Skautfold: Moonless Knight Review
Imitation Without Flattery
An old, oft-quoted proverb states that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In many instances, that may be true, but Skautfold: Moonless Knight takes that adage and makes it feel sinfully erroneous. Moonless Knight is a curious concoction: it’s primarily a Metroidvania, but it mixes Soulslike mechanics with a usage-based stat and progression system reminiscent of Final Fantasy II or the SaGa series. At the same time, its plot infuses cosmic horror and Lovecraftian themes for good measure. While there are some conceptually interesting gameplay foundations and story elements, subpar presentation, an error-laden script, and uninnovative gameplay sully the experience, making for a derivative and disappointing mishmash.
Taking place in an alternate 1900, Moonless Knight opens with the Second Knight of the Angelic Empire of Britannia, Gray von Reuenthal, reporting for duty to the empire’s queen, Eleanore, for an important mission. She informs Gray that he will be escorting scientist Noah to the Japan-based Dawn Empire, which controls much of Asia. The Dawn Empire is currently stable and prosperous, but is being usurped by cultists seeping into the upper echelons of society. Chief among these are the Lunatics, moon worshippers who are attempting to unleash the “opening.” To prevent this, Gray is set to meet with their shogun and, at the same time, obtain a relic that will supposedly help ameliorate the impacts of the ominous event.
The game over screen highlights some of the issues with the script.
While Moonless Knight has an initially compelling premise, it quickly falls flat and never recovers due to its lack of character development, thematic unoriginality, and poor writing. Taking place primarily in the imperial Japanese palace, the setting blends Japanese iconography and culture with Lovecraftian alien enemies and visuals. The basic plot works, but it’s ultimately unremarkable, largely due to Gray’s bland personality and the lack of real character development. It’s a trite, rote circling of the bases: monks, tengu, majin, and then some nonsense-spouting aliens yammering about cosmic incomprehensibility. All of this would be an inoffensive “whatever” if it weren’t for the embarrassing amount of misspellings, typographical errors, and even fragmented sentences, which make it next to impossible to take the game’s themes or characters seriously. Even worse, at odd times, Moonless Knight’s characters will suddenly drop their traditional English, flashbanging the player with odd, modern phrases that obliterate immersion.
Combat centers around the Guard System, with Gray and all enemies having two bars: one for HP and one for Guard. Guard functions as a sort of hybrid of shield and stamina. Incoming damage reduces Guard first before affecting HP, and all actions deplete it, though it regenerates when Gray is standing still or running. Moonless Knight’s action combat gives players several methods of engaging with this system, including a dodge and 360-degree shield, with well-timed evasions or blocks causing Gray’s Guard to regenerate faster while also reducing or even momentarily nullifying the enemy’s Guard. Any action can be canceled with a feint, with a timely feint allowing for a parry that nullifies damage and stuns the enemy, and perfect timing reflecting damage.
While the concept itself is interesting, it doesn’t translate well in practice. It functions, but execution is poor due to limited attack options and clunky, awkward controls. Gray can use five different weapons: a dagger, dual blades, a sword, a spear, and a greatsword, which initially gives the impression of variety. In actuality, their attacking frequency is too similar, meaning the shorter-range weapons are generally worse, though their actual ranges also don’t have much difference, except for the greatsword. The attacks also come out very slowly, and movement feels generally stiff, making for an overall plodding experience where the best option is to leisurely draw enmity, one enemy at a time. When faced with multiple foes, the lack of fluidity in controls causes combat to generally collapse in on its own weight, especially because maximum guard proportionally reduces along with health, which paralyzes player options if they get mobbed.
“Nbz uif gmui” to you, too, pal.
The progression system is an incredibly curious choice, as well. Leveling core statistics or weapon proficiency is accomplished through use, meaning players need to evade, dodge, or use weapons to level their proficiency, whereas Guard and HP increase by taking damage to each. There isn’t any real reason to use different weapons, as the two-percent damage increase per level means it’s best to pick one and stick with it. If players perform well without getting hit too much by regular enemies, the greater damage output and multi-directional attacks of bosses can quickly become an exercise in annoyance without grinding for more Guard or HP. The best approach for bosses ends up being to parry regular enemies beforehand to build Focus, which allows a powerful ultimate attack that quickly shreds enemy health.
Moonless Knight’s exploratory elements fare even worse, lacking a foundationally interesting element like the Guard System and ultimately amounting to an incredibly boring, derivative Metroidvania. Featuring a top-down approach, level traversal primarily centers on exploring rooms on a map, finding relics, and then using those relics to explore further. Powered boots allow Gray to kick and destroy boulders, a grappling hook allows for crossing gaps, and a summonable Fire Vampire lights up dark rooms. The way relics are spread out leads to a lot of confusing backtracking, and often their use is clunky and slightly unintuitive. For example, the grappling hook can only be used when it locks on, but this information is hidden away in a menu, and the lock-on function is slow and difficult to use.
Beyond just being banal and frustrating to explore, Moonless Knight wholly lacks the magic and intrigue that is the primary appeal of Metroidvanias. There aren’t any real secrets or hidden rooms, enemies don’t drop anything of value except gold, and the chests contain the same loot every time: a random level-up, Yth stones that level up weapons, and gold. The world feels sterile and dead, and not in an interesting way. The game’s fundamental misunderstanding of the genre is most evident in its Familiar companions, who all simply follow the player to inflict identical chip damage on enemies. Other titles give them character by giving different Familiars the ability to heal, point out hidden items, rooms, or details, or otherwise interact with the player character. In Moonless Knight, there’s no interesting or functional variation among the Familiars, and it ultimately indicates how cheaply derivative the experience is.
One of Moonless Knight‘s more creative areas, if a bit jagged.
The audiovisual department is where Moonless Knight does best, faring better soundwise than visually. The soundtrack is effective and competent at evoking a dark, grim, and occasionally Lovecraftian-esque atmosphere, but it’s also wholly unremarkable and unmemorable. Visually, there’s a decent and appreciable amount of detail in the spritework, especially character sprites. That said, the animations are often a bit stiff, and the game has a jagged, ugly look in many environments. The top-down approach does the game no favors, and the environmental design, especially in the imperial palace, suffers from a lack of depth, with some walls looking like floors due to improper shadows or similar textures. Some environments, especially those below the palace, feature appealing designs, but the tendency for objects to jut out jaggedly against the background makes the game unpleasant to look at.
Moonless Knight is a meal with an interesting assortment of ingredients, but they entirely fail to come together into the intended dish. The compelling Japanese-Lovecraftian fusion just cannot be executed with this rough, lazy script. It’s a failure of a Metroidvania, and it’s a bad and clunky action RPG as well, with progression mechanics that fail to synergize with the rest of the gameplay and ultimately drag the experience down even further. The experience is wholly disappointing, and Moonless Knight is simply not worth a player’s time.
Disclosure: This article is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.
Some interesting story concepts
Guard system is conceptually interesting
Lazy script full of typos
Stiff and clunky controls
Subpar and jagged visuals
Banal, aimless progression
No secrets or intrigue in the world
Recent Comments