Knights' Contract Thoughts

I bought this game at a convention for an unreasonably high asking price because I just love playing random PS2 and 3 games hoping I might find something I could enjoy. I always heard from the start that Knights' Contract isn't very good and even reviews at the time derided it but I wanted to find some enjoyment.

I'll start with what I liked, the story did seem pretty interesting, the premise and the idea playing as an immortal character is pretty cool since game characters in many ways are immortal to begin with and the idea of a game having that directly acknowledged withing the story and gameplay is interesting. Gretchen is admittedly an interesting character in that all of that similar to her kind have turned evil but she refuses to and still walks the path of protecting humanity, I admittedly have a soft spot for characters that choose to be good despite the fact that they have every reason in the world not to be. Them fighting for a hopeless cause where they won't get rewarded for it is something I always respect in any character in a story as long as their behaviour is consistent and gets results. The voice acting is also pretty good, but despite all my praise I never actually finished the game even though I like the story and voice acting.

To put it simpily, Knights Contract might be my go to game from now on when it comes to games that appear to have a good story and writing but terrible gameplay.

The gameplay of Knights Contract is so bad that it's almost impossible to see the game through to the end. The basic combat isn't too bad, it's essentially a combination of something like the God of War games where it has lights, heavy and magic attacks, the lock on and camera is somewhat similar to Dark Souls in that you can control the camera, and the lock on has a overhead view and you can strafe and run around your enemies, the game is also like ICO in that you have a companion with you at all times and she can help you during combat.

This all doesn't sound bad on paper, but this leads me to my first issue, the camera is really bad when enemies and Hendrich are in closed spaces, the camera will spazz out constantly and it makes it impossible to see what is going on but the moment to moment combat is generally okay. It's admittedly kind of fun to use different magic attacks with Gretchen.

This is where all the problems start rushing at once, Gretchen has a life bar of her own and Hendrich can't die. Gretchen's AI isn't the greatest and at times she will even run into enviromental hazards getting you a game over. You have to hold her to recover her life bad and this can be painfully slow, very painfully slow especially when enemies and bosses are attacking you all at once and you are trying to avoid getting hit while, it's just charges at too slow of a rate.

Then this leads to the bosses, which aren't very good since the camera isn't the greatest but admittedly they can go down pretty quickly but here is the catch if you get past all the dumb quirks with Gretchen and beat the boss, you have to do a QTE to finish them off like in God of War, but the thing is, these QTEs are easy to fail and you will have to fight the boss again to have another chance. The ice snake boss is one of the worst bosses I have encountered in a while, she can incapcitate Hendrich and mashing x just takes way too long to recover in time to rescue Gretchen from dying and this will lead to multiple game overs. But I got past it.

Here's the thing, I can take bad cameras, annoying escort missions with slow regen health and bad AI, terrible boss fights where you have it takes a while to do the finishing QTEs again but ruins the game for me and what made me drop it was the terrible level design.

Levels in Knight's Contract are way too big, okay that's not bad, but what makes it bad is that everything looks the same, there is multiple load screens breaking up the levels and the biggest kicker to all this is that it is never clear what is it you are supposed to be doing in a level. You can wonder around for minutes because there is no sense of direction or idea on what the player is supposed to be doing. You'll get some vague hints like going up a mountain top or opening valves to move through a sewer system but am I specifically doing in order to get to the end of a stage? I don't know, I looked up a walkthrough to get to firey village level to see how I am supposed to get to the end and it's to go up a hilltop and enter a door that looks exactly the same as the other areas of the village level, you are just running around circles because the game gives the player a terrible sense of direction.

Overall, as you can tell I did not like the game, the story, writing and voice acting seemed interesting but the terrible gameplay makes Knight's Contract a must avoid, don't buy this at it's current asking price, if you can play with emulator save states maybe there is some fun to be had, and that is a strong maybe.