Blood Knight

Introduction

"Blood Knight" is another game made for the Swap in the Middle with Two event by Jeroen_Sol and Zero3D. Or at least I think Zero3D was involved in this project based on a little blurb in the end credits about him providing some custom sprites for the main character and his best friend. Albeit, the game doesn't specify where these custom assets came from. Regardless, I should probably move onto the meat of the game then spend days of my life grumbling about the game's poor end credits.

Story

The story of "Blood Knight" is extremely basic and largely comprised of rather cliche dialogue. The sort of stuff you'd expect to here uttered by Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Batman & Robin". You know, "First the continent!, then the WORLD!!!!" sort of stuff. As such, the game really isn't going to pique your interest that much when it comes to the story.

Gameplay

"Blood Knight" is a strictly combat based game that only includes a few sections where you walk from one fight to the next. As such, the developers largely focused on combat balance and did an okay job in my opinion. Albeit, a lot of the combat follows a rather standard pattern of heal, use hard hitting attack that consumes health in order to perform, and then heal again. As such, the combat feels a bit samey in a lot of places, but the final boss does prove to be a more formidable opponent then the common gutter trash you deal with early on. And will easily force you to break that pattern if your not careful.

Graphics & Music

On the graphical side of things the game tends to stick to the RTP for RPG Maker VX Ace for the most part, but it does include a few custom sprites for the main character and his best friend. Albeit, the game doesn't really specify where these custom assets came from. So, I'm not sure if the zero3D got them from someone else or if they were crafted by him personally.



Though, I suppose the inclusion of those custom sprites was the main driving force for why the game doesn't use any face-sets. A decision that feels rather off putting to be honest, mainly because almost every other RPG Maker game out there makes use of face-sets inside of dialogue boxes as well as within the status menu. As such, the lack of sticking to standard practice here makes the game feel rushed and incomplete.



Sadly, my gripes don't end with the visuals. I still have to lodge a complaint about the choice in victory music for this game. Instead of the usual triumphant song you get from winning in most games. This game taints all of your victories with the standard game over music. I suppose, they may have chose to use this music to give the player an additional hint about the twist ending, but I honestly don't think the game needs to give the player any more hints then it already does with the game's dialogue as well as with how Zaron behaves throughout the game.

Conclusion

If this game was anything besides a hastily put together event game, I'd probably be a lot more harsh on this one. As it stands, I'd suggest giving this game a quick whirl if you want to play all of the games submitted to The Swap in the Middle with Two event. Other wise, I'd suggest skipping over this game and playing something else.

Bugs



In the fight with the great knights, it's possible for one of them to land on Arcka when they jump down. Thankfully, this doesn't lead to a crash, but it does come across as rather sloppy and only adds to my opinion that this game was slapped together rather quickly in order to meet the event's deadline.