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Smooth bore

  • NTC3
  • 02/24/2017 11:06 PM
  • 2042 views
Winterruption contest has officially been brought to a close and people are starting to review all the weird and wonderful sidequest-filled entries it generated. So, you know what it’s a good time for? That’s right, we should look at several short games, all left unreviewed from a last year’s Swap in the Middle with You contest! As its name implies, that event not only had a timeframe of just two weeks, but also had the developers swap command of the project halfway through. Because such complications obviously don’t make gamedev easier, I’ve decided to first play through all five of them before finalizing a review on any one in particular. That way, I would have a reasonable idea of what could’ve been achieved in those two weeks by a developer, and whether a game in question is falling short, like this one does.

Storyline



One problem with Shotgun Knight is that it’s not actually as entertaining as you might expect. In fact, the earlier part where our protagonist is still an overpowered Level 99 Blade Knight is more interesting in a few respects. There are comments on his ridiculous power like above, (though the fact that the potion not only heals just 20 HP, but also induces “nausea, vomiting, profuse sweating, severe weight gains and addictions” probably has something to do with his reluctance as well) and an explanation of the default “cloaked red-eyed ghost” sprite used for the on-map enemies: it is the cloak of darkness Demon King granted its servants, and which only the blessed sword of yours can pierce. Your item description is good, especially when it comes to Knight’s accessory, Red Rose: “Mere moments after the Princess gives Blade Knight this rose, she was kidnapped by the Demon King.” Nevertheless, he still gives the Demon King a chance to give her back and walk away peacefully, a chance that’s obviously not taken because of the latter’s secret firearm.

Once your dead character is revived by a smiling, yet violent and foul-mouthed fairy Ginette, and given a shotgun with infinite ammo, the game’s writing and humour becomes wholly one-track. There’s only the humour of juxtaposition, the titular incongruence of a knight with a shotgun and a grenade-wielding, foul-mouthed fairy who regularly screams in all-caps, especially when it comes to hurling insults at the enemies like “ALRIGHT YOU FUCKING ASSHAT! LET’S SEE THIS ASSHOLE’S BLOOD SPILL EVERYWHERE!”. Soon, you just block those lines out without caring. Weirdly, Shotgun Knight actually made me appreciate Forsaken Isle and its descriptive approach to excuse storylines a lot more: that game replaced intra-character dialogue with a paragraph introducing the boss and another afterwards on their corpse/death throes + loot, which had the kind of morbid appeal this has not, and the flat ending only cements this fact.

In all, I really hoped the game would aim to run more with the premise and opt for the classic action movie style, both because they arguably cemented shotgun’s place in culture in the first place, and because it would’ve been just cool to see the knight cracking cheesy one-liners while enemies react to your gun in disbelief and fear. Hell, the actual shotgun and grenades are just discovered by Ginette lying around in a log: imagine how cool it would’ve been if you got them from Ash’s grave, and perhaps had to defeat a few zombies while in a weakened state? Instead, the writing remains far too serious and similar to the regular JRPG of the type, while no-one besides the final boss notices that you’ve got a gun (and he gets over that pretty quickly regardless). It’s a strange omission, given that the game does not use random encounters, and so it could’ve had theoretically placed short dialogues in front of every enemy encounter, like in LockeZ’s half of Direvil Darkfort. As it is, the game brings to mind the “tree in the forest” problem: if you attack with a gun instead of a sword in a fantasy setting, but no-one is around to appreciate it, is it really different from any other JRPG spacebarmash?

Typos:
‘Tis certainly better of in my hands than those of the Demon King.”
“Why have the Gods abandonded me so?”
“Now bad, huh?”
“I thought I only had such a weapon!”


Gameplay



To be honest, no, it isn’t (the line above was funny, though). Sure, the simplistic combat is acceptable at the start, when Blade Knight has 2690 HP, 990 MP, and three extremely powerful skills. There’s a complication of sorts, as he lacks a normal “attack” option because said cloak of darkness on the enemies renders it useless. Instead, he can either guard for two turns to get TP for his insta-kill Radiant Slash, guard for three for the “kill everyone” lighting strike, or just use a TP-raising skill and do it faster. Either way, though, the enemies are incapable of inflicting any damage your armour won’t heal back immediately, up until it’s faced with an insta-kill pistol of the Demon Lord.

However, once you’re revived at level 1, with measly 30 HP (so that 20 HP from potions is suddenly wholly meaningful), and a similarly weak fairy at your side, the combat does not actually become more interesting. Sure, the first few battles are a little unusual, as while normal magic in this world is a TP power, your gun and Ginette’s grenades repurpose MP gauge as their capacity, only letting you do two attacks before you have to reload. Similarly, enemies’ damage is large enough to require potion use. Then, though, you start leveling up, and finding the stat-increasing upgrades. One of them is bugged: the Capacity Tune-Up only increases the actual capacity by 1, rather then the promised 10. However, it doesn’t matter, because as you gain levels, your capacity quickly goes from 2 to 19, then to 30-something, then to 50+ and 60+, making reloading, one of the few quirks in the game, wholly unnecessary. Similarly, just giving all the upgrades to the Knight will soon let him shoot regular enemies in one turn, and receive no damage from their attacks. Meanwhile, the frequent healing crystals render potions irrelevant at level 3 or so.

