Cloud Knights Review

In a way, Cloud Knights might be the most realistic sword-fighting game ever made. Real life swords fights aren’t these awesome, highly choreographed displays of skill - they’re just a mindless mess of flailing limbs and blades. And this game is a mess. It’s a big, sporadically fun mess, but it’s still a mess.

Cloud Knights is a physics fighting game in the vein of some violent Flash game parody one might find on a site like Newgrounds. In fact, the game feels like a glorified version of jokey projects like those, what with its anarchic spirit and colorful but flat and disjointed visuals. Players swing their sword left or right by holding in that direction. By alternating taps they can almost get a fluid slashing rhythm down, holding the sword up with one tap before bringing it down with another.

However, more often than not players will be madly waving their blade around in circles. Also, since there are no buttons for walking, players must use their swords to haphazardly launch themselves around the arena like pole vault competitors, all while making sure they don’t fall off the edge of the island.

The combat is crazy for sure, but it also tends to rely on crazy luck during 1-on-1 duels against the computer or other humans. Also, the lengthy, 60-level campaign only exacerbates the system’s more repetitive qualities. Most missions boil down to either killing a certain number of enemies or killing a certain number of enemies while protecting an ally. Enemies are tough too, and while landing critical strikes speeds up the slaying process, fending off the hordes is really more of a grinding test of patience rather than skill. It’s like Dynasty Warriors meets QWOP. However, players do unlock different weapons, like axes and long swords, with different properties that do freshen up the experience somewhat.

When a game basically looks like a bunch of LARPers in a mosh pit, it’s amusing enough to at least check out. However, Cloud Knights is a joke players probably only need to hear once.