It's hard to pinpoint the focus of Knights of Pen and Paper, so much so that it delves into the continual homage to pop-culture and D&D. The classic mechanics of its combat system – induced by the fact that it's a port of a mobile game – are wrapped in a skin that speaks to TTRPG players; between the quests invented on the fly by the game master or the amused remarks of the players, it is possible to find the atmosphere that is that of a real table. Unfortunately, the title lacks the real charm of the paper role-playing game: the player is faced with a replica of the old D&D editions, where the games consisted of mob-bashing for several hours. This turns the experience into a long grinding, which is particularly frustrating when the story doesn't follow or the fights don't seem justified – especially in the final stretch of the game. This lack of depth can also be seen in the type of quests, which are reduced to eliminating monsters, collecting items or escorting, that are in fact always reducible to the first category, when the dialogues could have suggested more diversity. However, it's clear that the game's master is rather pleasant – despite his habit of sending enemies over and over – and the group of players is likewise charming. In the end, Knights of Pen and Paper is a cute and nostalgic concept, from which one would have hoped for more depth. Nevertheless, it's a decent piece of entertainment, perhaps only enjoyable by an audience that has already played tabletop role-playing games.

Knights of Pen and Paper +1 is a super grindy turn-based RPG with a decent D&D flavor that facilitates a lot of meta humor that lands surprisingly often. It gets boring pretty fast; it was clearly built with free-to-play mechanics in mind and that makes a lot of the quests and combat feel monotonous. All that said, this is a decent time waster for when I want to play something light while I'm listening to a podcast or watching TV. Knights of Pen and Paper 2 has been released in the last year or so and is an upgrade across the board, so if you'd like something in this style, I would direct you there instead.

Turnbased RPG where you play a group of tabletop gamers playing through a DND style campaign.

Gameplay consists of a simple turnbased system, most characters have an attack, block and a number of spells and items they can use. Personally found the system to be super basic with little depth, it serves it's purpose but seeing as almost all the time you spend in the game is in it's combat system it would have been nice if there was more synergy to be had between characters or even within characters themselves.

The story is a mix of a standard DND campaign, and meta and pop culture references. I found the story to be entertaining enough to get through the relatively boring combat system, however I found myself somewhat unsatisfied when all was said and done.

The graphics are relatively nice and the pixel art style with all the little cute characters and references left almost all areas being somewhat unique and always nice to look at.

The games soundtrack became a little grating after I played for so long, however I played the game in relatively long sittings so that may be on me.

Overall if you can pick the game up for a few bucks on sale it's a fun little RPG that will keep you entertained for a little while, it doesn't have the best story or the deepest combat system but it does have a lot of charm.