The Knightling

The knightling is a fun action-adventure with a unique and fun movement mechanic and a charming style and story. Like I said I like the movement mechanics, they feel great and are fun to use. I just wish the game had a bit more incentive to go at speed. I found the combat to be a lot better than I expected from this type of game, its quite simple in its execution and it can be a little jank a times but I think it works great. it does also get a little repetitive but the experience isn’t long enough to ruin it for me. There just a nice flow to it. Another thing I want to highlight is the puzzle mechanics, the game doesn’t feel the need to overexplain itself and instead has these “puzzle zones” where it expects you to figure out what to do yourself. This makes the, immediately quite simple puzzles, a bit more engaging to figure out and for me only one audio puzzle was a tad frustrating to do. Theres a decent amount to collect and do although a lot of this will be finding chest and doing similar activities like repeated puzzles, thus I have yet to feel super compelled to get everything or do every sidequest (which are overall good). The experience is worth it to me, I find the price is a little steep so consider getting it on sale but its definitely a fun experience.

Great Platform game

Decent game. The Knightling is an adventure platformer which are somehow kind of rare these days. Your main character is a squire to a famous knight and gets stuck lugging around his super shield. The shield allows you to do a few techniques that help you in moving around, like gliding or sliding on it. The movement feels pretty good in the game, especially the various little tricks you can use in order to move around the map faster, like bunny hopping on your shield to get micro speed boosts. There's a lot of verticality involved in having to find your way on top of things (or sliding down them). Climbed up onto a building by using a jutting polygon to land on and reset your double jump? The game doesn't care, and probably assumed you were gonna try that to begin with. There's lots of stuff to find around the map, most of which give money and parts that you use to upgrade your shield or exp points to learn new combat skills. Combat is passable. You can strategically block/parry/counter everything which is quite safe, or be more aggressive with attacks. Nothing amazing here but no real flaws either. Story is mediocre but the worldbuilding for the setting and little region of the world you're in is strong. Music is quite nice, especially the themes while you're roaming the open world. All in all a solid experience.

This is a really tough reccomendation. I found myself infatuated with this game to the point of crossing my fingers that the map was much larger than anticipated, or that the story might reveal reasons to reexplore old areas, find new dungeons. But the game found an awkward way of fullfilling that wish, as I spent MUCH LONGER in the final area of the game, and perhaps not for good reason. This game really thrives in dense and vertical environments. The Knightlings moveset, while simple, is great for exploration and casual platforming. The game gives a surprising amount of player expression when it comes to maintaining momentum (Though its never really necessary). And surprisingly, the combat was a highlight. Similarly simple, but with a decent parry and posture breaking system that makes optimizing how to defeat single targets fun, and fighting multiple enemies really tough but engaging as parrying or using energy attacks do a large shockwave catching multiple enemies, and shield throws interrupting enemy attacks. The biggest sin of this game is that it waits far to long to build on a lot of these systems, so much so that the stellar final round of boss fights left me wondering why the rest of the game was holding out. And overall, I would NOT look at my play time as an indicator of how large or content dense this game is. The main quest is incredibly short, and the world is dotted with locales and side content I can only describe as... like Genshin. Enemy camps guarding a simple chest, fun yet repetitive puzzles. And despite me calling out how much I LIKE the movement in this game, a LOT of my playtime is inflated by just how long it takes to scan over the map (especially as I was cleaning up before the end) Not to mention probably the most frustrating aspect of the game, really inconsistent and infrequent checkpoints. Which I'm all for runbacks in metroidvanias, classic platformers, and soulslikes. But this is a really simple action platformer in an open world with multistage side quest and collectibles (and playing on hard mode mind you)... getting thrown across the map while trying to take out a bandit camp or the like feels pretty bad... even worse when the checkpoints are also just the autosaves... meaning you ARE just reverting back and collectibles you already found have to be recollected. This isn't really a problem until the final area [spoiler] Which IS supposed to be a hostile wasteland, but is FAR FAR more flat than ALL the previous areas. And wide, and sparse. Combined with cluttered enemy engagements, spending several minutes on a fight where every enemy in a large area gets aggro'd, only to lose it in two hits and having to spend minutes walking across the map to get back and finding the entire engagement was randomized anyway. And because theres few interesting structures, chest hiding in baffling but boring places... [/spoiler] That being said, the quest are fun. And the stories of the people are colorful and engaging. Funnily enough considering it has a bundle with The Plucky Squire, I have to really compare its writing and quality despite simplicity as incredibly similar. They're both games I personally would have wished to be more challenging but are thus amazing for your kids. And with that framing, still fun as an adult (although I there are SEVERAL other recent indie platformers I think would be a better purchase in that case) If you pick the game up, which I DO still recommend (maybe on sale) and if you play on hard, which I might not recommend despite liking the combat. Save. Save often. Not because its hard, but because the autosave far too lax and that is seemingly the games only checkpoint system.

Like what I've played so far

An immensely fun labor of love. The charm of the story, the open world, the platforming, and the visuals make it easy for me to overlook any rough edges. Also doesn't overstay it's welcome. Two thumbs up from me!

An enjoyable adventure with nice exploration. If you want a 3D platformer and combat game that isn't to demanding, quite charming and a good palet cleanser of a game I recommend giving it a try. It's however worth pointing out the last area is a bit damage spongy, the last village loading-zone got caught stuck several times making me have to restart the game and the "no return" npc got bugged twice for me. Frustrating yes, but not enough to soil my experience. 7/10