of each other. Characters will WASTE TIME goin around an enemy to attack on the other side instead of just killing them. Feels like you can max out equipment too easy or soon. You are limited to 4 characters while the enemy can have as many as 12 units on screen. This is a baby sitters game, you have to baby sit your inventory, you have to baby sit your characters in battle. If you like this style of arcade click festing your units then this is the game for you. I hate games where you win or lose based on how fast you can click and issue orders. Some people genuinely like this type of game, but if you are looking for somethign with more depth... look elsewear.

[h1]Sentry Knight Tactics is a charming and challenging blend of the RTS, Tower Defense, and RPG genres. The writing is amusing, the art style is adorable and, best of all, and the tactical combat will keep you on your toes.[/h1] **Update v1.1.0.0: Companions! .Story. Your story begins with 3 of the king’s loyal vassals: the legendary Knight, the kindly Priestess, and the jerkly Marksman. They’re travelling through Stonewynn Forest on their way to Stonewynn Castle to report to the king. Naturally, ♥♥♥♥ hits the fan. All manner of monsters start appearing, attacking the unlucky denizens of a sleepy little town located in the forest and then your party, forcing you, the mysterious, all-seeing force that guides our heroes to learn the art of combat in a tutorial that is fantastically organic to the game. I won’t spoil anything, but you do end up going on a quest to save, the world as you know if from some otherworldly villain who seeks to destroy human existence. .Gameplay. [i]Tactics, tactics, tactics[/i] Battles are not random and you can see an enemy running swiftly towards you from a mile away. There are 8 total unit types, each with 20 unique skills that are a mixture of active and passive. You control four of these units at once, each an archetypal RPG class by selecting them (either with your mouse or a corresponding hot key) and then right clicking an enemy or area on the battlefield. Like lambs, they’ll follow your directions to the letter, auto attacking until the target meets its demise. There’s a lot of micromanagement in combat, however: units will attack the next target only if it’s on top of them. Otherwise, they’ll stand idly by until you tell them to carry on. Your forces will almost always be outnumbered, so you’ll need to march your knight about, drawing the aggro of the enemy and hoping Priestess’s heals will be enough to keep him alive because your other units who are oh-so squishy and tender, won’t withstand a focused assault for very long. Finally, we’ve got dodgeable attacks that do a lot of damage, but can be avoided if you move your unit out of the way in time. I love this level of micromanagement as it’s engaging without being annoying. After defeating a foe, you’re rewarded with experience and gold. At the end of the battle, foes drop little satchels and sometimes chests—both of which contain a random assortment of up to 3 goodies. Once you’ve earned enough experience to level up, you get a talent point which can be used to strengthen the active skills you use in combat or the passive skills that add helpful benefits to each class. You’re also able to change equipment, which can be found, bought, and later upgraded in any shop. Old equipment and junk items can be salvaged for scrap, which not only frees up inventory space but also allows you to upgrade your weapons and armor. Accessories cannot be upgraded. A recent update added companions, which are non-combative and add an additional effect to your team. You can use one companion at a time, so choose wisely. Anyone who's played Castle Crashers will smile at these familiar floating, body-less cuties. Outside of combat, there’s a world to explore. The world map has treasure chests to open and locations to visit that may or may not spell certain danger for your heroes its worth exploring these areas, however, because you can find equipment and consumables to strengthen your party. In towns, you can buy and sell things, and upgrade your equipment using gold and scraps. Scraps come from breaking down equipment and junk items. Both your armor and weapons can be upgraded from common-->uncommon-->rare-->legendary. .Atmosphere. From its cutesy graphics and amusing writing to its clean and simple UI, and hectic combat, Sentry Knight Tactics oozes charm. Little things like the use of archetypes over names and the different text colors to indicate characters and important events are nice touches as well. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=775932448 The backdrops for locations like towns and other explorable locations look as though they have been hand painted and each region your intrepid team journeys through has its own climate that is reflected by its inhabitants. The music in Sentry Knight Tactics is great. From the title screen melody, which sounds like the melodious offspring of a Harvest Moon and Final Fantasy track to the upbeat, rallying music that plays during combat, there’s a lot of hum-worthy tunes. .Longevity. Despite its adorable outer shell at its core, Sentry Knight Tactics is a tactical experience that will challenge even strategy veterans. It’s brutal, its monsters crushing you at any given chance and forcing you to rethink your approach, but not unfair; you’re able to come back from the dead at the nearest cemetery and resume from the point you left off in a series of battles. There are 3 difficulty settings, so there’s something for those who think themselves master tacticians and those who simply want to enjoy the whimsical story, and also those who fall somewhere in between. .Pros and Cons. [list] [*] The game sounds and looks great. Tons of polish. [*] The writing is amusing. [*] Varied skills and classes allow for maximum tactics. [*] The game is difficult, but not punishing. I’m not particularly fond of games that knock you over and then kick you when you’re down. [*] Exploration is rewarded—with loot and Easter eggs. [*] Guest appearances by characters from other game worlds, all drawn in the adorable Sentry Knight Tactic's art style. [*] It can get a little grindy. Sometimes it felt like my tactics would never be good enough, so I fought a ton of battles until my units were strong enough to defeat a boss. [*] A small inventory, which means a lot of stopping to clear it out. This is likely a personal problem because I always seem to have this issue. [*] Upgrade system is shallow. I had maxed everything to legendary within a couple of hours and it didn’t seem to make all that much of a difference. [/list] .Bottom Line. Sentry Knight Tactics is a great addition to any strategist’s library and the price is right. It’s loads of fun, the talent tree holds a variety of tactical options, and combat is fast and furious, forcing you to think on your feet. You won't regret picking it up if you're looking for a challenging tactical experience with a ton of heart.

