This Metroidvania/Shoot’em’up is a complete success and brings a breath of fresh air thanks to its innovative and original ideas. The Knight Witch proves to be as beautiful as it is unforgiving, with its enchanting and colorful art direction, as well as its demanding and sometimes even extraordinary level of difficulty. The game is always smooth and enjoyable to browse, it’s an addictive, fun experience and fully translated into French. It will take you around 10 to 20 hours of your time and nerves of steel to get through it.
When heaven meets hell
To give you some context, the world narrowly escaped doom thanks to the knight witches sent to the front lines to defend the people from a merciless war. They are a band of fearsome witches with superhuman strength. and have the ability to defeat any enemy who dares to stand in their way and find their strength in different ways that you will discover during your adventure.
The surface of the planet is destroyed, mankind finds refuge in an underground city called Dungeonidas to spend peaceful days there. The adventure begins 14 years after those events and you play as Rayne, the new Knight Witches recruit who has the responsibility of protecting the people and their small town when a new threat descends on them.
The game, completely hand drawn, amazed me with its beauty from the first minutes. Slightly medieval and fantasy settings made me feel like I was being thrown into an old 90’s cartoon or children’s comic. The 2D sets are beautiful and always neat, rich in details as well as visual effects of all kinds. The artistic direction of The Knight Witch is clearly one of his strengths and got me thinking Steamworld Excavation or original.
The soundtrack isn’t neglected either! It is extraordinary and offers varied musical atmospheres that adapt perfectly to every situation and help to reinforce an already existing immersion.
Everything started very well for me! And I wasn’t at the end of my surprises, because the game turns out to be extremely fluid and offers a simple and immediate handling. Rayne, the little flying witch, controls herself like a little shoop ’em’ up ship, equipped with a projectile cannon and shoots everything that moves.
A rich and vibrant universe
Let’s stroll through all these interconnected areas where you will meet Captivating, funny and well-written characters. Like a baker-pastry skeleton improvising for a moment as a blacksmith to craft you armor, assuming you have the resources. The Knight Witch has quite a rich and interesting lore that, among other things, will be told to you by this group of characters that you will meet during this journey, since the game is so lively.
As with any good self-respecting Metroidvania, exploration will be fine because Several small mysteries are scattered throughout the map. But also traditional life and magical improvements, because yes, a witch can do magic! I really liked that last point, in addition the title offers a system of powers that are to its credit magic cards at different levels and in several categories. Very effective against bosses and other enemies thanks to the power of the attacks they offer you, they will not make your work any easier. In fact, the highest level cards consume almost all of your cast bar. I found it very clever and well thought out because depending on where you are some spells are more appropriate than others depending on the level design. What brings some complementarity between the gameplay and the environments
Maximum challenge for maximum suffering
Do you like to surpass yourself and hurt yourself? That’s good because The Knight Witch it is brutal, breathless and quick-witted bosses and hordes of enemies. It will test your nerve and your patience, and you will likely have to go through many failures before you succeed. If you want an idea of what to expect, know that it took me 10 tries for the boss… Tutorial! (And I’m used to the genre, even if my skills sometimes let me down)
A nice and well presented difficulty, but satisfying and never frustrating because it’s well balanced. All you need is a good dose of perseverance and determination, because even learning the patterns on your fingertips won’t always be enough. Blame the many elements that tower over the environment and which you have to dodge. In fact, sometimes you’ll have to advance through very cramped narrow galleries, riddled with enemies who won’t leave you alone. They are numerous and attack you immediately
No big surprise The Knight Witch however, does not offer an easy mode, Some small accessibility options are available if desired. They can be activated and deactivated at any time in their own menu via cheat codes in order to find themselves, which is rather rare in the genre and therefore deserves a mention.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t finish this adventure because I was literally stuck in an arena after a boss fight with no way to get out of it. To explain the why and how in a simple way, there were two doors to enter the arena, one of which was in a totally optional mini-zone that I didn’t open. Guess which door you had to exit at the end of the confrontation? And of course only open on the other side, otherwise it’s not funny…
accessibility criteria
| visual impairment | hard of hearing |
| ✘ High contrast (target reticle) | ✘ Subtitles with mood hints |
| ✘ Font color size | ✔ Identification of the person speaking |
| ✘ Tag enemies | ✘ Customizable font |
| ✘ Customizable user interface | ✘ Customizable font color |
| ✘ Customizable mini-map color | ✘ Alternative alarm options (vibration, flash…) |
| ✘ Color blindness option | ✘ Ambient noise reported (presence notification) |
| ✘ Text to speech option | |
| ✘ Game slowdown |
test conditions
| TV details | 4K | Game provided by the publisher | Oui | |
| console | Xbox Series X | Time spent in game | 15 hours | |
| difficulty level | normal | game over | Not |
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