Another day and another beat'em up, the amount of games of this genre that have been made is absurd, every day I find one or two beat'em up that I didn't know and even though most of them are not very good, you always find one that is at least decent enough to review. The game I'll tell you about today is one of those beat'em up that, although not spectacular, ends up being entertaining.
The story of this game is simple, but effective (as in 99% of games in this genre), however, Knights of the Round, as you might expect, is about the legend of King Arthur. I think we all know the legend of this character, this story has been adapted in series, movies, manga and anime, is one of the most famous medieval stories in the world, so it is not strange that they have also developed a video game based on this legend. As we know this legend is centered on the sword Excalibur and whoever succeeds in removing the rock will become King. Arthur was chosen to obtain this powerful sword, so he has earned the right to be called "King" and thus rule and bring peace to the kingdom. However, to achieve the complete peace of the kingdom, he must also obtain the Holy Grail, which is missing, and which likewise possesses a very powerful mystical force, which in the wrong hands could cause chaos and destruction. Therefore, Arthur, accompanied by two of his strongest and most loyal Knights: Perceval and Lancelot, must leave the kingdom in search of the Holy Grail.
Graphically it is a pretty decent game, with a level of detail in quite striking and well-decorated scenarios, decent designs that manage to recreate those locations of a medieval time quite consistent and optimal. So we will see different types of scenarios from castles, villages, dungeons, forests, ruins, fields, in general there is a variety of scenarios each of them adorned with their respective characteristics. Knights of the Round is a game that knows how to use the colors very well, so both the scenarios and the characters manage to highlight much on the screen, many bright colors and color combinations were used that fit very well with what the game wants to represent.
The design of the characters is undoubtedly the best of this game, since they have sprites with a relatively large size, so that you can visualize some details in the characters, especially in the main ones, which make them look good on screen. As we advance in the story our characters will be improving their stats and these changes are also visual, since they are changing the appearance of each character until they reach the maximum level where they will have armor, which changes them completely. The amount of enemies is somewhat varied, presenting different types of enemy designs, although they are also repeated quite often throughout this adventure, however this is something quite common in games of this genre. The final bosses, on the other hand, present much bigger designs, compared to our main characters, the final bosses are giants, with very good designs. However, I have been reading and people say that the SNES version, graphically is inferior to the Arcade.
The sound aspect is undoubtedly the least developed in this game, although it is not completely bad, but it is not innovative, Knights of the Round has the typical melodies that we could hear in 99% of the games of the beat'em up genre, and they are those fast paced melodies that are generally used in moments of action. There are some of them that are not very good and even boring to listen to for so long, but there are also others, especially the tune called "Desperate Fight" that I think is very good, because it manages to convey all that atmosphere of mysticism and fantasy that is so characteristic of games that are set in a medieval era. What I can highlight from this aspect is that Knights of the Round has a great variety of melodies and many of them are of different rhythms and genres, but always maintaining that style of "medieval-era game", so to speak.
In terms of gameplay, Knights of the Round maintains the classic characteristics of beat'em up games, which (as I have said countless times), consists of advancing through a large number of stages and defeating all the enemies on screen until you reach the final boss of each stage and beat him. The difficulty increases as we advance and the challenge of each battle will be a challenge to our skills. As you can always see in this type of games we can use the already classic life or energy boosters or also boosters that allow us to attack all the enemies that are on the stage at once. The control is quite simple and intuitive, with the already known mechanics of these types of games, so nothing will cost us to learn how to use each character available in this game.
And since we are talking about the characters, Knights of the Round has 3 playable characters, but this time as it is common in the beat'em up, we will not have at our disposal the female character of great speed, but little physical attack. But we will have a:
Arthur: Because he's the main character of the game, he's the most balanced character of all, with more balanced strength, speed and stamina, but despite having the Excalibur equipped, which is considered a very powerful sword, having this weapon doesn't give him any extra attributes. (This Arthur should learn something from Saber from the Fate saga).
Lancelot: this character occupies the role of being the most agile of the two, he is the fastest of all, however he is the one with the least physical strength, so his attacks are weaker than his other two companions.
Perceval: He occupies the place of the character with more physical strength, he is the "tank" of the group, as I like to call this type of characters, so despite having more physical strength and resistance, in terms of speed he is quite inferior.
Knights of the Round is definitely an entertaining game, which does not innovate in any aspect, but still, it is a title worth playing.
