One Angry Game has reviewed Portal Knights:

Portal Knights Review: A Bright Start

Despite it having been out for over a year on the PC, I’d never heard of Portal Knights. Within an hour of booting it up, I immediately knew why, and that realisation made me sad. The reason me, you and probably many others have glanced past Portal Knights is because it is so reminiscent of just a ton of other games that you’ll have played elsewhere. Minecraft, Terraria, Dragon Quest Builders, Zelda – they are all here, and that’s cutting the list short if I’m being perfectly honest.

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At the simplest level, Portal Knights is a basic, third person action game with light RPG features, crafting and such like. The game takes place on a series of themed, procedurally generated floating islands, and perhaps the only unique thing about Portal Knights is the mechanic that binds these islands together.

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That said, if you were thinking of starting a new world in Minecraft but just haven’t got around to it, then why not do it in Portal Knights instead? The islands act like microbiomes, each of which has its own unique resources, and the combat is better. The graphics are also so similar to those of Minecraft that they could be considered a high definition remake of Mojang’s seminal mine and craft-em-up. The appeal of Portal Knights is amplified massively by having friends that will join in, and when I referred to the similarity with Terraria earlier, I meant that the game has bosses, treasures and other reasons to drive the player forwards, which is something Minecraft has never excelled at.

You could do a lot worse with your time and money than spend it on Portal Knights, so for that reason, if it sounds like your cup of tea, then you should certainly: Try It!

Portal Knights got an Easter update and a hotfix:

Easter Update v 0.2.0 Available Now!

Hello, Portal Knights!

Our first monthly content update - Easter Update (v 0.2.0) is available to download now!

Additions

• Universes can now be named.
• Six new sets of armour can be found in-game.
• The Easter event will be active from March, 24th until April 10th.
• The hoe has been implemented. The hoe can be used on dirt blocks and transforms them into fertile soil. Plants will grow three times as fast if planted on soil.
• 4 new types of building blocks have been added.

1. Red Carpet.
2. Red Stone Bricks Block.
3. Refined Obsidian Block.
4. Refined Anorthosite Block.

• The new Mummy enemy can now be found in some dungeons.
• The new “Classic” furniture set has been included.
• Three new items can now be crafted:
• Mini Bomb.
• TNT.
• Explosive Bomb.
• The landing pad can now be moved with a crafted item.

Changes

• The tutorial can now be disabled in the settings menu.
• The backpack button in the HUD has been moved down, next to the action bar.
• Recipes are now being sorted by the crafting station they belong to
• Tweaking of the equipment screen.
• The home button in the map screen now directly warps to the home island.
• Skills are all instant use now.
• The Hollow King boss fight has been tweaked to be more challenging.
• Torch and equipment light is now visible for all players in multiplayer.
• Area for auto-targeting has been tweaked.
• The attributes and perks on armour and weapon items have been tweaked.
• Normal maps and better shading for grass.
• Items crafted without a crafting station have to be fetched manually.
• Advance plant growth while enemies or players are nearby.
• Improved combat auto-targeting selection.
• Improved movement input controls during melee attacks.
• Improved ore/gem distribution.
• Improved attack behaviour of Turtle enemies.

Fixes

• Ground destruction caused by staffs has been reduced.
• Mining and fighting behind trees is possible now.
• The player doesn’t get stuck on an invisible menu anymore when opening a chest while jumping.
• Dynamic lighting has been improved.
• Fixed attack aiming in manual mode.
• Improved multiplayer session error handling.
• Improved multiplayer invite handling.

Portal Knights gets an update that also includes Easter eggs.

As 505 Games’ sandbox action-adventure Portal Knights continues its surging Early Access Period on Steam, developer Keen Games is not keeping their eggs in one basket as they announced the first larger content update to the game that adds new blocks, items, fixes and a special Easter event that will run from today through April 10.

In this latest update, Keen Games has added a number of Easter Eggs – literally. Across the grass-themed realms of Portal Knights, Easter Eggs will spawn that players can destroy to obtain smaller eggs. These eggs can be used to craft a Golden Easter Egg trophy as an in-game achievement.

In addition to the ovate updates, the Easter event sees the introduction of six new sets of armor for low-level and end-game players.  Players now also have access to the hoe, which is used to transform dirt blocks into fertile soil, enabling plants to grow three times as fast.

Other additions/tweaks to Portal Knights include:

·       New universes can now be renamed

·       Four new types of building blocks - Red Carpet, Red Stone Bricks, Refined Obsidian and Refined Anorthosite

·       A new furniture set – the ‘Classic’ set

·       A new enemy – the Mummy – can be found in the dungeons

·       Three new items can now be crafted: Mini Bomb, TNT and Explosive Bomb

·       Landing pads can be relocated with a crafted item

·       Hollow King boss fight is now more challenging

·       Armour/Weapon attributes have been tweaked

Big Shiny Robot reviewed the Early Access version of the sandbox RPG Portal Knights:

Review: Portal Knights

In today’s video game environment, we’re not exactly experiencing a lack of RPG’s, crafting games or even combinations of the two. As that is our reality, a trip into the voxel-filled world of “Portal Knights” isn’t necessarily something we haven’t seen before. That being said, it appears as though Keen Games has injected their newest title with a healthy dose of N64 nostalgia—if this game came out back when I was in middle school, I would have lost my shit.

“Portal Knights” starts off in true RPG fashion—the player gets a choice of generic character classes (fighter, ranger and wizard), along with a better-than-expected character customization tool. The character designs are very similar to those of the Nintendo Mii, which is where the nostalgia factor begins germinating in the nerd forebrain. Creating this adorable little warrior immediately evokes memories of that first digital avatar for the Wii. After the game’s quick tutorial, the player is thrust into a perfectly adorable world filled with Zelda-esque monsters and zillions of crafting options.

Perhaps the most innovative thing about “Portal Knights” is that it plays like a sandbox game that comes included with different levels. Every monster that falls under the player’s blade, bow or staff coughs up shards of Portal Stones that can be used to activate a gateway to another biome. Each biome has a unique set of enemies, resources and secrets that make exploration engaging and rewarding. Certain biomes can also be barren of particular resources, forcing the player to get creative. For example, I found myself needing to build a workbench in the middle of a desert. Since there were no trees for me to chop down, I had to horde logs by killing orc-like creatures until I had my quota. Also, the crafting element of the game fed nicely into the RPG elements, since new weapons and armor could only be equipped once the player found the necessary components and crafted them.

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Score: 7/10

-> Steam