Review: Spiral Knights

Spiral Knights is a free-to-play MMORPG made by Sega, whom everyone should know as the developers of the classic Sonic games, and available for the PC. This is a title that I actually came across completely by chance after noticing a tiny little blurb on Kotaku's website a couple days ago that this had been released, and it looked curious enough to warrant setting up an account and giving the game a try. Although I have not gotten very far into the game, which I attribute to both schoolwork and the fact that if I play any game longer than thirty minutes on my computer, it overheats and shuts off, I am very much enjoying this game thus far and am offering my impressions below:

The Good:

Gameplay - For anyone who ever played the old-school Zeldas (before Ocarina of Time), this game is very similar. It's a simple hack-and-slash dungeon crawler, focusing on loot collection and upgrading your weapons/armor. While simple in execution (it's very simple to pick up and play through a dungeon), there's a level of complexity to the game in terms of upgrades whose surface I have yet to scratch, and am still figuring out.

Controls - Hold the left mouse button to move in the direction the mouse is pointing, attack with the right mouse button. Very simple.

Art Design - This is a colorful and very cool-looking game. Graphically-speaking, it is not a demanding game, but for a free-to-play game, it is very creatively designed and colored. The design of the Clockwork especially (the staging area for the dungeons) is surprisingly awesome for what I was expecting from this game (not much).

Addicting - This game will pull you in. Nothing you can do about it. Just submit. But seriously, it does hook you in the strangest of ways - it is not the most intricate game, but the nostalgia and fun experienced while playing it will have you coming back for more.

The Bad/ The "Why?":

"Free" - This game is not exactly "free to play", as it claims. It is free to join and to play at first, but in order to make any progress, you need to buy energy with a credit card (or paypal, whichever you choose). You are given an allotment of 100 energy points, to be used to revive yourself in combat or to progress through dungeons. Unfortunately, 100 points does not get you very far, as it takes about 24 hours to fully regenerate the 100 points. You are thusly forced into buying energy - not so free after all, eh? I understand the inclusion of the system, as you cannot develop a game like this for free and expect to break even, but I feel this is a form of false marketing that is very present in the gaming industry these days.

Complexity - I like that this game has depth, I do. But I would like to be able to access that depth by knowing what the hell I am doing, which I most definitely do not. Short of explaining attacks and the game world (barely) to you, you are left to figure out everything else on your own. There is no in-game guide, nor is there one on the website. It is a bit of a frustrating oversight.

My Score: 8/10
This game greatly surpassed my expectations for what to expect from a free-to-play MMO game. The dungeon crawling is a very fun bit of nostalgia that does not linger in the past unnecessarily, and the simplicity of the controls makes this an easy game for anyone to pick up and play. The payment system for energy is not my favorite thing in the world, but it is a necessary evil. The fact that it costs nothing to pick up and try out for a day, along with the fact that you do not need to download it (you can play it from the website), makes this a must-try.

Recommendation: Give it a try.