Blood Knights Review

Vampires are over-rated. There’s no denying that there is a modern fascination with the hunters of the night, from Twilight to True blood, but as yet a surprising lack of decent games in which you get to play as them. Memorable experiences essentially start and end at Skyrim, with Castlevania getting props for starring Dracula.

So, with the release of Blood Knights, there was a chance of something really special. A medieval vampire hack and slash with RPG elements, in which, like Blade before him, our hero goes from Vampire Hunter and Hunter of Vampires, to a Vampiric Hunter.

Here’s a spoiler; it isn’t very good. In retrospect, I actually had to consult a thesaurus in order to find enough negative adjectives for this review, so here we go.

The Play Jeremy who starts his journey in the belly of the beast, chasing down an enclave of bloodsuckers alongside his fellows in the church. Told entirely through weak exposition, we find that his cleric buddy has “bonded” him – Probably through blood – to a female Vampire; something he finds horrific.

The Vampire sidekick named Alysa doesn’t seem particularly angry about this, in fact, she kind of embraces it. Her only real outstanding features are the ones sticking half-way out of her skimpy armour. I mean really, how that is going to offer any real protection…

As they travel through a variety of locales, Jeremy becomes a Vampire, is disowned by his former colleagues, has a crisis of faith, and is accepted back by them for a variety of hunter-typed reasons. All in all the Narrative is weak and makes little to no sense. Things are told, not shown or played, and I couldn’t have been less emotionally attached to them if they were sacks of potatoes.

These problems come from a combination of the writing and the not so good voice acting. Now, I’ve heard some pretty crap voices, but the majority of the recordings sound somewhat like the actor would much rather be somewhere else than doing this. Also, when the same recording of the same line of dialogue is simply repeated three times within a tutorial segment, you know something is amiss. It’s just somewhat amateurish, from both a vocal and technical perspective, and frankly not good enough.

However, as proved in the past, some games can get away with having a terrible narrative, as long as their gameplay is up to scratch.

This isn’t one of those games, because the combat is not what I expected it to be like. The two characters you can switch between at will each have different styles; Jeremy is a swordy-hacky kinda person, whilst Alysa prefers a more ranged approach. Each has a standard attack (without combos), a special attack and an extra special grenade or spin, and that’s really it. They can suck blood but it never really gets much deeper than that, and frankly that gets rather repetitive rather quickly. What makes this bland combat system really bad is the jarring way in which you switch from character to character. Whilst Jeremy’s movement and attack direction is controlled entirely by the keyboard, Alysa’s is controlled via the mouse curser.

The switch between the two is FAR too jarring and really breaks any flow the combat does have. Talking of the switching, the two characters don’t appear on screen together unless you’re playing co-op.

I could suggest that the small amount of satisfactory slashing might be amplified with a friend, but bearing in mind one player would be entirely stuck playing Alysa, it might get a little repetitive after a while. Money drops though out the game and can be used to upgrade your characters weapons, and blood droplets also drop from fallen enemies which convert to health.

The graphics of Blood Knights are satisfactory at best, if inconsistent. Some of the character models look ok but not perfect, however like I said it was satisfactory.

So is Blood Knights any good? For me no it was not, whilst it tries to jump on the Vampiric bandwagon, it’s just a leech to fuel the blood-sucking plague. In terms of being a supernatural story it has a couple of good points, like an “interesting” take on blood-sucking, (I didn’t realise blood could be sucked AT RANGE) but a narrative executed so poorly that it makes me wish I was watching a bad Australian TV soap. There are only three positive things I can think of to say about Blood Knights. Firstly, cleaving your way through the acceptably designed enemies is slightly entertaining in short bursts. Secondly, there aren’t actually many bugs, so it’s a smooth experience at least. Finally, there is no lack of ample cleavage to distract you from the horrific voice acting, if that’s enough to justify playing through it.

Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.