Dang, y’all, this one is a bummer to write.
I had been looking forward to Knuckle Sandwich since whenever I played its demo, and now that it’s been fully released — Andy Brophy could’ve let it cook for a while more. Before I get into my criticisms, I’m not the type to look at the ‘quirky RPG genre’ and be the kind that froths at the mouth if it’s not a one-to-one reference to Earthbound every step of the way, but I am the type that notices when a game tries to make up for its lack of substance with style.
That opener isn’t to say that Knuckle Sandwich has been an entirely bad experience so far, as it’s given me quite a few laughs and sparked interest in just what the sam frick is going on in this universe. The honeymoon phase has since come and gone; however, now that Knuckle Sandwich is bringing up the difficulty, it’s outright begging to have its combat scrutinized.
The biggest issue is that for a good chunk of the time, none of it really matters in terms of damage or effects for all the inputs and minigames. Using offensive abilities only for it to do the same damage as a normal attack sucks out all the wind from my sails in wanting to consider equipping or using them, and instead, all my EP does towards defensive or supportive abilities. By comparison, enemies absolutely wallop your characters even with healthy level-ups and defence boosts. If this is to make the game challenging, it isn’t a fun challenge; it’s artificial.
The boss battles practically confirm this, as most of them have been gimmicked harder than 80s wrestling compared to ‘true’ fights that are a back-and-forth brawl. For example, one boss takes piddly damage from your attacks but has chunks taken from them when successfully countering their abilities. Another has an invisible turn timer that doesn’t give you experience or fortune rocks (the in-game currency) after winning. Most of your damage during boss fights comes from successfully countering their abilities, which again begs the question of why you even bother with your offensive abilities.
You could argue that because the player character and his coworkers aren’t heroes and just simple everyday folks, they shouldn’t be able to hit these bosses for lots of damage — Yet this argument falls apart when one character can throw fireballs and heatwaves while another can call down lightning.
Let’s pause briefly because this has been nothing but criticism so far. I will not say that Knuckle Sandwich is bad for all these faults because its music, funny writing and visuals make it a treat to look at and listen to. This is doubly so when the game goes off the rails with ‘corrupted’-style visuals with its sprite/pixel (I can never tell the difference) art or even changing the art style entirely during a set piece!
But it does come across like it’s all in favour of providing these moments of stylish delight to compensate for how bland and simple the combat is. The game shifting to a Playstation 1/Sega Dreamcast-era visuals for character moments and sharing plot is cool, but the player character goes the way of Venom Snake from Metal Gear Solid: Phantom Pain: The plot happens around him, and he’s just a pawn to keep things moving forward. I wouldn’t be so annoyed by this fact if the Busdriver didn’t make such a big deal about how intrinsic you are to ‘solving the mystery’.
Relatedly, it comes across like Knuckle Sandwich wants you to feel for your player character as the universe seems to conspire to be as crap to him as possible, and yet, the player character has no character. He’s just an unlucky sap roped into this whole affair by a dimension-hopping goblin.
Item management is poor, the story effectively invents itself as it goes along, and battles are flimsier than cardboard — So many little problems keep building and stacking upon one another, making Knuckle Sandwich a bummer so far. Sunken cost fallacy in terms of how long I was looking forward to the game dictates that I should see it through to the end, but by now, I’m half-tempted to turn all the difficulty options to easy just so I can cruise through battles and see where the game ends up.
If I could influence any tweaks to Knuckle Sandwich, I’d encourage retooling the combat system, as that would immediately improve a good chunk of the experience. Make offensive abilities stronger than regular attacks, and don’t have boss battles boil down to being a passive experience if most of the damage comes from counters.
On the one hand, you could say I’m being too critical of what’s, at its core, a comedy RPG. On the other hand, if they want battles to be so common, it’s hard not to poke and pick at these nagging issues. Knuckle Sandwich has a lot of good ideas and creativity in spades, but ideas and creativity can only act as a crutch for so long if your gameplay is lacking.
