Kingdom of Night

Kingdom of Night is an enjoyable game with a lot of great ideas and I wish the devs had a bit more time to flesh some of them out more. You are tasked with defeating four bosses before tackling the final boss, with a long running sub quest of finding and helping all your scattered friends along the way - which when combined with the side quests do a very good job at encouraging the player to explore rather than simply run straight to objectives. Exploring is also rewarded by finding extra gear and I am very thankful that the devs put an auto sort in your inventory which puts the best gear at the top because by the end of the game I was drowning in gear options. Defeating each of the bosses gives you a good chunk of XP and high tier gear so you feel a tangible benefit gameplay-wise beyond simply progressing the story. Likewise, finding your scattered friends and sending them back to your hub area can give you bonuses - however it is only with certain characters. Some friends give you great things like the ability to heal to full health in the hub, or the ability to have an extra piece of equipment, others just give you some dialogue. I'm glad the devs at least had the dialogue, but I do wish more of the rescued friends did something that had an impact on gameplay. Combat in the game is fairly intuitive if a bit basic. For physical classes you fight with a "standard" stamina system which manages both your attacks and your dodges - with dodges providing i-frames so its all about timing (although I should note that I had a few issues with sword combos and dodges resulting in my character skidding towards the enemy instead of backing off resulting in some annoying hits YMMV). I actually think the developers made a bit of a misstep here in splitting all the magic off to a separate class rather than integrating the spells in with the physical (Warrior or Rogue) classes. I played the game with the Rogue class (with a merge with one the Warrior class later on), and while I had a good time with the game it meant I never really interacted with the spell system beyond the tutorial. The game isn't linear, once you're past the opening you're free to travel anywhere and it's only the higher level enemies that will tell you whether you should be pushing ahead or changing direction (or you can persevere and fight the bosses out of the "intended" order like I ended up doing). However while the game isn't linear the story absolutely is. None of your choices really matter in the game - and that's fine - except sometimes the game hints that your choices do matter. When Charon asks you to make a deal about death to unlock fast travel, just do it. There is no difference to the plot or even any changes to dialogue if you go through the game without making the fast travel deal. Like-wise early on there are several stat checks that give you options or are required to get into different areas, but these are all at the start of the game when you just need 1 or 2 stat points from gear or a level-up. These stat-checks seemed to completely disappear by the mid-point of the game. There isn't anything inherently wrong with the game not having any meaningful choices, but it does make the replaybility of the game a bit limited. Which for me means I am unlikely to ever try out the magic system, because I've already seen everything in the game (in all fairness there are a couple of choices at the end of the game, but as long as you have a save file before the last boss you can reload and check them all for achievements). I completed Kingdom of Night in ~13 hours according to my save file. This included all achievements and my character was maxed level before the final boss. You can probably complete it faster if you use the fast travel. At ~$30 AUD I might have had an issue with the value, but at 35% off as part of a regular sale I have no regrets. If you're looking for a fun game to play to kill some time, maybe give this a go.