GameBanshee’s Review of Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 1, 2011

I hope you guys forgive me for talking about very little other than Frayed Knights this week. And probably next week. But after almost three decades of dreams and several years of effort, it’s been something of a big deal. Or rather, its consumption of my attention has been at an all-time high the last couple of weeks, and I really haven’t been able to concentrate on much else.

Anyway, there’s an epic 5-page review of the game over at GameBanshee. Surprisingly, it’s not by Brother None, who did the stellar preview last week, but by Eric Schwarz. And as you can guess from the page count, this is not a shallow review:

GameBanshee Feature: Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon Review

An excerpt:

“Despite the focus on dungeon crawling, that doesn’t mean that Frayed Knights is devoid of interesting quests, however. Although the game is, for the most part, quite linear, providing the player with a mostly fixed path through the game, many quests have at least one or two minor decisions to make. None of them have any long-term consequences or real moral dilemmas; rather, it’s the way in which all of the quests interact that makes them fun to get through. Frayed Knights has a very good way of having one quest lead to another, and then that next quest leading to two more, and most of the game’s quests will span nearly the entire length and breadth of it, requiring you to enter multiple dungeons, speak to several different characters, uncover hidden secrets, and so forth; some of its best quests require the completion of others to finish up, and others rely on your own deduction rather than obvious tips. This can sometimes create a feeling of directionlessness, but this can usually be remedied by making a bit more progress or exploring another dungeon. Not all quests end up marked in your journal, either, and when you combine that with the lack of a quest compass, you’ll wind up with a great feeling of accomplishment for figuring out where to go, what to do, how to solve a particular puzzle, and so on. Being able to simply deduce how to get through the game for yourself is, sadly enough, something quite rare in RPGs these days, and it’s extremely refreshing to see that Frayed Knights doesn’t just require this, but does such a great job of encouraging and rewarding it. “

 

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 3 Comments to Read



top