Game Review | The Witch and the Hundred Knight: Revival Edition
Many role-playing games place their players in the shoes of a powerful hero, dropping them off in a mystical land with strange creatures and the tools necessary to save the world from pure evil. Form a band of unlikely heroes, fling a spell or two, that sort of thing. The Witch and the Hundred Knight may take that mold and flip it on its ass, but its forced humor, verbose narrative, and grating cast of characters make this novel effort a bit hard to swallow.
Deep in the swamp of Niblhenne resides a powerful, foul-mouthed swamp witch named Metallia. Her goal is simple: summon the legendary Hundred Knight to both crush her rivals and spread her nasty swamp water as far as the eye can see. As Hundred Knight, you’ll accomplish this by hunting down magical pillars, slaying their guardians, and raiding the occasional village in the process. You know, hero stuff.
It’s not your typical story by any stretch of the imagination, but no matter how unique an experience it is, it was rarely entertaining. Metallia is an overly aggressive, rage fueled, hateful person that I found extremely difficult to become invested in. Her supposedly humorous dialogue often came across as forced, as if the writers wanted us all to play a drinking game any time she referred to someone as a “whore.”
The Witch and the Hundred Knight is way over the top, which is something I generally look forward to. The thought of finally playing something different, or a game that unapologetically caters to those of us who find humor in the most awful of situations, is certainly appealing. There were definitely scenarios that caused me to step back and think “man, that was messed up,” like the time Metallia turns her own dying mother in to a rodent and has her chased down by a swarm of “horny boy rats” before feeding her deep fried corpse to Hundred Knight in the following dialog scene. Another early scene has her kidnapping a knight cursed to live as half-woman, half-dog, in which she leaves the mutt-knight’s nude body tied up in bondage, ridicules her buxom “stupid tits”, and proceeds to give her a suppository.
Had the dialogue not been so overly repetitive or verbose, I think The Witch and the Hundred Knight would have been a far more enjoyable role-playing game. Wanting to see what shade of crazy Metallia played in the next act is what kept me going, but I mostly found myself rolling my eyes while thumbing the X button to briefly skim the dialogue–and this is something I don’t usually do in any game. Through an eventual change of heart Metallia becomes more palatable, but by that point I’d already given up on the story altogether. Watch Metallia correct the pronunciation of her name for the 50th time, re-word her uninteresting goals for 10 minutes, go find another pillar, fight another guardian, repeat. Yes, I get it. This is a video game and there needs to be something in between all the killing.
But hey, at least killing stuff is fun.
Gameplay-wise, The Witch and the Hundred Knight is a top-down isometric action RPG, but there’s a sprinkling of metroidvania in there for good measure. It’s broken down in to multiple stages that can be revisited at any time, which is good since most of them have hidden areas that require skills found later in the game (like explosives or ranged attacks) to access. The central hub, Metallia’s swamp hut, is home to vendors, respawning treasure sites, and the ability to upgrade weapons and armor via her “bucket list.” Hundred Knight can also swap between four different classes, each with their own pros and cons.
Along with an unlockable array of secondary abilities, your silent protagonist receives their fair share of loot along the way as well–anything from standard axes, swords, and hammers, to used pink undies worn as armor. Each weapon represents one of three different attack types (slash, blunt, or magic), and rather than deciding on one or the other, Hundred Knight has the ability to wield five weapons at once.
Rapidly pressing the attack button causes each of the equipped weapons to swing in their assigned order for one single blow, essentially ending in a 5-hit combo of varying damage types. Every enemy you stumble upon is weak against one of the three, so it’s important to mix things up a bit. You can adjust the order of attacks within the equipment menu, or even shuffle between three saved weapon sets using the shoulder buttons. Learning which enemies were weak against which attacks, then punishing them with a full set of corresponding blows, was always satisfying.
However, there were a few mechanics in the game that I just didn’t care for. Metallia frequently encourages Hundred Knight to raid villages (by pressing triangle) in exchange for items, but doing so raises your karma. Higher karma leads to higher vendor prices, but all of my acquired loot was found the old fashioned way–bludgeoning stuff. Karma just seemed pointless.
Inventory management tends to walk a fine line between being understandable and infuriating. Mostly the latter. Using the Hundred Knight’s stomach as a storage unit, you can only carry a small amount of items in the early going, and you don’t have access to anything you’ve picked up until you return back to Metallia’s hut. This encourages players to be smart about what they loot, which is fine, but should you die for any reason, you forfeit everything. All of it. Gone. And let me tell you, unknowingly stumbling on to a boss fight with an inventory full of epic weapons, only to die, really sucks.
Your inventory storage also has an unwanted roomate: monster garbage.
One of my least favorite mechanics in The Witch and the Hundred Knight is the protagonist’s GigaCals meter, which decreases over time as you defeat baddies and remove the fog-of-war from each map. Running out of calories reduces your attack and defense by a significant margin, so managing your calories with food or spending upgrade points becomes priority. Upgrade points are earned by killing stuff, but they can only be used within your chosen level (they reset once you leave). Having to spend them on restoring calories, instead of something more fun, never felt rewarding. You can also restore GigaCals by consuming enemies at low health, but as I mentioned above, they’ll end up as “garbage” in your stomach and take up valuable inventory space. Yes, you can buy items that induce vomiting in the early going, but it was little more than an annoyance in the longer dungeon crawls.
Final Verdict
The Witch and the Hundred Knight is certainly different from most games. You’re not really a hero, the situations are anything but normal, and you can swing around five weapons at once… so what’s not to love? Unfortunately, most of it. When I was out slaying monsters and min-maxing my weapon upgrades, I was having a blast. I wanted to tread unfamiliar territory and hunt down new abilities, but I found so much getting in the way of my enjoyment that I lost my desire to continue.
I passed on The Witch and the Hundred Knight when it released on PS3 back in 2014, so the shiny new Revival Edition was appealing as a fan of RPGs. If you’ve already experienced the game, however, the Revival Edition on PS4 features a graphical upgrade and a new 100-floor dungeon, Tower of Illusions, that allows you to play as Metallia and collect items that permanently upgrade your weapons and armor. Whether or not this warrants a double dip is entirely up to you, but I have a hard time recommending it. There are far better action RPGs to spend your hard earned money on.
