Knights Contract has been Revoked

Every time I see or hear anything remotely like “has just been revoked” I automatically think of the end of Lethal Weapon 2 after Riggs has been shot, and the South African d-bag claims diplomatic immunity. BLAM! “It’s just been revoked”. Hell yeah, Sgt. Murtaugh! That was Lethal Weapon 2, wasn’t it? Where was I… This is supposed to be about Knights Contract, I’d just rather it not be.

The Knight’s Contract

So the contract was written with the trailer, looking like this:

The contract carried out aka what you really get is this:

See those brick textures in the background? They don’t look any better up close. Notice the washed out, muted tone to everything. That’s how it all looks, with attempts at separating the objects with what look like primitive specular maps and simple lighting. However, I’m not one who holds to bad graphics = bad game.

Knights Contract Mechanics

Knights Contract plays with elements seen in other recent games, Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom and Enslaved Odyssey, where you not only have to be aware of your health, but your partner’s as well. Like in Majin, working with your partner in Knights Contract, you can execute special dual moves that serve as finishers. Each fight, combo and execution builds a rating grade that is tallied up at the end of the segments. You are graded, as is traditional in many Japanese-style action games (think ranking system). What this does I’m not sure, or didn’t pay attention enough to learn. You earn “witch” powers for your side-kick and collect souls or orbs or insert keyword for killing points, which are used to upgrade those powers. Gameplay is simple enough, yet tedious and repetitive and I couldn’t stick with it long enough to see if that improved.

A Strong Story Saves the Day?

Our basic setup is that witches, wrongfully executed under a corrupt “inquistor”, have come back from the dead to wreak havoc on manking through a plague. These are allusions to the Spanish Inquistion / Salem Witch Trials and the Bubonic Plauge. It’s late, so I’m not sure of the historical timeline, but I don’t think those events line up. You control Heinrich who was the executioner of these witches and when he “carrying out justice” upon a final innocent witch is cursed with immortality. Forward 100 years or so and Heinrich has now met up with a witch seeking to rid his “curse” (why am I using so many quotes in this “article”), only to find that the singular good witch he is helping was the one he executed all those years ago. The overriding theme is that the corrupt inquisitor actually wanted an item the witches had that would preserve his life, as he has actually been dabbling in dark arts to become immortal himself.

Knights Contract Void

They have a decent story setup, they have an amazing trailer full of promises that need to only deliver, oh…. say 50% of to be great. And they didn’t meet their contractual obligation (having way to much fun with this). [amazon_link id=”B003ZFVD4O” target=”_blank” ]Knights Contract[/amazon_link] is bubonicly plagued by poor visuals: bland textures, washed out color, simplified normal maps, washed out lighting and clipping issues. The music is fairly generic as well. Our story is interested, but the dialogue is awful and carried out by mostly sub-par voice-acting. Occasionally when voice acting is this bad, I can switch over to original Japanese and extend my play; there was no such option here. Worst of all was the cardinal sin of designing a trailer that had no chance in hell of even being remotely like what the final game came out to be. Unforgiveable. So read the not so fine print on this article, and avoid Knights contract.