The Knightling Review - A Knight in Shining Armor?

The Knightling sets you off on a journey around the world of Clesseia on the hunt for your lost master, Sir Lionstone, and to stop the ‘Earthborn’ from harming your civilization. With a focus on 3D platforming, shield-forward combat, and exploration, the game promises to be a good time for anyone who enjoys a colorful foray into the action-adventure genre. But can The Knightling hit its legendary highs, or will it be stuck at the bottom of the ranks forever? 

The Knightling’s master, Sir Lionstone, has disappeared after a fight with an Earthborn, a member of an ancient civilization that was wiped out many years ago. Sir Lionstone is a renowned knight and the queen’s hero, and when he vanishes in pursuit of said Earthborn, the city lockdown leaves our Knightling to search for him on his own. Well, not quite on his own; he has the help of Lionstone’s sentient shield, Magnus, who can be used to slide on, glide on, and smack the enemies you encounter on your adventure. With hidden Earthborn ruins, races, and other puzzles to complete alongside the main quest, the game offers plenty of content with its very pretty form! 

There are three main facets to The Knightling’s gameplay: the traversal, the combat, and the quests. Starting with the traversal, there are multiple ways to explore the world both on foot and using the shield. There are mushrooms to bounce on, platforms to hop between, and rooftops to live out your best Ezio Auditore life on, and that is just on foot. Your shield can be used to slide on whenever you like, but obviously setting yourself off down ramps or large hills will have you zooming around the map at some speed, and that’s not even taking on board the blue goo that can send you flying when your shield comes into contact with it. 

On top of the land traversal, after a little while, your shield can be used to glide through the air, latching on to gusts of wind that carry you to further reaches. I will say, though, if you accidentally glide into one of these drafts going the other way, rather than slowing down or falling out of the air, the game will spin you around and send you entirely from where you came from at some speed.

Overall, traversal is fun, but it can sometimes be frustrating. To hop onto your shield, you have to hit the sprint button in mid-air and then hold it while you zip around, which can be slightly annoying if you just wanted to sprint normally. Plus, the shield sledding can be slightly unruly and difficult to control, but it never felt like that was a major barrier in progression and definitely something that does get easier as the game goes on.

Now I have to move on to what I believe is the weakest part of the game: the combat. Now, I do feel the need to preface this section with the fact that I HATE parry mechanics, and more often than not, I simply cannot do them, so I did call in a second pair of eyes to double-check that my opinions weren’t total nonsense. That being said, I have a few issues with how The Knightling handles its combat. You can unlock new abilities and skills at the Knight’s Academy, but the main themes of the combat are blocking, dodging, parrying, and smacking the ‘hit’ button over and over until the enemies are dead. The combat often feels slow and repetitive, and over the course of the game, I did find myself getting bored of fights I was put into. This, plus the way combat works in groups, can be quite frustrating. With the lack of iframes and the length of time it takes to recover from a hit, I found myself tanking hits over and over until my poor Knightling died.

But, having said that, my frustration at the combat was outweighed by how much I enjoyed the world that has been built for you to explore. The quests are all uniquely different from one another, and while some of them didn’t seem to come with a waypoint (which did leave me wandering around an area confused if I was even in the right place), more often than not they were easy to complete, nearby to the quest giver, and featured a diverse group of puzzles and challenges. Puzzles are something The Knightling does really well; there are mazes, parkour, environmental puzzles, and a whole host of other things to scratch your head at. Alongside the puzzles, you’ve got races and optional dungeons to complete and cartographer stations (and subsequently map segments) to find. 

Story progression happens at a natural pace, with the story itself being easy to follow and not particularly groundbreaking, so you’re often gaining skills and abilities through merely carrying on towards finding Lionstone. Other sets of progression, i.e., fighting tactics or shield moves, can be bought from vendors dotted around the map using either the currency you’ll find in chests or get for completing quests or, in the case of combat skills, the Knightling Praise that you can find scattered all over the world. You can also beef up your build by adding crests to Magnus, your shield, that will give you specific buffs, be that extra damage when your health drops or the ability to heal yourself while running, which it is worth mentioning I never managed to make work even one time.

The music is consistently lovely and whimsical, adding to the overall vibe of the game, and with every character other than Magnus speaking in a muffled half-language, the world feels really special and like it has a real identity of its own. It is obvious from the get-go that the developers had a very clear vision for the art style of this game, and it really delivers. Its colorful, cartoony aesthetic is the perfect companion to the quirky world it has built. With unique character designs that seem to imply that the helmet or hat (or maybe it’s just their heads) you wear corresponds to the job you do, it is both ridiculous and fun to behold. 

Sometimes the world feels a bit flat, but thanks to the general verticality of the traversal and the depth of the cities and other major locations, that feeling doesn’t last long. The duality of vibes from the main civilization and that of the defeated Earthborn are distinct and allow you to really see what the world was like when these robotic golems roamed the world.

The Knightling’s performance is generally good, with some visual glitches here and there as well as a little bit of stuttering when the game boots up, but the only real issue I had only appeared once in my time with the game, that being a combat tutorial that flashed up for just a second and then never came back. Most tutorials I didn’t find myself needing, but I am still not sure how best to combat what the game calls (I think because the pop-up disappeared before I could read it) ‘agile enemies’ as I then could not find that tutorial in any of the menus in the game, and thus I can only assume the way I have fought them is the correct way. But that is being picky, as that was the only real issue I had with the game, and it did never happen again. 

I think The Knightling has a lot going for it. It’s bright and colorful, its traversal and platforming are fun, and the world it has built is sufficiently unique and interesting, but I am not sure if the majority of people will be able to stick with it until the end with how basic and potentially boring its combat system is. If you stick the game on easy and just smash your way through enemy encounters, I think you’ll have a much better time than those looking for a combat challenge in a cartoon world full of whimsical dudes and missing knights. I hope that The Knightling finds its audience and that people have a lot of fun with it. I wish I had enjoyed myself more, as I think the story is well worth playing through, which is why I think The Knightling earns itself a Bronze Lamp of approval.

BRONZE - GOOD