Spiral Knights, the latest dungeon crawler MMORPG by Three Rings Design and SEGA, is a free-to-play, browser-based java game which has been open to the public since April 4, 2011. Spiral Knights is a real-time, action-adventure game which plays like a modern mix of the Legend of Zelda series and Diablo, with a cutesy visual style.
Unlike most free-to-play games, Spiral Knights’ most prominent feature is that it is absolutely free to play. Players can pump money into the game, although it will only get them a commodity called “energy,” which all players generate. The game comes across as extremely fair, because there is no buyable premium content – players must depend on their skill rather than wallets.
Unfortunately, that is about as good as the game gets. The game lacks any real substance. There is no plot, and the premise is so simple that it almost doesn’t exist. There is no real reason to defeat the bosses – there is nothing in need of saving, and the stakes are relatively low.
As a result, Spiral Knights is a hack-and-slash game in the most basic form. The only objective in the game is really to run through levels while using swords, guns, or bombs to attack monsters. Although a redeeming quality may be PVP modes, Spiral Knights only offers two, and they depend more on luck than actual skill.
In addition, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of content which needs to be understood in order to play the game – the selection of gear, interactions with other characters, the strengths and weakness of the monsters, and even the level-system of the game.
Perhaps the worst aspect of the game is the amount of game play. The game’s designers tout that due to the unique shifting of levels, every trip is unique. Unfortunately, it is true only to a certain extent – and that extends to about the first 24 hours of game play. After that, the playing the same levels over and over again only grows more and more repetitive, dull, boring, laborious, monotonous.
The lack of plot leaves players doing the same tasks over and over again, with no real room for variation. It is not an open game world, and even players’ movements within a level are restricted, forcing a player to move in only one general direction.
Spiral Knights is a quaint novelty, but lasts only for about 150 hours of game play before a player is worn down enough to call it quits. A good try by SEGA and Three Rings, but Spiral Knights is only as good as the two and a half stars out of five that it gets.
