Kill Knight Review (PC)

Before the age of story-heavy video games with groundbreaking narrative design, mind-blowing lores, and cinematic cutscenes, we lived in simpler times where games were about right here, right now; about beating the high score and mastering the gameplay mechanics. PlaySide’s latest game Kill Knight is a homage to that bygone era; an isometric Bullet Hell action shooter with brutal combat and unforgiving gameplay set in a hellish setting that can bring back memories for old-school gamers and act as a history lesson for the newcomers.

As one might expect, the story is not the focal point of Kill Knight just like all other arcade titles. An infamous warrior knight is condemned to eternal suffering in hell where he must fight endless hordes of infernal creatures in different circles of this nightmare. The story is just an excuse for the combat to begin and for players to face off against relentless waves of enemies. Although there is a final boss fight at the end of the game that serves as the final act of the story, that and the starting cutscene of the game are the only story-wise interactions that the players have with Kill Knight.

The combat is everything in Kill Knight. Players are equipped with dual handguns as primary weapons and a secondary weapon that could be a shotgun, a grenade launcher, or some other types of special weapons. The knight is also equipped with a sword for occasional melee attacks. A relic and armor are the two other pieces of equipment that the knight has in his arsenal. The relic provides a boost to weapons or stats and the armor manages the health and mobility of the knight in combat. The heavier the armor, the more health the knight gets while sacrificing the number of dashes he can perform consecutively to avoid damage. New weapons and equipment can be unlocked by completing in-game challenges or spending points earned by completing levels.

With the loadout set, players can choose a level and start fighting the enemies there using the tools they have. What makes Kill Knight special is its combat loop. Enemies drop red orbs when killed and picking them up increases the knight’s damage and power. But those red orbs can also be used to charge the secondary weapon’s special attack that not only has a devastating effect against enemies but also makes them drop healing orbs to restore the knight’s health. Thus, players need to prioritize their pickups during gameplay to maintain a balance between damage output and health. While the primary weapon has unlimited ammo and only needs to be reloaded, the secondary weapon’s ammo is limited. In turn, killing enemies with the melee weapon makes them drop ammo for the secondary weapon. Thus, Kill Knight’s core gameplay loop is a perfectly intertwined cycle of using primary, secondary, and melee weapons while managing the pickups received from killing enemies so that the flow of combat is not interrupted by death!

The game has a reload trigger like the famous active reload mechanism in Gears of War in which players have to push a specific button during a short window of time while the primary weapon is automatically reloaded to activate a boost. If players do a melee attack during this window, the knight will hit enemies with a special and more powerful melee attack that yields much more secondary ammo. If the primary weapon is used during the reload trigger, the primary weapon’s special power is activated which could be an increased rate of fire, damage, penetration through enemies, or other special features. Reload trigger can also be used to fill the secondary weapon’s special attack faster; decreasing the time players have to wait between each use. This feature adds yet another layer to the sophisticated combat loop of Kill Knight; providing a welcomed challenging experience that an arcade game is expected to have.

The game also has a good deal of variety when it comes to its hellish creatures. Enemies are either melee combatants or ranged shooters. Either Groupe has multiple types of creatures that are gradually added to the game in each of the five levels. Deadly glowing orb-like bullets, lasers, special melee attacks that should be countered with the knight’s sword, and exploding homing flying demons are just a few of the tools in the enemy’s arsenal of death. Adding this enemy variety to the environmental challenges of each level such as deadly spikes, exploding pillars, or moving lasers makes Kill Knight one of the very few games released this year that breathtakingly tests the players’ reflexes to its limits. Perhaps the only thing missing here is a couple of more boss fights to make finishing each level feel more epic.

Kill Knight is a magnificent arcade game. While it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it perfectly puts mechanics from other famous and successful action games next to each other to create a unique and satisfying gameplay loop. This is one of the few games out there that needs your 100% attention while you’re playing it and makes your time fly! With difficulty modifiers, in-game challenges, and quite a few weapons and items to unlock, Kill Knight is also a title with high replayability and a dream come true for arcade shooter fans.