The Witch and the Hundred Knight Review
ALEX MANN is on a witch hunt. Over the years, NIS has become synonymous with immersive strategy RPGs. Their first foray into the action RPG genre on the other hand, comes as a blundering misstep. Meet Metallia, an overtly sexualised swamp witch who is about as charming as a rotting turd. She swears like a Call of Duty troller, has a knack for repeating the same dry punch lines, and is malicious beyond comprehension. She is possibly one of the most abhorrent characters I have ever encountered, and she just happens to be the focus of The Witch and the Hundred Knight. TOIL AND TROUBLE >> The game itself is a mess of different ideas that, while plausible on their own, are ill fitting when pieced together. You play the Hundred Knight, a legendary warrior demon with a huge arsenal at his disposal. It’s no secret that his squeaky toy appearance is meant to be a source of humour (evident from NIS constantly rubbing our noses in it), but the joke works against itself on a practical basis, clashing with the overall layout. The main offender is the HUD, which perplexingly places the stamina bar directly over the character whenever he jumps, strikes or runs. This, together with the endless flurry of text appearing with each strike, a camera angle too removed to properly catch the action and the ever-blazing flame atop the tiny Hundred Knight’s dome, heinously obstructs the action at hand, making it very hard to discern what the little squeaker is doing mid-scuffle.
The distant camera causes even more problems in the dialogue heavy sections, which become even more tedious than they already are. Not only does the dialogue sound like it’s written by a school of severely abused, teenage monkeys, but the fact that all we can see are the brims of each character’s hat means we may as well be watching a group of mushrooms grow in the forest. The sad part is you’d probably have an easier time relating to the mushrooms. A TINY FLAME >> It’s a shame, because behind the jumbled eyesore that makes up The Witch and the Hundred Knight there are some really strong ideas. The combat system, for example, is built around five hit combos, with players being able to choose from an array of ranged and close combat weapons for each strike. But every good idea is met with a hundred roadblocks, which in this instance comes at the hands of the aforementioned visual clutter.
On top of this, the game tries its hardest to stop you from discovering these strengths by alienating you with its content. Not only is the intended irony lost thanks to a severe lack of restraint, but the tastelessness in which it handles character interactions is abysmal. Excessive cussing and overt sexualisation are one thing, but jokes implicating sexual abuse are downright unacceptable, and as The Witch and The Hundred Knight is a multiple offender on this front from early on, it comes as an insulting addition to the video game world. 2/10 Verdict: A pile of ideas that don’t quite mesh, The Witch and the Hundred Knight is as offensive as it is bland. As published in Hyper Magazine #248
