Keen Games’ Portal Knights aims to target the audience that loves Minecraft, but would probably enjoy a bigger focus on the story and better graphics from the ground up. And they do all of that while still offering the same levels of freedom and creativity in designing massive worlds, where sky is often the limit – unless you break it!
You start off with a simple character creator, and select from a basic assortment of classes. The premise is simple – after the world is torn apart by the Fracture, you’re tasked with visiting the different fragments by means of portals, and try to restore peace. It’s a pretty straightforward premise that facilitates the core gameplay. The game sets you free almost immediately, and you can choose to either chase down different worlds and discover new mysteries, or set up base and start building.
Apart from the main quest, you’ll meet NPCs along the way who give you side objectives, often prodding you into uncharted areas, and giving you more reason to explore. This is further supported by the core character progression system, which nets you XP for actions performed, and can be used to gain new abilities, while levelling up your character. This core loop itself makes for an even more compelling experience from the get go. It’s still just as much fun to lose yourself in the freedom that the game allows you, but the sense of progression and direction provides all the more reason and motive for your actions.
The combat system is also a lot of fun. It’s plays similar to a third person hack and slash game, where you can lock onto enemies, attack, parry and dodge quickly. The weapon variety is also impressive, and you can craft your own as well. Enemies have their own abilities and engage you with their own combat tactics. This makes the overall simplistic combat a lot of fun and not repetitive. There are occasional boss fights that are massive and challenging. It’s here that all your levelling up and practiced skills come into real use.
You can play the game solo, but playing with friends is immensely fun. You can get up to all sort of shenanigans together, and it’s really impressive to play wound with the tools the game puts at your disposal in a co-operative environment.
There’s a lot of variety to the various worlds themselves, each looks vastly different from each other. They are also packed with detail, both in the creatures inhabiting them and the environments. The choice of color and visual styles really makes these places stand apart, and no two places feel like reskinned versions.
With this much freedom, and so many tools at your disposal, the menus and controls are surprisingly robust. You might come across the occasional hiccup, but for the most part, it’s all very well streamlined.
With an excellent blend of progression, exploration and sandbox elements, Portal Knights offers a great experience, especially for those looking for a good alternative to Minecraft. And for those who felt intimidated by the scope of such games, Portal Knights offers a more directed path as well that familiarises you with the tools and world before letting you run wild.
Register with us for the best in gaming, and join us for video game discussions on our forums.
