Knights of the Chalice - Review @ DIYGamer
 

DIYGamer has penned a review for this game. The title is Everything old is new again. The reason for this can be seen in the review found here:
A snip about the combat:
A snip from the conclusion:
More information.

I downloaded a demo for this a while back and had to quit after only a few minutes. I could get into an old school tactical game. Simple graphics are fine also. But this one is extremely difficult to even look at.

But why the horrible, crowded layout? Why the garish, vibrating colors? Why the bad, hard to read font made even harder to read with a drop shadow on every character? An old fashioned game doesn't have to be ugly.

I don't know how anyone could play this for hours. It looks like a suck-tastic MySpace or Geocities page made by a teenager.

My impression wasn't as harsh as that, but similar. I just couldn't really comprehend INTENTIONALLY making things that blocky. I get trying to recreate the old-school feel, but IMO games like Ultima VI looked better when run through the hg3x filter than KoC looked. I don't mean to be disrespectful to the author, and it seems he's been reasonably successful with it which I'm glad to see, but that was my impression.

Well, I doubt it was intentional. The guy really focused on implementing the fantastic DnD ruleset, and I have to salute him on that. Gameplay is king in my world, not customizable hairstyles and eyebrows.

Yeah it's kind of ironic that the game that arguably did the best job of emulating the 3.x ruleset on a computer was also a game with only 3 classes. I definitely thought it was a great game, although in the same way that the 3.x ruleset completely breaks down at high level, so does much of the gameplay in knights of the chalice. It's a ton of fun at low and mid level though.

This game has the best TB combat in the last 10 years. The developer really put some effort into his combat encounter design. I bought it when it first came out and I'm still playing it.

From what I saw, I think he definitely succeed on the gameplay and ruleset. I guess I'm just curious why he didn't run his graphics through a scaling filter or something to smooth them out. Would have made the font, if nothing else, easier to read.

Nothing is free. Everything takes time.

I thought it was quite delightful - a homage to old games. I thought the colour and midi music coupled with a surprisingly modern interface worked well. He did redo the fonts ages back, by the way - they look fine on my setup.

I enjoyed the game for several hours but ultimately lost interest. I need a compelling story (even if it is just with the written word) giving me a reason to continue. I enjoy figuratively putting myself in the protagonist's shoes and understanding his motivations. Just levelling up and exploring new areas isn't enough for me unless the graphics are realistic/amazing (not applicable to this type of game) and the combat is fun and even then I get bored at some point without a good story.

The art style reminded me of darksun/old-school goldbox games, but in the end I didn't care about the colors. What mattered was the combat and it was pure bliss. It was great having to think tactically again and being able to take my time with it. Also the AI was no joke. Damn thing was smart. I got wiped out when first leaving the castle because I didn't think it would use their spellcasters effectively. I was wrong.

I had a lot of fun with this game. Hopefully the next will have more of a storyline, but for a first attempt it was amazing what he did.

Agreed, this game was excellent (once the font was changed). I also loved the interactive info screens; a lot of love and hard work went into this one.

Also, remember the dev added new display modes which are very useful since you can see more on the screen! They weren't there when the demo was originally released. (Now they should be in the demo, too.)

My thoughts exactly. KotC is one of the best indie RPGs to come out in a looong time.

I've only played the demo as well, but really enjoyed it. It has some charming old school sensibilities and like skaven said, it reminded me of my time playing the first Darksun. (Note to self - must purchase the full game!)

Whilst I agree that the character sheet screens are a little cluttered and awkward at first glance, I think these details become gradually more superficial once the glorious fun of the combat has been realised.

For those who dropped the demo because of the (truly awful) font: it's fixed in the full game.

Really a delight to play. Both the enemy AI and the in-game help systems could serve as models for just about any AAA developer out there.

Same thing happened to me! I'm meandering out of the castle. I already know they're waiting for me, but I'm thinking Right, this is the training fight to ease me into the game. Since I've been playing games like this for years it will be a cakewalk. And I've got a bunch of NPC guards on my side.
Whole party wiped out in five or six rounds.

This game rocks!!! I love the tactical challenges, and that the AI is totally ruthless, lol! Reminds me of the spiderweb games, but maybe even more challenging and deeper in some ways.


-Carn

I found that the AI was a lot better in the early game then the late game. Certainly strategies which are ingeneous at the lower levels (making grapple checks instead of attacking) are suicidal at higher levels. I had many enemies commit suicide against my fighters by constantly drawing gapple related AoOs from them.

But as I said above the game as a whole works so much better at low level, in part because the 3.x rules work so much better at low level. I never finished the game just because high level play got kind of boring. But low level was amazing.

This is so true. I have not played a AAA game in the last 10 years with such good combat system/encounter design, AI, and in-game help.

It really shows that one guy with good ideas designing for a niche market can do better than design by committee for a broad audience.