The Witch’s Knight Reviewed

Learning the Narrative

Like most RPGs, DAERISOFT’s latest starts off with a brief story about its game world. You’re told that you have to break the “witch’s curse” in order to stop monsters from spawning. The spawn locations are totems dedicated to the witches that died in the war against the knights. Intriguing plot line, but the narrative aspect of the game ends there. The missions tell you to do various things from practicing alchemy to unsealing totems. These are quests that align with the end goal of breaking witch’s curse, but where it lacks is storytelling. One confusing part of the story is the witch’s feudal relationship with their knight counterparts, who acts as a loyal soldier whom you can “overpower” to increase their (and, therefore, your) combat power. They do not elaborate on the relationship between the witches and the knights after the war beyond these dynamics.

Once you start playing, you’re quickly taken to the witch’s home world called “Atlanta” (no relation to the capital city of Georgia). There, you can approach the characters standing off to the side to understand more about the game mechanics. I liked this approach as it allowed me to start playing right away and to learn as I went along. In my opinion, this process was better than trying to remember a laundry list of instructions from the beginning.

The Involved Auto-Battler

The concept behind the witch’s fights in The Witch’s Knight with monsters and demons is similar to that of other RPG gacha auto-battlers. However, compared to most auto-battlers, you can control several facets of battle. You can control which spells you cast, what weapon you use and the armor you wear beforehand. The only thing that’s out of your control is when the spells are fired, and you can only keep three in rotation at once. You can move your character around in order to dodge enemy attacks, and you can change your spell rotations in the middle of battle.

Everywhere you travel in the game you battle monsters to get there. This means that you can gain a lot of currency and experience just from walking around. The auto-battler feature means you do not need to be 100% focused on your character at all times which makes multi-tasking while playing this game possible.

Quicksand or Ski Slope?

As an idle RPG, you can gain experience and coins just by keeping the game open in the background. After starting the game, I ceased playing for a couple days after getting stuck on a mission. During this time, I accumulated enough coins and experience to level myself up twenty levels and increase my attack and defense strength. However, it can be difficult to quickly advance if you want to play the game for long stretches at a time. It can quickly get frustrating to battle the same monster over and over again without the necessary resources to upgrade your spells or increase your combat power. Because of this, I found myself continuously putting the game down for long periods of time. 

Don’t Open Your Wallet

The Witch’s Knight can be relatively free-to-play friendly. Like most games, there are opportunities to watch advertisements to gain more resources. You can watch an ad to double your daily witch paycheck. Unfortunately, many players have experienced the game crashing when playing advertisements. This glitch makes me more inclined to rate the game lower on the free-to-play scale. Without the ads as an option, the only way to increase your resources quickly is to pay for them.  

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed playing the game and being taken on The Witch’s Knight’s adventure. The cartoon animation was compelling. There was constantly something I could do to improve my stats if I had the time to battle monsters. I would recommend this game to anyone who likes idle RPGs that involve strategic battle preparation and adventuring around a new world. I would not, however, recommend it to someone who’s looking for a new game to binge-play.

If you’re looking for a more hardcore Idle RPG to play, check out our review of Madtale: Idle RPG!