Gryphon Knight Epic is a game that is a lot of fun despite itself. I know that’s a weird way to start a review, but just bear with me on this. Gryphon Knight Epic is a game really pretty looking game from Cyber Rhino Studios. It has this retro inspired aesthetic that pulls from the heady days of the 16 bit generation with systems like the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. The whole world is gorgeous, with lots of animations and really well done multi-layered backgrounds.
The game itself see’s the player taking the role of a noble knight that sets out to rescue his friends from the evil influence of a number of weapons that they all collected in a past adventure. These weapons have been slowly corrupting them all and bringing out their evil sides to cause all sorts of havoc within their individual kingdoms. Nothing to wild on the story front, but it does do a good job at setting up the world and giving the player some solid motivation for getting through the game. But what really makes Gryphon Knight Epic stand out is in the gameplay department -for better or for worse, depending on who you ask.
The game is set up like a classic sidescrolling shoot ’em up –or SHMUP– and see’s you riding your gryphon through a good variety of stages. Unlike most SHMUPS though, you have the ability to change direction at will. This means that if you miss something, or really want to take out an enemy, you can tap a button –or key– and head left or right whenever you wish. This is a really cool mechanic that will have you doing a bit of backtracking, and because of this makes the stages last a bit longer. You’ll also at certain time get the chance to take alternate routes during a stage, and this is a lot of fun, especially as you can usually take all these multiple paths in a single run, meaning that you won’t always have to go back to old levels if you are a completionist like myself.
The issue with the sort of free-roam mechanic is that you will be moving really slow during the game. In fact, it feels only slightly faster than your standard walk in most platforming sidescrollers. Gryphon Knight Epic is probably going to be the slowest SHMUP that you will ever play. This pacing artificially inflates the games length, but it never gets to the point where it drives you mad, as there is always something going on onscreen. Even with searching out every nook and cranny for every secret room, path, and rune stone, –extra bits that power you up with a permanent stat boost– the game clocked in for me at just over 6 hours in length.
Where Gryphon Knight Epic really falters is with the very SHMUP mechanic that it so heavily relies on. Because the fact that you are sitting on the back of a gryphon your hitbox gets all sorts of messed up. If you have played a SHMUP before you know that the player hitbox is centered on the character, whatever that character may be. In Gryphon Knight Epic the hitbox is a rectangle that encompasses your character, –which is fine– but since you are riding on the back of a gryphon who can’t be hot, this hitbox is off-centered. This causes the difficulty, even on the rookie mode to be outrageous early on, as your eyes want to focus on the center spot of both characters, thus causing you to take tons of damaging as you try to readjust everything you’ve ever known. Having the option to resize, or readjust this hitbox would have solved this issue.
Another issue comes with your attacks. You can of course shoot forward like in any other SHMUP, and you can buy little helpers ala R-Type, but for whatever reason the game only lets you shoot forward. You can’t shoot up, down, behind you, or at an angle while playing. Early on this isn’t a huge deal, especially since you can easily turn around, but in later stages when enemies abound it will lead to some cheap deaths. Another problem pops up after you rescue your friends from their evil selves, as when this happens you take thie cursed weapon for your own use. These alternate weapons are pretty fun and give you the power of each boss, much in the same way as Mega Man, but a few of them are so overpowered that it makes the game a breeze, even the boss battles, on the standard difficulty. There was one weapon in particular that simply decimated every enemy, mid-boss, and boss without much trouble.
While Gryphon Knight Epic is a really pretty game, this style comes at a cost. You can easily find yourself getting lost among the clutter. This happens because there isn’t enough of a distinction graphically between the game layer and background layer. Everything just blends into one big lump, especially when lots of enemies show up. Gryphon Knight Epic is so close to being a great game, but it just manages to fall short in so many aspects of its design. But even with all the negatives I have mention, I still couldn’t stop playing it. Heck, I was up till three in the morning making my way to the last boos.
Like I mentioned when I started this review Gryphon Knight Epic is a game that is a lot of fun despite itself. The core idea and fun story really manage to grab you visually, with solid sound and music, and good gameplay ideas. While the game is frustrating in all the wrong ways, it still manages to entertain on a level many indie titles simply can’t. With a few tweaks and adjustments Gryphon Knight Epic could have been a great entry in the SHMUP genre, but as it stands it simply falls into that nebulous status of just being a good game.
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