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I was pretty excited to start playing Knights of Tartarus when I first bought it. It looked like a game ripped right off the Gameboy Colour, specifically a Zelda game. That hope was soon answered as it didn't just have Zelda puzzle elements in dungeons, but also a turn-based gameplay style! Playing even further I discovered a crafting system for weapons and armour, and the world in general being fairly non-linear. For example, I defeated the earth boss first, but you could also defeat the wind boss first and unlock a whole new area to visit before even facing the earth boss. All of this sounds very cool right, what could possibly go wrong? Well.. there are a few issues that make some of the gameplay absolutely aggravating. Let's start with the Zelda puzzle elements, which is basically item-based gameplay to solve obstacles. If you remember Link's Awakening, it was sort of tedious to switch items because of the limited amount of buttons. You could carry two, and had to go to the menu constantly to switch. Surprisingly, Knights of Tartarus handles this even worse, far worse even. You can only equip one item at a time, and instead of just selecting it you have to sit through a confirmation dialogue that is unskippable. Now imagine doing this in a room where you constantly have to switch between items. What's even worse, the dungeons and puzzles reset after a defeat or leave, meaning that you have to do all the rooms with said puzzles in them again if you didn't finish off the boss the first time. To be fair this issue is mostly relevant to the final dungeons, but it certainly is annoying. I did have my fair share of defeats because being open-world does bring along some issues. The challenge of this game is all over the place, with some bosses taking legit strategies and medical item consumption, while others die in a hit or two. The challenge didn't give me an issue personally, but grinding at some points is almost a requirement so do keep that in mind. Grinding goes pretty fast through so kudos for that. The combat feels weirdly like a non-Pokemon Pokemon game when it comes to status effects and the like. It does the job well enough though, nothing to complain about here. I also liked the mechanic that if you've fought a monster once, the next time you fight them you can actuall see their health bar. It's a simple touch but one that I approve of. Spells are actually learned from monsters as well, so if you're choosing the mage class there's definitely a good amount of spells to choose from. There's a good diversity in skills to choose from as well after every five level-ups, though one of the defensive perks negates one of the attack perks and that just felt weird. Overall Knights of Tartarus is a good game, and one that I would definitely have liked more if some of the bugs and my earlier mentioned problems are ironed out.
7/10
