Portal Knights Nintendo Switch Review

"Adventure Portaling"

Campaign

Portal Knights is a take on the popular Minecraft crafting system and mixing that with a sense of adventure. Think of it like Terraria, but in 3D and with hopping between dimensions. It also stands out with its focus on cooperative play by allowing a group of players to quest with each other online.

With the Nintendo Switch you can also enjoy the experience in local splitscreen which is nice. This may not entirely across as anything too new, but it's a mixture that works well and is a relaxing play. It's got light hearted questing with some goals, bosses and enemies to take out. You essentially just hop from world to world collecting resources and getting better.

There's a wide range of places to see and each of them are lovely. You can also select which type of world sizes you'd like generated though honestly the sizes could have been larger. They're fine for how long is spent on each, but further scaling would have been great

That's where part of the issue with this comes in is that no world feels too special aside from your selected "home world" and is another bump on the way along. Some might be a spot to revisit for new riches or materials, but it's rarely needed.

Once you do get going you can begin crafting. From there I created benches for making better workshops, tools and decorations. You can craft all sorts of things since there's a wide range of options available and I enjoyed that part of it a lot.

Gameplay

The game looks good and can be quite beautiful. It does seem somewhat toned down in terms of how vibrant the game is for the console however. While exploring you'll find rare materials, caves to trek through and dungeons to tackle. Nothing was taxing, but some challenge was provided.

Portal Knights is more about crafting and the collection of materials to build better things. It works well by yourself, or with a party of friends providing support. The combat was fine with the option to play in first or third person, yet most enemies felt simple. When it comes to performance the Nintendo Switch version runs fairly well, feels fluid and I didn't really notice any real issues.

I did find that loading was incredibly slow between worlds and I could see that being an issue for players. It takes quite awhile. That being said, it looks solid whether it's docked or undocked and the type of game that works well for this platform.

The Conclusion

I enjoyed visiting Portal Knights finding it to be a relaxing and refreshing take on the crafting style of game that is incredibly popular at the current time.

You can break blocks down, find resources and tackle monsters to improve your selection of gear. There are interesting bosses to tackle, you can play with friends online or locally and the creation system has some fantastic depth to it. The combat was simple, yet fun and had just enough challenge that it wouldn't seem too easy.

I'm sure everyone could enjoy playing this, hopping from world to world gathering supplies and mastering the dimensions. It's a game that seems really suited for the platform and it's nice to see it perform so well on the Nintendo Switch.

Read our SteamWorld Dig 2 Review
View our Game Hubs

Portal Knights Review on Nintendo Switch
Review Code Provided by Wonacott PR

Rating Overall: 7.8