Knight Squad 2 First Impressions: Men In Metal
Knight Squad’s second coming is off to a promising start
Knight Squad has always been about friendship, making enemies, and losing friends. The sequel dials things up a notch, promising an accessible eight-player bloodbath even more dizzying than the original. Chainsawesome Games has been busy promoting their latest brainchild with a healthy heaping of giveaways across Twitter: an offer that was too hard to refuse. While the limited access demo only has a handful of modes and restricts your arsenal, the gleaming cogs in the machine show plenty of promise.
The game loses none of the charm its predecessor had while offering up a satisfying upgrade in terms of graphical fidelity. Its odd sense of humor might not be for everyone, but I cracked a smile when I saw that the lightning staff was shaped like a metal bolt of lightning. The knight models themselves seem to have been updated, with panels offering up a better explanation behind their names. Most of the old ones are back with a fresh coat of paint (I missed you, Saviour). New death animations and wild special effects tore across the screen without a hitch on my far-from-gaming ready laptop. Even with eight players littering the field with mines and horse corpses, the game managed to run smoothly without dropping frames.
Granular control over the arena
While its predecessor hinged its ambitions on unpredictability, Knight Squad II wishes to have its cake and eat it too. Modifiers bring a whole new flavor to the metal massacre that was getting long in the tooth. Exploding bodies and a slippery arena force you to think twice before adopting a strategy or chasing down an enemy. Random item spawns are the icing on the said cake. While a laser gun is useful, accidentally picking up a self-destructing kamikaze pickup on one end of the map is a pitiful way to die.
You also have the ability to customize your loadout before you head into a match. Be warned that Knight Squad 2 keeps things fair: you won’t be the only one riding a unicorn with a saw gun strapped to your back. While the map variety is merely a taste of what is to come, these options changed things up enough that every match seemed like a unique encounter.
Operation payload
Payload is a brand-new mode that Knight Squad 2 brings to the medieval table, battered and slanted far enough that you’d be surprised that food stays on it. While the game type is by no means original, it fits right in among the rich variety of modes offered by its predecessor. It pits two teams in a race to get the cart in the center to the opposing team’s base.
Think soccer, but with a cart laden with explosives.
It’s where I spent most of my time during my hands-on with the game. Things are certain to get messy, with the AI bots holding their own across a wide range of difficulties. Be warned: they’re meaner than they look. But the real difficulty I had with Knight Squad 2 was grappling with its keyboard controls. While its precursor was no knight in shining armor in this department, it was easier to grasp, albeit while granting controller players a slight advantage. Knight Squad 2 expects you to hold a key to move while using your cursor to tell your knight where to go. It sounds good in theory, and I’m certain that it’ll work out well with a controller. But things felt rather mushy on my laptop.
For one, I couldn’t pull off the dashing sword pirouettes that I had adopted and honed during my hours with the original. It was a pain to aim since you cannot turn while being stationary. It’s hard enough to keep track of all the carnage around you, let alone a cursor that dictates where you’re facing. The little cursor demands a good deal of your attention; attention that could be better spent on incoming lightning bolts and missiles.
Brace yourself
Perhaps the biggest change that Knight Squad 2 establishes is the ability to block incoming attacks. It felt cumbersome at first. Slowing down and stopping to raise a shield was the last thing on my mind as knights tossed boomerangs and missiles at each other across the battlefield. I didn’t even know it existed for the first few matches. I questioned the move until I decided to play defensively by choice. I thought it was a futile endeavor.
Until it stopped a bazooka missile dead in its tracks.
I began to make mincemeat out of my foes by carefully dancing around them as metal fiends hurled objects and expletives at me. It would have been glorious, but the finicky control system keeps it from attaining true gothic greatness. Knight Squad 2 doesn’t reinvent the torture wheel in its entirety, but its novel weaponry in tandem with its approach to customizing the arena freshens things up. It cranks up the heat and ensures that I’ll be sinking in a couple of hours once the game is out.
While I’d have loved narrative challenges that multiple players can tackle coupled with an achievement system to unlock new knights, I suppose there’s enough time for the developers to tinker with the game before it launches. With Knight Squad 2, Chainsawesome Games doubles down on what made the first game so special: cutesy carnage. It retains the eight-player mayhem and its inexplicable sense of charm is still alive and kicking in 2020.
Knight Squad 2 launches on Xbox One and PC later this year.
