Developer: Chainawesome Games
Publisher: Chainawesome Games
Platform: Switch, PC, Xbox One
Tested on: Switch
Knight Squad 2 – Review
It’s been seven years since the original Knight Squad game debuted, and Chainawesome Games are bringing back their party game franchise in style with the long anticipated Knight Squad 2. Although the game launched on PC in december, it only just arrived on the Switch. We don’t exactly expect Knight Squad 2 to be historically accurate -we doubt bazookas and rainbow-colored Unicorns were a thing in medieval times- but the game definitely looks like a blast. We assembled a squad of our own and stepped into the arena to find out if Knight Squad 2 would be worthy of a seat at the round table.
Story
I’m sorry reader, but our narrative is in another castle. There is no story to be found in Knight Squad 2.
Graphics
The least we can say about Knight Squad 2’s visuals is that they are very polished. It would have been easy to simply use the same base model for each of the knights and apply a palette swap, but Chainawesome Games went above and beyond here. Each of the characters has a distinct design that underlines their personality. These designs really shine on the character selection and victory screens, so it’s a bit of a shame that they don’t come across as effectively during actual gameplay, in part due to the top-down perspective. The arenas themselves are varied and although they are quite basic in design, owing to the cartoonish aesthetics, the fast-paced and chaotic gameplay ensures that you’ll be too caught up in the action to really notice any lack of detail. Not only that, but the game runs smooth as butter, with a consistent framerate, ensuring an enjoyable visual experience.
Sound
Although Knight Squad 2 features an appropriate heavy tempo soundtrack, we imagine most people aren’t going to really notice the music as the game’s short but frenzied rounds require your concentration, and honestly, there’s going to be a lot of swearing and shouting by players during a typical game of Knight Squad 2. What’s a little more difficult to ignore, however, is the booming announcer’s voice. The announcer will not only give players the signal to go, but will also announce which player is about to win in minigames where it’s possible to take the lead.
Gameplay
Knight Squad 2 is an arcade party game for up to eight players, that is probably best enjoyed with friends locally rather than online or against AI opponents. What you’re getting here is essentially a series of fast-paced chaotic minigames, all of which are played from a top-down perspective. Each of these minigames uses the same base mechanics when it comes to controlling your character, so it’s easy to familiarize yourself with the core gameplay. This comes with the added advantage that you don’t need a lengthy explanation whenever you get into a new round where the objective is different from the previous one. That’s not to say that the various minigames feel like carbon copies as there is plenty of variety here to ensure things don’t get repetitive.
The game offers up to 13 different minigames -or modes, as Chainawesome games calls them. These range from a Hunger Games-style battle royale, where weapons randomly spawn in an arena and you need to grab one and try to eliminate all your opponents to be the last one standing, to a soccer variant where you need to get a giant ball into your opponents’ goal. Knight Squad 2 offers up over a hundred different arenas, and you’re also able to team up with your friends or engage them in a free-for-all, in addition to the possibility to change certain game conditions, such as starting weapons and environmental hazards. This ensures that no two rounds need to feel the same, and really encourages that “one more round” feeling. Whether you’re taking on one another on a slippery ice floor or riding around on rainbow unicorns, the game fully embraces its own wackiness to provide a refreshing and fun take on the multiplayer arena genre.
Most of the fun that comes from a game like this, however, is dependent on who you play the game with. This is a title that shines when you can gather friends around your TV and engage in colorful bouts that involve lots of shouting at the screen. No matter how you look at it, a game like Knight Squad 2 is simply less fun when you remove that social element. The game offers up an online mode, so if you can convince your friends to pick up a copy of their own and use a third party application to enable voice chat, you can still get a few games in, but the experience definitely isn’t the same. We try to avoid referring to the ongoing worldwide situation in our reviews, as it is usually irrelevant, but for a game like Knight Squad 2, it’s difficult not to address the elephant in the room: this is a game perhaps best saved until after the pandemic.
Conclusion
With Knight Squad 2, developer Chainawesome Games delivers a fantastic take on the multiplayer arcade genre. The game’s reliance on an easy-to-learn core gameplay experience means that anyone can jump into the game’s minigames without having to worry about the controls. Adding to this, the degree of customizability present here ensures that it’ll be a long time before Knight Squad 2’s formula grows stale. The icing on the cake is the very reasonable €12.99 price point. The game’s biggest weakness is perhaps its release timing, as it’s difficult to get people together around the same screen to fully enjoy the chaos that ensues in a local multiplayer game.
Knight Squad 2 - Review,
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[…] Knight Squad 2, the chaotic arcade multiplayer game by Chainsawesome Games has released today for PlayStation 4. […]
[…] we are diving into the medieval madness provided by Chainawesome Games in their 8-player party game Knight Squad 2. The first Knight Squad is already a good five years old and the sequel was first released on PC […]