Ember Knights is inspired by the 1980 game Rogue, the idea of a roguelike is that you only have one life to live and losing such life means having to start over from scratch. However, over the course of two decades, the term “roguelike” has been thrown around so much that the genre has diverged or maybe even evolved into two distinct forms with the latter being more commonly known today as a roguelite.
A genre that has reinvented its entire formula and created many amazing video game titles like Hades, a popular title from Supergiant Games that is highly praised for its satisfying gameplay loop while also offering a variety of improvements after each and every death.
But before we even get to scratch the itch that Hades has left and while Hades II still hasn’t seen the light from beyond the Underworld, Ember Knights, a game developed by Doom Turtle and published by Twin Sails Interactive is here to scratch that for you.
This action-based roguelite Ember Knights mixes in the satisfying combat while wielding mighty weapons and skills that is further amped up to 200% as you build synergies around them through the game-changing relics that you can unlock as you progress throughout your adventures. Oh, and did I mention that it has up to four player co-op?
The Story so far…
However much like the games that root from this genre, it isn’t the perfect 10 all around because while its addictive gameplay loop is top-notch, its story and premise is as simple as it gets. Not that I’m complaining but it just doesn’t give much in the way of world building to make me care about saving its world and whoever is in it. In its opening cutscene, you get to see the main villain of the game sucking out the life of the Ember Tree for its own evil gains.
Esper, a sort of guardian for the tree gathers the remaining ember left from said tree to summon you, a Legendary Ember Knight to retrieve what’s stolen as you rip through hordes of enemies until finally going toe to toe with the one that started it all, the evil sorcerer Praxis.
Its fast, it’s exhilarating and it EXPLODES
And like I previously mentioned, the gameplay mixes weapons and skills then synergize it with relics to provide an even greater range of possibilities for each successive run which provides a more explosive combat system theoretically and honestly, quite literally.
Want your enemies to explode upon death? Ember Knights got you covered. Don’t like getting hurt? Try one of their “heal on crit” build for the low, low cost of selling your soul to the grim reaper himself. Want to play the game but your reflexes are as bad as my grandma? Ember Knights doesn’t have your back on that one but that’s okay… your insurance company probably doesn’t either.
But all jokes aside, the fluid hack n’ slash gameplay on top of its explosive combat system is where Ember Knights shine the brightest. The risk-reward system from initiating perfect dodges while also providing relics that complement that kind of gameplay whether it’s freezing a random enemy upon a perfect dodge or making your next weapon attack a critical hit provides a satisfying balance of managing risks and rewarding you for its execution.
Its an enjoyable experience that’s just further improved upon as you run through the gauntlet of enemies in each room where you can potentially gain new abilities or improve your overall base stats to clear the harder stages later on in the run.
And while that kind of progression only last for that specific run, the more permanent ones is something you gain through the Ember Tree’s, get this… ready? SKILL TREE! This skill tree or rather, passive ability tree, provides you with interchangeable sets of passives for each subcategory as you earn more ember for each run you finish or fail even.
These range from increasing your health, dealing more damage to certain types of enemies or even providing re-rolls for your skills and relic selection to potentially give you a better synergy for your chosen build. Meanwhile, going through the worlds and its stages will let you unlock more game-changing paths from a total of six weapon types that’s unlocked as you earn more ember and even then, you also get to upgrade more features in your hub as you play through it like an NPC that would let you buy up to four relics at a cost prior to a run or unlock more skills and even adding more functions to how your weapons work.
Despite its cutesy and cartoony look, it does a banger of a good job
The art style that shapes the world of Ember Knights is both refreshing and vibrant. The cartoony feel of its world and its people to the minimalistic look of the UI makes the world just pop as you equally pop some heads and explode some brains out. I have to say that I really enjoyed the variety of enemies that populate each of the prime worlds and the unique themes that came with it.
The bountiful bough, Scoggfirth, which acts as the entry point to the game, gives the least challenging fights among each of the five worlds but it also provides a great stepping stone towards the harder challenges up ahead as you gain your first skill and relics pretty early on. Meanwhile, you have the snow-drenched fortress of the Steadfast Citadel where it starts to become a challenge especially on the world’s main boss encounter and makes it a whole lot more fun as you get to run, dodge and beat the crap out of it after the countless deaths against it.
It’s easily one of the harder boss fights in my opinion but it’s also where you get to enjoy the game the most as you learn its attack patterns and git gud before facing off with some of the more heavy-hitting and damage spongier enemies.
Despite being in the realms of the roguelike genre, there’s still a sort of pattern toward its progression. The first world will always give you a selection of skills at the second level of the world while the next room after that will award you with a relic of your choosing and so on.
But while it’s a bit hard to tell if it would make it better this way or to a more randomized extent, one thing that I really have to give them credit for is that synergizing relics is a lot more forgiving as often times, we’re given at least one from the selection of relics closely related to what we already have instead of having a mish-mash of relics that does no good with one another and to a certain extent, relics in the game also have some form of correlation to make synergizing them with another a lot more plausible.
Doom Turtle really knows its target audience though and the fact that there’s an endless mode after you beat the game so you can continue to run through the entire thing all over again with all your stats and relics intact makes for an even crazier challenge ahead as you start hitting harder while also ramping up their own. After your first clear of the game is also where you get to fully customize and modify how future runs will play out.
From adding more variants of enemies such as elites, a second or third variant of world bosses that even have different attack patterns than what you’re used to, increasing enemy spawns and their damage dealt, speed, health and so on but what kind of drops the ball on this one is the lack of a way to continue a run later especially once you’re up on your second or even third iteration which really drags on for too long as each run could take around 30-45mins depending on how your relics and build holds up.
And in some cases, the only real challenge that could kill a run is your motivation to run through the entire thing again when your build becomes so crazy its almost impossible to get you killed.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for something to scratch the itch that Hades left behind… look no further, Ember Knights is both a back-scratcher and an itch-remover all in one package. Don’t let the cartoony looks fool you into thinking that this isn’t a great title that can hook you for hours because it certainly fooled me once. But with some great swordplay, hammerplay, glaiveplay or any play honestly plus its addictive synergy possibilities with its weapon types, I have to say that I can’t take responsibility if you lose sleep because of this.
Its addictive gameplay really brings it all together and having multiplayer options means you can bring even your friends together.
Ember Knights Trailer
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