Skautfold: Moonless Knight Reviews

Kill cultists. Kick cultists. Behead cultists. Stomp on cultists. Light cultists on fire. Grappling hook cultists. Shock cultists with lightning. Teleport behind cultists. Shoot cultists full of arrows. Reflect cultists attacks back at them. Parry cultists. Laugh in the face of cultists as you cut them down one by one until naught remains but yourself.

A nice game. Nice writing, especially if you like lovecraftian themes. Fun gameplay and interesting bosses.I beat it in 12 hours but i could replay the bosses as it has a BossRush mode and an ascencion type difficulty.

What is moonless knight? Moonless knight is a top-down game where you get to stab things and get stabbed while trying to fight and kill demons that just want to ruin your day. Pros: - Crisp art - Glorious combat - Great death animations - Epic map to explore - Bosses that will kick your head in Cons: - Too good, I haven't seen my family in days

Moonless Knight is the 4th entry in the Skautfold series and yet another very solid one at that. It's set right after the events of Into the Fray: the enemy is the entire moon and the only hope for mankind to survive lies below the Shogun's castle in the Japan of this eldritch-touched alternate history. This time around we're back to a metroidvania-ish gameplay style, which reminds of the 2nd game in the series, Usurper (except it's sorta top-down instead of side-scrolling). The combat system is also an evolution of the system in that game - you have the guard-bar which is simultaneously a secondary layer of defense before you actually lose health and also is used as stamina for attacking, parrying and dodging, and perfect dodges and blocks immediately restore parts of it. It's pretty satisfying, although sometimes it could be a tiny bit more responsive. There's also parrying, kicking, taunting and you find a bunch of relics along the which usually have both combat utility and are needed to pass environmental obstacles. Bosses are very cool again, though overall it's probably the easiest game in the series so far (which is not necessarily a bad thing). Do give this series a try if you're curious, it's worth it (and if you've already played the previous ones, Moonless Knight should be an easy purchase).

The next installment of the Skautfold series. If you've played the previous titles, it feel like a good mix of SIS and Usurper. If you haven't played them, it has strong Soul-esk combat(overused phrase, I know) with great exploration/level design and some puzzle aspect thrown in. It's a little difficult at first, but death doesn't have a very strict penalty, making it easy to practice on trash. It doesn't take long to get the feel for what you're supposed to do. It never felt 'grindy', which is a plus for me. The area seems like a maze(and it is), but as you explore you'll feel the map start to come together in a really satisfying way. Would definitely recommend!

Along with the other Skautfold games a remarkable example of what a small developer can accomplish in a limited timeframe. Combat is largely timing-based and relatively simple once you get the hang of it: All of the primary weapons are available at the start and it's largely a matter of taste which you prefer, while several secondary weapons are found later on which serve the double purpose of being useful in combat and opening up later areas. What's really exciting, though, is the sheer imagination of the environments: walking along the ocean floor while the water hangs overhead, finding the remnants of ancient alien ships and artifacts, haunting voids holding nightmare memories, Moonless Knight keeps you guessing what's coming next.

Moonless Knight plays like a mashup of the three prior Skautfold games, but you don’t have to have played them to enjoy it [you probably should, though]. There’s a little bit of metroidvania, exploring new areas to find relics that unlock other areas, there’s a little bit of top-down brawler with a complicated but satisfying melee system, and an awful lot of story. The combat is definitely the highlight for me. Besides just an attack and evade, you have a shield you can block with, a kick you can push enemies away with, and a button that lets you feint out of any animation, stunning an enemy if they were landing an attack at that time. The evade, block, and feint also gain bonus effects if you perform them with very good timing, letting you chew through or outright skip the enemy’s Guard pool [attacks in both Usurper and this subtract from your stamina before your health, and all enemies in this work the same way you do]. There’s also five different weapons you can use, each of which have different mechanics, timings, and effects, like knockback or instant hits with no windup, letting you exploit different aspects of the combat, and human enemies can spawn with one of four different weapons too. You also find relics, some of which can also be used in combat, and use them to open new paths and find extra loot. There are shortcuts to open and fast travel points to unlock, although sometimes the backtracking can get a little tedious when you’ve killed everything and hit a dead end. Level progression isn’t done by assigning points manually, but by performing certain actions. Unfortunately, this means that some of the stats are counterintuitive to build, like your max HP only increasing if you take a lot of HP damage, but there are random stat points scattered around and rewarded by treasure chests to help beef up the stats or weapon skills you haven’t been using somewhat. Moonless Knight is definitely worth picking up if you have any interest in a game like this. I still liked Usurper better, but this has that same sense of mastering a system and being able to replay it repeatedly and still have fun. If you liked any of the earlier games, you’ll probably love this, and if this seems interesting but you’re not willing to bite on it yet, check out the earlier games.

