Frayed Knights: The Skull of S'makh-Daon Review
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It's a rare thing these days to come across a genuine old-school CRPG, one with strict turn-based combat, first-person dungeon crawling and that general lack of hand-holding all pushed to the forefront. Frayed Knights: The Skull of S'makh-Daon, an independently developed and published CRPG made by a long-time blogger and RPG community member Jay Barnson, who you might also know by the handle "Coyote", intends to recapture all of these more traditional CRPG design traits that have been lost over the last 15 years. Frayed Knights ends up being very successful in this respect, and manages to provide a very solid old-school experience, with some excellent and deep turn-based combat and character development. However, the game's visual style and humor mean it may not be for everyone, and there are some issues with its gameplay, as well as some rough edges with regards to presentation, that keep the game just shy of excellence.
The story of Frayed Knights begins with the eponymous Frayed Knights, a band of adventurers made up of Arianna, Dirk, Chloe and Benjamin (warrior, rogue, sorceress and priest archetypes), plundering the Temple of Pokmor Xang, in pursuit of some once-sacred gemstones. The group hopes to prove their worth to the Adventurers' Guild, but unfortunately for them, a rival band manages to get there first and turn in the quest in their stead (no explanation for why the place is still crawling with Pus Golems and Evil Priests, though). Their hopes at becoming Genuine Certified Adventurers(TM) left in ruins, for now, the Frayed Knights soon turn their attention to hunting down the Skull of S'makh-Daon, a deadly artifact capable of immense destruction, and find themselves embroiled in a quest to uncover a potentially world-threatening plot. Frayed Knights started out as one huge game, but has now been split into a series of episodes, so while the game does a good job of bringing its own story to a conclusion, and doesn't really end on a cliffhanger, the overarching story is something that will have to wait for the inevitable sequel(s) to be resolved.
As you can probably tell based on the above paragraph, Frayed Knights is not a particularly serious RPG, and that comes through in everything from the cartoony, Monkey Island-esque art style used for the character portraits, to the sometimes absurd enemies and spells (Exploding Kneecaps is one of my favorites), to the dialogue, which reads more like a Let's Play than it does traditional videogame narrative. This is going to be one of the deciding points in whether you enjoy Frayed Knights. While I personally enjoyed the game's sense of humor, I can fully understand if other players do not take so kindly to it. It's hit or miss for different people, certainly, but thankfully, it is quite consistent and the jokes rarely get tiring or annoying. Barnson's writing may not be the best or wittiest in the world, but he imparts a strong sense of character to the game, and that's more than what can be said of many RPGs.
Core Mechanics
Frayed Knights is, at its heart, a dungeon crawler. Although there is dialogue to be read, a town and wilderness to explore, and side-quests to undertake, the vast majority of the game is spent in combat and underneath the ground. The Village of Ardin, aside from serving as a hub for quests, mostly exists as little more than a place to offload your loot and get a good night's sleep. The actual dungeons you'll explore are generally quite varied, and many of them have some sort of gimmick to them. The Minotaur's Lair, for instance, is a large maze of near-identical hallways, with multiple floors, and the minimap is made useless, as the party can't keep track of their position in the maze; meanwhile, the aptly-titled "Goblinville" houses a fair-sized town inhabited by a mix of friendly and unfriendly goblins. Most of these dungeons tie into the game's main and/or secondary quests, and they all have good foreshadowing and storytelling within them, either in the environment itself, or through the characters encountered inside. There isn't quite as much variety in gameplay or layout as some titles, but each of them still manages to feel unique.
Despite the focus on dungeon crawling, that doesn't mean that Frayed Knights is devoid of interesting quests, however. Although the game is, for the most part, quite linear, providing the player with a mostly fixed path through the game, many quests have at least one or two minor decisions to make. None of them have any long-term consequences or real moral dilemmas; rather, it's the way in which all of the quests interact that makes them fun to get through. Frayed Knights has a very good way of having one quest lead to another, and then that next quest leading to two more, and most of the game's quests will span nearly the entire length and breadth of it, requiring you to enter multiple dungeons, speak to several different characters, uncover hidden secrets, and so forth; some of its best quests require the completion of others to finish up, and others rely on your own deduction rather than obvious tips. This can sometimes create a feeling of directionlessness, but this can usually be remedied by making a bit more progress or exploring another dungeon. Not all quests end up marked in your journal, either, and when you combine that with the lack of a quest compass, you'll wind up with a great feeling of accomplishment for figuring out where to go, what to do, how to solve a particular puzzle, and so on. Being able to simply deduce how to get through the game for yourself is, sadly enough, something quite rare in RPGs these days, and it's extremely refreshing to see that Frayed Knights doesn't just require this, but does such a great job of encouraging and rewarding it.
