I'm really happy to say that knuckle sandwich was not a casualty of its decade long development cycle. The amount of time spent on this game shows in the density of novelty, one-off mechanics, visual gags and high effort set pieces, especially in the combat encounters, comparable to that of deltarune chapter 2, a game made by a man with infinite money.
Those combat encounters are, in many ways, the highlight of the entire experience. Between the unique mini games given to almost every enemy and definitely every boss, the psychedelic procedural backgrounds that accommodate them, and the regular breaks from format to make a single joke, knuckle sandwich is a breezy experience that rarely overstays its welcome even if you feel as conflicted about other parts of it as I do (more later). I did find the game's maths to be confusing and kind of unpolished, with numerous skills shockingly under tuned, others over tuned, and a really inconsistent approach two enemies health and defence stats that make it very difficult to tell if you're actually doing decent damage for any particular encounter.
I'd like to give particular praise to the game's OST, created by a bunch of independent artists who aren't necessarily in games, and God does it show! Swagger and personality oozes out of every track and manages to make even some of the least interesting locations shine through sound. Special props to the standard battle tracks "Handsome Humans" and "Fearsome Freaks" as well as "Nothing Sweeter" and "Brightfang Lash".
In broad spoiler free terms, the story and writing writ large is the biggest letdown of the game. Knuckle sandwich has whimsy, much like many indie RPGs of its lineage, but it doesn't have much in the way of emotion. Your party characters barely allow you to endear yourself to them by letting you know basically anything about them (the most i ever got was one character being a former athlete who struggles with chronic health issues, said once in optional dialogue). All characters in general could serve to be A bit more intense and punchy than they are? For the simpler archetypes to land. The strong thematic basis of "being a young person working sucks" doesn't last, and with the story being almost entirely driven by a very simple plot, knuckle sandwich is left feeling like it's about nothing but very, VERY gentle satire for most of its runtime. That's about all I can say without delving into plot details.
Ultimately, knuckle sandwich is a very light and breezy time, at a crisp 10-15 hours, full of novelty and virtuosic presentation, but struggles to be a story worth the grandiosity of the JRPG format. In other words, it's a really good Mario and Luigi game.
Those combat encounters are, in many ways, the highlight of the entire experience. Between the unique mini games given to almost every enemy and definitely every boss, the psychedelic procedural backgrounds that accommodate them, and the regular breaks from format to make a single joke, knuckle sandwich is a breezy experience that rarely overstays its welcome even if you feel as conflicted about other parts of it as I do (more later). I did find the game's maths to be confusing and kind of unpolished, with numerous skills shockingly under tuned, others over tuned, and a really inconsistent approach two enemies health and defence stats that make it very difficult to tell if you're actually doing decent damage for any particular encounter.
I'd like to give particular praise to the game's OST, created by a bunch of independent artists who aren't necessarily in games, and God does it show! Swagger and personality oozes out of every track and manages to make even some of the least interesting locations shine through sound. Special props to the standard battle tracks "Handsome Humans" and "Fearsome Freaks" as well as "Nothing Sweeter" and "Brightfang Lash".
In broad spoiler free terms, the story and writing writ large is the biggest letdown of the game. Knuckle sandwich has whimsy, much like many indie RPGs of its lineage, but it doesn't have much in the way of emotion. Your party characters barely allow you to endear yourself to them by letting you know basically anything about them (the most i ever got was one character being a former athlete who struggles with chronic health issues, said once in optional dialogue). All characters in general could serve to be A bit more intense and punchy than they are? For the simpler archetypes to land. The strong thematic basis of "being a young person working sucks" doesn't last, and with the story being almost entirely driven by a very simple plot, knuckle sandwich is left feeling like it's about nothing but very, VERY gentle satire for most of its runtime. That's about all I can say without delving into plot details.
Ultimately, knuckle sandwich is a very light and breezy time, at a crisp 10-15 hours, full of novelty and virtuosic presentation, but struggles to be a story worth the grandiosity of the JRPG format. In other words, it's a really good Mario and Luigi game.
diymes
4 months ago