Rampage Knights

 
Developer: Rake In Grass
Steam Release: Sep 2015
Hours Played: 6.8
Similar To: Bloody Zombies / Castle Crashers / Lost Castle / Son of a Witch
Rating: 5/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY

If you are one of those players who feels Castle Crashers may be more for the multiplayer crowd and crave something similar but as a single player game, then Rampage Knights will answer your prayers. Sure, you may go for the abysmally unbalanced Dead Pixels or head on over to iOS for a blast at Zombieville USA 2 which is fine in itself, but for the richer experience RK with its crispy clean interface and far more lively romp knocks most of the competition for six. Set in an environment of haunted forests and creepy castle dungeons you enter a series of small areas; larger than those in the Binding of Isaac but designed giving that slightly tilted or isometric effect. Your task is to leap, roll and slash your way through a handful of enemies before proceeding onwards.

 

BALANCE & PACE

Before every run, much like The Weaponographist, you'll begin at your home base or camp. Here, you'll interact with various NPCs to check progress or change your look but most importantly to choose which class to play and on what difficulty. Additionally, tottling over to the far left will have you arriving at the game's excellent training area which acts as the tutorial or as a way to get re-accustomed to the controls.This has an 8-page book placed on a stand and reminds you how to do things like a leap attack to relieve enemies of their swords, a charge, a roll, a stomp, or how to pick enemies up to swing them around! It may sound like a lot to remember but unlike many other beat 'em up brawlers it becomes very intuitive after practice and definitely does not reward button mashing. This is a game that rewards skill in a totally firm but fair manner.   

PRESENTATION & DESIGN 

The first thing to notice about RK is its crystal clear presentation and crisp graphics. There is plenty of detail in both the extras added into the environments like little mushrooms or skeletons to smash, plus the features added like interesting potions, scrolls and power-ups that you can pick up. A comic element also permeates the game throughout: the quirky NPCs and enemies look like caricatures; weapons that you pick up have silly names; some power-ups are bizarre and many potions give strange diseases like jumping-disease or feet-expansion disease. The menu-design has fonts and colour-schemes that are stylishly done and apart from a very slight hit to the frame-rate on a few occasions there are no complaints with overall presentation. 

PROGRESS SYSTEM

The ultimate aim is to beat the game's final boss by fighting your way through nine areas. The areas such as the Enchanted Castle, Courtyard, Tomb, Dungeon and Sewer etc have a stat screen when completed but these are not listed anywhere in the game. Progress is therefore centred around the 80 challenges (which are more or less achievements) that you can check on by approaching an NPC at your camp. These challenges also count towards unlocking six classes including: the adventurer, barbarian, pirate, assassin, warlock and battlemage. I assume the battlemage is the class that you'll need to beat the game. Before venturing forth, you'll also need to select a difficulty (casual, normal, hard and insane) which all have parameters that contribute to making the journey through the game progressively harder. 

CONCLUSION

I generally avoid beat 'em ups as, if my experience with Shank is anything to go by, they seem to often be wanton button-mashing affairs with little need for skill. Rampage Knights is that rare breed of game that may have a number of moves to master and seem complicated at first, yet feels like an arcade-like title that is very proficient at putting you in the zone. My only gripe is the absent of any chart or stats to do with the nine different zones as it would have been nice to check and compare how far you could get with each class and on each difficulty. Still, the well implemented four levels of difficulty help give it massive replayability as you move up through the classes and the 80 challenges also gives you plenty to aim for.