The underpinnings of Frayed Knights' character development are pretty much standard for the CRPG genre, and overall are quite robust. There is no class system to speak of, and while the four characters (who you can't customize the names or appearances of) start out roughly adhering to certain archetypes, you can very quickly change them to fit just about whatever role you want. On a basic level, characters are governed by five attributes: Might, Reflexes, Brains, Charm, and Luck, and these are fairly self-explanatory. Might operates pretty much as you'd expect, increasing damage dealt, Health, and allowing characters to use heavier weapons and armor; Reflexes increases chances to hit, improves defense (or dodging), and increases speed in combat; Brains improves the effectiveness of spells and Endurance; Charm improves Endurance and priest spells, and has a minor effect during certain conversations; and luck governs resistance to spells, chance to avoid traps, as well as a number of feats. In addition to these primary attributes, there's two derived attributes: Health, which shouldn't need explaining, as well as Endurance, which is effectively mana and stamina, though it's consumed for most tasks, including standard attacks, feats and spellcasting. Last, there's a couple more attributes, such as Speed, and Accuracy, which are derived from and enhanced by equipment and spells.
On top of this, Frayed Knights features an extensive number of different proficiencies, spellcasting feats, enhancements (passive bonuses), and skills (active feats). All of these, in addition to the primary attributes, can be increased using character points awarded on level up (done on a per-character basis); you'll get two points every odd-numbered level, and one every even level, and while the vast majority of upgrades cost a single point, some requires two, especially as you get into the higher levels. To be frank, Frayed Knights has some of the most satisfying leveling-up I've had the pleasure of in a long time. The game's level cap is a mere 13, and I finished the game at level 12 after doing absolutely every single side-quest and exploring every dungeon, so you'll have to really work for each level-up, not to mention that the number of points you'll have to spend is fairly limited. This means that you'll frequently be making some very tough decisions about what to upgrade. I found myself mostly leaning towards passive upgrades as I made my way through the game, but the sheer number (approximately 80 in total) and the overall usefulness of all of them meant that I found myself agonizing even after I knew exactly what I wanted. I haven't looked forward to leveling up, and then had so much trouble making up my mind about it, since the original Fallout, and I mean that in the best possible way.
The actual combat setup is similarly functional and well thought out, and avoids getting bogged down in gimmicks. Battles are turn-based, with characters taking turns based on their Speed (which can occasionally lead to characters receiving extra turns in succession). Terrain has no bearing on how combat plays out, but positioning within party formation does. By default, short weapons (i.e. daggers) can only attack one "space" ahead, while medium weapons (swords, axes, clubs) can attack two spaces, but with a penalty (which can be removed with a specific feat), and long weapons (spears, halberds, etc.) can reach three spaces ahead, but again, with penalties. This means that, for example, a dagger-wielding party member will only be able to attack enemies immediately in front of it, while one wielding a spear will be able to attack those at the back of an enemy group. This means, on a basic level, keeping your spellcasters in the back and melee fighters in the front, but it can be exploited in order to reap greater advantages. For instance, targeting spells at enemy spellcasters in the back of their squads will make fights go by much more quickly, while putting enemies in the rear to sleep can put them out of the fight until the front ranks are down, and using poison can drain enemies in the back before they can attack you. It's simple, becomes quite intuitive after a few battles, and most importantly, works well to add some subtle depth and make combat a bit more than just spamming the best attacks over and over.
Beyond that, there's a couple more staples of turn-based CRPGs, searching for secrets and disarming traps/picking locks. Searching in the game is a simple matter of pressing the hotkey X, or clicking the search button in the user interface. Depending on whether or not there's a secret nearby, you'll receive a distance indicator of 4 to 1, with 4 being far away and 1 being nearby. Although in theory this sounds great, in practice, searching is a rather repetitive task, and since it passes turns, often you'll find yourself beset by enemies in the process, which can become a bit annoying, especially later in the game when the frequency of those encounters increases. Searching is required for some side-quests and to find some of the game's more powerful loot, but at least usually you'll be given some indication of where to search.
Traps and locks, meanwhile, are detected based on the Luck attribute, and are disarmed via a mini-game using your most skilled party member. This mini-game is quite barebones and mostly consists of using various inventory items to disarm individual trap or lock components, and also opens your party to potential random encounters, though there are often no ill effects for failing. My only real complaint with this system is that there's no way to search for traps - detecting them is a one-time thing and there's rarely an indication that you'll have to deal with a trap until you've tripped it. You'd expect it to tie into the search mechanic in some way, but it doesn't.
