I acquired a review code from 505 Games for the game, Portal Knights, for the PlayStation 4. The game can be played with other people as an MMO or as a regular solo adventure. To play online, you need to have PlayStation Plus. Now that the basics are out of the way, let’s jump right into this thing!
At the start of Portal Knights, like I mentioned, you will be given the option of playing online. When you make your choice on that, you’ll be able to design your character and name your world. There are quite a lot of custom features at the start of the game so it will take a few minutes to get into the meat and potatoes of gameplay. If you want your character to have long hair and a moustache, you have that option.
There are set character designs that you can choose from but you have color options as well so you can pretty much decide what you want your character to look like. You’ll also be able to design new tools as well as create new weapons/tools to fight with at your workbench in game. Portal Knights plays a lot like a cross between Minecraft and Terraria. Minecraft in the graphical aspect and the fact that everything is breakable/usable. The same could be said in regards to Terraria that everything is breakable/useable. You will need to think how you will use the items you find in the wild to your advantage. If you find bricks in an abandoned house, what could you create with them to help you survive?
The game also has RPG elements thrown into it as well. You will be tasked with fighting enemies, not random encounters, in each world to gain experience to level up. It was hard to see where the enemy was in battle on the pure 3D plane so it made lining up attacks difficult. I’m talking about “one on one” battles in this regard. While I’m talking about the camera, it isn’t the greatest. While breaking the ground/rocks apart, you, as well as the camera, get stuck plenty of times. Since everything can be broken down, you have to go underground quite a few times and f the camera/player gets stuck almost every time, then its something that should have been fixed during the “debugging” process.
The controls at times felt a little more complicated than they needed to be. All I wanted to do was perform a simple attack and I would be finding myself opening the inventory. In the same regard it was tough to tell what items you needed to use to upgrade to new items. You needed to create the new item and then use that new item to create the even newer item. Creation menus shouldn’t be confusing like that and attack menus really shouldn’t be like that.
For these reasons, I’m giving Portal Knights for the PlayStation 4 a 7/10. I would like to thank 505 Games for the review code.