Portal Knights Review
Portal Knights
Publisher: 505 Games
Developer: Keen Games
Genre:
PEGI: 10+
Comments:
Once upon a time, there was a land in trouble and a brave hero went out to save it. He (or she) just had their wits and crafting tools. The main goal: defeat the enemies, go through portals and discover whats next. Welcome to Portal Knights for the Nintendo Switch.
Portal Knights has a story that is briefly introduced at the beginning of the game, but its not really that important to the overall game. Portal Knights is very much about exploration, discovery, and fighting. You may think its just another Minecraft clone before you even play it, but you’d be wrong.
The character customization in Portal Knights is a lot better than Minecraft. You can create your own character or you can have the game randomly create one for you. Either way, you are going to end up with a character that looks a lot different than anybody elses character. The lands you explore will be the same theme as everyone elses but the lands are randomly generated and will have different layouts. All of this gives Portal Knights a unique personality that’s separate from Minecraft, although this game does share somethings in common with Minecraft!
There is some of Minecraft’s DNA in Portal Knights. You can craft and build stuff much like you can in Minecraft (the player is given a lot of items that can be made) and you can build structures but you don’t need to.
Item crafting is much more important to Portal Knights than building structures. If you feel the need to do any structure building, the best thing to do is buy an empty piece of land to do so. Otherwise, you’ll be crafting a lot of items, especially blue portal pieces. In order to go to the next place in Portal Knights, you’ll need lots of blue pieces.
And thats where the combat system in Portal Knights comes in. Minecraft has a pretty basic combat system, whereas Portal Knights will let you add skill points to your character and give them special skills too. At the beginning of the game you are given the option to be a Warrior, an Archer, or a Wizard. All three of these characters play a bit differently, but Portal Knights has very easy, accessible controls that anyone can learn.
The controls in Portal Knights are pretty simple and easy to handle. The menus are all easy to navigate too. Portal Knights has touch screen controls and they are very useful for building and crafting. You can even attack enemies using the touch screen but I preferred using the buttons for that. I did use the tough screen controls for building and crafting and they work pretty well.
Portal Knights does not have motion controls at all. I think it might have been great for swinging your sword but I’m not sure how it would have worked for crafting. Overall, the touch screen controls more than make up for the lack of motion controls. In fact, I recommend playing Portal Knights via handheld mode specifically for the touch screen controls! That said, Portal Knights looks great both on the TV and in handheld mode.
Portal Knights is a wonderfully colorful game. The ground and all of the buildings are blocky like you’d find in Minecraft but the textures in Portal Knights are just so better than Minecraft. And then theres the characters, enemies, and some objects that are not blocky at all. The combination of Minecraft style blocky environmental details and the cartoony characters and other things works really well. Portal Knights looks great on the TV and in handheld mode.
Portal Knights has a very pleasent and enjoyable soundtrack too. None of the tunes in Portal Knights are especially memorable, but none of them are annoying either. The soundtrack is nice. I was a little bit more impressed with Portal Knights sound effects, especially when attacking enemies. Portal Knights is a very good game overall and I think fans of action rpgs and Minecraft will really love it.
Portal Knights for the Nintendo Switch is a great game. If you love action rpgs and Minecraft, you’ll definitely love Portal Knights. There are actually things in this game that I love more than Minecraft. I think its great how Portal Knights focuses much more on a rpg element that Minecraft and I absolutely love how the characters in Portal Knights look. This is a really fun game and even if you’ve never played Minecraft before, you will probably like this game as long as you enjoy action rpgs.
Its very easy to recommend Portal Knights for the Nintendo Switch. Now, its time to craft a healing portion and go defeat some orange blobs! Are you ready for this?
Portal Knights is currently available on the Nintendo Switch eShop!
Trailer
Article By Daniel Fugate
Daniel Fugate has wanted to be a writer since he was seven years old. He has a bachelor's degree in English and he's a huge Animal Crossing fan. The Wii U and 3DS are currently his favorite video game systems!
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