Blood Knights (2013)

Blood Knights (2013), developed by Deck13 Interactive, published by Kalypso Media

A clunky camera? Check.
Uninspired action? Check.
Boring enemies? Check.
Boring gear? Check.
"RPG" elements? Check.
Bad AI? Check.
A terrible script? Check.
Bad voice acting? Check.
Unintentionally hilarious? Check.

I could go on, really. But that would feel a bit unfair, as pointing out all the things that are wrong about Blood Knights is like shooting fish in the barrel. No matter where you point, something is bound to be if not terribly wrong, at least in some state of waiting for a final touch that never came.

It is the age of war between men and vampires. Jeremy, captain of the holy order, travels to an ancient temple to protect the Blood Seal from getting in the hands of the vampires. As the battle is fierce, Bartholomew, a priest of the order, binds a vampire Alysa. Tied together, the unlikely duo tries to stop the Seal from being stolen, only to fail and Jeremy himself is turned into a vampire.

Despite his old holy order discards him, Jeremy is still keen to stop the vampires, as the theft of the Blood Seal has started a cataclysm ripping the Moon apart. When the Moon breaks, so will the Earth end as well, killing millions.

Together the former vampire slayer and the vampire begin their journey to get back the Seal in order to save the world. During this journey, Jeremy has to decide if he wants to fully embrace his vampiric tendencies or keep them at bay. On a couple of occasions, he has to make a decision, if he will free a vampire or allow them to die. This opens up some small story differences in a form of alternative, short, side missions, so despite they exist, I wouldn't call them a good enough reason to play the game multiple times.

The game itself is played with either of the two protagonists. You can swap them on the fly in to suit the situation you are currently in and at times you need to use both to kill an enemy. While I started the game by playing mainly with Jeremy, I soon swapped to almost exclusive to Alysa, as her dual field crossbows are far more effective weapons than Jeremy's swords.

The game world is filled with additional equipment for both of the characters. It doesn't take long to gather up better gear and money to buy them, though, in the end, I spent very little money to buy anything at all. The gear I got from the loot was more than good enough.

The game itself is laughably easy with a terrible enemy AI. You don't really even need that good of gear, as you can easily snipe the enemies from a high place with Alysa's crossbows and occasionally heal up with Jeremy's skill when needed. It says something about the difficulty of the game, as I remembered to spend my skill points the first time when I was on a level 7 or so. I also had several Blood Coins, tokens that can be used to level up strength and other stats, which I never used, as I saw no point in it.

Most of my deaths were directly related to the terrible camera of the game. On many occasions the game swings at such an angle, that is very difficult to see where you are actually running. When this happens, it is terribly easy to accidentally walk or jump off a cliff and plummet to your death. This can happen even when you are actually expected to do some platform jumping, so many times you just need to do some trial and error before you find the correct place to jump.

The icing and the cherry on the cake is the script and the voice acting. The story itself is just flat out bad, but the voice acting, where the actors are clearly fully detached from what is happening on the game is unintentional comedy gold. I assume none of the actors had the slightest idea to whom the characters were talking, what was the context of the discussion or what kind of stakes the story had. The simplest way would be to say, the acting clearly lacked direction in any way or form.

Despite Blood Knights isn't a good game in any way or form, I still finished it, mostly because I wanted to see how low the game could go. The level of gameplay never got any worse, luckily, but it's apparent that the writers stopped caring if they made any sense before the first level manages to end.   

So consider yourself warned, Blood Knights is not a good game and the comedic value it has might be best enjoyed by watching a YouTube playthrough.

And then there is the funniest part of the game: the ending sets up a sequel. At least someone was delusional enough to believe this clunker was good enough to warrant more.