You must vanquish evil and defend Princess Kitty at all costs! No, seriously, that’s her name. This is your objective in Jet Set Knights, the newest title by Ratalaika. Developed by FobTi Interactive, this old school, arcade-action platformer with tower defense and RPG elements is where you take on the role of one of four knights (a fifth can be unlocked) in either a single-player or couch co-op approach to defend, build and upgrade through waves of enemies making their way to attack the wonderful Princess Kitty. Build by collecting resources, find power-ups, defend with melee and by using the items come across throughout the waves. Chances to upgrade are given out once you’ve fought off a certain amount of enemies. An enjoyable and addictive pick up and play game that has made an excellent addition to the already growing library of fun games produced by Ratalaika.
What we liked!
- Plenty of ways to upgrade – I must say, there are a large number of possible ways to improve your overall chance at beating levels. Randomly generated chests, building materials, and power-ups are accessible to you throughout every level. Inside treasure chests, you will find various arrow types that provide you with ranged attacks over your usual melee. It’s also worth mentioning every knight has a unique charged special power. Power-ups will randomly spawn in for you to collect. You can also find wood and metal building materials, allowing you to build additional defenses around the princess to help out when you’re otherwise occupied. Killing a specific amount of enemies now and again will bring you to a stats screen where you will have points to spend in either improving your damage, health, accuracy, or speed. Coins and gems are dropped from killing enemies. Once you collect 100, the princess will present you with a token. These can be used in the gambling house node on the map to unlock permanent artifacts but bear in mind, they all have their uses and only one can be applied at a time. Yes, this game is packed with enhancements to boost your chances of success and vary your gameplay!
- Smooth plugin and play – Just load up the game, select the level you want to play and you’re straight back into the action defending Princess Kitty from all those evil monsters. With the fairly easy and simplistic controls, you’re introduced with from the get-go, without needing to select your loadout from your inventory, the only thing to do is select what knight you would like to play as.
Somewhere between
- Retro appearance and audio – The overall gameplay I would class as a fairly old school but it doesn’t stop there. Both the soundtrack/effects and pixelated 2D visuals for the game also follow suit for a consistent theme. As for gaming nowadays, this doesn’t have the modern-day looks or sound but I’m glad the developers stuck to this as the game pulls off the classic appeal remarkably well without the need for anything fancy.
- Good replay value – Jet Set Knights gets you hooked. As soon as you see the game over screen, the game gets you straight back into your next attempt which is exactly how it should be. Take a second and then straight back into the action. With the combination of being a platformer thrown together alongside the tower defense and RPG components, don’t be surprised if you find yourself coming back for round two. Or ten. Or even more.
What we disliked
- Lack of levels – Unfortunately, I was left with wanting more levels to play. With only five levels in the entire game which all consist of a few waves before the inevitable boss battle, I was disappointed for my experience to end so abruptly. Sure, you can continue levels after the boss battle if you so wish but I don’t see much reason to continue onwards after this point as I see the boss as ‘You’ve beaten the level, move on to the next’.
Hello, I’m Victoria. I’m from the UK and have been playing video games for as long as I can remember; back on DreamCast. I’ve pretty much fallen for Xbox since I was around eight years old and remember BioShock being my first game on the Xbox360. Although I find it thoroughly enjoyable to not only experience gameplay, I also find comfort in getting lost and engrossed in the online worlds that sometimes differ greatly from what we know. Another side of my Xbox passion would be achievement hunting and gamerscore. I thrive when I hear the little sound of one popping up on the screen and I’m always finding ways to work on my backlog when possible. Horror is my favourite genre so if you have any recommendations, don’t be afraid to send them my way!
