Of the games released, two WoW clones, an FPS, a mediocre action RPG, and a hack 'n slash dungeon crawled named Spiral Knights. Spiral Knights was released to great hype in 2011 a game company known as Three Rings Design. When I first downloaded Spiral Knights from Steam, I was expecting little more than your average dungeon crawler with an in-game shop to benefit those willing to fork over money to actually enjoy the game. Well, I was only half wrong.
Spiral Knights is what I would call a mixed bag. The combat, when you have a good sword, is fun and satisfying. However, notice my use of the word "sword". In the game, you have two choices of weapons. A sword and a gun, but if you want to have any type of fun with this game, don't waste your money on a high end gun. All guns ever seem to do are get me bashed around by 6 enemies at once because I can only fire three shots before taking a time to reload. Save your money and instead buy a decently leveled sword. These are much more useful and fun to use, as you can hack and slash in many different directions at a fast pace to take care of any threatening enemies.
The dungeon system, while not particularly innovative, is effective. It's extremely easy to hop on the elevator, join a party, and get right down to business. However, you'll find yourself recognizing the layouts of the dungeons, as they tend to repeat themselves. The leveling system is also something I applaud. Instead of people grinding their characters to impossibly high levels, all of the leveling is done on the equipment. This provides a new type of challenge to get all your latest equipment up to speed with the ones you have been using for awhile. The health system is fairly generous, which is one of my two main peeves with this game. You can take up to 10 hits from one average opponent and still not die, and even if you do manage to die, all you have to do is pay a measly 2 "mist energy", although this doubles each time you use it. This brings me to my main peeve with this game.
The "mist energy" is a type of currency, if you will, used to preform actions. In order to use the elevator, you need to pay 10 mist. With the average dungeon lasting around 8 to 9 minutes, and using 10 mist energy between this level, that means you can only spend about an hour and a half each day doing actual combat. For some, this may not be a problem, but keep in mind your energy only refills fully after 24 hours. So if you're playing late one night and decide to come back early in the morning, you may run into some trouble. But if you're a casual player who only wants to play a half hour a (BAD PUN ALERT. BAD PUN ALERT) "knight" playing this game, then you should have no worries.
Lastly, the economy is fairly complex. And I can't even begin to dip my feet into the waters of materials, crystals, crafting, and all that jazz. However, I will say that if you want to keep playing into the high level dungeons, you're going to need to either pay up big time from your "crowns" (main source of currency) or pay some of your hard earned cash. This bugs me a bit, as the number of crowns you pay is way out of proportion with how much money you need to pay to get the best equipment and fight in the later dungeons.
However, at the end of the day, the game is free. It's a quirky little hack and slash that I wont be putting down too soon. You'll have fun leveling up your equipment and fighting through dungeons and making friends and joining guilds and crafting and etc etc etc. If you want this loser's opinion? Go download it. I can guarantee you'll at least get SOME entertainment from it.
PROS
- Fun, addicting game play
- Easy to hop in with a party
- Easy to make crowns and buy new items
- Free
CONS
- Mist energy system may leave hardcore players yearning for more
- Later dungeons require cash/lots of crowns
- Guns border on useless
OVERALL - 7.9/10
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