Imagine being a hunter and having to bond with your prey. As awkward as that sounds, what if the situation ultimately resulted in you having more empathy with your prey as you are unfortunately transformed into them. Blood Knights’ co-protagonist, Jeremy, suffers this fate. He goes from hunting vampires, to being bonded with one and eventually becomes a vampire himself. He must fight along side his former enemy, Alysa, and recover the blood seal to fix the moon…or something.
Blood Knights is a hack and slash action RPG that allow players to switch between the melee heavy Jeremy and the arrow-shooting Alysa, almost as often as you’d like. There are some portions of the game where you are inexplicably unable to select the other protagonist. However during coop both characters can move about freely. Along with the melee and projectile attacks your heroes are able to attract and repel enemies from various distances to feed on or dispose of them. Each character is also equipped with a power attack. Jeremy’s would be best described as some sort of berserker rage while Alysa’s is a fire arrow. These arrows can be used offensively or in conjunction with oddly placed barrels full of explosive material.
Anyone who looks at Blood Knight will notice that it is not the prettiest game and the the voice acting is laughably bad. I find that almost charming; being a fan and champion for indie games. The gameplay was not the smoothest or very polished but I found it enjoyable. Most of my qualms lie with the UI. Opening up a menu and being able to quickly assess what you have equipped and where your upgrades were seemed more difficult than it should be. It was by no means a showstopper but rolling my eyes as I open up a menu to customize my character in an action RPG is not good. The game is rough and I hope the developers can improve the menu experience. Blood Knights is tough to recommend for $15 but I do encourage fans of the genre to at least give it a try.
Developer: DECK13 Interactive
Publisher: dtp entertainment
Genre: action role playing
Price: $14.99 Try before buying
Platform(s): Steam, PC, PS3, Xbox 360, PSN, XBLA