Middle Age Warfare Meets Anime: A Krzyżacy: Knights of The Cross Review

By Manuel

Players: 1
Platforms: PC (via Steam)

Krzyżacy: Knights of The Cross is a Deckbuilding RPG that comes by way of Olive Panda Studios. It also has a rather unique historical setting as it takes place in the world of the historical novel of the same name that involves the Polish-Lithuanian-Teutonic War that took place in the early 15th century. Besides its setting Knights of The Cross also stands out with its party building mechanics, its anime art style, and sprite graphics that are reminiscent of HD 2D titles. Is this a game you're going to want to check out though? And do all these different elements come together in a good way? Well, read on to find out!

As just mentioned Krzyżacy: Knights of The Cross is adapted from the historical novel of the same name by Henryk Sienkiewicz. It's a classic romance novel that is set during the early 15th century at the start of the Polish-Lithuanian-Teutonic War, which saw the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth defend themselves from the aggressive incursions by the Teutonic Knights. This war culminated with the Battle of Grunwald, and Knights of The Cross tells its story that ultimately ends with this battle as well. You take on the role of Zbyszko who along with his uncle Macko has just returned from a series of conflicts on the border. While visiting a local inn he meets a beautiful woman named Danusia who is a lady in the court of the Duchess Anna. Through a series of events he finds himself entangled in the conflict with Teutonic Knights when he attacks a diplomatic envoy of the Teutonic Knights. He is rescued from certain death by Danusia herself and this is only one of the many hurdles that they will have to face in order to remain together. From here the story weaves its way to resolving both the budding romance of Dansuia and Zbyszko, and in dealing with the Teutonic Knights once and for all. The story in the game is very well-written, and that might not be surprising in general considering its source material, but it does have many story and thematic elements that are unique to itself. One could imagine that such a specific historical setting wouldn't gel well with the gameplay and the anime art style, but it really does and arguably makes the story accessible to a wider audience.

The Queen say "War"!

It's about to go down...

Knights of The Cross is a deckbuilding game, so let's talk about that a bit. All battles are done with cards representing your actions, and you can do battles solo or with up to three companions that you can hire from your base camp. Your companions will perform actions determined by what you do on your turn and aren't directly controlled by the player. Your deck is initially made up of 19 cards and these come in the form of attack, magic, support, or one-time use cards. They have various levels of effectiveness, and may have special directions on them as to how they are to be used. You can never run out of cards as your discard pile is re-shuffled into your hand as needed, but you can never have more than nine cards in your hand at any one time. Also, you are only able to keep two cards in-between turns if you have any left over. Each card has a number in the upper left that tells you how much energy must be used to play it; with you being able to play as many cards as you have energy. You typically have five energy per turn, but this can be raised and lowered in various ways. You select a card, select a target if necessary, watch it play out, and then move again. You click "end turn" when you're done, and any remaining energy is used to heal your HP. Your turn is followed by your companions, and then the enemies. Characters who lose all their HP are removed from battle, with damage from enemies being able to be mitigated by the use of block or armor cards played during the player phase.

The camp scene. Looking a little empty.

The "world" map as it were.

Another important part to the game is acquiring "relics". Relics are cards that aren't played in-game, but have passive abilities such as giving you a point of energy each time you kill an enemy, healing the party member most damaged at the end of a turn, and so on. These are acquired at the end of events and battles, just like cards and gold, with some only coming by way of special story sequences. Relic space is limited though, so you're going to want to pick and choose which are most important to you. Speaking of choosing, you can also adjust your deck at any time between battles and even pay to have the deck size lowered so your favorite cards come up more often. At the end of a battle you get rewards, and usually a scene that closes out whatever mission led to the battle in the first place. Sometimes you get Talent Points which you use for upgrades to Zbyszko which basically act as relics, but in a more permanent fashion. There's probably more to mention here, but that's the general overview. The learning curve might be a bit steep if you're not familiar with deckbuilding games (I was not before this game.) but it's such an intuitive system that you'll soon be crushing battles in no time at all.

