Reviews for The Rise of a KING

[thephilosopher1989]

personally...

i think this flash should have received first prize for today. secondly, i have some sugestions. as you kill monsters, you should have the option to level-up and learn skills and spells that you cannot buy. secondly, the money the monsters drop isn't enough to ensure a ,,safe'' trip in your quests. i was barely able to buy enough potions to keep me alive (for a while).
what i do like is that you didn't trouble yourself with a muticlass game. you're a knight. that's it:) and you can us spells too. the graphics are good and the way the caracter atacks is ok. i like the power atack most. his movement is ok too and the music mathes the game very good.
i hope you'll be making another game like this in the future.

SeethingSwarm responds:

This is a surprise! Most reviewers have stated that you get way too much oney way too fast. Well, I guess it differs form gamer to gamer. I'm glad you liked the game and thanks for the nice review!

[AbsintheClock]

Not too shabby

I played this game on ArmorGames.com and was surprised to finally see it here on Newgrounds. The game had some interesting character designs, although I think you slacked off a bit on the humans. Also the treasure chests inside of the cave you can just keep getting over and over again which makes it pretty easy to buy the expensive stuff real quick. Lots of good ideas, but I think you could have raised the bar with the storyline, the moves, and the interaction. The art was pretty solid though.

SeethingSwarm responds:

I think I did raise the bar quite a bit from the first one (The Rise of a Knight), but I know what you mean.

[AS2-16]

This is really a well made game

Love the graphics very much

Controls are ok, difficulty is easy at most, as you need to just hack and slash your way most of the time. Price of weapons/armor may be too cheap.

Are the missions linear? As there are some "decision making" moments that can change the scenario?

SeethingSwarm responds:

Glad you like the graphics. I spent a lot of time on the art and atmosphere. Unfortunately every quest is linear. This is not Oblivion. I just tried to improve on The Rise of a Knight. At first this game was supposed to be another simple hack 'n slash with a few extra things, but it just grew and grew from there. I would have liked to make choice a real thing in this game, but that would have taken a lot of time, and time is something I dont have a lot of. But, the more games I make, the quicker I get at it, so that would be a big possibility with future games from me, but I'm not promising anything :)

[Nondo]

The sequel is finally here!

Man, it's been awhile since your first game came out, but WOW, what an improvement.

I was actually hoping for the 1st game to have the RPG element that you displayed here, but at least you made that possible here.

First off, I'd like to address a problem I'm currently confronting in the game. (To all the people who are reading my review, I'd suggest not reading any further if you don't want to be spoiled of the storyline):

The problem I'm having is that during the mission that Felkon gave me to kill the witch, when I confronted the witch and told her I was not going to kill her, I went over to save the princess at the castle, and took off her necklace. After that, Felkon found me and kill the princess and everyone else in the world. So my question is, what in the world do I do now? I visited all the caves, went to every single town TWICE, and visited every room of the stormguard keep and felkon's keep, but I have no idea what to do. Is that it? Like I'm stuck? There's nothing to do and it's technically Game Over? If this is the matter at hand, then I'd like to ask you why you did not give us a message/warning telling us that that was the end of the game and that we chose the wrong path to complete the game? Instead, I had to waste 20 maybe 30 minutes tracing my steps to all the previous places I've been, whilst slewing so many enemies. -_- That would probably be my biggest complaint.

Suggestions:
I've definitely taken a liking to the various shops/items/spells that you've allowed us to buy and use. However, like one of the reviewers said, it was very easy to obtain the greatest items/spells/weapons after the 2nd mission was over. My suggestion for this would be to not only dish out more weapons/spells for us to buy, but also make different places sell different things. For instance, Stormguard could sell the default/normal steel weapons/armor, whilst other locations, based on where they are situated, could sell various armor/weapons that would suit the environment that they are contained around. For instance, I noticed from Storm Peaks to Peak's Watch area, there were several Ice Trolls and Flying electric monsters, so the blacksmith there would only sell armor and spells that would deal best against the particular monsters in that area. However, there is a problem with this suggestion of mine which can be fixed with the next suggestion I'm about to give. That suggestion is:

I don't think I can put it more simply than this, but you HAVE TO MAKE THIS GAME HARDER! I'm sure you've gotten several reviews by now stating this problem, and this problem was also affecting the first game you made. I'm not sure why you never took the time to make the game harder. Believe me, I love the game for what it's worth, and it's great storyline, but the problem is is that there is no.... how should I put this... gaming-value to this game. As many have already addressed, by simply holding down the directional button and holding down the A button or mashing the A button, you can just waltz onto any foe you want to, and slay them within 1 to 3 seconds. You have to make them harder or else the first suggestion that I made earlier won't have much use, but don't fix this problem JUST for that suggestion, just make it harder for the sake of playing a good game, not to say this game wasn't good.

