Written by Patrick Orquia
Title: The Knight Witch
Developer: Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team
Publisher: Team17
Genre: Action-Adventure, Metroidviania, Bullet Hell/Shoot ‘em Up
Number of Players: 1
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: 29 Nov 2022
Price: $19.99
The Knight Witch was developed by the awesomely named developer Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team and published by the equally awesome Team17. The game has amazing visuals, with hand-drawn art style and animation (very reminiscent of SAHDMT’s other game, Rise and Shine) with bright colors and cutesy character and level design. The music is also top-notch, with different tracks playing for different areas and for enemy encounters. This game is indeed well-put together and presented very well.
This action-adventure game is of the metroidvania genre, mixed with bullet hell/shoot ‘em up elements. Just when I thought that the metroidvania genre has all been played out, I got pleasantly surprised that this game has done something to make itself stand out. Whereas in a typical metroidvania game is played as a platformer, this game has a flying protagonist that can go almost anywhere on the screen. Almost, since this a metroidvania game, some areas are closed off until the character has the ability to proceed further.
In this game, you play as Rayne, a newly-recruited Knight Witch. Knight Witches are a group of superpowered heroes that have helped the town of Dungeonidas against the Daigadai clan, whom they have defeated years prior to the events of the game, in a civil war. The clan was believed to have been wiped out, and the surviving people were forced to leave in an underground city. Rayne became full-fledged member of the Knight Witches after the Daigadai clan returned for revenge. The other four Knight Witches have been scattered to different areas of the world and it is up to Rayne to defeat the Daigadai clan once and for all and in the process, resolve the mystery behind the Knight Witches themselves.
As a Knight Witch, you can fly around and reach many different areas that you are allowed at any given time. Actually, you fly almost every time. You never land to walk, but later on, you can swim underwater and have other abilities to reach previously closed off areas. You can also shoot projectiles and can either aim with the use of the right stick and shoot with the R button, or you can auto-aim at enemies by just pressing and holding on the R button, which is quite handy since there are many multi-enemy encounters that you will have to go through throughout the game.
The enemies, referred in-game as golems, also fly around and shoot at you at first sight. Some will actively pursue you while some are stationary and will only shoot at you if you are visible to them. Aside for your basic projectile, you can use other types of projectiles when you equip spellcards for different kinds of projectiles and attacks that you can either acquire from treasure boxes or defeating enemies or bought from merchants. You can equip multiple ones and they shuffle at random with 3 of them available at a any given time. These spellcards also have corresponding mana points that are consumed for them to be used. For example, if a spellcard requires 2 mana points to be used, you need to have at least 2 mana points available. You can replenish your mana points by collecting blue orbs that are dropped by enemies or by opening treasure boxes. Other collectibles that you have to collect are the green shards, which are the main currency in the game, used in buying armors from merchants (armors give you additional heart points as well as other perks; they can only be available for sale from merchants once you have found their blueprint). Another one is the Yipi coins, which are scattered throughout the world, some of which are hidden or placed where enemies are lurking and you will need to kill them for you to reach the coins (these are used for purchasing new spellcards from a specific NPC).
One aspect of the game that makes it standout further are the enclosed enemy encounters, referred in game as enemy ambushes. An area is closed off and you have to survive an onslaught of enemies (until you have depleted their collective health bar) for the are to reopen or a new path becomes available to you. They could get pretty intense, and oftentimes frustrating, as the game suddenly becomes a bullet hell, with multiple projectiles from multiple enemies come at you from different directions. You will eventually unlock the dash ability near the start of the game, and this allows you to dash through projectiles and other obstacles and traps (and also allows you to pass through some barricades to open new paths). Especially essential during boss fights, which are more intense and much more frustrating. Dying in this game doesn’t penalize you aside from sending you back to the last save point, which could either be near the boss area or a few rooms away, which adds up to the frustration, especially if you failed to open a shortcut (typical metroidvania stuff… always look for shortcuts!). Some ambushes will reward you with upgrades, especially after boss fights, so that is something to look forward to as you “get gud” for you to beat the enemies.
Aside from getting new upgrades from spellcards and equipment, your character can also level up by increasing your link level, and you do this by interacting with NPCs. When you encounter an NPC for the first time or when you interact with the masses (part of your job as a Knight Witch is keeping the people happy), your link level increases, which signifies your link with the world around you increasing. When your gauge for your link level reach from one end to the other, you level up, and new upgrades become available to you. Unlike the armors that get destroyed when you die or spellcards that can be mixed and matched and removed altogether if you so want, these upgrades from leveling up are persistent, like additional fire power or increased fire rate or increase of your mana pool. The problem with this system is that you don’t constantly encounter new NPCs as you progress in the game. These NPCs, as interesting as they may seem, are placed at specific areas, so you level up when the game wants you to level up.
The game is divided into different areas, which are further sub-divided into different interconnected rooms, again, typical metroidvania stuff. Some rooms loop back to previously visited ones and there are even hidden ones that you can discover by blasting through some walls, which usually contains some collectible or even some NPCs that need to be rescued. The goal for each area is to reach a specific rooms and get past some challenges, typically by beating some enemies. You can quickly open the game map and see where you currently are and you can also press – and a glittering waypoint points you to the general direction of where you have to go. Aside from the challenging enemy encounters, navigating through the rooms are not too hard. Save points are also placed strategically throughout the area, and this also where you can edit your spellcard loadout (you can equip up to seven) and even get some clue on what you need to do next. This is also where you respawn when you die, so always save when you see a save point so that you won’t respawn from a far away save point. By the way, the game also auto-saves every so often, so you really don’t lose progress.
Overall, the Knight Witch is a very good game, which is typical for a Team17 release (I loved Blasphemous and Yoku’s Island Express). The overall presentation is really outstanding and the game is evenly paced. The combat mechanics are also very good, though the enemy encounters can be quite frustrating at times and I find them quite unnecessarily tedious to go through. Maybe they should have included multiple difficulty settings, so that I could maybe chose an easier difficulty than the one that the game offers by default. I find overly difficult games get less and less enjoyable when it becomes more and more of a chore due to the difficulty. Maybe it’s just me being not so much of a fun of bullet hell/shoot ‘em up games, but there are many other gamers like me who would just want to have a fun time playing a game. But all rants aside, this game is really good. Fans of the metroidvania genre should give this one a go. Even if you’re not a fan, this quality game will still definitely leave you awed from beginning to end.
REPLAY VALUE: High
PROS:
- Amazing visuals, with excellent hand-drawn art style and animation and background environments
- Excellent music and level design
- Solid gameplay and combat mechanics
- Navigation is a breeze, with multiple signposting available pointing you to where you need to go next
- Very interesting NPCs
- Optional cheats codes are available to be activated, to alleviate the game’s difficulty (with one cheat code making Rayne instantly die on just one hit)
CONS:
- Can be ridiculously challenging at times, especially on enclosed enemy encounters and boss fights, which could lead to much frustration; would have been better if the game offers multiple difficulty settings
- No voice acting during cut scenes
- Very long load times
- Buttons cannot be remapped; the dash and shoot functions would have been better set on the trigger buttons instead of the shoulder buttons
RATING: 4/5 bullet hell and Knight Witch spells
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