I need to recruit her!

Fighting some sea invaders.

The game is separated into seven main chapters, with several sub-chapters, and you progress by completing the main mission in each of them. Some chapters have more than one main mission, but you only need to complete a single one to close the chapter, so be careful with which you choose in these cases. Besides that main mission there are often side or character missions in each chapter. The former are exactly what they sound like, sidequests, but are often only available if you took a sidequest in a previous chapter and have already met the characters that they involve. Character missions serve to flesh out your companion characters, and you get them the longer you have them in your party. These do have an "ending" of sorts so you can shuffle in new party members afterwards to see as many of these story scenes as you can, if you want to do so at least. There's also the camp option, which is always available but has different services available at any given time. Depending on who is visiting the camp you can lower your deck size, buy new cards, recruit new companions, take part in trial missions, and heal. The latter is most important early on as low HP obviously leads to death, and there aren't any other ways to effectively heal at this point in the game. Depending on what main mission you take, and even what options you pick in some scenes, you can slightly change the way the story plays out. There isn't anything too grand to discuss in this regard, but the small changes you get from gaining favor from either Danusia or Jagienka are entertaining and provide incentive to play through the game again, making different choices along the way.

This nun can bless me anytime!

Danusia is true waifu material.

Knights of The Cross has two distinct ways of showing off the characters, super-deformed sprites and tall detailed sprites that sometimes come with animations. Both are very detailed, with all the characters looking very unique. Obviously the bigger character sprites are flashier, especially when it comes to the supporting characters and their bouncing... assets. I wasn't sure how I'd feel seeing these kind of designs in such a serious story involving war, grief, and loss, but it really works and characters like Danusia especially shine through. I would say graphics are probably the best aspect of the game, and arguably still are, but there are the occasional graphical glitches here and there to mention. I noticed a lot of screen tearing while playing, and at first assumed that it was just something with my setup. I then noticed that you can even see screen tearing in official videos from the developers, such as their livestreams, so I guess it's just part of the game. I'm usually not one to care about these kind of things, but it very noticeable here due to how much is going on at any time. Other than that, everything runs well. Also, if anime isn't your thing, you can change the designs to be more "Western" via a free DLC pack. I find these character designs very boring, with some being near unrecognizable to their normal versions, but I imagine it might help some get into a game they might not otherwise. I was surprised to learn that this pack was created in response to feedback from the game regarding the game's original character designs. While I don't want to get into the topic too much here, I don't think that there's anything wrong with the original characters, but if you prefer a more "realistic" look, then it's out there for you to grab.

A lot of cards (max hand) and a lot of birbs.

Performing a special attack.

My only real wish in Knights of The Cross is that it had voice acting. There are a few miniscule bits of it here and there, mainly in the form of shocked gasps and the like, but the game is largely silent throughout. Perhaps this was never going to be the case since it's a game with a specific European historical setting and made by a Chinese developer, but I can always hope I guess. Elsewhere, the music in the game is great and fits the period well and gives off a great JRPG vibe. There are calm town themes, battle themes, hectic boss themes, and even Greensleeves, which I think is from the wrong period but I'll allow it since I like the song. There isn't a single track that I didn't like and there were several, mainly the aforementioned version of Greensleeves which acts as a love theme of sorts, that stuck in my mind long after I was done playing. Since graphics had a bit of issues that had to be mentioned, I guess that I'd give the award to the best part of the game to the music. Maybe I'll pick up the soundtrack if it ever gets released on its own.

