Ah.. Spiral Knights. A free game made by Three Rings.. or is it?
Spiral knights is a game where you are basically an adventurer who’s fighting off fiends, beasts, jellys, and more to get to the core. Each gate to the core has three tiers. You must get to the tier two barrier on each gate and have a set of two star or better gear to be eligable to do tier two. To be eligable to do tier three (the last tier), you must get to the tier three barrier on each gate and have a set of four star or better gear. While you’re doing this, you’ll find minerals to collect. After you’re done dungeoning, you can deposit these minerals into the gate that you want to appear next. This is in fact worldwide. The gate that has the most minerals will be the next gate to appear. You’ll also make recipes which are bought with crowns, the currency in this game, and made with energy and crowns.
Let me just say that the music in Spiral Knights bypasses any other flaws of the game by far. The music goes with anything that’s happening in the game, like an ambush will have random baddie music and once you’ve completed it, it’s over and back to the kind fun happy music. I had heard about how epic the music was from a few youtube videos, but once me and my friends were really playing the game, we were just amazed. “Wow.. that music is pretty damn good..” The menu music is best though, it makes me just want to stay on the menu screen and just continue with my day, with that endless loop of music.
And as always, the bad part of the game.
I’d honestly only recommend playing this game if you’re alright with only one hour of gameplay a day. It’s horrid. The “energy” goes out so fast in this game because energy is now used for basically.. everything. Now, you start off with 100 energy. Making recipes take anywhere from 10 energy (1-star equipment) to 800 energy (5-star equipment), going farther into the dungeon takes 10 energy each time (unless you get to a terminal which is like a tiny rest area to get recipes and full health), there are random energy gates scattered in each dungeon that justwipe out a bit of energy, and you can’t just avoid them due to them being on the path, and lastly, if there are any dangerous areas that you and your group have the chance of going into, it’d cost energy for the member who opens the gate. But ofcourse don’t fear! You can always buy more energy! But how much does it cost?
Well you can buy 100 energy with crowns (the currency in Spiral Knights) for the current price of 4,890 crowns which rises more and more each day, or you could buy from energy which goes from $2.45-$49.95. And getting crowns just isn’t that easy. Considering that just playing a few dungeons with yourself would be difficult unless you had some 5-star stuff, you’d be with a group. There’s always a lootshare and the only real time you’re getting good crowns is when you come around an arena when is mad difficult and makes you want to quit the game multiple times. Now if you completely refuse to pay a price, there’s ALWAYS waiting about 24hours to have your energy replenished. Yeah, boring.
Basically, the conclusion that me and other Spiral Knights players have come to is that Three Rings really just wants money. I heard from past players that before it had gotten on Steam, ofcourse it was on it’s own website. Well the Steam benefits are there too. Achievements were included :D. No “:D”? Well not for the older players who never had Steam. Although you could log in with your Spiral Knights account, the achievements would have to be redone by all of those veterans. Like the Master Miner achievement where you deposit 10,000 minerals into a gate. Just think if someone had done that and now had to redo that. And yes, “mining” on Spiral Knights isn’t as simple as buying a pick axe from a little roleplay store in the game and mine as much as you want. No. You can only get a mineral from a dungeon level, and the amount of the mineral you get is determined by the size of the mineral which is totally randomly generated, though big minerals come rare. The values go from 1-6 of a mineral.
Oh, and there’s an auction house that basically destroys the purpose of an auction house. Once the auction house was added, it also changed trade. You aren’t allowed to trade/auction any 4-5 star items. Not even 4-5 star materials. That’s a tad harsh. Just a bit. I mean it’s not like there were any RWT (real world trading) issues in the game, why such drastic measures? I mean the end game when you are all bored out of tier 3 things used to be to make high level things and sell them off to people who need it most, but now, there really is no end game. So what are the high levels to do now?
What sucks the MOST is that once you equip an item, you’ll never be able to sell it or trade it. Some think a reason for that would be so that way a new player wouldn’t be able to get a full set of (for instance) maxed out 5 star gear from a friend. I don’t really agree with that. If a friend wants to hand over their gear then let them! I mean it doesn’t have to be kept at their same level! They can be reset upon trading or something clever like that. You can’t deprive a bunch of players like that! Especially the ones who had a friend refer them to the game.
On the good side…
The game is SO intense that it’ll make you want to buy more and more energy! It really is a fun fun game! But for people like me who actually nolife and play a game even til it’s past completed, we can’t really do that. The overpowered enemies and what now keep the game interesting and force some teamwork habits.. XD The fighting is pretty nice after changing up the controls too. And wow, the graphics are beautiful. They’re so crystal clear. I love it. I thought this would be some low grade looking game but for something free, it’s got some look to it. It’s worth playing for this reason especially if you’re a graphics freak. The weapons are very unique and all have their good sides and bad sides. It’d be hard to recommend weapons mainly because well, everyone has their own opinion on the weapon to get. There’s weapons from swords and guns to crossbows and angel guns. It’s fairly creative.
Plus, there are just so many emotes you can do in this game, I was surprised XD. Most of them aren’t emotes that really just make you do emotes (such as the /dance command just goes “(player name) has the urge to dance!”). But it was still cute.
Gameplay: Poor Good Great Excellent Awesome
Graphics: Poor Good Great Excellent Awesome
Music: Poor Good Great Excellent Awesome
Creativity: Poor Good Great Excellent Awesome
Extras: Poor Good Great Excellent Awesome
Wait, What? 