Knights in Tight Spaces Review (Seth)
About 2 hours in, and so far it is a "Yes, BUT".
The previous game in the series, Fights in Tight Spaces, was one of my comfort games, and at its core it is the same base concept - a deckbuilding roguelike with an emphasis on positioning, redirection, and punching people in the face - now with the added bonus of being able to slash instead. However, it is a different, medieval-fantasy-based take on the previous game
For every step forward, there is another step back.
The minimalist and slick style of FiTS was exchanged for a more detailed medieval world. In a vacuum, that part is purely down to personal preference.
The UI has also been changed and reorganized. Your resources - Momentum, Combos and the turn number - are still the same old, BUT they are positionned differently on the HUD. That one is for the most part a change of habit.
Hoooowever, all of this sometimes gets in the way of playability. The more detailed environment, the new UI placement, and sometimes even your hand of cards gets in the way of displaying certain enemies' stats if they're positionned a certain way (like, you know, THEIR HPs, which you KINDA need for obvious reasons), and require moving the camera around to actually see the bloody things. It happens irritatingly often, and the first game had nowhere near that amount of problems with that.
In the same way, what counts and doesn't count as a Kill Zone where you can ring out an enemy (and vice-versa) tend to be a lot less clear than in FiTS. You do have an option to display them, thankfully, but in fringe cases it feels less natural.
The other new mechanic, and the major difference in between FiTS and KiTS, is also the possibility to recruit other characters and fight as a party instead of a solo character. Now this system IS good, HOWEVER, it is also incredibly unweildy and clunky to use. You can't see your hand clearly as long as you don't have a character selected, and there is no keybind to switch around who you're playing, so you have to do this by hand _every time_, which gets annoying when the character selection is crammed in a side of the screen away from everything else. You can also click on the character themself, but the color code sometimes gets in the way too.
It's also surprisingly easy to think you've switched characters, only to realize that you popped a buff on the wrong character, or moved the wrong one... And in this game, a blunder like this means you're eating a lot of shit in the next turn.
Keybinds to switch around easier and a clearer indicator of who you're playing as at a moment's notice would gain a lot on that front.
Sound design is also all over the place. Some moves are fine, some others are either lacking a lot of punch, don't have the flow of FiTS's counterparts, and others again are completely borked, the Fireball being a prime criminal here.
Final default : it gets some time into a run - past the prologue - to be able to recruit your team.
So for now I've been pretty negative. And for my first hour, I've been skeptical. It was missing that... spark.
But everything clicked and expanded massively once the Party mechanic mentioned earlier comes into play.
The aforementioned clunkiness is still a thing and still need to be fixed, however, when you have a 3-men squad, your power level, duties, and tactical options are _massively_ expanded.
You play all your characters on your turn : they all share the same hand, the same Momentum, and the same Combo meter.
But, you do get an additional Momentum by party member, and a MASSIVELY expanded deck and hand when teammates are in play. So, although you do have 3 characters to protect and pay attention to, right off the bat, your ways of dealing with the presented situation are a lot more potent and consistent than in solo play.
Your characters also combo with each other, and will get a free attack of opportunity every time you trigger their conditions for it after one of your action. Kicking an enemy only for him to get nailed by your Rogue's ranged attack and then absolutely crused by your fighter's fuck-off axe is a special kind of satisfying.
Classes also play differently. For the time being, I tested the Brawler and the Warrior.
A FiTS veteran will feel right at home with the Brawler, because you're playing basically like Balanced Agent 11 back in the day. As the warrior, you do have to interact with the equiment mechanic, but the results are well worth it with either damage or utility up the wazoo, depending on your weapon.
Some cards are unaccessible to some classes. The good ol' Head Smash requires an Unarmed character, so Fighters and Rogues can't use those, but the Brawler can and will.
Oh, and the soundtrack is legendary, as always with nervous_testpilot.
All in all, Knights in Tight Spaces definitely need some polish in quite a few aspects.
However, the core gameplay and the novelties added by the new setting are making this one just as much of a potential hit as its prequel.
As soon as Ground Shatter fixes the clunkiness and passes some polish, it will become a worthy successor to Fights in Tight Spaces... Without necessarily replacing it. In my opinion, it's the best of both worlds.