I usually reserve sections talking about updates to a game or what not for titles that are in Early Access, but Knights of The Cross has been going through some issues since launch. I got the game a bit after its full release so I assumed I would not have any issues with the game. Well, it updated that evening and after the update the game had converted to Chinese and had changed its resolution settings. It took me a bit to figure out how to switch them both back, not so much due to language issues but because the options menus are a little on the wonky side. That wasn't the end of it though. I thankfully had to take a break playing the game as I missed the update that rolled out shortly after this one. This new update was to add in several new cards and items that would make the game more palatable to new players. The issue is that this update apparently broke many players save files, and the developers were forced to roll back to an earlier version. I saw all of this in community tab on Steam and I then joined the Discord to get more details. There is still an update coming at the time of writing, but I am a bit worried about touching it until I know that it won't ruin my progress. Interestingly, the developers spun this issue as a positive as the new game additions are only available on new games, which honestly makes me wonder why they didn't finish this update before release. Also, the game's translation is a little off at times, and has more than its share of typos. Anyhow, it almost makes me want to hold back on recommending it, but the game is 100% complete and playable as of now, I just suggest you only update a day or so after any updates are live just in case. I know that that's what I'll be doing.

Choices like this affect later sidequests.

Why is there a giant soup?

Hopefully if you plan to replay Knights of The Cross you did so because you wanted to, and not because you lost your save data in a bad game update. I mention wanting to restart as there is quite a bit of replayability here, and the base game is only seven chapters long. Since resources are a bit hard to come by early in the game, I restarted a couple missions from an earlier save when I thought up a better way to complete them, and found out that much of the game is random. Rewards, and sometimes even combat encounters, are different each time, with some events not showing up in every playthrough. Some character missions are only present if you have recruited certain party members, and you can only complete one man mission to move the game forward, even if there are two or three on the map. This means that it's impossible to see everything in any one run of the game, even if you do get the full experience of the story. Events and battles aside, you can obviously try different deckbuilds too and maybe even give a solo challenge run a try. Add to all this several difficulty settings and you have a lot of replayability in a small package. While Knights of The Cross isn't an RPG in the standard sense, it's still rare to see this level of replayability in a title like this. I know that I'll be restarting soon, not for any of the reasons mentioned above, but to get a different set of anime waifus to join my party.

Danusia is willing!

Be sure to read the book after the game!

Even though there is something of an unstable nature of the game at the moment, I can't recommend Krzyżacy: Knights of The Cross enough. It even comes in at a price under twenty dollars, and you definitely get your money's worth at that price point. I do think that the recent update issues were a one-time thing and the developers were on top of things either way. Also, let's not forget that they've already been adding lots of free content to the game, so you'll probably be less upset by the whole situation like I am with that in mind. It's rare to see a game tackle its genre so well, and also tell a story that is as unique as it is well-written. Also, while it's not a one-to-one adaptation, it made me very interested in the novel it is based on, and I know that I'll be checking it out soon. Until then, I hope you join me in returning to the game and bringing an end to the Teutonic Knights once and for all!

Check Out Krzyżacy: Knights of The Cross on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2092850/Krzyacy__The_Knights_of_the_Cross/

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Story: A
Gameplay: A-
Graphics: A-
Music/Sound: A-
Value: A-

Overall: A-

Pros:
+ Amazing art style, character designs, and animations make this a great-looking game.
+ Adapts the historical setting/story of the classic novel well while adding in their own thematic and story elements.
+ Surprisingly long game with lots of replayability.
+ A unique cast of supporting characters not only give different sidequests and story content, but also change up gameplay.
+ Music is well-done and even features the centuries old earworm "Greensleeves".
+ If the anime style isn't your cup of tea, there is a free "Western Characters" DLC option available.

+/- Some of the names, and the title itself, are pretty hard to pronounce without the "Simple Names" option.

Cons:
- Though the graphics are great, there seem to be a few glitches like screen-tearing that occur throughout the entire game.
- There are a surprising amount of bugs, some of them game-breaking, for a game not in Early Access.
- The difficulty can be uneven at times, even occasionally frustrating.
- Odd localization and typos ruin the immersion with their frequency.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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Who am I kidding? Jagienka is best girl!