It is never too late to be what you might have been.
-George Eliot
I’ll be the first to admit, when it comes to favorite genres, shmups are pretty close to the bottom of the list. I can appreciate them in all their different forms, but for the life of me, I cannot play them, especially bullet hells. I just can’t keep track of everything happening on the screen and end up panicking, then dying. Believe me, I’ve tried. I’m just no good. This is why I surprised myself when I first picked up the demo for The Knight Witch, an exploration adventure with shmup-style combat. I can’t quite call it a Metroidvania, as to me, that genre requires platforming, but it’s as close as you can get with a character that flies everywhere.
On top of the shmup combat, the game also claimed a card-game element for spellcasting, another typical turn-off for me. While I’m good at card games, I don’t usually enjoy them. By almost all rights, I should have had no interest in The Knight Witch at all, and yet, I couldn’t draw my attention away. It just had a look and a feel about it that made me want to try despite my misgivings. Having managed to complete everything there is to do in the game, I can safely have I have no regrets.
The 8-Bit Review
Visuals: 9/10
I said it was the look of the game that grabbed me, and it held me from start to finish. This game is simply beautiful. The art is clean and clear. You’re never wondering “what even is this?” or thinking everything around you looks the same. Nothing blocks the screen in UI, either. The card game element, tucked away in the corner of the screen at all times, is large enough to identify what card is on what button at a glance. The characters and settings are all identifiably unique. Whatever complaints may be had about the rest of the game, there is nothing negative I can say about how it looks. The only, ONLY visual complaint I have is that it can be difficult to tell enemy bullets with everything flying across the screen in combat. But that’s pretty normal with shmups, as far as I can tell.
Audio: 8/10
I have a strange relationship with the audio in The Knight Witch. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve booted the game up, gone “This time I’m going to get a read on the background music,” and then immediately lost it. The music is fantastic: beautiful instrumentals that give the forest vibes of the Gaia Tree area, or the windy cold of the Mirror Lake, even instrumental rock for the fiery Forge Fields and enemy ambushes. When I sit and enjoy the music, it’s simply wonderful, an OST I could recommend to any music lover. As soon as I start to focus on anything else, though, I lose the music entirely. I think it’s because of the pacing of the music. It starts quiet and builds up every time. If you wait around, you’ll get to hear the subtle individual elements swell into their whole. However, it’s a game. You’re not waiting around, you’re rushing in and kicking butt. By the time the music picks up, you’re buried in gunfire and explosions, which also sound great, but it overrides the background music.
Gameplay: 6/10
Gameplay-wise, The Knight Witch has a lot going on. It’s got the map and exploration elements of a metroidvania, the shoot-em-up elements of something partway between a regular shmup and a bullet hell, and with a little card game mixed in. It’s also got a decent number of moving parts. Every button on the controller has a job by the end of the game, and it feels fairly good to play once you get the hang of it. There’s a button that solely gives you a directional guide for where you’re supposed to go, which seems like a great idea at first, but ultimately, it doesn’t feel necessary. The game is fairly linear in the paths you need to tread, and it shows you your next destination on the map. The directional guideline goes the most direct available route, even when doors are locked or paths in the way. It’s the only gameplay element that feels unnecessary, but as one of the first ones you learn, it’s out of place and easily forgotten.
How’s the shmup gameplay?
For the shmup parts, you’ve got a mix of ways to play. You can freely aim with a control stick, or you can let the AI aim for you. Both techniques have pros and cons. With the auto-aim function, you can focus more on dodging enemies, but your attacks do less damage. Aiming yourself will do considerably more, almost doubling your damage, but at a higher risk of missing a shot. One of the elements that I’m fond of comes into play when you get hit. You may have some invulnerability after a hit, you may not. I couldn’t actually tell, because when you take a hit, all shots clear the screen. You’re never forced to continue dodging immediately or take multiple hits from a single massive attack. Damage is one and done, giving you a moment to readjust yourself in bad situations.
You can see the difference in the bullet sizes between the auto-aim on the left and the manual aim on the right.
How about the exploration?
As an exploration game, you find and unlock more moves as you go through each stage which allows you to go back and get more things you couldn’t before. The biggest problem with this is, well, Rayne, your character, is kind of slow. You eventually get a short dash, but it’s meant for dodging, not for speed boosts. Like Super Metroid, there’s also no fast travel (well, until you beat the game, and even then, it just lets you go to a zone’s starting point from any save point. It’s really only good for collection clean-up.) At the very least, there’s a central hub so getting between areas isn’t so bad. You don’t have to cross a giant map to get from the first area to the last. You just have to cross the large individual maps. Slowly.
What’s in the cards?
I haven’t touched much on the card game element. The cards, effectively, are your magic. You build a deck, and each card is pulled randomly when you use one of the top ones assigned to a button. This could have been a major hangup if done poorly. If you were limited in how many times you could use a card before you had to refresh at a save point, a single ambush could have been deadly. However, the cards are, effectively, infinite. As soon as you use one, it goes right back into the deck to wait for its next pull. As long as you have mana to spend, you can just keep casting spell after spell. Since enemies drop mana fairly frequently, you won’t find yourself short on it much. All the components of it come together well. The only real issue is that the spell cards are in the bottom corner of the screen. When you’re focusing on dodging shotgun blasts from enemies, taking a peek at what’s in your hand can be dangerous.
If you know, you know
There’s also one more thing that drags the gameplay score down, and I can explain it in two words.
Water Level.