Overall, this was definitely a heavy improvement/adjustment to your previous game, and it was definitely worth the wait, but the problems that were lingering from the first game are now affecting this game as well. Other than that, an author's comment would be very nice concerning the problem I'm currently facing about just walking around with nothing to do but kill monsters. I certainly hope that's not the end of it all, and that I just took a wrong turn in the storyline.

- Nondo

SeethingSwarm responds:

Check the roof of Stormguard Castle. There you will find what you're looking for. This confused many people when it first came out on ArmoGames, and I have to apologize for this, not telling you what to do or where to go in the game. I guess I thought it would be obvious and that there wasnt too many places to look, but I was wrong, and again, sorry.

With this game, and I've said this before, I tried MANY new things. I'll quote myself from a response to the previous review,"This was the first game for me with a shop system, a money system, a conversation-tree system, a pause button, a save option and the ability to switch armors, spells, swords etc. All this was the first time I've done any of those. Now that I've got them all under my belt, I can try to improve on them all as well as on gameplay. Oh yeah, and with the enemies, damn, I have always struggled to make proper enemies, and I try to improve every time off course. Hopefully next time I'll make some decent ones :)"

I wanted to make it so that every shop had different items. It does take a hell of a lot of time to do a shop, (for me, because it's my first time) and time was playing against me all the time, so I decided against it for now. I just wanted to make things "work" with this game, if you know what I mean. I hope you dont think I'm making excuses. I take responsibility for all the shortcoming in this game and try to improve every time with every game. I just stated some reasons so that people can better understand why this game is not better than it is. Long story short, I'm still a noob at game-making :)

Thanks for the great review!

[Drakonais]

Potential, but not quite

Pros -
The attack and magic system work great. I like the freeze, poison, burn, shock effects. Good, solid system with a lot of potential. Too bad it didn't deliver.

I like the options of being a prick or a valiant knight. Too bad it didn't change anything in the long run. At least make a variable that adds up and gives you your good knight/bad knight title at the end. I was hoping that the use of either the good best sword or evil best sword could also add to this variable (I don't know much about coding in Flash, but throwing some +1's in there couldn't be too hard).

Con -
Weapon/Armor/Magic cost is way too low. I had the best sword and armor before the first mission was even through. Even though the game was short, I might play a little longer if I was aspiring to buy a sweet looking expensive scythe.

The weapon variance for damage and/or effectiveness is little to none. Mix it up: slow, but kickass mace, bow for distance, pike for multi-enemy hit, your choice.

All the vendors sold the exact same thing. Spacing items/spells out between towns would make for more variance. Hell, even make a spell or item a unique reward for doing something great.

Switching between armor/shields/weapons was completely unnecessary. Especially for the armor/shields with special elemental defense, seeing as there was one element-using enemy for each type in the entire game. If, say, I were entering a volcanic den, with all kinds of fire attacks, I might switch armor. Maybe make some armor heavier than others (decrease agility, but raise def)? I do like the blocking aspect of the game, but there was hardly a reason to do so.

Enemy difficulty was pathetic. The only reason I changed up my strategy of "push forward while swinging" was to block a fire hammer or jump a lightning bolt. All other enemies allow the hero to run behind their swings. I would eliminate the first backward swing in the combo to enhance difficulty. Or, hey, make only one weapon do the backward swing to increase variance!

Was there a limit to the number of potions you can carry? If there was, it was way too high. Should've been about 5.

___________________________
I only bother to say all this because it certainly had potential. I mean, granted all my criticism, I still gave it a 7 because had a lot of good in there. Good animation, makings of a decent system, but failure to apply effectively. I look forward to playing a sequel.

SeethingSwarm responds:

You have some good points there, and I have to say I agree with all of 'em. Thanks man, inspiring me to improve on my creations. In this game there were a lot of firsts for me. This was the first game for me with a shop system, a money system, a conversation-tree system, a pause button, a save option and the ability to switch armors, spells, swords etc. All this was the first time I've done any of those. Now that I've got them all under my belt, I can try to improve on them all as well as on gameplay. Oh yeah, and with the enemies, damn, I have always struggled to make proper enemies, and I try to improve every time off course. Hopefully next time I'll make some decent ones :)

Thanks for the review, very informative.