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cover-Knights in Tight Spaces

Wednesday, March 5, 2025 4:54:10 PM

Knights in Tight Spaces Review (Derpykat5)

A worthwhile sequel to Fights in Tight Spaces, as long as you manage your expectations. It's a good party builder roguelike for the people who are into that, but if you're content with Fights I might think twice before giving this one a try.

The Good

The base gameplay is basically what you remember from Fights, and there was no need to reinvent the wheel here. It still flows beautifully and is crammed with tactical decisions that I suck at. A lot of the same cards are back, there are a bunch of new ones as well, and overall it's a solid peer for its predecessor.
There's a couple new mechanics here that inject some much-needed replayability into the game. Each hero (except for the Brawler Archetype) can equip weapons and armor that give them abilities. Some weapons might boost your damage against certain types of enemies, some might just give a smaller flat damage increase. Some items add a single use (per game) item into your hand. You can get some passive boosts this way and it's fun to collect items and lean into your synergies.
The party system is also pretty cool. You can recruit other characters (up to a total of three, including you) and control them during battles. They'll combo-attack nearby enemies when someone else lands a hit and it's a nice bit of strategy. Each recruit also comes with their own three cards, which can help juice up your deck with the cards you want.
There's also a bit more variety in enemy design and ability combos that can spice up combats. You'll still see them all in one run, but there's more of them to see, and they have more interesting abilities to boot.
There's also a sidequest mechanic, where you can unlock additional battles and choices that you can go do at any time before you finish the chapter. The rewards aren't very great most of the time, but they're a nice randomized element to interact with.
The starting archetypes are also more varied and interesting. They have different equip slots and some stat boosts to boot, so they feel a lot more different than just twelve cards that will eventually get drowned in the drafts and upgrades accrued through the run.
There's also an endless mode, which as far as I'm aware Fights lacked, so a niche has been filled.

The Bad

The decision to fully color in the environments instead of leaving them monochrome like Fights did was perfectly understandable; it fits the game's artstyle much better and helps the world feel more like a world and less like a backdrop. That said, the fact that everything's colored in makes things like auto-attack indicators and other danger markers harder to see, to the point where I really hope there's either already a high-contrast mode I missed or that the devs will add one soon. It's not enough to render the game unplayable, but it certainly is annoying.
The environment design is also a bit awkward, in that it doesn't really make sense what is and is not an edge you can push enemies off. For example there's one map in a river where the bottom edge of the map is a set of planks that serve as a railing, but the rock in the middle of that railing which is at the same height as the planks and is only a bit wider, does not count as a railing and is, in fact, a wall. Stuff like this makes it so much harder to tell where I can and cannot push enemies into, and I'm using the Highlight Hazards hotkey a lot more just to remind myself about logical inconsistencies like the aforementioned.
I also strongly dislike the boss design compared to Fights. In Fights every boss was a melee fighter or at least tried to get close to you. In Knights every boss is ranged or otherwise runs away from you or tries to keep their distance, making every boss fight (except the last one where this isn't the case) an absolute pain of hoping you get the right movement card to actually catch up with them, and then you get teleported halfway accross the arena because of the boss's ability and have to approach them all over again. It's painful.
I also feel like the party system actually makes the game harder? Not in a sense that the game is balanced around having a full party, but more the opposite. I beat the story with a full party and it was a decent challenge, but then I played again going it alone and it was a breeze. The more party members you have the more momentum (energy) you get, but the more you need to burn getting everyone out of trouble. When you're constantly on the move trying to get your squishy rogues out of danger (they gain 40% less block) you can't ever line up for those combo attacks that make the party members worth it.
And frankly, the decision to make every enemy either red, black, or yellow (with the exception of designated minibosses which are always purple) baffles me, especially given how similar a lot of enemies look. You could look at any enemy in Fights and from the vibrant and distinct color you could know exactly what kind of enemy it was and thus what it could do. In Knights you have to squint at the archer and mouse over them for details to see if this is the kind of archer that deals more damage to block, or creates an unblockable hail of arrows, or auto-attacks, or turns to follow your movement... they do all technically look different but the differences are pretty subtle, to the point where it takes several seconds to identify them each time. This is a massive issue because some of these guys are way more dangerous than others.
I also really have a problem with the story mode, in that there's a lot more scripted encounters than usual. In Fights you had the boss fights, the first fight of each chapter, and a miniboss. Here you have all of those, but also some extra story fights sprinkled in there (including a choice between two of the exact same scripted fight which makes absolutely no sense). For how much less linear the map looks, the story and gameplay feel doubly more so. Almost half of each run is scripted encounters and it makes the story mode get really stale really fast.