The Knightling

TL;DR: I strongly recommend it if you are looking for a well designed action adventure with a good memorable open world that isn't story heavy (or rather, hard to follow) that feels fun and engaging to explore thanks to its great movement mechanics. Wow! I just 100% completed the game and this reminded me so much of classic games such as Spyro the Dragon for its cartoonish graphics, the exploration freedom of an open world that yet never feels overwhelming to explore for it has a clear progression tracking system to boot with. While some of the open world puzzles are on the lighter side and never feel too complex to solve, you always have the option to skip them then come back to them later on in the event that you might be stuck. This world is so full of life, so colorful, carefully designed to benefit the movement mechanics of your character and fun to explore that I did not want it to end! The combat is one area I felt like it was a bit repetitive after some time, but not to a point where it made me want to quit playing it, far from it in fact! What I mean is, I would have liked the devs to further expand the combat system with more combos. It felt like some abilities were not... complete so to speak? On that note though, its definitely not a bad combat system and having a shield as your one and only weapon in the game might have been a challenge of its own to accomplish what is still a really fun exeprience all together! The soundtrack was beautifully composed and matches the world so well that whenever I went back to listen to it I could picture the scene from where I remembered the track playing from, and that is a good thing! Music in video games is one of the aspects I care most about and this game's score is one of my favorite soundtracks in a while and definitely surprised me as I was not expecting this level of quality. It is both soothing and relaxing when exploring around and it gets exciting and engaging whenever a fight comes in. Well done, I loved it! One could easily describe this game as a clone of Breath of the Wild and while it is clear that its been heavily inspired by it in some areas, I do believe The Knightling managed to forge its own identidy and set itself apart. One that I will remember for a long time. The devs have crafted a world that is easy to remember as you venture on. For instance, there will be areas where you'll encounter some mechanisms for which you just won't be able to operate for the time being, but these will always look the same to a point where it becomes second nature and you'll tell yourself "Oh! So that's what I needed to unlock that!". The story is simple and really well told. Sure there isn't much if any voice acting involved and this could unfortunately throw off some people right away, but I never felt like it was dragging on for too long and like I spent too much time in one area and got tired of it or its lore. There is a lot of reading involved yes, but it is well written enough to keep every dialogue brief and to the point in short bursts. What I mean is you don't spend too much time reading from point A to point B and in between if your primary concern is the main story alone. This helps a lot in keeping the player entertained and taking short breaks between quests, similarly designed to say... an MMORPG such as Final Fantasy XIV for example, but lighter? Even the side quests were still tied in some shape or form to the main story which made them all interesting. So coming from someone who normally hates reading in general, this game managed to make me read everyhthing I could about it. So the devs have done a great job on that part too! I could keep on rumbling on for a while about everything I loved about it, but I don't want to end up spoiling anything. I hope this review helps anyone who took the time to read it better understand what this game might be like and I hope it brings you as much pleasure and nostalgia as it did to me from start to finish. Thank you for this beautiful game and I hope to see more from this team in the future!