With all your initial problems sorted, only pure spacebarmash remains. Sure, it makes sense for the Knight to be able to only shoot with the new and unfamiliar weapon to him, and the game also goes a little extra with the shotgun aspect by having him upgrade from Bird Shot to Buck Shot to Rifle Slugs as he defeats the bosses of first and second area (let’s not ask why Chimaera and Bullman/Minotaur like carrying strange lead things around with them.) However, there’s no real reason for Ginette to not be doing more with her magic. Even though she supposedly sticks around with the knight to heal him again, she does not actually have healing magic (crystals take care of that), and her only spells are a mediocre single-target attack and to recharge the grenade supply. Grenades themselves never upgrade, and while they do group damage, it’s only half of even the Bird Shot damage, and that’s when enemies don’t dodge it, which happens strangely often. Most importantly, though, all the enemies in the game do nothing but attack, even the three bosses, which makes the game truly dull. For comparison, the combat in August and the Abyss (made for the same event) managed to be considerably more interesting through better balancing and only slight increases to skill variety relative to this game, as its enemies gained roles in encounters because of it. Leo and Cat (another Swapsie game) also had its combat laughably broken through the stat upgrades, but it still felt more entertaining because of the skills available to both parties.

Aesthetics (art, design and sound)



As expected of a contest game, the sounds are VX Ace RTP, and so are all the graphics besides the faces for the two main characters, which are clearly done in Red_Nova’s distinctive style. Blade/Shotgun Knight is always fully helmeted, but does emote, as seen by the whites of his eyes changing inside the darkness of the helmet. With Ginette, I’m honestly not sure if her expression ever changes from that crazed smile, but that’s not what matters here. The mapping is clearly more important, and here it’s just adequate. There’s nothing bad, but also nothing distinctive about the small forest, hill and castle areas of the game. Again, the aforementioned Leo and Cat had a memorable cursed swamp area in the end, and other areas were a little better. Similarly, here's a map from August and the Abyss, created with the same tileset as the hills above:



Conclusion

Shotgun Knight certainly has a catchy name and a cool premise, but only does the bare minimum with it throughout its running time. This cannot really be excused by contest restrictions, as you’ll find better storytelling in Leo and Cat, better combat in August and the Abyss and far more off-the-wall crazy fun in Space Attorney. On the other hand, at least it works as intended and can be finished without frustration, which is more then what can be said for, say, Lady of the Winds.

Posts

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Thank you for your time to review Shotgun Knight, NTC3!

Yes, this game does fall short, and yes, I've already been informed on the mapping of the game, but the thing is that this game, like you said, is a decent, but still flawed game. Not all games are perfect or gorgeous, but me and Red_Nova did our best.

Hopefully, this game will be re-released with an enhanced (and hopefully fixed) remake in the near future.

Thank you for your time! :D
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
Hey, thanks for the review, NTC3! I'm a little confused about your initial statement: There were certainly more than five games that came out of the Swap in the Middle with You event. Does this mean we'll get to hear your thoughts on Through Dark and Liar's Soul in the future? I'll be looking forward to that if so!

Yeah, I didn't take the premise nearly as far as I wanted to before handing it off. I thought I could manage my time with the game well enough to at least lay a good groundwork for Zephire98 to finish, but life tore me a new one that week and kept me away from working as it as much as I planned. Thankfully, Zephire swooped in and pulled out something pretty good from that shoddy framework, so I'm very grateful to him for that.

Huh. I didn't think I was good enough as an artist to have a style, let alone a distinctive one. Especially since Knight's design is so different than what I normally do. The cynic in me is saying you're just trying to be nice, haha.

Overall, I learned a hell of a lot about scope and time management from working on this, so I've got no regrets. I wish I had the time to go back and fix some issues (especially that lying capacity tune-up description. Yikes!), but current commitments eat up too much of my time nowadays. If Zephire98 wants to go in and change/fix anything, I'm absolutely fine with it so long as he keeps the original event build available for download.

If there's any actual issue I have with the review, it's the way you ended it. I'm not sure what the point of throwing Lady of the Winds under the bus like that was, but there was no need to jab at a completely different game out of nowhere like that since there was a different member involved with that game that wasn't involved with Shotgun Knight's development. You can be as critical of Shotgun Knight as you want, and I'm fine with referencing other games that does some aspects better for the reader's sake, but I'd appreciate it if you'd stick with criticizing this game without taking potshots at other games like that.

Other than that, this was a nice review. Thanks again!
author=Red_Nova
Hey, thanks for the review, NTC3! I'm a little confused about your initial statement: There were certainly more than five games that came out of the Swap in the Middle with You event. Does this mean we'll get to hear your thoughts on Through Dark and Liar's Soul in the future? I'll be looking forward to that if so!

Well, when I said "all five of them", I meant all five of the "several short games, all left unreviewed", as written in my previous sentence. I currently prioritise unreviewed games above pretty much all else, and when I stumbled on Space Attorney and its "Suggested downloads" linked to four other unreviewed games, I couldn't resist the opportunity. (Now, I found out there was at least one other I missed, Revenge of the Fallen, and review on that is in the pipeline.) Since NeverSilent had already taken care of TDaLS (acronyms can be fun!), it's not as much of a priority to me even if it looks interesting, sorry!

author=Red_Nova
'm not sure what the point of throwing Lady of the Winds under the bus like that was, but there was no need to jab at a completely different game out of nowhere like that since there was a different member involved with that game that wasn't involved with Shotgun Knight's development.

I mean, like I said in the review, I played all five of these games one after the other, before reviewing them. This one was the first review I finalised, though, and as I wrote the conclusion I kinda decided "Well, if I mentioned the three games from the contest that I thought were better, I might just go the whole way and name the one from the same contest I thought was worse as well." I can see how it doesn't come across the best way now, though.
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