King’s Knight is a game I had not even heard of until it launched on the Nintendo Wii’s virtual console service. I was especially excited because this title was from the RPG masterminds at Squaresoft. From the title and boxart (featuring anime style illustrations which was a rarity back then) it would be easy to surmise that this was an RPG. I was surprised that it was not. Sure, it has role playing elements, but King’s Knight is actually a shmup. When it finally launched on the service I was immediately underwhelmed. The game was not up to par with Squaresoft’s other offerings from this era. I was compelled to complete it, but had long forgotten about King’s Knight. That is until I randomly added the NES cartridge to my collection. It has been years since I’ve played so maybe I was wrong. Let’s take another look at King’s Knight.
The story is about as generic as they come. A princess has been kidnapped by an evil monster and the kingdom summons it’s four bravest warriors to save her. This includes the likes of the knight Ray Jack, wizard Kaliva, the monster Baruza, and thief Toby. There’s almost no dialogue to speak of not that I care too much considering this is a shmup. Gameplay is a bit unusual as far as the genre goes. King’s Knight is a vertically scrolling shooter and each character moves on foot. This means they are blocked by terrain, and if they get trapped behind it when the bottom of the screen reaches them they’re toast. Fortunately most elements in each environment are destructible. You can level entire mountain ranges with ease as well as trees and more. This here is actually a major focus of the gameplay.
Destroying the environment is how you get most of your power-ups. You have to continuously shoot to unearth these, and even with the screen slowly moving this becomes frantic for a few reasons. First of all enemies are often hidden away here so you’ll have to deal with incoming foes. Secondly you actually need to find an elemental power-up in every level. Failing to do so means you cannot complete the game. Unfortunately these are very rare, and sometimes you’ll have to first unearth stairs leading underground to a boss to get these. This simple fact makes King’s Knight kind of a chore to play. The game never explains this concept to you, and unless you have an instruction manual there’s no real way to know this. Each character has their own level, and you can’t simply die if you miss the necessary element because when they perish they’re gone.
There are no lives here. As I mentioned characters can die, and they will not be usable in the final stage when this happens. If your life bar drains you’re simply thrust into the next level. I’ve never been a fan of this kind of concept in video games because it wipes away all of the progress you’ve made. It’s too unforgiving. Unless you have the level layouts memorized, or a strategy guide, you’ll have to play through multiple times. I’m all for trial and error but not when it means you have to start a video game over from the beginning. This completely drains away the other neat concept of all four characters meeting in the final stage and combining their powers. I suppose that the extremely short length of the adventure makes up for this somewhat, but it’s still frustrating beyond belief.
King’s Knight does have a myriad of other power-ups to make your life easier however. Arrows facing up increase your life bar, but the downward ones drain your health. Shoes allow you to move faster, the shield beefs up your defenses, and the weapon icon increases the power and size of your shots. There’s even a spring that lets you jump higher, but this is action is performed automatically when you reach a hill or island you wouldn’t otherwise be able to just step on to. Each character can also destroy specific blocks easier than the others. They don’t feel significantly different from one another, but in the beginning it’s fairly obvious. As you collect powerups however they all become functionally identical. That’s kind of lame, but it’s the least of King’s Knight’s issues.
As I mentioned earlier the four protagonists join forces in the final stage, and you control all of them at once. This means they move in formation, but only the top character can shoot at foes. Unfortunately if any of them are hit you take damage, and the life bar is shared. Arrow icons cycle through the bunch and change your active character. Unfortunately with the way these are situated it can be difficult to avoid them. Sometimes you need to use a specific warrior and the game tries it’s best to prevent them from being the active party member. The concept is really interesting on paper, but boy could it have ever used some fine tuning. If you run out of health on this stage it’s game over. There are no continues to speak of, so you better get it right the first time.
The first four stages are actually very easy, but just to stay alive. Generally enemies don’t have complex patterns and only move in one basic direction. They also take just one hit to destroy. This is nice because you’re forced to focus on destroying the terrain. It’s the final stage that’s the real issue. I’ve already touched upon the fact that you have only one chance, and that the hitbox for your party is absolutely huge. Perhaps the most frustrating part of this is that in some areas blocks form to block your path. You can become trapped if you don’t go exactly the right way because these appear differently based on the direction you chose. This means you can seal away the path forward and it’s an instant game over. There’s literally nothing you can do in this situation. May as well just hit reset at that point.
King’s Knight is also not a very pretty game. Squaresoft was obviously trying to save space by using a very limited tile set, and so the terrain just repeats over and over. At least it’s somewhat different between each stage, but a change of scenery would have been nice. The characters all look very different from one another so it’s easy to tell them apart. There’s also a noticeable lack of the usual flicker effect the NES was known for, and the framerate holds surprisingly steady even when there’s a lot going on at once. It’s also very easy to distinguish the power-ups from one another which is good considering the fact that one of them can actually drain your health. The soundtrack is incredibly basic with the same repeating loop over and over again. Sometimes it changes between stages, but it’s all very similar.
