Skautfold: Knight’s End
Combat:
Knight’s End features a unique combat system, focusing on the usage of ‘Guard’ as both a defensive barrier, and a resource used for attacks. This is the evolution of the systems present in Usurper and Moonless Knight. Battles take place on a timeline, instead of flat combat turns; actions have different guard costs, cast times, and cooldowns, which all help determine the flow of the battle.
Active defensive play will allow you to block, evade, ward, or parry incoming attacks. Using the right type of defensive action with the right timing will drastically reduce or even outright negate damage; all whilst building your combo chain.
Exploit the enemy’s shifting weaknesses – as they use one of 3 defensive stances, use the right type of attack to drastically increase your damage and gain a combo chain. Each of your attacks will inflict some kind of status effect, allowing you to weaken your enemy, or exploiting applied statuses to create further effects. Spend your combo chain for devastating attacks; the bigger the combo chain, the greater the impact!
Story / Exploration:
In the final days of humanity, you take up arms as Lennecia Britannia, the First Knight of the Angelic Empire of Britannia. The Moon has opened up, revealing the Eldritch horror within. Chunks of the shattered Moon are on a collision course with Earth, threatening to cleanse all life from the surface. As the preparations finish for an Ark-like escape from the doomed world, Len sets out on a more personal mission to save a person dear to her.
Explore the Waltham Industries Vitae production factory. A deepening mystery below begins to unfold, as you uncover the history of the most notorious figure in the series, Alfred Waltham. As the end draws near, you will help him fulfill his final scheme…
Grow your arsenal of weapons, spells, and occult items, as well as your own power; as you face down the creatures, experiments and rejects roaming the facility in the depths of the factory.
The story serves as the finale to the events of Shrouded in Sanity, Usurper, Into the Fray, and Moonless Knight as the Skautfold series reaches its conclusion. Knowledge of the previous games in the series is not required, but it will most certainly make it even more enjoyable!
Game Discussion
Steam User 0
A great finale of a game with a drastic learning curve in the beginning due to less-than-ideal explanations of the combat system. However, after all the patches that have been released, I would dare say that this is the "easiest" game in the series, and I suppose that lines up with Len being the strongest of all the playable characters thus far. Knight's End finishes the Skautfold series in a pretty satisfying way, and ties up just about every plot thread that has been introduced. I personally enjoyed playing through Len's path as the final chapter in this series, and I'm sad to see it end.
If you love Lovecraftian horror, start from Shrouded in Sanity and work your way through the games.
Steam User 0
A nice enough game, played the other 4 in the series, each is a different gameplay style and this is a action bar turn based one, where each attack both by you and your allies/summon and enemies shows up on a bar, each side is only on one part of it so easy to read what action happens next.
It's not very long, about 6-10h for completion, have a bit more time as i left i on when doing other stuff.
Compared to the others in the series it's fairly easy, if you learn the rock-paper-scissor system you'll rarely die, if you click on the wrong type in the order you'll likely be oneshot but besides the clumsy missclicks you won't really die as the active battle system helps reduce damage (up to 100%) as the closer to the bars end the more damage you'll block in a risk/reward way.
You also get some Guard back depending on where the bar is and if you used the correct weapon type to block. (Ranged defeats Swords that defeats Magic that defeats Ranged etc)
Guard is a bit like armor and mana in one, consumed to attack and blocks damage to your hp bar, if you get good at timing and keep hitting at 70%+ blocks you won't be killed by anything besides bosses that needs bursting down.
Enemy attacks deal x damage, blocks reduce it by a % and you get a certain amount of block back depending on when you timed it you even get the leftover Guard to use if you did well enough.
Some of the maps are a bit confusing but that's likely by design, (It has a cosmic horror/Hp lovecraft theme) though one area will kick you back to the start of it if you walk in the wrong door so that's annoying when trying to explore and find weapons.
As of writing information is quite sparse so hard to look stuff up if you missed something, the optional bosses can be found near the end of the game, one in the library and the other 2 you need to go through a train.
Weapons don't unlock in the order of the inventory suggests, the last gun is close to the end but shows as the second slot in the inventory so that's a bit annoying.
Didn't run into any real problems so stable enough though one end game weapon from an optional boss didn't work for me, (final weapon in the sword type) but it's optional so got to the end well enough without it.
Edit: it was supposed to work that way, with it not sticking around for more than one turn as it applies a status condition that can combo into a finisher (so a 2 turn kill on some enemies)
But overall it was fun enough and not very long so worth a try at least, would just take an evening or two to run through.
Steam User 0
The grand finale of the Skautfold series and it's a turn-based game now. Solid gameplay with great atmosphere as always. Recommended.
Steam User 0
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