The Knight Witch review

From Super Awesome Beginnings

On a planet not unlike our own, the Daigadai family achieved Utopia. With a focus on science, technology, and progress, they managed to bring an entire planet together, convincing people of all different species to live and work together towards common goals. For a while, it seemed like the code for a perfect global community had been solved. And then their hubris caught up with them.

n their pursuit of progress, the Daigadai siphoned their planet’s resources until it was nearly dead, turning their beautiful planet into a husk. The desperation of the citizens awoke the Knight Witches, powerful beings who receive their strength from the trust and belief of the people they protect. This is the reality of The Knight Witch, a 2D shoot ‘em up that has plenty of personality and a fascinating world to show you. Does it save the day in the end, or is it more likely to fade away into oblivion? Let’s find out in this review of The Knight Witch.

The Knight Witch was developed by *deep breath* Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team. Definitely a mouthful, but the quality of The Knight Witch speaks for itself. This is the studio that produced the cute and colorful 2D puzzle/action game Supermagical, but it seems more inclined to deliver the kind of serious/dire world with endearing cartoon art as is evidenced by their games Rise & Shine, Pro Zombie Soccer, and now The Knight Witch. This is unsurprising as the studio is comprised of devs who previously worked on games like Plants vs. Zombies, RiME, and Moonlighter.

Publishing duties for The Knight Witch were handled by Team 17. Most might recognize Team17 from their other published games including The Escapists, Overcooked, and My Time at Portia, but they are also responsible for publishing harder-edged titles like Thymesia, Blasphemous, and Hell Let Loose, among other things. The Knight Witch, despite its presentation, falls somewhere in between the bright cuteness of those former games, and the dour grimness of the latter.

A Beautiful, Shattered World

From The Knight Witch’s start screen, you might think you have an idea of what you’re in for. Players are immediately presented with Rayne, the game’s heroine, who is rendered in a style that simultaneously reminds me of Little Witch Academia and Steven Universe. You can tell Rayne is strong, plucky, and resolute just by looking at her. But what you are presented with when you start a new game kind of threw me for a loop. The basic rundown I provided at the beginning of this review is delivered through text and still art, but once I was given direct control, I was not in the world I had pictured based on the start screen.

Destroyed buildings on fire, mechanical death machines, and a cracked sky convey a frightful, harrowing situation that isn’t at all cheerful. This feeling and presentation is pervasive throughout most of the game’s 6-8 hours, but it never feels overwhelming or unbearably grim There is still plenty of color splashed around the world, the environments are designed intricately and highly detailed, and the many different characters you are introduced to are positively delightful. Every new area you explore finds a perfect balance between managing the seriousness of the story and being a visual treat. The only issue I have in terms of the game’s presentation is that occasionally it’s difficult to tell what is acting as a barrier and what is just part of the background environment. It’s strange, I found myself more than once backing into a barrier, trapping myself in a vulnerable position because I couldn’t tell the barrier apart from the rest of the stage. Typically games like this have stage barriers colored more brightly or otherwise more obvious that it is part of the gameplay, while everything else is in shadow or colored darker. I’m not sure why The Knight Witch didn’t do that, but it’s definitely an inconvenience for most of the game. Even considering this minor fault, you can’t deny that The Knight Witch is a mesmerizingly beautiful game. And when you factor in gameplay, it’s definitely something special. thanks in part to its art direction.

There is still plenty of color splashed around the world, the environments are designed intricately and highly detailed, and the many different characters you are introduced to are positively delightful. Every new area you explore finds a perfect balance between managing the seriousness of the story and being a visual treat.

The only issue I have in terms of the game’s presentation is that occasionally it’s difficult to tell what is acting as a barrier and what is just part of the background environment. It’s strange, I found myself more than once backing into a barrier, trapping myself in a vulnerable position because I couldn’t tell the barrier apart from the rest of the stage. Typically games like this have stage barriers colored more brightly or otherwise more obvious that it is part of the gameplay, while everything else is in shadow or colored darker. I’m not sure why The Knight Witch didn’t do that, but it’s definitely an inconvenience for most of the game.

Even considering this minor fault, you can’t deny that The Knight Witch is a mesmerizingly beautiful game. And when you factor in gameplay, it’s definitely something special.

Where The Knight Witch really shines is in its gameplay. For some reason, I wasn’t really expecting a horizontally scrolling cartoon fantasy Gradius or DoDonPachi, but that’s exactly what The Knight Witch is.

Players take control of Rayne 14 years after the events of the intro. At the time of the opening battle, she was a Knight Witch in training, but that training was never completed. This is really just an excuse to have some spectacular power creep over the course of the game as Rayne builds up strength and unlocks new abilities to achieve Knight Witch status, but it is also narratively relevant.

Battles with the returned villains play out over a series of interconnected areas in different locations, and combat proceeds in typical twin-stick shoot ‘em up/bullet hell fashion. Rayne’s movement is controlled with the left stick, aim is handled by the right stick, and the right bumper fires. Both sticks get plenty of use as you weave in between waves of projectiles and take aim at enemies.

Simple enough, sure, but The Knight Witch also adds a card-based spell system, in which you equip spell cards that can be utilized as long as you have enough magic to activate them. Each card uses a certain amount of magic which directly correlates to how powerful it is, and these really proved to be life savers in many of the fights I encountered. Because The Knight Witch doesn’t mess around.

Difficulty Without Frustration

This game can get quite difficult pretty quickly, and it really takes complete usage of every option available to you to get out of some of these fights. Just in the first hour, I banged my head against Demolition Golem Abraxas maybe eight times before it was finally defeated. I found that managing aiming while watching and avoiding attacks was quite difficult for me, but The Knight Witch has a pretty helpful solution for these situations. If you hold down the fire button without aiming, the blasts will auto-aim and hit the target as long as you are within range. This freed me up to avoid taking damage and finally take it down.

I’m sure shoot ‘em up purists will disagree and scoff at this inclusion, but it never caused that particular fight or any other to feel “cheap” or easy. The game is still hard if you aren’t aiming, and having that option prevents The Knight Witch from descending into Hollow Knight levels of combat-related restarts. The auto-fire is just the cherry on top of a combat system that looks and feels good to use, especially as Rayne gets stronger.

In addition to gorgeous art and engaging combat, The Knight Witch made me… feel. Not in a weird way, but in kind of an anime way. Like when a hero looks overwhelmed and is about to lose a fight, but then their friends back them up and give them the strength they need to win.

Almost this exact same concept is introduced pretty early in the game, and it’s how Rayne’s power grows. Every time she helps someone or makes a new friend, a chain is formed between her and that character, which adds to her power. I think this is a fantastic system. I got goosebumps every time one of those major power boosts happened, and the way the end of the game played out definitely had me a little misty-eyed.

The inspiration I felt as the credits rolled is something I rarely experience in video games, and I think the developers delivered something very special with this one.

The Knight Witch has a few flaws. The aforementioned stage barrier issue and some dialogue that could have maybe used some extra polish come to mind. But when you are engaged by a story like this, and gameplay captures all of your attention so thoroughly, it’s difficult to complain about things like that.