Knights of Tartarus

Quality little solo character RPG with top down Zelda style dungeons. No random encounters, leveling comes pretty quickly and spells/materials acquired from monsters are fairly plentiful. Good visuals and some very good music. There are a few negatives to mention. At least back when I played (which was when it was out of Early Access) the earth dungeon could not be left from till you defeated the boss (though it's possible this was never the case and I simply missed something). Puzzles reset if you happen to leave the area. There's no in game crafting guide (though the dev did create and pinned one on the forums). None of these detract from the game that much and single character RPGs are incredibly rare as it is, so please do give it a shot.

I want to like this game, I really do, but I can't. The character moment is super awkward, every step is followed by a pause, even while sprinting. So there's constantly this start and stop when traversing. Actually getting spells involves defeating an enemy and just praying RNG gods are willing to grace you enough that not only does the monster come back to sheepishly give you a reward, but that the reward will be more than a single gold. I'd say the chance of any reward besides exp is maybe 1/10, 1/15? Which isn't bad by itself, but given the time between enemy spawns and the low chance that the enemy will actually fork over a spell just causes the whole thing to drag if, say, you want to get a lightning spell for the first boss because merely grinding levels takes forever. The direction past meeting the king for the first time is super vague too. 'Go rescue some dudes' is all you're really given with no sign that you're taking the correct path until you're at the end of the trek. My first attempt playing this ages ago involved me going everywhere but the correct place for the longest time. Overall, I don't mind the idea of it, but ultimately I'd argue the game doesn't really st…

Knights of Tartarus captures a nostalgic retro feel while also putting its own spin on things. The game's atmosphere feels a little like Undertale, but it's shorter and less ambitious. It also keeps things a little too simple for my liking in terms of both mechanics and character advancement. Overall, given my appreciation for classic RPGs, I found it easy to become engrossed and lose track of time with KoT for several hours at a time.

Knights of Tartarus is a slightly unpolished, but overall extremely fun homage to game-boy colour JRPGs. The combat is simple, but satisfying. Mage seems to be absurdly powerful with 6 spells and the busted life drain (Seriously, only thing that stops this spell from turning the game's difficulty off is it doesn't trigger if you KO'd the enemy on one hit). Endgame puzzles mean the game starts to wear out it's welcome a tad, (especially since I think a few I needed to solve via a glitch). But overall, a very fun RPG that succeeds in it's brevity and rock solid mechanical core even if it is often let down on the technical side.

A really good RPG game that takes you back to the old school era. It's an NES styled game, with puzzle elements and a big world to explore. If you're an old school games lover, I would recommend giving it a shot.

Charming and surprisingly full-featured semi-nonlinear RPG. Combat is basic but results in some interesting scenarios, and it's fun to experiment with the different spells and discover what each monster can teach you. Surprisingly, it has a type-advantage system, like Pokemon, and makes that work with a single hero by giving you items to transform into different races. (That's my impression of how it works, at least; I'm only partway through.) The cool part about this is all the NPCs have different dialog, depending on what creature you are at the moment. Admittedly, it has some rough edges, but not nearly enough to put off someone looking for a delightful, bite-sized experience. The spell animations are pretty cool, too.