Normally I start a review by trying to write a neutral intro where I talk a little about the game and lead up to my review. That’s normally; I’ve decided I’m going to forgo that this time and just say straight up say this game is bad. Knights Contract starts out seeming like your run of the mill action adventure game but it didn’t take too long to realize how many things are done so badly. Most of my time playing the game I spent wanting to throw my controller at my wall and I’ll now explain exactly why.

There are so many things wrong with Knights Contract but I’ll start off with some of the basics. The basic gameplay is fundamentally broken; I can beat most basic enemies by just using the same two-button combo repeating it over and over again. Given there’s four attack buttons and most of the time I only used two of them and pressed them at the same time equates to being pretty darn shallow. Talk about no brains required to play. You’ve also got some magical spells that you can have casted but they all look pretty generic, in fact half them I can barely tell the difference between which one’s which it’s between generic frozen magic spell number one and generic frozen magic spell number two in my eyes. That’s just the start of the games many faults. Now diving deeper into the symptoms of the game’s disease leads me to the biggest problem in my eyes and that’s the AI. Well to be more specific the AI of your companion character. For you see the game is just one big long escort mission where you protect your witch buddy Gretchen from would be henchmen and fellow witches turned evil. Now the big problem is Gretchen manages to get herself killed a lot. There have been a lot of moments where I wish I could order the AI to just hide in the corner instead of trying to help fight enemies in the open. For you see your character essentially can’t die; you can get weakened and be temporarily out of commission but you only get taken to a game over screen if Gretchen is dead. This becomes a huge gaping problem during any boss battle in the game. Gretchen more often than not will walk into attacks and getting herself killed. While you’re left helpless with your only refuge being to get the boss battle done as fast as possible hoping she’ll survive for that long. This was a terrible design choice and I can’t say how many times she’s died and I’ve had the near uncontrollable urge to fling my controller at the wall breaking the controller into a million pieces as Gretchen got herself killed for the 20th time. I wish if my game’s progress were to be left up to a non playable character not dying you’d at least have some sort of option to order it around and tell her when to get out of harms way.

The graphics are poor to boot going along with the terrible game theme. They look like early Xbox and the backgrounds are pretty bland and motionless. The characters models are a little better but still not close to the standard of most games coming out on the Xbox 360 right now. The sound is an especially sour point for me. Most of the time you’ll hear an annoying though not overly so series of grunts coming from Heinrich your character accompanied by some generic sounding sword slashes when attacking. You’ve got some generic fantasy music to sink in the background and not really trying to stand out or seem interesting. Actually up to this point generic describes the sound pretty well. Though the worse come from Gretchen who is the most annoying character I’ve had in a game. If you’re a fan of Zelda then you’ll know I’m serious when I say it makes Navi sound like a loveable character. If you get too far from her she starts having the most annoying nagging screech I’ve ever heard. I’d say a lot of the time the game experience is enhanced with the mute button on because of it.

The game’s story is the best part and that’s not saying much. You’ve got plenty of cutscenes to entertain you. The gist of the story is your character Heinrich no longer wants to be immortal and Gretchen has come to back to life to stop some witches up to no good. She will grant your request for mortality if you help her out. When I say it’s the best part I’m not saying I loved it. The story is clichéd with the main characters being boring and wooden. The main motivation of the witches is the humans hurt us so we’re going to hurt them back, not exactly the most compelling of reasons. The game isn’t saved by the story but it’s the best in a big bag of bad.

Knights Contract would be one of the last games I’d choose to play of my own volition on a Saturday night. The gameplay is bad, the graphics are bad and the story is generic and cookie cutter. Gretchen makes me wish the game gave me the option to kill her as she bothers me on so many levels. The title Knights Contract must truly mean you signed away all rights to having fun when you bought it.

Gameplay

Graphics

Sound

Overall

Click here to buy Knights Contract online from EBGames.com

Click here to buy Knights Contract online new or used from EBGames.com

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