Knight Squad

With the whole Xbox Games with Gold programme, it’s now possible to get 4 free games a month. Needless to say, this creates a massive backlog of unplayed games behind buying games you actually want to play and games you are currently playing. I’ve actually been quite choosy with these on the 360 but I’ve pretty much taken every free game on the Xbox One. One of which was Knight Squad.

I had seen a few of my friends take this one on and it looked to be quite a quick completion. I was right and managed to earn all the achievements in an afternoon.

Knight Squad is an Arena Battle Game where you play as a knight fighting against other knights in various arenas with a set of game specific rules. You pick up lots of different power ups to take the fight to the other knights in said arenas.

In addition to fighting other knights there is also a challenge mode where you fight against different creatures which are reminiscent of the boss fights from the classic Zelda games. This was by far the most single player fun you can have in the game and my only disappointment was that there weren’t more of these challenge levels.

The game is cartoon in design and is viewed from the top down. You fight in a 2D field as well which is a change of pace from most modern games. There’s not a lot else to say about the way it looks. It doesn’t pull any punches and doesn’t try to do more than it needs to which is no criticism.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 15 Achievements

Considering it only has 15 achievements, surprisingly some of them are worth 0 points. This feels a bit pointless but whatever, I’ll run with it.

The achievements themselves are either quick hits where you have to meet certain criteria, challenge mode related or grindy, but obviously not too grindy otherwise it would have taken more than an afternoon to do.

I kicked off my 100% completion quest by getting three achievements relating to power ups. Some of the power ups get progressively better if you pick up a certain amount of the same types in a row. There is one for getting a unicorn by getting horse power-ups; another for running at the highest speed by collection feet power-ups and another for controlling 8 minions at once which means you have to pick up two minion pick-ups at once. There is also another one for throwing a boomerang and then not catching it again for 10 seconds which can be done in the same way on the right level.

These are all really easy as you can set the AI to the lowest difficulty level or, if you have two controllers, play against 1 other human player and idle. Using a second controller is the easiest way to get all of the non-challenge related achievements with the exception of getting 1,000 kills.

Speaking of using a second controller, it’s the easiest way to get the Crystal Prospector and Master Excavator for destroying 25 Crystals in crystal rush mode and for destroying 5,000 walls respectively.

Playing through Challenge Mode was the best bit but surprisingly most of these achievements are the zero pointers. You only get points for completing the last three which doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why not have the achievements be worth less but have all challenges earn Gamerscore?

After all that is done, there should be three left for getting 1,000 kills, getting exterminator for killing seven other knights quickly and another one for getting three kills with one shot with the laser gun. The first two can be hammered out in a Juggernaught match on The Bunker level. The laser gun one is arguably the hardest at it relies on luck rather than skill but it can be obtained most easily during a Gladiator match on Melee King. Gladiator is essentially king of the hill which means all the other knights will be in a similar position making it easier to score three kills.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Knight Squad was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. It reminded me a lot of classic Zelda from the SNES era, especially the challenge modes. I like that despite having a strong focus on versus gameplay, you can earn all the achievements without multiplayer as well - massive plus points. The biggest disappointment was the shortness of challenge mode. Some extra awesome boss fights would have been a welcome addition as well as adding extra challenge.