For the King - Switch Review
For Honour! For Glory! FOR THE KING!!! For the King is a roguelike that warns you before you even enter the menu. You Will Die. This is not a joke warning, the game requires a lot of patience and learning from your mistakes. Uncover the plot behind the successful assassination of the king and bring peace back to your land. Good luck.
Gameplay
For The King is a turn based roguelike game that is heavily inspired by tabletop where you undertake several quests and side quests to help save your country after your king was assassinated. Every time you start up a new run, the world is randomised but the quests remain the same. The game can be played in single player by taking control of the three party members or online co-op with up to two friends to control one party member each. The overworld is a hexagon grid which will have icons for towns, docks, enemies, dungeons, and world events positioned on a specific hexagon. Each main quest is usually finished by completing a dungeon where you run through a gauntlet of battles, which is sometimes broken up with small events like looting a dead adventurer or finding a treasure chest. Does the chest contain loot or is it a deadly mimic?
Turns in combat are determined by a character’s speed stat which can be affected by their equipment. While in combat, your currently equipped weapon determines what attacks you have available to use. Every action in the game aside from moving is determined by 1-7 dice rolls of a 100 sided dice. The difficulty of each dice roll is determined by what stat is being used for the action and the character’s actual stat. As you complete quests, you receive lore tomes which can be used to unlock different classes, encounters, cosmetics for the players and NPCs to encounter. Sometimes when moving, your character can be ambushed and during this combat sequence, it is only the one player and at times, the combat can be brutal and unfair.
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World / Level Design
Each main quest will move around the world with it mostly focusing on a certain area. However, there are more campaigns with one focusing on a snowy domain and one based on searching the depths of the ocean.
Story / Personality
King Bronner, ruler of the kingdom of Fahrul, has been assassinated and now his kingdom is becoming corrupted by Chaos energy fuelled by the Chaos Cult. The Queen of the land has put out a call for the citizens to help get rid of the corrupting Chaos and return peace to the kingdom. The game oozes Dungeons and Dragons energy and is probably a great representation of a tabletop RPG made for a video game with the random elements, but channels the earlier editions of D&D through the expendable characters.
Graphics / Art Design
The game’s art direction is a bit more of a cartoony toy look that really plays well into the ragdoll effect that the game has when creatures die, which can lead to some pretty funny moments of misshapenned bodies. The overworld is separated into different sections where each hexagon of the area is coloured to fit the area, such as green for the starting forest area or yellow for open plains.
The UI is kind of clustered to fit all of the information. Several bits of information are hidden behind different menus which means unless you’re looking for them, it is entirely plausible to miss them entirely.
Music / Sound Design
Music that envelops the fantasy and medieval feel is at the core of the game with a natural ambient sound of birds in the forests or ringing bells while you’re in a town. It is the kind of music that brings you into the world and keeps you immersed.
Final Score: 72%
For The King is a well made rogue-like game that captures the feel for tabletop RPGs however it is a game that requires a lot of patience due to dying a lot and sometimes, to a cheap death. It is satisfying to make more and more progress in each run however if you don’t have a lot of time to invest into the game, I can’t recommend it.
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