Knight Storm Review

Life can be tough for a knight. There’s a near-constant need for chivalrous heroes, taxes to collect, and strongholds to manage. And yet, they persevere because it’s the just thing to do. Knight Storm appropriately gameifies such a life to a surprising degree of success, although it does have one spectacularly large flaw that any potential users need to be made aware of.

A young knight’s father has recently passed away and left him with his titles, lands, and all that other cool stuff. Players must do their best to fill their mysterious father’s boots as they fix up the compound and roam the countryside looking for evils to vanquish. There are three essential mechanics to Knight Storm: town management, jousting, and dueling. Town management involves assigning followers to various shops and such in order to speed up the production of cash, experience, and potions. Dueling is mostly a simple matter of deciding whether or not to equip magical glyphs (at the cost of some stamina) to deal extra damage to an enemy. Jousting also involves glyphs as well as a simple dragging mechanic to place the tip of the lance in the proper spot. Put it all together and we have a perpetual adventure full of action, basic sim aspects, and plenty of gear to upgrade.

Knight Storm’s presentation is probably its most impressive feature. This is a good looking game, of course, but a lot of care has been given to the smaller details as well. The slow motion shots of rivals being tossed from their mounts as their lances shatter and wood bits fly everywhere never get old, and the goofy dialog options for many of the quests make up for their lack of visual stimuli. The constant brewing of health and stamina potions is a clever idea as well since it gives players a legitimate chance to keep playing for extended periods of time without having to spend real money all the time.

I could nitpick about some of the smaller issues, all of which are cosmetic, but I’d rather spend the words issuing a warning: keep an eye out for the Game Center welcome bar that pops up on the top of the screen. If it doesn’t show up, go into the multiplayer menu (it looks like two crossed lances) and select the Game Center option manually. The reason for this is because Knight Storm will not save progress if it’s not logged in. I seriously wasted several hours of potential resource accrual because absolutely none of my actions were saved over at least half a dozen sessions.

I almost gave up on Knight Storm after losing so much progress but I’m glad I stuck with it and figured out the problem. It’s a fun, accessible game that doesn’t punish its players for being frugal.