I both love and hate this game... The mechanics are fun with a nice light storyline and some great game feel. I also like the cute accessible art style, but this is one of the games problems. The art style makes the game look light and fun, but its anything but, this game is hard as f**k. I'm not kidding when I say I have found Dark Souls to be easier. This game has soooo many of the right elements I love, but is tuned too difficult for the visual wrapper it lives in. I suspect the designer played this game and tuned it during the entire development timeline, continually increasing difficulty to challenge himself (I have made this mistake :/ before). This is a great for him, but first time players gets brutally spanked. With some tuning to be more player friendly, and a fit for the aesthetic this game could be great for its price point. The down sides of this game are as follows; 1. Too hard, you need to be two levels above the recommend level for encounters to have a chance to win. Lower the default difficulty to be more player friendly. 2. Items that give you a fighting chance in combat drop rarely, or are super expensive to buy/craft requiring lots, and lots , and lots of tedious grinding. Suggest rare drops are 10-20% more plentiful or reduce item/craft cost. Grinding really hurt the game for me. 3. Characters and enemies often overlap making them a nightmare to select and target in this "plate spinning" game. Suggest you add character profiles for all the characters and health bars, that can be selected (selecting the character) and launch the spells from. The spell icons are huge and can be reduced and placed under the corresponding character. 4. Allow players to level up beyond 20 and get all the skills, this will help them get past the super hard encounters... eventually , where skilled player could do it naturally before maxing out all the skills. This way you make both causal and hardcore happy. 5. Lastly I suggest you allow players to keep experience and gold they get from defeats so even less skilled players can eventually overcome difficult challenges like we did on Ratchet and Clank. Sorry for the long post, I wouldn't have gone to this trouble if I didn't think the game had potential. With a few tweaks this game could be a lot of fun, I will give it a thumbs up in hopes they address the three issues above that are holding it back. P.S. Who ever painted the backgrounds, great job, really lovely color pallet.