[b]Recommended at full price[/b] (with some caveats, nothing major but you can see below to find out) [h1]Zeldavania: Eldritch Abominations Die Thrice[/h1] Imagine playing an isometric action game set in an alternative japan plagued with eldritch horrors while collecting metoridvania-ish upgrades and skills that allow you to travel to more and more parts of the map, fighting enemies and bosses with a stamina based fighting system (think of the soulsborne series, with parrying, dodging and all that good stuff) and level up your skills as you use them (kind of like in FF 2 or in the the elder scrolls). So yes, this is kind of a frankenstein game, but [b]it´s amazing how everything fits together[/b], the combat system is easy to learn but packs quite a bit of depth with it´s mechanics: your attacks are really slow, even the faster weapons have a LONG wind up BUT you can "feint", cancelling it just before it hits and either dodge or block or whatever you need, but if you feint at the exact time the opponent attacks then you parry it and turn the damage back at him, also it has a "guard" system that makes it so your stamina ALSO works as a a kind of shield, a shield that you can instantly regenerate by dodging or blocking at just the right time. All this makes it so [b]the game has a big focus on risk vs reward gameplay but it all feels extremely good to learn and master[/b], it also allows you to adapt your playstyle to the situation as you see fit. [h1]The 4th fold of Skaut[/h1] This is the latest game in the Skautfold series, I´ve been following it pretty much since the beginning and I love how much it changed and improved, as a sequel is pretty much all I could´ve asked for, but [b]it´s not needed to play the previous games to enjoy this one[/b], you don´t need to start with Shrouded in Sanity as all these games are more gameplay focused, but if you enjoy lovecraftian tales then I highly recommend you do so, this one continues on with the story and I love the effort it shows in some sequences and dialogues, but if you only want to experience the "game" part of it you can perfectly fast forward the dialogues and just enjoy the exploration and combat parts. This game also fixes a lot of problems of previous games (I particularly loved the sound effects enemies do when they see you, it´s a great way of avoiding off screen attacks) and expands on the "guard" mechanic from Usurper, which I still believe it´s kind of a genius idea in the first place. [h1]Some caveats[/h1] -First off I had a problem with my controller in which I needed to recalibrate it everytime I turned on the game or loaded a save, I looked it up on the forums and apparently the developer said it´s a problem with the game engine itself, it´s nothing gamebreaking but it is a little annoying tbh. -I love the map , it´s lovely, but even with it the game has a serious problem of constantly getting lost, sometimes you´ll need an upgrade or to kill a boss and finding them can be a little troublesome, not a problem if you like exploring and backtracking, and if you like metroidvanias then I´m inclined to believe you do, but it is a problem especially with... -...low enemy variety, this is a sad thing to point out since this is a nicely polished indie game but I feel the reason why it´s so easy to get lost is directly related to how many areas reuse the same samurai type of enemy, they do have different weapons and sometimes different skins, but I just wish there were more eldritch abominations waiting around the corner (don´t get me wrong, they are, but areas are large and without enemy variety is hard to remember specific rooms imo) -This last part feels wrong to even say, but this game could be so much better with more content (like most games, right? lol), but don´t get me wrong, this game took me some hours of backtracking and exploring and trying to figure out where to go and finding secrets and all that, it even packs a boss rush mode so I want to make it clear that the content on offer is quite deserving of the asking price, it´s just there are a lot of "hints" towards more content, more secrets, more relics and so on (you can even kill or spare some bosses, but this has no impact on the ending, it does change "something" but is very minor), as far as I understand they were planned on future patches but as of the date of this review this is how it feels to me. I would be happy to even pay for dlc if that were on offer (which as far as I know couldn´t be further for the truth as the developer is extremely consumer-friendly and in previous games kept releasing free content for long after his games came out) but if in future patches he adds more stuff then this is a super recommendation. Also, it´s full of cool references, I just wanted to point that out, overall I greatly enjoyed my time with Moonless Knight and I cannot wait for the next one in the series.

