Skautfold: Knight's End

Placeholder until game is out of EA. Positive and original experience so far, like the rest of the games of the saga. Needs some polish but nothing major.

[u] [b] Rating: [/b] [/u] [list] [*][x] [b] Recommended at full price [/b] [*][ ] Recommended at a discount [*][ ] Recommended but only at a discount [*][ ] Not Recommended [/list] [b] Duration: [/b] 7-9 hrs, only one difficulty and 2 optional bosses, very little (if any) replayability [b] Best features: [/b] + Turn-based-skill-reliant combat: It´s turn based, BUT timing, dodging and parrying is alot more important than stats, while also retaining a lot of interesting tactics due to the many statuses you can inflict on the enemies, I´ve frankly never seen anything like it and I loved it, fun and addictive. + Fun exploration during the first half of the game: At the start of the game you can explore and find items and weapons and it´s great, but after the roof bossfight it devolved into linear hallways + Interesting storyline and setting, specially if you played the other Skautfold games + Very lenient save-system and punishing but not so much dying penalty [u] Feedback [/u]: - Combat can get repetitive, especially once you saw all the enemy types, but you can escape without much consequences so it´s not so bad - Boring second half: after the roof boss fight the level design takes a turn and it suddenly becomes a series of linear hallways with repetitive encounters against 1 new enemy type (repeated until boredom) and some older enemies (which by that point you are already bored with), thankfully you get additional dps to make them go faster, but not fast enough imo - Money is kind of worthless, some items can be important but once you hoard a certain number of them money becomes meaningless, this does have the positive effect of lessening the death penalty (if you choose to respawn in the same room) even more [b] Overall thoughts: [/b] This game is great, I don´t know what magic the Skautfold dev wields but he almost always manages to craft an unique yet engaging battle system, the lore and story are also quite cool and if you enjoyed past Skautfold games then I cannot recommend this one enough, even if you dislike turn based games this one has such an unique battle system that it barely feels like one

This is an admirable entry into a series from a mostly solo developer. It is a very big departure from the others in the series and, although it is very rough around the edges, it is both a neat little romp and worth a look if you've been following the series. The combat system is a little difficult to get a handle on, at first, since there is no tutorial. New players will be well served to read through the instructions on the pause menu, and give it a few tries, since death is not particularly punishing. That being said, if you cannot stand QTEs you will not have a good time, as the combat system is entirely QTE-based.

I'm sorry this game is just really, really frustrating I don't know how it's possible but somehow its worse than you it's Usurper, its just a slog to get through with his QTE's and some bosses having the ability to regenerate their health makes this game a disappointment and I really enjoy this series and its story, maybe I'll try this game again someday but as it is I'm just can't enjoy it.

While I really appreciate the chance taking with the combat system and actually (after figuring it out for 20 minutes) find it fun. The game seems to have too little locale and enemy variety, I found myself skipping enemy encounters near the end. The leveling system also seems to have little impact. Personally the other Skautfold games were more my thing.

I am biased and have completed the entire Skautfold series. I recommend you do so as well. That is all.

I love this series

while i admire how the the person making the the games wanted to keep trying new things, i feel this is the worst installment, the worst experiment in the series, constantly random turn based quick time events that you don't even understand what is going on, is the worst way to implement combat. there isn't enough of a tutorial to prepare a person for the awful combat crap going on such wasted potential, a good series decided to crap itself to death with awful combat ideas

A great finale of a game with a drastic learning curve in the beginning due to less-than-ideal explanations of the combat system. However, after all the patches that have been released, I would dare say that this is the "easiest" game in the series, and I suppose that lines up with Len being the strongest of all the playable characters thus far. Knight's End finishes the Skautfold series in a pretty satisfying way, and ties up just about every plot thread that has been introduced. I personally enjoyed playing through Len's path as the final chapter in this series, and I'm sad to see it end. If you love Lovecraftian horror, start from Shrouded in Sanity and work your way through the games.

A nice enough game, played the other 4 in the series, each is a different gameplay style and this is a action bar turn based one, where each attack both by you and your allies/summon and enemies shows up on a bar, each side is only on one part of it so easy to read what action happens next. It's not very long, about 6-10h for completion, have a bit more time as i left i on when doing other stuff. Compared to the others in the series it's fairly easy, if you learn the rock-paper-scissor system you'll rarely die, if you click on the wrong type in the order you'll likely be oneshot but besides the clumsy missclicks you won't really die as the active battle system helps reduce damage (up to 100%) as the closer to the bars end the more damage you'll block in a risk/reward way. You also get some Guard back depending on where the bar is and if you used the correct weapon type to block. (Ranged defeats Swords that defeats Magic that defeats Ranged etc) Guard is a bit like armor and mana in one, consumed to attack and blocks damage to your hp bar, if you get good at timing and keep hitting at 70%+ blocks you won't be killed by anything besides bosses that needs bursting down. Enemy attacks deal x damage, blocks reduce it by a % and you get a certain amount of block back depending on when you timed it you even get the leftover Guard to use if you did well enough. Some of the maps are a bit confusing but that's likely by design, (It has a cosmic horror/Hp lovecraft theme) though one area will kick you back to the start of it if you walk in the wrong door so that's annoying when trying to explore and find weapons. As of writing information is quite sparse so hard to look stuff up if you missed something, the optional bosses can be found near the end of the game, one in the library and the other 2 you need to go through a train. Weapons don't unlock in the order of the inventory suggests, the last gun is close to the end but shows as the second slot in the inventory so that's a bit annoying. [strike] Didn't run into any real problems so stable enough though one end game weapon from an optional boss didn't work for me, (final weapon in the sword type) but it's optional so got to the end well enough without it.[/strike] Edit: it was supposed to work that way, with it not sticking around for more than one turn as it applies a status condition that can combo into a finisher (so a 2 turn kill on some enemies) But overall it was fun enough and not very long so worth a try at least, would just take an evening or two to run through.