This review is done on behalf of PC Games N' News - https://pcgamesnnews.wordpress.com/ - with a review code. It didn't alter my opinions on the game at all. Every so often (although not enough, I’d say), you encounter a game, on Steam or otherwise, that’s a surprise. One that doesn’t look like it would be any good, but manages to prove you wrong due to having good gameplay, an interesting story, what-have-you. Sentry Knight Tactics is one of those games, provided you’re not turned off by the odd title. My first impression looking at the game’s store page was that it was a mobile port: it has the cartoony look to it, and the gameplay seemed like something designed to be played on a phone. That turned out to be a bit inaccurate, as Sentry Knight’s origins are as a flash title, produced by Armor Games. Now that might not sound much better to you, but there was clearly a great deal of care put into this port – rather than being completely bare-bones like some other games, the settings menu has a great deal of options, particularly for video. You can toggle particles, shadows, screenshake and weather to name just a few. I have a pretty decent computer so it’s never dipped below sixty, but this tells me they really cared about everyone being able to play their game, which is a good first impression. That continued as I actually started the game. Sentry Knight Tactics is a real-time, squad-based RPG not unlike Dawn of War 2 or Company of Heroes, albeit in a lesser format as you only have four members to control, not counting any guest characters who join you. At the start you have Knight the tank/damage dealer, Priestess the healer/buffer, and Marksman, who handles ranged attacks. After the initial area you recruit Rogue, who also attacks in melee but is more of a glass cannon. Those aren’t typos, incidentally, as all of them don’t seem to have names beyond their profession. The game’s combat is what made me think it was a mobile port at first. You select members of your team with the left mouse button, and move or target enemies with the right one. It’s definitely something that could appear on mobile, but it controls well here, and there’s several hot keys to select heroes if you need to do so quickly. Which you often will: each battle has multiple waves, and while the ones you run into on the overworld are as simple as you’d expect, fights in dungeons (which are essentially just gauntlets of battles) can be tricky and keep you on your toes. You’ll contend with enemies that can trap you, attack from range, heal other enemies and spawn more, and of course bosses, who have a lot of tricks up their sleeves. Thankfully if you’re not used to this sort of gameplay, there’s also an easier difficulty option available. Naturally like any good RPG, you also have experience and loot to consider. Like the rest of the game, both are streamlined. The party gains experience as a whole, and each member gets a skill point to use when that happens. So it doesn’t have that moment of frustration where you beat a boss right after a party member dies and doesn’t get experience. Of course, if you ask me those moments are part of the experience of most of them, but that’s what you give up sometimes for convenience. After every battle you get at least one bag of loot, which may contain vendor trash, equipment, or items that can heal or boost characters in battle – these get used up automatically when their conditions are met, which is a little annoying since you have to equip them first. That means you need to know when a fight is coming up where you’ll really need them, and the game doesn’t really warn you if the next fight will be against a boss. Equipment can be upgraded using scrap you find, or collect by breaking other equipment you don’t have a use for, which is nice. Every weapon or armor can be upgraded up from ‘Common’ to ‘Legendary’, which offers bonuses like potentially restoring the Priestess’ life for however much she heals, or a damage over time effect when the Knight hits something. So while it’s not exactly Grim Dawn with what you can pull off, there is a sense of progression. There are still some things I don’t like about the game, though, along with stuff others might not care for either. The game’s cutesy art-style is one I can tolerate, but I could perfectly understand finding it offputting. The dialogue also has that elbow-nudging style of writing where it knows it’s a video game and doesn’t shy away from letting you know it knows, meaning there’s jokes like the Marksman getting confused at the Priestess’ blunt tutorial. I don’t mind the fourth wall being played with, but I’ve seen humor of that sort done better elsewhere. Overall, I would recommend Sentry Knight Tactics. It’s not a revolutionary game in any respect, and isn’t trying to be, but not every RPG needs to be sixty hours long to be worthwhile. If you’re in the mood for a bite-size example of the genre, I think it’s worth a look.

Here is a link to some gameplay so you can decide for yourself: https://youtu.be/ncN7uqlxJ50 I really liked this game. It's simple, yet difficult. Cute, yet serious. But it immediately became a game killer when I spent 2 of my 5 hours just trying to beat the same boss over and over and then farming over and over to get stronger and then fighting the boss over and over again; unable to beat it. And you can't progress past this boss. I had to set the game to easy (which you can't undo) in order to progress. PROS: + Nice simple bold graphics. Not Skyrim over here, but everything is crystal clear easy to see. + Lots of RPG elements. Combat, story and plot, quests, looting, crafting of sorts, vendors, etc. + Combat is fun real-time changing it up tactics. CONS: - It's very quick and easy to immediately get the highest tier gear, and it's super underwhelming. - Not really much crafting crafting, besides somewhat upgrading gear a little. - Little too much micromanagement needed and quick responses in combat, especially on healing. After you kill an enemy, you don't auto-attack the next; you have to assign everybody to attack again. - Overall stats of characters are pretty low, and grow very slowly. - Characters level VERY slowly. The past hour of farming, I've gone up only 1/2 a level, even with the bonus exp pet, and they aren't a high level... - Don't expect to get the achievements for normal and hard difficulty without a LOT of grinding. Also, there's a couple achievements that are impossible to get now as well. It was for playing during the holidays. - No map or mini-map. - No way to know which quests are main quests and which are side quests (need to know for achievement purposes) As I think of more PROS and CONS, I'll edit this review, until I complete the game.

