In Knights Contract you play Heinrich Hofmann, an experienced witch-executioner plagued by a curse of immortality, who charged with the task of protecting a witch by the name of Gretchen as she attempts to save the world. The world is being threatened by a mad scientist, named Dr. Faust, who is trying to gain the same curse Heinrich has, as well as rid the world of witches all together. Along the way the pair is forced to take on a plethora of other witches who are out for revenge on a world that feared and killed them.
Sounds rather epic doesn't it? But how did the game do overall? Read below for more.
Hated
Let it be known, this is a game that is almost all escort mission. We all love escort missions don't we? No; not that much. But none the less, the main style of play is escort mission. Granted, you can force Gretchen to do a few tasks that are not commonly in escort missions, like cast some pretty powerful spells or buffs to Heinrich, but while you are immortal, she is not. This leads to a lot of frustration as she will not fully defend herself, even though the character is capable, while you wade headlong into monsters galore. Why even give her the power to kill everything with one attack if she won't use it until you tell her to? Seriously?
Now the escort style here wouldn't be so bad if there was some consistency with the villains and creature difficulty. They range from ridiculously easy and killable in one hit to insane and kill Gretchen in one hit. When you mix in the fact that there is no progression based on story or character growth, it starts to feel like you have to luck out instead of rely on skill. Even the boss battles followed this pattern. I had a harder time with one of the earlier witches than I did with Faust, the main villain. How should that be? It reminded me of the boss structures from Splatterhouse where the only hard boss came in chapter two.
The need for luck also continues into some of the QTE actions that take place. There seems to be little to no time to actually press the require button or analog stick movement. This goes to the final kill of bosses and for performing "Finishers" on normal enemies. Finishers being a QTE that mixes Gretchen's magic and Heinrich's scythe. I missed quite a few of these and had to retry because you have fractions of a second for this. In some cases the movement or button presses don't even register, forcing a loss of that QTE that you have to fight your way back to for the chance again.
One last thing, I thought we were past all the piss poor dialog in games. You remember the "Jill Sandwich" line from Resident Evil? Well a good chunk of the dialog follows suit here. Do we really need the characters to make dumb comments or state the obvious in modern games? Well at least outside of characters that are designed that way.
Liked
I will give a bit of credit to the art team here. I really enjoyed the visuals of the game. While the graphics were not the most cutting edge, the style was amazing. In particular I loved Rapunzel's castle and how hair was used in place of cobwebs and the like. Extremely fitting for the character and it added that great little extra to the whole feel of the story. This wasn't the only case of this, but it was the one that really stood out to me.
Now while the dialog of the game was a little bit of ass, the music for the game was truly amazing. It screamed medieval epic adventure to me, not to mention those who walked into the room before seeing what game was on screen. Much like in films, this added to the overall story being told in Knights Contract. Usually in games I mute out the music a bit so it doesn't overpower the dialog or sound effects, but I did the opposite here. The music was amazing.
I also will say that I found the overall story rather intriguing even though a little poorly presented and a little predictable at times. I think it comes down to the twist on a few of historical/mythological figures being given a new twist. It did have me wanting to know what was coming next and want that sense of completion for the whole thing. I am a huge fan of games as a storytelling format and I am always happy to see when developers take a hold of that medium.
Should You Get It?
Yea, the big question. I would have to say that this is not a cup of tea that everyone will enjoy. It has a few great game elements, but it does suffer from the fact that it is one big escort mission. The story and a bit of the visuals help to make you forget about that, but it really does harm the overall game. I do suggest at least giving it a play if the videos and screen shots caught your attention at all. It is a nice distraction away from all the FPS games that came out around the same time, another good selling point. In the end though I'd wait for bargain bin or rent Knights Contract. At least if the below trailer doesn't get you overly excited for the game.
Knights Contract was developed by Game Republic and published by Namco Bandai Games on February 22nd 2011 for the PlayStation 3 and XBox 360. The game retails for $59.99. A copy of the game was supplied by the publisher for review purposes.
