Krzyżacy, also known as The Knights of the Cross or The Teutonic Knights, written by Henryk Sienkiewicz and published in 1900 is a historical novel based on the real Battle of Grunwald in which the United Kingdom of Poland and Lithuana defeated the German Order of the Teutonic Knights. If you’re like me, you’ve never heard of this novel, or the real historical event behind it. But if you’re like the people at Olive Panda Studio, then you not only know about this novel, but have also decided to create a story-driven deckbuilding RPG based on it, that you publish alongside Neverland Entertainment.
Now, why a Chinese studio would decide to adapt a classic Polish historical novel out of all things I can’t explain, especially when the result is very anime-inspired. But I can’t say I don’t respect the vision. So, as the teutonic knights got hungry for power and wealth, they started waging wars, one of which was against Lithuania. To defend their countries and people, the Grand Duke of Lithuania married the Queen of Poland in 1385, creating the Union of Krewo. The novel then tells the story of Zbyszko of Bogdaniec, a young nobleman who would play a the key role in the conflict, both on a political level, and a personal one.
Once you really look at it, it’s no surprise that the team at Olive Panda Studio saw the potential for a classic fantasy story in this. Filled with political intrigue, interpersonal conflicts, and the knight in shining armor every story like this requires, there’s a solid foundation here for them to build upon.
Sadly, the writers fail to fully realize its potential. Krzyżacy – The Knights of the Cross jumps from one plot beat to the next in rapid succession, leaving no time to get attached to characters and feel the weight of their choices or the impact of the events that unfold. I’m not a fan of games that extend themselves beyond reason, resulting in a long and arduous experience that stretches the story too thin, but I do believe that in this case more time could’ve done a lot for the game.
Individual moments need more time to breathe, we need to see more than just the biggest ones, but most importantly, the extra time is needed to first establish and then develop the characters properly. It’s hard to care about them when they’re little more than a mix of fantasy and anime stereotypes. Furthermore, the relationships between them are not always convincing. Krzyżacy – The Knights of the Cross needs those little moments in-between all the grand-scale politics, the small interactions between the characters that foster their relationships, and it just needs to allow for some more small things to happen so that we can feel it when the big things happen.
It’s lucky then that the story mode is not where I’m expecting most people to spend the majority of their time in Krzyżacy – The Knights of the Cross. There’s a separate roguelite mode available, and the irony is that the game seems to have been clearly designed for that, rather than just the normal story mode; randomized ally recruits, card rewards at the end of each battle, and the occasional relic that gives you permanent buffs all feel much more at home in a roguelite than a story-driven RPG.
So, what’s up with the cards, recruits and all this other stuff? Krzyżacy – The Knights of the Cross features some rather interesting combat mechanics. The basis of it are your standard card-based roguelike mechanics. You draw a handful of cards from your deck that you put together over the course of the game, and you can play as many of them per turn as your energy permits. There are three types of cards; the red cards are physical attacks, the blue cards are magic attacks, and the green cards are usually defensive cards. Nothing too exciting here. But then there’s the party system.
So, you can recruit allies, some of them naturally throughout the story, others at your camp if you have the money for them. But what do they actually do, since this is a card-based game after all, not a classic strategy turn-based game? This is where the three colours of your cards come in. Every party member has a small number of moves they will perform automatically at the end of every turn, but only if you’ve played the right combination of cards to engage them. So, you might have to play two red cards and then a blue card, in that order, to get one of your units to attack, but another one might need two blue and then a red card.
This system coupled with the deck building creates a complex balancing act. You want good cards in your deck, of course, but also need to make you have the right amount of each type of card to properly utilize your party members so they can consistently activate their moves. And you want to select the right party members so they can support your ability to put your best cards into the deck.
Each party member that’s active in a fight also gets XP and levels, but all these really come down to is slightly enhancing the numbers on your moves. A little more damage, a little more healing, an additional turn of a status effect, that sorta thing. For your main character, levels mean points you can spend on a skill tree. These are all pretty basic upgrades as well though, like your basic strike deals one additional damage, or you get 50 gold at the start of each fight.
One more thing about the recruits that’s worth mentioning is that they also all come with their own side quests. In-between the story missions they will pop up every now and then and give some additional story focusing on those characters. Like the main story, the writing here is nothing special, but they tend to give you nice rewards exclusive to those characters.
There’s one more thing about the writing that I have to mention. The English version of this game is, of course, a translation, so I don’t want to be too hard on the developers here as I don’t know what the original text looked like. But the English version will often either use language that’s almost a little too flowery, describing things with a poetic nature that seems unfit at times, but then it will also go to the complete opposite end of the spectrum, using the most simple language with grammar that I’m not sure is entirely correct. I’d guess that’s the result of different translators working on it, but I’m not sure.
I only have good things to say about the presentation of Krzyżacy – The Knights of the Cross. The art style and characters designs are clearly very anime-inspired. Whether that’s your thing or not is up to you, but it’s no doubt very well done. It’s not just regular anime illustrations though, as the game heavily relies on pixel art, and it looks gorgeous. Both the small sprites in battle and the bigger avatars in your menus look great, and their designs give you a pretty immediate idea of who these people are, but once again in a way that’s undeniably very anime.
If that isn’t your thing though, Krzyżacy – The Knights of the Cross actually has an option to turn on a western skin pack, turning all the avatars into more western designs with a different art style as well. I’d only ever use that if the original really bothers you though, as all it really does is take the individuality of the characters and makes them all look way too similar. In the original, you might have a demon girl with a giant hammer, an elvish girl with a bow, and a knight riding on a horse, and in the western style they will basically just be another woman all wearing very similar-looking armor with maybe some differently coloured hair. There’s also an option to change the Polish names into simpler English names, turning Zbyszko into Henry, but that just seems a little silly to me.
In the music department, Krzyżacy – The Knights of the Cross doesn’t do anything to reinvent the wheel, but it follows the established rules of this genre pretty well. You got your classic medieval fare song, a victorious fanfare for the celebratory moments, and a more intense and slow song for when the enemy is gaining power or one of your allies is struck by tragedy. These all sound just like you’d expect them to, nothing more, nothing less.
All in all, Krzyżacy – The Knights of the Cross comes together to create a great roguelite experience, but the story mode, which is supposed to be the main component of the game, falls a bit flat due to an underdeveloped plot.
Nairon played Krzyżacy – The Knights of the Cross on PC with a review copy.