Great looking game and made me surprisingly like a strategy game despite me not being a fan of the type. But the game seems like it should be a flash since you cant upgrade your equipment more than 3 times and leveling up doesn't increase your stats, also im just going to say this... Diffculty Spikes should be a tiny ramp with nails on it not, a mountain made out of broken glass. so basically needs to be significantly updated

The game can be fun but they made some incredibly frustrating game choices. When going through the world overview they spam enemies along your path that are incredibly annoying to get past if you dont want to fight them and if they catch up your only options are too do the entire fight or "retreat" which sends you to the nearest graveyard which is usually at the start of the area forcing you to have to try again to walk past all the enemies, this setup makes it tedious to backtrack which you'll be doing a lot of. The controls are also terrible you can remap them which is nice but it doesn't entirely help.if you have the healer selected you cannot also tell your team to attack a target you would first have to switch to another character to do that. The final boss is easily the worst part of the game its an incredibly tedious 2 part boss fight with the first part having 2-3 bosses you have to fight again each time you lose. The main 2 bosses have huge amounts of health, spam abilities, and once your down to the final boss of the first part he starts spamming normal enemies at you and they aren't weak ones mind you one of the enemies he can spawn stuns an ally so imagine it stuns your healer, your tank now dies and you lose the fight instantly having to redo the entire thing. The 2nd part of the boss fight is you just fighting the main boss you just killed again as a harder version that again just spams abilities, enemies, and attacks that deal even more damage.

Sentry Knight Tactics is an Adobe Flash/AIR based mobile app like lightweight RTS with lightweight RPG elements and an art style unabashedly stolen from Brian Lee O'Malley's famous Scott Pilgrim comics (the intellectual bankruptcy of stealing someone else's art design is galling here). The game itself is pretty badly written with annoying chunks of VR based text interspersed with pointless grinding and weak small unit size RTS-esque gameplay. It's really important to bear in mind that while the game "works" and can be played, it's up against actual real RTS games like Command and Conquer and the Total War series, and also up against RPG's like Baldurs Gate 3 and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Welcome to Steam, it's the big leagues. So how does this game compare to the giants it's facing off against? Well, badly! From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. The game features simple, cartoony 2D graphics, of the type you normally expect to see in low effort mobile apps. 3D graphics programming does require a degree of skill and competence and unfortunately not all developers have the budget or talent to deliver this, despite 3D graphics cards hitting the mainstream in the 1990's. Considering this is being evaluated as a PC game, having the graphics phoned in like this isn't going to result in a high quality, visually impressive game that PC gamers are used to seeing. The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just iPhone screen tapping stuff. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here. Comically, the game was written in Adobe Flash/AIR (I'm not making this up). Talk about not using the right tools for the job. Might as well try to bake a cake with a screwdriver. The extremely poor choice of game engine here is a major contributing factor to the defects with the game. This looks and feels like a mobile app, but it doesn't seem to have made it to the app stores. It's unclear why this was put on Steam instead of the app stores it seems to have been designed for. Maybe it was removed, maybe it was rejected by Apple and Google (they do have more rigorous quality standards than Valve does for Steam, after all). Regardless, for all intents and purposes Sentry Knight Tactics might as well be a mobile app, it has the same limitations and dumbed down qualities. It's impossible to recommend such a game to PC gamers. We don't spend all this money building gaming rigs so we can pretend they're iPhones and play games that might as well be mobile apps. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. Reviewing SteamDB to check how popular this game was with players reveals a surprise... there's a modest spike in player counts for the game. But this only happened once, around the same time that trading cards were applied to the game... so this is just card idlers getting their cards and moving on. A closer look at the numbers shows the game just has a couple of players every week running up the game and idling it for cards, then deleting it. We must ask how it benefits gamers for there to be so many games like this, with no merit as a serious game, that only generate sales from people idling and selling the trading cards. So, should you buy this game? Sentry Knight Tactics has the insane price of around $5 USD, (FIVE BUCKS FOR A FLASH GAME!!!!) it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam. For comparison, the $5 asking price for this game could get you games like "Battlefield V", the "Tomb Raider" remake or "Rainbow 6 Siege". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.