The Knight Witch Review (Switch)

There are a plethora of Metroidvanias on the Nintendo Switch eShop now, with titles coming from both AAA developers and the vast majority from indie developers. Due to there being so many titles, developers find that they need to add a twist or do a subgenre mashup to make their title stand out from the crowd. It’s necessary in hopes to get some discoverability and word of mouth on social media due to the lack of discoverability and curation on the eShop – another topic for another day. We have gotten many metroidvanias mashups over the years from pinball, golf, and now a shoot ‘em-up by Super Mega Team, published by Team 17, called The Knight Witch.

Story

In traditional Metroidvania fashion, The Knight Witch opens with you playing as one of The Knight Witches, Robyn, where only four of them take part in a great war against the golem army of Daigadai. This is actually the game’s prologue, which takes place 14 years prior to where we are introduced to a secret 5th Knight Witch named Rayne, who we follow on their adventure. She doesn’t have nearly the abilities or power controlling Robyn, which is to be expected in this type of game.

Our story picks up over a decade later after the events of the war that had society leave the surface behind due to Robyn’s final attack. In the crater that resulted from her attack, a network of tunnels was discovered which leads to the city of Dungeonidas, where the story picks up with Rayne. Rayne is actually a Knight Witch, but it has been believed there were only four so she is not as powerful as her sisters. Before long, everything doesn’t go to plan and there is an attack on her village by none other than the Daigadai – guess they all weren’t wiped out in the war after all. The remaining Daigadai forces are seeking revenge and the heroic Knight Witches from decades past are no longer, so it’s all up to Rayne. In addition to Rayne needing to save her village, their forces have captured her husband so she needs to rescue him as well.

Rayne will aim out to prevent the Daigadai from getting their revenge and as the story plays out, there is the expected twist or two. I won’t spoil that here, but the story does a good job of pacing the game. You get a story beat or two with each mission Rayne is sent out on, and when she comes back, she has to report her findings to the village. The way she has to report her findings reminded me a bit of the Hunger Games series where she must decide whether to tell the truth, or simply what the citizens want to hear.

Gameplay

The Knight Witch is a Metroidvania, but I’d say it’s a Metroidvania-lite. Of course, the game has the maze-like areas which will require back tracking, secrets to uncover, epic boss battles, etc. There is a central area, the hanging castle, where you will report your findings after each mission and find other NPCs to interact with, such as the baker who can craft your armor or the card duplicator. From this central area, you can go off into one of four maze-like areas, which have the traditional type of metroidvania maps you would expect but are on the smaller side.

As far as gameplay goes, Rayne is constantly flying so that removes the platforming aspect and associated challenges that come with it, which could turn people off that are more accustomed to very tough platforming sections. Instead, there are intense flying sections to dodge bullets, lasers, and even spike-lined caverns. While traveling around the environments and dodging the various hazards using the left stick, Rayne will need to defeat foes by shooting. The Knight Witch does a good job implementing a shoot ’em up with your primary weapon aiming tied to the right stick. There is an auto-aim mechanic too when you quickly release off the right stick, but due to the intensity of the game, I didn’t find myself using this as much as I should have.

Rayne’s secondary method of dealing damage to her foes is by casting spell cards. You have 3 spell cards randomly drawn from your deck, which can be customized and altered at selected save shrine locations. Each card has a mana cost and mana is gained by collecting it from defeated enemies. I found this card system to be a cool idea, but poorly implemented. I found with how much else was going on at any time, I usually just spammed these abilities as my attention was focused on dodging all the incoming projectiles. There were a few times I would catch in the corner of my eye the spell card I would like to use, but for the most part casting spells were an afterthought.

In most Metroidvanias, as you progress you gain permanent upgrades that give you better weapons or new traversal abilities, but for the most part Rayne’s upgrades are in the form of new cards. There is also a link system which rises in level as you rescue some NPCs that are hidden in the various areas. You can also raise your link level after a mission by reporting your findings which choice you decide to report. You can choose to be moral and tell the truth, but that can worry the villagers so your link and their belief in you won’t grow as much and become stronger. I did like this system where I could choose to tell the truth at the sacrifice of not increasing my link level as much. Increasing your link level will eventually fill a progress bar and raise Rayne’s level. Each level up allows you to choose a knight or witch ability.

Overall, the traversal and action gameplay are great, but I just think the developers came up with too many ideas and systems that some of them just get lost. I think the spell card system is a neat idea, but I would have preferred permanent upgrades or even loadout you could customize Rayne with versus just the cards.

Presentation

Despite some of my dislikes for some aspects of the gameplay mechanics, the overall presentation of The Knight Witch is fantastic. The worlds are beautifully designed with rich and colorful backgrounds and character models. I really liked the designs of some of the bosses and the soundtrack is also fantastic. I found myself humming and nodding along to the theme in the central hub area in particular.

Despite the beautiful artwork and soundtrack on display here, sadly, I have to report that there are some technical issues, especially during boss battles. There can be so much mayhem occurring on screen that the game experiences some slow down and stuttering. I also found instances where some bullets would go through walls and other times where they would not, so it felt like I was sometimes taking unnecessary damage.

Conclusion

The Knight Witch left me puzzled. On paper, it sounds like a great idea and the team has crafted a beautiful world with an awesome soundtrack. I just found the overall implementation of the various ideas from the shoot ‘em-up portion paired with deck building to be a bit overwhelming to keep track of with all the action going on on-screen. I would have liked to see the team focus hard on one or the other systematic twist to the metroidvania formula rather than both. I usually found myself consumed with dodging all of the mayhem to not really pay attention to which card abilities I had. I would have preferred a more traditional upgrade system instead of the deck building since the shoot ‘em-up aspects are very challenging, sometimes simply down to distinguishing all the projectiles atop of colorful backgrounds.

Luckily, there is a cheat menu which helps with the difficulty. I am not a big shoot ‘em-up gamer, so having the ability to tweak the difficulty, turn on damage numbers and force extra health drops was a nice bonus. I am all for people playing and experiencing games the way they want to play them, so using cheats here or playing an RPG like Persona 5 Royal with the easiest difficulty turned on, go for it!

I think if you like shoot ‘em-ups and are looking for a game where combat can get intense and hectic, this will be an enjoyable experience for you as it will take you on a roughly 10-hour long adventure. For fans of either genre looking for an interesting take on the formula, give The Knight Witch a look.