The problems I have with Portal Knights

In my conquest to play every single PS-Plus Extra games it is extremely rare that I actually find a game that I play beyond the 1-hour test mark that I have set for each one of the games that I play in there. Portal Knights was one of the only ones that I actually did play beyond that 1-hour requirement. I have played it for probably around 10 hours actually, which is EXTREMELY RARE for me to go to that point.

After 10 hours I think I am ready to put this one on the shelf for good and there are quite a few reasons why that is.

src

Originally released exclusively on PC, this game was obviously trying to capture some of the glory that Minecraft established all those years ago. The fact that a simple block building sandbox game was able to become so popular is just as alarming to me as it was to most other people but in the interim it became one of the most popular video games of all time... and this is before we take into account the likely billions that have been made in merchandising.

Portal Knights is a lot more bright and polished than Minecraft and although I have never played Minecraft I can say that if I saw both games side-by-side and was asked which one of them I wanted to play without knowing anything about them, I would choose Portal Knights and I think most people would do the same.

src

The game just looks a lot more crisp and wonderful and considering the relatively massive amount of years between when they were developed, it is perfectly understandable why that would be.

Now let's get to the part about why I am going to be leaving Portal Knights after a mere 10 hours.

Crafting exists almost exclusively for weapon/armor upgrades

src

There are a lot of weapons to be made in this game and I say this after playing only 2 of the available classes that are in the game. The weapons and armor do make rather significant difference in how much damage you dish out and can take but in the end none of the enemies in this game are terribly difficult to "kite" and it is actually quite rare that I end up taking any damage at all that isn't self-induced by a fall of some sort from heights.

Having a weaker weapon simply means that kills are going to take longer but since most of the important ingredients for upgrades come in the form of something that isn't going to fight back like some iron ore or a tree this aspect of it is rather irrelevant. You gain xp simply by digging a hole in the ground so if gaining levels is your only objective, you can mindlessly do it that way.

There are a lot of other things you will become capable of building along the way but most of these things are furniture that is meant for you to place inside of the castle that you and your friends build as a keep of sorts. Since I have very little interest in doing this and most of the people who do have an interest in doing it are playing Minecraft, finding all of these "recipes" is extremely meaningless to me.

While I am delighted that there doesn't seem to be any aspects of weapons and gathering items deteriorating over time, there isn't much inclination to craft anything other than weapons and armor and this just means that you aren't going to bother with it.

What the hell are coins for?

I am yet to find anything in the game in my 10 hours of playing in which the coins that I find around the world and in chests could actually be used for. Sure there are a lot of vendors but they sell stuff like cosmetics and furniture. I am not interested in either of these things so I guess I don't really understand the point of having an in-game currency at all. Maybe there are a ton of people out there that actually are interested in this part of the game and I am just too old to get it.

src

It gets to the point that when I do encounter a village or a keep that I no longer even bother to see what the vendors have for sale because I know that I am not going to want any of it. Therefore the idea of grinding for gold coins is a waste of time and I have thousands of coins whose only purpose is to throw them to the void when I die, which is rare and almost always self-induced.

New zones are just more of the same

While they do look nice, there is very little reason to get excited about opening a new portal. The landscape is going to be largely the same but with the addition (sometime) of very deep water that is just going to be trivial and time-consuming to get out of.

Sure the new areas bring about an opportunity to gather materials that you previously didn't have access to but again, the only reason to get excited about this is perhaps having the ability to craft a weapon on armor piece that you weren't able to make previously. As I stated before these upgrades aren't really necessary since combat is extremely easy in almost all instances.

I DO like that the individual sections of the world map will tell you what items are gatherable in that region before you ever "warp" there but then again, this just seems like a senseless forcing of you to walk to distant places. Most of the regions don't have any sort of alluring feature like a dungeon of sorts, which brings me to my next point.

The damn "fetch quests"

There isn't much of a story in Portal Knights and from what I have read the story is meant to be player driven even though there isn't any PvP that I am aware of. When you do encounter NPC's they will have some really boring quests for you to complete for them in exchange for an item and/or exp, but almost all of these consist of making them a single item at your crafting bench and then bringing it back to them, or wandering around the immediate area and killing a certain number of a certain type of foe.

src

When you do acquire these flame rubies - which is exceptionally easy to do - you bring them back and he gives you some xp. No new areas open up, no new abilities open up, that is literally all that happens. I first started to really despise fetch quests back when I was playing Final Fantasy: A Realm Reborn and i have had a high level of disdain towards them ever since. It would have been nice if there had been some dungeons that can only be unlocked with a key that an NPC offers you are something like that but at least as far as I got into the game, this never happens. In the few dungeons I did encounter, I had already been through them before I even encountered the NPC that was telling me where it was.

Lack of bosses / challenge

There are very few bosses in this game and it would have been nice if there were more of them because they actually are pretty damn cool.

src

None of the bosses are difficult and they all have very detectible "tells" about their upcoming attacks. However, they are a nice break from the usual running around and digging up ore or once again shooting arrows at a distant foe and then dodging at the last second only to repeat the process until it is dead.

While I am sure there is a lot of programming that goes into the creation of these areas, it would have been nice if there had been more of them. Some mini-bosses would have been nice as well but i guess the primary focus of this game was to encourage people to build stuff and unfortunately for me, I have very little interest in that since I have almost zero online friends and the ones I do have are not at all interested in playing a game like this.

So overall my initial enthusiasm for this game has waned almost entirely since I first started playing 10 hours or so ago. This is yet another game that doesn't have an end and this doesn't really appeal to me a great deal. I should have seen this coming since I had essentially the same reaction to Dragon Quest: Builders 2. I started out really enjoying it but then it becomes dreadfully repetitive after just a few hours. Then I trudge on hoping that there is something amazing around the corner only to discover that it is more of the same but with slightly different sprites.

I don't believe that the userbase for this game is very large and perhaps that is why the game became free not just for PlayStation, but across all platforms.