Spiral Knights Review

Spiral Knights is a browser based free to play action mmo created by Three Rings and Sega. It is a real time action game that you can play together with your friends online. The game takes place in an alien world where you have crash landed and have to fight through swarms of alien monsters to survive.

In Spiral Knights, you hack and slash your way through swarms of monsters in dungeons known as The Clockworks. The dungeons are instanced so only you and your party will be in them. There are 4 different dungeon gates to choose from when adventuring and once you descend into one, there are multiple paths you can take to reach the various levels of the dungeon. Like all games, the deeper you go, the harder it gets. The levels of dungeons are broken into 3 tiers.

Tier 1 is for new players. This is the dungeon that you will be going through when you first play the game until you get you 2 Star rating equipment.

Tier 2 is for advanced players with better equipment. This is where you will be spending most of your time in the dungeons since it will take a while to get to the 4 star rating equipment for the next tier of dungeons.

Tier 3 is for the experienced players decked out with superior equipments. This tier will be the most challenging tier of all. It is recommended that you have knowledge about the enemies and gear up accordingly.

Unlike other action mmo, spiral knights doesn't give you an action bar filled with abilities. You only have 3 actions that you can use while fighting monsters.

Attack - Depending on your weapon, this will vary from 2 strikes to 3 strikes.

Shield - This is your defensive skill that will help you survive the onslaught of mobs in the dungeons. Learn it and most importantly, USE IT.

Charged Attack - Holding down on the attack button will charge your weapon and unleash a powerful attack that will vary depending on the weapon.

The controls are pretty straightforward and simple for an action game. You attack and shield with your mouse and by default move with it too, but it is recommended that you change the movement to the WASD keys for better control.

Instead of leveling up the character itself, spiral knights require you to level up your equipment with heat collected from dead monsters. The equipments like armor and weapons have 10 levels and are divided into 5 different different star ratings. 1 Star rating equipments are the starter gear you get when first getting into the game and is suitable for Tier 1 dungeons. 2 Star rating gear is needed before you can step foot into the Tier 2 dungeons and 4 Star rating gear is needed for Tier 3.

Weapons

There are 3 types of weapons in Spiral Knights. Swords, guns and bombs.

Swords are your bread and butter weapon, good for any situation. The damage is the highest of all the weapon types and can range from the very fast attack speeds to slow heavy hitting swords.

Guns are for people who like to shoot stuff and kill them at range. However, the damage is somewhat lacking and its use is somewhat situational where some mobs will dodge the bullets and it will be really hard to hit them at range. Although the damage is not that great, it is an awesome weapon to use when you can't get close to some mobs or exploding blocks, or maybe when you are on the brink of death.

Bombs make big BOOM!! :-) Bombs are excellent at dealing AoE damage or massive crowd control. They range from fire bombs that will roast your enemies alive, to freezing bombs that freeze your enemies in place so you can kill them one at a time. Some bombs fire projectiles that pierce through mobs and there's even a bomb that explodes into a black hole and sucks monsters in. On the downside, the only attack a bomb has is its charged attack. Meaning you have to charge the bomb before laying it down making you vulnerable to attacks.

Different weapons deal different damage types and they range from normal, shadow, piercing, elemental or a combination of two damage types. Some weapons also inflict status ailments like burning, freeze, poison, stun and shock. Even with all the variety of weapons and damage types, it should be noted that some monsters are weaker to one type of damage and strong against another. For example, slimes are weak to shadow damage but strong against piercing damage. So it is wise to know which mobs are weak to which damage to make killing them much easier.

Armor

There are 3 slots for armor purposes. your helm, chest and shield.

Helm & Chest - These are you typical armor. They give you damage mitigation and also increase your health. Different armor gives you different protection against various damage types. Some armor are strong against certain damage types which gives the need for players to mix and match their armor depending on which dungeon they are venturing into.

Shield - Out of all three the shield will be the most important because with the shield action, you can create a bubble around you that will absorb damage, although too much damage will break the bubble and damage you. With higher quality shields, the amount of damage absorbed by the bubble will increase and some shields give you better damage absorption against different damage types.

Crafting is the main way to get new equipment in Spiral Knights. There are other ways to get equipments like trading in tokens collected from bosses but in the end, getting the high end gear will require you to craft it yourself. To craft a certain equipment, you must have the recipe for it, the materials needed, some in game gold and also energy. The high end gear will require a substantial amount of energy to craft, so you will be buying energy using real money or in game currency whether you like it or not.

The good thing about spiral knights is that all the content are open to all players free or paid alike, the only difference is that the amount of times you wish to do the dungeon. Spiral knights has an energy system in place which is similar to a lot of facebook games. The energy will determine how much actions you can do per day. There are two types of energy in Spiral Knights, Crystal Energy and Mist Energy.

Mist energy is available to all players and there is a maximum of 100 Mist energy which will replenish over time. It takes roughly about 22 hours for the mist energy to replenish from 0 to 100.

Crystal Energy is what you get when you spend real money on the game. The difference between crystal energy and mist energy is that you can trade crystal energy and it does not replenish. There are only 3 ways to obtain crystal energy, trade it from other players, buy it with real money or buy it with the in game currency (known as crowns).

Spiral knights gives a different take on the traditional action mmo in the market today. With integration of the energy system from social media games, this game feels like it has promise. Although it is not without its own share of problems like the frequent lag spikes and the rising energy price in game. Not to mention there is no PvP at the moment.

If you are into casual games or would just like to spend an hour or two hacking and slashing away at some monsters then this is game worth checking out. The gameplay is simple yet the dungeon are challenging enough to keep you coming back for more. If you are looking for a hardcore action game, with flashy moves and ridiculous combo, well... I suggest you look somewhere else.