Edit: If you got stuck during your first couple hours and couldn't figure out how to progress, I'm putting that info at the bottom of the review. 2nd Edit: If you get stuck during the next couple of hours, I'm putting that at the bottom of the review too. This is really a thumbs-neutral. Moonless Knight is a considerable improvement over Into The Fray in terms of playability, and it seems to have mostly stuck to the top-down-shooter approach of its predecessor, but replaced guns with blades. Moonless Knight starts you off with an assortment of melee weapons, and allows you to invest runes in any of them (although honestly you don't want to split your runes, you want to pick a weapon and stay with it.) This makes character growth feel less interesting here than in ITF or any of the other Skautfold titles, but the melee combat mostly works. Granted, the hitboxes are janky and playing on a keyboard feels a little unwieldy, but you can bait heavy swings, then step inside someone's hitbox and counterattack, and mostly that feels nice. Apart from investing runes in weapons, your various skills grow through use. So to level up double blades, hit people with them. To level up your guard meter, get hit. This approach makes progression fun and frequent, which offsets the blandness of that same progression a little bit. Plotwise, Moonless Knight has some of the same issues as its predecessors. Talking to someone twice will lock you into dialogue hell, as all dialogue repeats fully each time you interact, and some NPCs are very talky. That said, the overall lore of the Skautfold series is kinda neat, and Moonless hits a bunch of fun cosmopolitan cosmic horror notes. Unfortunately, the place where I washed out of the game was its mapping and lack of walkthrough. Moonless' map is an improvement over most of its predecessors, but it still has a good way to go. It flags locked doors, and which side they're locked from, and the room you're standing in is a slightly different color of green from the rest of the rooms, but lots of doors are gated by power-ups and Moonless just shows an open unexplored door symbol for those, making backtracking frustrating. On top of that, there seems to be only one correct direction to go, despite the game starting you out with multiple paths, and I couldn't find it. Other people *have*, so if you feel confident in your ability to play blind, you'll probably get past where I did. However, this game doesn't tutorial much, and some things like weapon switching on a game controller (hold the right stick in any direction) aren't explained at all, so if there was some sort of starting technique I needed to do to bypass pits or forcefields or the like, I still have no idea what it would be. I know it's not dashing, as that just drops you into pits. Anyway, if you're interested in the Skautfold series, I recommend checking out the earlier games first. The first couple are sleeper hits. Usurper's a gem. This one might be too, but if it is it's more in the rough. Edit: To progress, you need to acquire and use relics. To acquire relics, stand under the chained purple crystals (yes, the ones without an interact prompt) and press the interact button. To equip relics, hold your right stick in any direction to go into the weapon-switching menu (don't go into the relic equipment menu, that one doesn't work) and hover over the relic you want, then press the button you have mapped to 'use relic' to equip it (pressing 'use weapon' will simply equip the weapon you're highlighting instead.) After this, using the relic with the use relic key should produce an actual effect. Use the correct effect on the correct on-map objects (such as gargoyle statues, frown doors, or levers) to progress. 2nd Edit: There's no explanation of how the first battle with the fiend works. You can use the shield relic to i-frame through his attacks, but attacking him does nothing. However, if you attack him *at the exact same moment he is attacking you* (the game does nothing to indicate this) you win the fight. The timing is extremely finicky, and the game actively incentivizes you to not do this, but it's the only way to progress.

Another Year another game in the Skautfold Series! The next chapter definitely doesn't disappoint with another new game style Similar to top down Zelda games mixed with the glorious Guard system from one of the previous games Usurper. Combat take a little getting used to but when mastered is extremely satisfying. The game is spread over 3 acts and features around 8 bosses in total. My whole playthrough doing a lot of exploring took me about 10-15 hours I lost track since I restarted a few times experimenting with different weapons but with the full knowledge of the map I could see you being able to make that time significantly lower. With 9 relics to find each providing a way of tackling obstacles while also giving you an advantage in battle you'll be rewarded for backtracking to access hidden chests which may contain scrolls that give you levels in a random skill, Zen or Yth stones which allow you to increase your weapons power/range So Its definitely worth spending the time exploring you might even find a hidden pet or 2 Now graphically its not the most stunning looking game out there but I feel you can forgive this considering the entire game was made by one person in around a year and the actual priority should be great game play which this has. It was a lot of fun working out new enemy patterns and the bosses had a lot of variety with them all having weakness to discover. If you haven't played any of the previous Skautfold games you could jump into this one first but as its an ongoing story I'd recommend starting from the Shrouded In Sanity first Its worth experiencing the whole story If you can and each game in the series hasn't disappointed yet each featuring a different game style completely Its unique for a developer to take so many risks and its a breath of fresh air in these days of stale copy and paste Franchises I'll say this is Steve's Finest work yet and look forward to seeing where the Series Ends In the final game but until then I think I'll start another run!