Kill Knight [Review]
Action-packed twin-stick shooter Kill Knight is a blood-soaked masterpiece of the genre.
Kill Knight. Credit: PlaySide
Games like Kill Knight are my jam, and this one didn’t disappoint. Bloody, brutal Kill Knight is a macabre, horror-tinged twin-stick arcade shooter from PlaySide that will test your skill. It’s one of those games where you’ll lose and always want to try “just one more time.”
You are a knight banished to the Abyss, dead inside reanimated armor. As the Kill Knight, you delve deeper and deeper across five arenas on your quest to kill the last angel, turning demons into puddles of blood in your wake.
Kill Knight. Credit: PlaySide
The play systems in Kill Knight encourage you to alternate attacks strategically. Your general-use weapon is your gun, which works like it would in any twin-stick shooter, but your secondary weapon is crucial to your survival. However, you only have a limited number of shots for your it, and you can only refill them by attacking enemies in close quarters with your sword.
Each special weapon also grants a special attack that you can trigger when your Wrath meter is full to take out lots of enemies at once. You must trigger the absorption of Wrath Shards dropped by dead enemies to refill the meter. The interesting wrinkle to this is that Wrath Shards also serve as your experience points, and those absorbed for the Wrath meter won’t reward you with the XP you need to level up and increase your power; you’re picking one over the other. On top of that, your Wrath special is the only way enemies will drop healing items. Overusing the Wrath special can be a very slippery slope.
Kill Knight. Credit: PlaySide
The game also features a parry system against certain enemy attacks and an active reload system that will give you a temporary bonus boost to your gun if you get the timing right. You have to be watchful of the indicators for both while handling all the other moving parts of the game. The result is that Kill Knight is one of the most rewardingly mechanically complex twin-stick shooters I’ve played. It takes complete focus.
Over time, you’ll be able to unlock new guns, swords, special weapons, and armor. These will change how you fight and create interesting ways to change your strategy. You can unlock them by either meeting specific, challenging prerequisites for each or buying them with a currency you’ll slowly earn.
Kill Knight. Credit: PlaySide
The gameplay isn’t the only highly polished part of Kill Knight—the polish also extends to its gorgeously minimalistic visual aesthetic. From the start of its stylish, red-tinged opening cinematic, I was enraptured with the game. The game’s use of color makes it easy to grasp the state of play at any moment instantly. Arenas generally stick to a single hue, and enemies are mainly restricted to brown, purple, and grey. Red projectiles and drops dominate the action, with yellow highlights and red blood splattering all over the arena floor. Green is reserved only for rare health pickups. It all makes for a visually cohesive experience that may not be highly detailed but is very pleasing to the eye.
The game’s pulse-pounding soundtrack is dominated by the constant barrage of sound effects from your actions and the enemies. It becomes an overwhelming wall of sound that makes you feel everything happening onscreen. Still, it’s punctuated by the sounds that nailing timed actions, such as your active reload, in a way that makes it feel very satisfying.
Kill Knight. Credit: PlaySide
Kill Knight is a challenging game requiring extensive practice and muscle memory. However, it was never a frustrating experience; every time I died, I just wanted to play again because of how satisfying the gameplay felt. Besting my last high score in an arena always gave me a high, even if I didn’t finish it. Kill Knight is a fantastic twitchy action game.
Kill Knight is available now for PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, and Xbox One / Series X|S.
Overall Score: 9/10
Played on: Steam Deck
