[Review] Aldred Knight of Honor - Nintendo Switch

Developed By : QUByte Interactive
Published By : QUByte Interactive
Category : Arcade, Platformer, Retro, Action
Release Date : October 8 2019

Aldred Knight of Honor is an arcade platformer game developed by Brazilian team QUByte Interactive, where you take the role of Aldred, a knight of the divine flame, whose mission is to eliminate all evil.

The story is as basic as possible: the evil Lord Gugor spreads evil in various kingdoms, and the knight of the divine flame Aldred is called to extirpate those evils. Aldred must face trials and monsters such as skeletons and spiked turtles to bring peace in the world again.

After a short text-based cutscene, the player is brought to a tutorial level. While most mechanics are nothing unusual, Aldred can attack with various weapons, cast spells which deteriorate his mana bar, double jump and turn into a golden knight for a short period of time which will grant him invincibility and stronger attacks.

The game has a total of three maps with a total of 33 levels, 11 for each map. The player will notice that the level of difficulty will steadily increase. While at the start the platforming seems easy enough, spikes and rotating blades will soon begin to appear in the levels to mess Aldred up.

The goal of each level is to each the end alive, but there are other things to do. In each level, there is one person to save and three Lord Gugor’s totems to destroy. While those act mostly as collectibles, it’s fun to explore the map and try to find them all.

There are also enemies to fight which are scattered throughout the level. Killing them will grant Aldred a few gold coins, which can be used to buy upgrades and potions in the shop. Upgrades consist of a higher HP or Mana bar or longer invincibility and even more!

The enemies are really neat. While their design is nothing astonishing, they are all different. There are flying enemies, magic enemies and physical enemies, each with a different attack and look.

You can obviously tell that the budget for this game was really low since it costs $1.99, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Surely, the pixel art is nothing we have never seen before (just take a look at Sword of Xolan as an example) and both the scenery and music get boring and repetitive quickly, but the gameplay is actually quite good, especially the platforming parts. It offers a challenge that doesn’t get boring, and the player can always try a different approach to beat the level.

There are various weapons to unlock, such as a great ax and even more speels to use. Just keep in mind that once your mana bar goes to 0 you can’t cast any more spells until you get a game over or finish the level.

There are boss fights too, but those are quite easy in contrast to the platforming parts, and will only last a minute if done correctly.

Aldred Knight of Honor as quite the load of “things that could have been done better“. The game can be beaten in just a few hours, there are only three tracks for the game that are played in a loop, and things might get repetitive fast. But yet again, it has a price tag of $1.99, so you can’t expect anything much. The controls work fine, and if you like a challenge that isn’t over to top then this might be for you.

In conclusion, while Aldred Knight of Honor is no “shining” gem, it’s not too bad. If you don’t mind some repetitiveness and a little bit of a retro-styled challenge, then you might like this one. And can you really say no to such a price? I don’t believe so.