April 28, 2011

Nothing About These Knights Seems Like A Dreamcast Logo.

Everyone on Talking Time and such could not shut up about Spiral Knights. Everyone seemed to be getting into this new free-to-play game that they were describing as a mix of an MMO and Zelda. I was really iffy, but after hearing that you plug in a controller to your PC, and it just works like a controller should, I was more willing to give the game a try, and made a free account.

The game is really fun, and a great way to waste half an hour.

The MMO part of the equation is really kind of PSO in style. You run through randomly-generated Zelda-like dungeons, only with more combat and less puzzles. Sometimes you’ll have to find keys, or hidden buttons to press in order to continue on, but it’s mostly combat scenarios and loot. You fight monsters of various attack alignments and difficulties, and then move on to the next random floor via an elevator. Each time you ride the elevator to a new floor of monsters and loot, it costs you 10 energy. Now, you only have 100 “normal” energy. This refills over time when you’re not playing the game, but it can’t stockpile more than 100, kind of like turns in KoL. You can, however, buy a different kind of energy with real money (or people can buy this energy from people wanting to trade it for in-game currency) that has no cap on how much you can hold. You can also use this micro-transaction energy to buy in-game perks, like having more weapon slots. I would be willing to do something like that (I’d love to have four weapon slots) but the problem is that you can only buy the privilege of having that slot for 30 days, not a permanent unlock. Will I be playing this game 30 days from now? Questionable, and the unlock is seriously only about a dollar of this for-pay currency, but I don’t like paying real money for in-game perks that aren’t permanent, so I’ll likely do without.

The game is really casual, but with some depth to it. I don’t know all the depth, really, but since your character does not level, your ability is completely based on your gear. Fighting with gear lets it gain “heat” which is basically gear experience, and you level up your weapons and armor as you go. You also collect various crafting materials, and one of the big parts of the game I haven’t really gotten into yet seems to involve acquiring recipes and materials to create the best weapons and armor in the game. There also seems to be a way you can manipulate what sorts of random dungeon stages come up by feeding elevators different types of crystals, but I don’t really understand it.
Luckily, I don’t have to get into it if I don’t want to. The game is great about partying you with randoms if you want every step of the way, and since the game is completely co-operative with no real way for one person to screw over a party (Loot is automatically rolled for randomly and distributed. Everyone gets any money or heat picked up. There’s no friendly fire, really. The only way someone could be an ass is by not playing, but it’s really easy to kick someone from your party, or just break from who you’re with, “go solo,” and continue.) it’s been a genuinely fun experience with the random people in the game. While there’s some strategy involved, it’s nothing more intense than a normal top-down Zelda game, so you can just hack away and not worry about having perfect timing or whatever. It’s solid, mindless fun, and since you can only play about two delves into the dungeon before you run out of energy for the day, it takes awhile to get old. I’ve been playing for a few days now and I’m not feeling like I’ve seen all the game has to offer yet.

If you like dungeon crawls, and have a gamepad on your PC, you really should give Spiral Knights a try. It’s free, doesn’t hassle you constantly to give them money, and is a really good time. If I was younger, I could see myself getting really, really into this. As is, I’ll probably only play it off and on for a few more weeks, but still, at the cost of free, it’s totally a worthwhile experience.

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