Fatigue, Spell Upgrades, and Drama
Where I feel Frayed Knights pulls away from some other dungeon crawlers and makes a more unique mark is in some of its additional game mechanics. One of the main things you'll need to manage during the game is Endurance, which powers everything from standard attacks, to active feats, to spells. While you're out adventuring, your maximum Endurance rate will begin to fall the more times you rest up, and also depending on if you're over-exerting your party in combat. This means that, when you've got a good night's sleep, you'll be ready to take on the world, but spend too much time out in the wild and you'll find yourself clinging to the edge of life and struggling to perform even the most basic of feats. Most of the game's quests and dungeons seem specifically measured to bring you to the brink, as well, so while you'll often find yourself waltzing in, overconfidence and poor management of your Endurance and resources can often lead to extreme difficulty later on; thus, taking steps to ensure efficiency is key. On top of that, while characters never die, they will become incapacitated when their Health drops to zero; while there are a couple of ways to revive them without heading back to the inn, the most common, Potions of Recapacitation, will sap them almost entirely of Endurance, meaning that you'll ideally want to keep everyone alive as long as possible and make sure your entire party is strong, rather than relying on a single character to bring you through.
The approach to spellcasting is also interesting. Frayed Knights has a very wide variety of spells available, ranging all the way from levels 1-2, up to levels 11-12, for about 150 in total. Some of these are basic elemental damage spells, like Hotfoot, and others, like Smart Pill, are your standard buffs. The most useful, in my opinion, are disabling spells, like Blindness and Crash, which, assuming an enemy isn't immune, make larger fights much easier to handle than with simple direct damage. Spells adhere to different schools, namely Sorcery, Divine Magic, Nature Magic, and Dark Magic, with Chloe starting out with experience in Sorcery and Benjamin in Nature Magic; in order to learn new spells in the other schools, you'll need to invest in the relevant feats, and then either level up to gain access to common spells, or transcribe scrolls or complete certain quests to gain the more uncommon ones. However, the game's most powerful spells are limited by Spellstones, items which effectively serve as ammunition, and must be present in a given party member's inventory for said spells to even be available.
On top of all this, given the correct feats, spells can be augmented up to level 5, increasing either their damage or duration depending on the spell, but also increasing the amount of Endurance and/or Spellstones required to cast. Not only does this mean you'll have more options when using magic, it also means that those level 1 spells that you might be otherwise inclined to scoff at can still be extremely valuable later in the game, provided you're willing to spend more Endurance on them. While magic never outright dominates as it does in some RPGs, ignoring it is complete suicide, as the mid- and late-game enemies will disable, poison, silence and generally turn your party into gibbering wrecks before tearing them to shreds.
Another interesting design choice in Frayed Knights is to have the turn-based qualities of the game carry over into the exploration portions. Similar to something like Baldur's Gate, which under the hood operated using turns, Frayed Knights keeps the turn counters going even when you aren't in combat, meaning that certain actions like casting spells, resting, and searching the environment will take a turn or two. While this can potentially expose you to the danger of random encounters and patrolling enemies (which is why it's best to rest up in smaller rooms off the beaten path), it also means that you'll have to make certain decisions about pre-buffing your party - namely, what is the ideal order to do so, considering that different spells have different durations, and whether to do it in safety but waste some of that duration running off to the next fight, or to risk another battle by casting those spells in the open.
Last, there are Drama Stars, which are effectively an alternative to save-scumming. The Drama Stars are represented on the user interface as three eight-pointed stars, which are filled up in bronze, then silver, then gold levels, one point at a time, and you'll do so by opening doors into new rooms, speaking with NPCs, solving quests, and winning battles. Filling them will impart you different abilities, from instantly reviving a party member, to improving the party's rolls , to removing all negative spell effects; the level bronze, silver or gold will determine the effectiveness of the action. The only downside? You lose your current Drama Stars when you reload the game, so they're best used rather than wasted. It's a novel approach to solving the old save/reload problem, and it works to some degree, though when I was low on Drama Stars, I was more inclined to simply reload anyway. Still, at the very least it will probably keep you playing longer and living with the consequences, rather than quitting or reloading in frustration.
Overall, I found all of these mechanics to be quite well-balanced, and most importantly, enjoyable, with strong risks and rewards. There is a great synergy created by these disparate systems, and ultimately, they feed into the basic question of "do I keep pressing on, or slink back to town in shame to lick my wounds?" I feel that all good dungeon crawlers really revel in posing that decision to the player, and Frayed Knights absolutely nails it.
