Fallen Knight (PS4) review

Reviewed on: PS4

Fallen Knight is a tribute to classic action platformers with a charming look!

FairPlay Studios, a developer based in Bangkok and founded in 2018, delivers in its second title a clear tribute to classic action-platform games such as the Mega Man X series and its offshoots.

Fallen Knight features beautiful visuals and a solid style with clear inspirations such as the Gundamfranchise, yet still contained within its own art style. However, given the state of its gameplay, it may have been released a bit too early.

Plot

The story, which is not the emphasis in this genre, is a futuristic retelling of the Knights of the Round Table, with playable characters such as Lancelot and Galahad.

The premise revolves around the actions of an alleged terrorist group called PURGE, which criticizes humanity for benefiting from the energy generated by the Holy Grail.

The adventure then begins when both protagonists (each of whom can be played in their own campaign) arrive to resolve the situation.

Graphics

The game’s art style is clean and pleasant, with neither too many elements on screen nor a lack of detail. The environments deliver what you would expect, especially compared with other titles in the genre.

The studio itself describes the adventure as “driven by nostalgia”, so the elements you expect from the environments you navigate bring a whole familiar architecture that, for veterans, makes you almost play on autopilot and, at the same time, is not overly predictable for a new game.

The soundtrack also matches the visuals very well, bringing excitement and flow to the progress through the stages.

However, the optimization problems already start here: at various moments you can notice that, even though the game clearly has no heavy graphical features, its rendering is not as smooth as it should be and the frame rate drops for no apparent reason. The inconvenience is the inconsistency of the smoothness, which is essential for a genre that demands quick reflexes all the time.

Another moment where the graphics inexplicably do not work as they should is in the menus, where some of them have navigation latency while others do not.

Otherwise, the graphics, 3D models, particles and menus are quite pleasant; the bosses have unique looks and the protagonists are charming. The standard enemies are a bit repetitive, which can be bothersome for those used to themed enemies in each stage, as in the game’s sources of inspiration.

Gameplay

Before getting into what will be most of this review, let me point out that these words are written by someone who loves this kind of genre and was fascinated by the Mega Man X and Zero series, but these comments are not based on that comparison alone.

Fallen Knight’s gameplay is, at best, unpolished and, at worst, lazy.

The characters can walk, attack, dash forward, jump, defend, heal, hold on to ledges, cling to and walk on walls, and use other techniques that can be obtained by defeating bosses or bought with points earned on specific occasions or depending on the ranks obtained in a mission. The big problem with these controls is that they are bad and unresponsive.

The attack works on the ground but constantly fails in the air. The jump is not consistent in height, nor in how much it benefits from the dash. The wall jump is theoretically meant to take advantage of jumping while on a wall, but that is not always the case.

Healing depends on pressing and holding one of the buttons (triangle on PlayStation), but the input is not easily registered. Sometimes you have to press two or three times for it to work (and the character has to stand still while charging), and in a game like this, a move that depends on correct timing and command precision ends up becoming an unusable mechanic when you need it most.

The enemies’ hitboxes are strange; it is hard to trust how close you can get to them and what exactly you need to dodge. Some enemies damage you on touch and others turn into platforms when you jump on them, and that does not seem intentional.

One of the strangest parts is when the player is hit: there is a sort of vacuum that pulls you toward the enemy and causes a paralysis effect for a fraction of a second, which easily turns into a combo that unfairly drains your HP. In addition, being hit in the air wipes out any momentum your character has, and Lancelot or Galahad will fall in a straight line with nothing you can do about it.

There is a defense or parry mechanic that, by pressing the button at the right moment (against very specific enemy moves), lets you counterattack, destroying regular enemies and weakening bosses who, if the mechanic is used correctly three times, are defeated without having their HP bar emptied. Another interesting mechanic undermined by the inconsistency in control responsiveness.

Another relevant point is that the points we collect during the game are scarce and buying upgrades becomes quite difficult, killing the sense of progression: near the last stages of the game we had gathered less than enough points for 4 upgrades, and after the third one you need to buy more slots.

Paraphrasing a review I read about the game: “Right now it is a hard game, but not a fair game; at times I found myself dying for reasons beyond my control that had nothing to do with my skill“.

Conclusion

Fallen Knight is beautiful, creative and has a lot of potential to meet the needs of Mega Man X orphans, but it needs to be revised and polished until its controls respond as well as its predecessors, or its innovations will always be overshadowed by its flaws.

Fallen Knight is not recommended in its current state, but we eagerly await a fix patch that puts it at the level it deserves to be.

Fallen Knight is available and can be obtained on Steam, PlayStation Store and Microsoft Store.

Played on a PS4 (Slim, with an SSD) with a Dualshock 4.