One of the most infamous kinds of level design in games, the unbearable water level. Yes, unfortunately, The Knight Witch has one, and I hated it. See, while Rayne can fly, she cannot swim. However, the water level was set up with submarines that you can get in and pilot. These submarines absolutely sink the gameplay. You go from being able to shoot in any direction to only left or right. You can’t use the dash move you just learned last stage. The level never stops being a puzzle, and retracing your steps is a chore. There are a few places with guns that redirect your bullets, but in using them, they turn into bullets that can hurt you too, so sometimes you even have to be careful where you’re shooting versus where you’re standing or you can take yourself out. To add insult to injury, the save points are fairly spread out, so it’s a decent swim back when you get KOed due to the complete change in gameplay style. Thankfully, it’s only that stage that has a horrible mechanic, but it’s bad enough to warrant a lower score.
Narrative: 8/10
Fourteen years ago, the world almost ended. The Daigadai Emperor, the ruler that once united all races, progressed technological advancement too far and wounded the planet. In the end, the only force that could stand against him was the Knight Witches, four brave women with the powers of flight and magic granted by the planet herself and powered by the faith of the people who believed in them, a power called the Link. Led by Robyn, they stood against the emperor’s golem army and defeated them. For the planet, though, it was too late. The sky broke, burning the land. However, the destruction of the emperor’s personal golem revealed a path to a lost underground city built around a giant life support system. The survivors fled, and the world moved on beneath the surface, all thanks to the four Knight Witches.
Nobody talks about the fifth Knight Witch
No one remembers Rayne and her failure to keep up with her sworn sisters. By the time the war was unavoidable, Rayne couldn’t even fly, so the others left her behind for her own sake. Now, she still has the abilities granted by Gaia and better control over them, but no reason to use them. She’s just there to tell stories about her old friends with the tiniest bit of resentment. It’s okay, though. She has a happy life with her loving husband and no worries.
Such a thoughtful hubby, too.
Of course, what kind of game would this be if everything stayed peaceful? The war golems return and immediately begin to wreck up the place. Worse, with them came a giant warrior with the power to kill the Knight Witches, long out of training. With her friends dead or missing, Rayne is the only one with the element of surprise on her side to fight back. The question is, can Rayne live up to the expectations she couldn’t reach before?
All told, it’s not an original story, the battle of technology versus nature or magic. It has the twists you expect it to have. However, the characters and the way it plays with the familiar are enough to not leave you bored.
Accessibility: 7/10
If you want to get a friend or family member into shmups or Metroidvanias, then my friend, this may be your game. No, it’s not quite a full shmup or Metroidvania, but it introduces the elements in a mostly approachable way (ignore the water level). You also have full control over the controls, letting you change them to whatever layout you prefer on your controller. I didn’t try using a keyboard, as the game recommends using a controller right on the first loading. As far as age range goes, this may not be a game for smaller children due to the complexity of the controls. However, anyone familiar with using a whole controller shouldn’t have any issues. This is also a game that should mostly be played by readers, as it’s fairly story heavy, but without voice acting. Several parts are entirely text-based when giving interviews on your deeds to the public to increase your Link. You can probably get through them without needing to read, as your answers only influence dialogue with NPCs, but you won’t have a clue what’s going on.
Challenge: 7/10
As someone who doesn’t play shmups, I fully expected to struggle with The Knight Witch. I have issues with keeping track of everything on the screen when bullets are flying, and my reaction times are not the best. However, this game is one of those that lets you build the difficulty as you like. There is no difficulty level to start off, just you, a few hit points, a little magic, and a slow gun. There’s not much health scattered around to recover with, either. Sure, the respawns aren’t too bad, usually, but when you’re used to face-tanking shots, it’s not easy to rewire yourself to dodging. I died. A lot.
And then I found the Cheats page.
It’s no secret, really. It’s right there on the settings page. There’s a decent variety of “cheats” that you can turn off and on at will as long as you’ve unlocked them, and honestly, you don’t really need a guide for most of them. I stumbled on several just trying combinations that seemed obvious (all of a single color, in an order, etc). There’s also one cheat that makes the game harder, if that’s what you want. I managed my way through the rest of the game with only the Enemies Drop Health powerup, because I still like to be challenged a little. Even better, there is no punishment for using them. You don’t get a worse ending. You still unlock achievements. The game does nothing to shame you for adjusting the difficulty to your liking. I couldn’t have asked for a better cheat system.
Uniqueness: 9/10
In the back of my memory, I feel like I once saw another shmup exploration game. To my vague recollection, it was closer to a traditional shmup with driving a ship. It may have been a roguelite. As such, I can’t really say I’ve ever seen anything like The Knight Witch before.
On top of being a mostly unexplored genre, it also has the rare element of an older player character. It’s been fourteen years since Rayne made her first attempt at being a Knight Witch, and she was no child soldier. While her age is never outright said, at the very least, she’s in her mid-30s, and she’s just hitting her stride in her abilities. As a mid-30s woman myself, it’s so wonderfully refreshing to see a heroine like me. Usually, games say if you’re not in your teens or mid-20s, you’re past your prime to be a hero, especially if you’re a woman. No more adventures for you. Seeing a game say, “No, you’re still good enough to save the world,” is a breath of fresh air.
Personal: 8/10
The Knight Witch is a game I took a complete gamble on, and I’d say I won. By all rights, I shouldn’t have liked it. Only one of the three main components that make up the gameplay is one I like to play. And yet, everything came together in a way that I thoroughly enjoyed.
We would like to thank Team17 and Super Mega Team for sending us a copy of The Knight Witch for this review.
Aggregate score: 7.7
Maggie Maxwell spends most of her days buried in her fiction writing, only coming up for air to dive into the escapism of video games, cartoons, or movies. She can usually be found on Twitter as @wanderingquille and @MaxNChachi or streaming on Twitch with her husband, also as MaxNChachi.
