(Fatal Crusade) Kill Knight

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What does it mean to kill? To constantly be on the move? Flexing your capabilities as far as you can in a twin stick isometric shoot em up? A ballad of death and destruction, personified, sucking up power to increase damage factor, maintaining maximum carnage.

Like, think of Ruiner meets Doom, with the bleeding acrylic art and glitter punk style background. The music oozes just the feeling of hyper-violence, the levels transforming on each cycle, and the enemy variety shifting up, dying, repeating, trying different methods, rinse and repeat. The gameplay leaves me to try a lot of things, but also has me figuring out like what works best and what doesn't.

If you're expecting story, big selection of levels, jam-packed content, eh, such is disputable. What I can say, though, this was a hell of a game I played. It has a thing for leaderboards, and there are plenty of reasons to come back, if you can deal with the hard progression lock.

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As you look into the abyss, does it stare back? Why would you care? Filled with carnal lust for blood, and absolute destruction of all that dwells within. It's high time for some action. Our knight finally jumps into the foray, and makes way for some lethal action.

A tutorial section explaining every part of the gameplay from the gun shooting, timed reloading, dodging, melee attacks to using special attacks. There's a lot going on, as every part of this is interconnected. Shooting enemies brings out red orbs, these absorbed do two things: filled up for ultimate ability, and increase power level. These need to be done in continuous motion.

There are other things, like the secondary weapon, which is limited and only replenished through melee kills, dropping white orbs. Using the ultimate, also drop health bars, and is sort of like a strong AoE blast weapon that vaporizes most enemies clear. It's good for sustain.

I missed a number of steps from the training while playing the game, the melee kill thing for one, and the other is that I have to continuously use the ultimate, in order to gather more red orbs, if I don't, I lose power level, that or through getting hit. So, there's incentive to play well, and playing right. That can be done simple through practice, lots, and lots, and lots of practice.

We're talking like a game that is asking you to struggle with a learning curve through trial and error. It's already a lot just to manual reload, which also powers up my main, timing is easy, especially when the audio cue arrives. But try to dodge, assessing where to engage, then shoot them down, before seeing other enemies plowing on me. I'm talking like brutes, specters, like the grunts, and those who shoots, then you got lasers, bombs to dodge, mini-boss sections.

It boils down to just mostly remembering the enemy encounters, and having the right loadouts for the Layer levels. Of which there's like 4 to unlock. Dying means I earn certain points, and a ranking, but finishing a level is required to unlock the next one. And it seems easy, it's not.

Can't tell if it's my controller, or sometimes the controls don't really feel super responsive and fluid. Like, you know, better analog response, and tuning. I would hate it if the deadzones in this game are poorly preconfigured, and aren't adjustable. Probably is, I never checked. But some of my deaths were in result of some movement snafus. Especially when things really get hectic.

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Now, about the hard lock progression problem. I tried over 10 times to complete the first level, and my final score tallied close to 500K. Which isn't bad, per se, though I've seen others beating me. Look, if you want this to be an enjoyable game, you'll be hard-pressed a lot.

This game can be punishing if you don't improve each time, enemies are relentless, and if you want these nice, better equipment, you're going to have to farm them a lot. Or, just you know, finish the side objectives like killing X amount using X gun or ultimate X amount of times. Easy to keep track, hard to understand since I don't memorize the weapons and ultimate name all the time.

Like, what is this, League of Legends? Actually, this guy shoots and moves like Lucian, and then when I do the melee attack during gun reload, with my new sword, he managed to spin like Garen. I mean, I like me a good bullet hell, but if you're wearing your inspirations on your sleeve like that? Come on now. Also, there's not much to master in the new equipments.

The hard-lock progress ruins the flow, even when I get another layer level to play, it's like, I don't know, I'm doing to increase scores? I guess this is for those who do enjoy the punishment and just want to boost themselves in the leaderboard. Quite a way to show off there.

I had fun, but it wasn't sticking around for long. I was stuck farming, punished for playing bad or owning an old, terrible controller. Seriously, the novelty wears off kind of fast.

Still think it's badass, the score keeps me going, the enemy design, especially when you add the one that needs to be timed countered by a melee attack in the midst of all this, and the levels are spectacular, keeping you guessing what comes next and on constant edge, even if you remember it later on. It's amazing to look at, and play the same time. And, it's 15 USD.

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