GAME REVIEWED:

REVIEWED BY: E1Alpha

Introduction:

Knightly Passions is an adult-only adventure game with a card-game battle mechanic. The concept immediately brings back memories of games like Slay the Spire, Monster Train and Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. The game is still in development as the build I was able to play was the 0.4b version, which gave me a solid 6 hours of game play at a casual pace while also trying to explore as much of the game’s features as possible.

I will first go over the different aspects of the game and discuss them, before ending with my final evaluation:

Gameplay:

Let’s immediately tackle the big fish here. The gameplay is… rough. You can definitely see a solid base but it feels very barebones and has loads of room and need for further improvement. The combat boils down to drawing a hand of six cards from your deck and having three energy per turn to spend on three of these as each card in the game so far always costs 1 energy. The cards you get are very basic. You have an attack card to deal damage to an opponent; a defend card to give yourself some armor for 1 turn to tank incoming attacks; and one of the early quests gives you one healing card as well. Your hand will always be any combination of these cards, as there are no additional cards present in the game. You can’t even open your deck to have a look at each of these cards. This definitely makes combat in the game feel very monotonous.

A positive detail however was that your character also wears equipment like in an rpg, and this equipment actually has an effect on your cards. Better armor makes your defend cards better, while a better sword makes your attacking cards do more damage.

The enemies will always announce what they will do on their next turn, whether it is dealing damage, defending themselves, healing, etc… But while the game takes time to explain to you how the basics of combat work, there is no explanation what each symbol above the enemy means exactly. Luckily the symbols are pretty straightforward, but when buffs or debuffs are given, it would have been nice to be able to see their effect by hovering over them.

You also can get healing potions to top yourself off in the game, and while they aren’t really necessary to beat most of the game, with the exception of the one and only dungeon so far, it is easy enough to farm gold and buy them in bulk and make the combat way too easy.

Speaking of said dungeon, there is one instance in the game right now where you have to go through a gauntlet of fights, going from node to node on the map to clear out each node. Right now, this dungeon is simply a linear experience, although I did enjoy one of the nodes presenting me with a number of obstacles I had to overcome simply by making the correct dialogue options.

Combat will also get you various drops which you can either simply sell in town for gold, or combine them together at the blacksmith to upgrade your gear. The crafting process for this new gear can be a bit confusing at first due to the lack of tooltips when hovering over the materials you need.

Outside of combat, we’re working with a more traditional point and click adventure game. You have an overworld map to travel to different locations, and a main town hub with a few points of interest to visit. A lot of the game will take place here as well as you go around talking to various NPCs, accepting and turning in quests and the occasional aimless wandering for the next quest to appear. I’ve had a few times where I was stumped on what I was supposed to do exactly after finishing a quest, and so I just went around every place to see if I could find something useful. I did end up finding the next plothook, but some sort of indication of which points of interest could lead to a new quest would be very useful in not making you feel lost and wondering what the hell to do.

There’s also the occasional minigame, which either comes down to button mashing or a sliding puzzle. Nothing too egregious though, and the minigames do offer a little respite from the bore that the main battle gameplay becomes after a few fights.

All in all, the gameplay itself is definitely the game’s weakest point right now, but there is a glimmer of hope in there for the future. But that does bring me on to the next parts…

Art:

While the combat graphics are stiff, rough and uninteresting… The same cannot be said for the rest of the game. When not in combat, characters are drawn lovely and with plenty of character to them. I cannot deny that the main character’s cocky smirk was very infectious and many of the female characters (and even some of the males) had some real charm put into their art.

This quality also expands to the CG-scenes. There is a mix of full size drawings and more comic panels, but all of them look very nice. Clean linework, simple and effective coloring and shading. My biggest gripe was that in the very first “cutscene”, the facial expressions of the characters and the dialogue did not seem to match in terms of tone, but I have not seen this issue anywhere else.

The UI is still very basic and rough, but serviceable and at least doesn’t detract from the experience.

Writing:

Let’s get the ugly out of the way. The writing feels amateurish at times, and typos can definitely sneak in a-plenty. There’s also a recurring theme of emotional states being just mentioned in parenthesis, instead of being written out properly. On the flipside, there are certain descriptions that feels needlessly flowery and descriptive. Some of the writing could really do with another pass to improve both the flow, grammar and overall quality.

That being said… The story and quips presented here are absolutely wonderful. The story, while basic and somewhat predictable, is solid and enjoyable enough to actually get invested. The cliché main story that you are supposed to care about and be focused on is quickly forgotten in favor of wonderful side stories, especially the three nuns you meet early in the game. Not only is their design simple but lovely, but each really feels like a distinct person as you get to know them through their stories.

And then there’s the humor. I was not ready to give this game credit for its humor, but there’s some real smart writing in there and I’ve had more than a few chuckles, and even the occasional laugh in response to some of the snarky back and forth dialogue. The main character feels a smartass with a good heart, and that is a character trope I absolutely adore. Every character you talk to has something to either like or hate them for (even though about one third of the present cast seems to have a drinking problem). I personally really felt myself drawn to the red-headed nun as a character I wanted to learn more about as I got to know her.

I do have to mention a pet peeve I ran into immediately with an elf you meet in one of the first scenes. You can get your first erotic scene from this, but after that, this elf mysteriously disappears from the rest of the game. Considering her design was rather interesting, I was left disappointed by this, especially since so many other characters quickly became much more interesting.

Audio:

The music is definitely something to approve of. Nothing ground-breaking, but it sets the mood well. I did get the occasional glitch where the same track kept on playing even after it should have changed (such as the combat tune playing all the way into town and some of the next cutscenes). This glitch somehow seemed to even remain when reloading a save. But none of the music feels too repetitive to make this a major issue.

Erotic Scenes:

However… The writing in these scenes feels like it takes a nosedive. The scenes feel rushed and the writing seems fairly barebones. Just as quick as an erotic scene begins, it disappears just as quickly again. So if you’re looking to get some gratification from the scenes yourself, you should either just enjoy the basic animations for what they are, or you better be a speed demon when it comes to fapping or fingerblasting.

Final Evaluation:

Knightly Passions is a collection of beautiful character art and erotic scenes, with witty but rough and gameplay that shows potential, but as of right now feels repetitive and lackluster. Had this game simply been a visual novel or adventure game without the card fighting element, then you’d already be looking at a very solid story experience, but right now, the gameplay feels like an extra afterthought that doesn’t really add much to the experience, except padding out the playtime.

I can recommend this to pick up for the story and art, but if you want to pick up this game to have actual fun gameplay, then I would wait until this project gets further down its development and hopefully get some improvements to make the combat more fun.And if you want to pick up this game to have some quick fapping material, then you’d better move along, because you do have to slog through a fair bit of the game’s bare bones combat to get to most of the good scenes.

Gameplay: 7/20
Art: 15/20
Writing: 13/20
Audio: 12/20
Erotic scenes: 12/20)

Score: 59/100

DEVELOPED BY: