Game Review: A Knight’s Quest (Xbox One)

Influenced by many an action adventure game over the years but mainly The Legend of Zelda, A Knight’s Quest is a colourful and charming game. One that brings a smile to the face with its fun and varied gameplay but has a few noticeable flaws that stop it being a great game.

Players take on the role of Rusty, a young boy who is just a little bit clumsy. Attempting to find treasure in a cave, Rusty inadvertently unleashes ancient evil trapped in a crystal. The end of the world is nigh and only Rusty can stop it. Travel across the world to desert lands, beaches and frost covered locales to find elemental weapons to help defeat the evil.

Sound familiar? The narrative isn’t the strength of A Knight’s Quest. In fact, that feeling of familiarity is present throughout as you battle enemies, big bosses, explore dungeons and open chests. If you’ve been playing these games all your life, you’re not going to find any surprises here.

Now, that might sound like a negative but actually it’s not. It’s not because A Knight’s Quest has a tongue in cheek, self-aware kind of comedic style. One that makes for many an amusing moment. Putting it simply, it’s a funny game and it makes both Rusty and the world all the more appealing.

A world that is worth exploring as it’s fairly substantial with plenty to do. As you progress and gain new weapons and abilities, more areas become available to explore. It’s all very free-flowing and you’ll never really get stuck as the game sign-posts your quests simply and effectively.

While many chests hold items that don’t have much impact on the overall game, exploration and platforming to get trickier ones is just another aspect that can be quite rewarding. Of course, platforming is a major part of the gameplay and A Knight’s Quest does it well, very well in fact.

The controls as you jump, roll, climb and fight are responsive and you always feel in control of Rusty. Later, items like the ‘Grind Boots’ add a fun extra element to the platformer and again, work really well. There can be no complaints regarding the controls, it’s just a shame the combat doesn’t hold up quite as well.

The most disappointing thing about the game, there is no weight or substance to combat.

As well as having to fight the same enemies over and over again, it just relies on you hitting them again and again and as fast as possible. There’s no skill involved and very little fun to be had. After one too many fights, you might find yourself actively avoiding groups of enemies just so you don’t have to go through the repetition again. Bosses fare a bit better but with them you end up having to follow a set pattern to defeat them.

Combat is not the game’s only flaw though.

The map is terrible, offering very little in the way of navigation and with no ‘zoom’ function the detail is lost. There are some occasional visual hiccups that make the pretty colourful world seem less so and then there is the saving issue.

A Knight’s Tale does not auto-save in the traditional way, Instead saving when you move from one area to the next. That does mean if you were to quit out mid-level, you will have lost the progress you made from the point you entered that area. It’s all good and proper saying, don’t quit out then but some of the locations are quite big potentially resulting in a lot of lost progress. It just makes no sense.

However, all these complaints aside, A Knight’s Quest is a good game. It looks lovely, the vibrant colours and cartoony characters reminiscent of something like The Wind Waker. It’s funny, genuinely funny and self aware which makes its lacklustre story shine that little more. Exploration is fun and the platforming sections are done well.

The whole experience is worthwhile, especially as we don’t get enough of these kind of games on the Xbox.