Old-School to a Fault?
Beyond all this praise, however, there are a number of faults with Frayed Knights that keep it from being an absolute must-play. The first, and most damaging of complaints, comes down to the user interface. There is no way to get around it: the interface is ugly, clunky, and, while never hard to use, feels like it's stranded 15 years in the past. Although I can understand the nostalgia factor for some players, there's a good reason why RPG interfaces have moved forward in the last several years. The inventory, for instance, requires the player to switch between "use", "transfer" and "discard" modes, when this could be much more easily accomplished by using a context menu or drag-and-drop functionality. Another example is the cast menu - not only do you use the same menu to switch between using feats and spells, but finding the spells you want to use can become quite difficult, as the sheer number means that you'll need to navigate through several pages just to find the one you want, and combined with the fact that there's only three quick slots, means you'll be spending a lot of time looking at menus, and this can really take away from the otherwise quick flow of combat. Once you've got the hotkeys down, the game plays much faster, but there's a pretty big learning curve, and frankly, it just feels old-school for the sake of old-school, not because it makes for a better game.
In keeping with the problems with the user interface, the overall presentation of the visuals and audio are not particularly great. Frayed Knights isn't an outright bad-looking game, but it is by all accounts quite primitive, with very basic geometry for its environments, repetitive textures that don't always line up with one another, and simple lighting. However, as an indie game, it's understandable that the game doesn't look amazing; the real problem comes in art direction, which can be quite inconsistent. Most of the enemy models look fine, but the style seen in the rest of the game's NPCs is very inconsistent, ranging from fairly realistic, to outright cartoonish, to JRPG-like. Unfortunately, some excessive load times, clocking in at 30 seconds or more, really bog things down, and really shouldn't be there given how primitive the visuals are. Sound, much like the visuals, is very sparse, with some decent sound effects in combat, but no voice acting to speak of, no environmental ambiance, and no footstep sounds. Music ranges from outright annoying and poorly-composed, to reasonably catchy and atmospheric, and I feel that here, more minimalism would have been preferable over the occasionally overblown and bombastic tracks, which at best feel woefully out of place.
There are also some gameplay and balance problems. Although for the most part Frayed Knights' difficulty fits snugly in the "hard, but fair" category, there are times where it will feel like the random number gods are out for your blood, and even with 90% odds I would find myself frequently missing the same spells over and over. If there's any additional modifiers at work in combat, there's no documentation to indicate it, and while I can't blame bad luck on the game, I get the distinct sense something's a bit off in the game's number-crunching given how prone I was to losing streaks.
Another annoyance is the presence of random enemy encounters and patrols. While I understand the appeal of ambushes and the need to keep players on their toes, it can be extremely frustrating to clear out an entire dungeon only to end up facing down an especially difficult enemy encounter just as you near the exit, and end up dying because of it. The endgame ratchets this problem up to eleven, with the most difficult enemies ambushing you incessantly, and making what should be an enjoyable build-up to the conclusion a rather tedious slog.
Tying in with this, a particular spell obtained late in the game, Rest Stop, effectively removes all consequence of the Endurance mechanic, since it allows your party to regain all Endurance with no reduction to its maximum level, and no chance of enemy detection, unlike regular resting. Considering the sheer number of random encounters in the endgame, it feels to me like this spell was added to reduce frustration... but breaking one system to make up for another design choice isn't really a good thing in my eyes. Thankfully, this complaint is at least only relevant in the final stage of the game.
There are also times when Frayed Knights is very poor about communicating certain information. This includes everything from the lack of precise data on the influence of attributes, or the damage spells do, to more serious issues. As an example, late in the game I had to solve a puzzle revolving around the flipping of switches. I messed around for close to an hour trying to figure out how to flip them correctly, but couldn't find any clues as to how to proceed. It was only after backtracking and finding a well-hidden room tucked away in the corner of a building that I was able to find the solution, and there was otherwise no signposting or hint for me to even find this necessary information. I can fully foresee players with less patience giving up in this kind of situation. Sometimes, this lack of guidance works to the game's advantage, making exploration much more rewarding, but in a few cases like this, it can be annoying to simply have to keep wandering aimlessly until eventually you bump into the information you need, especially when it's required to finish the game.
Conclusion
In spite of these flaws, however, Frayed Knights does something that so few RPGs do these days: it provides a real sense of hard-earned progression, enjoyable quests that interweave with one another, tactical and challenging turn-based combat with a huge amount of depth and few obvious exploits or problems, exploration which not only provides good rewards, but revolves around player ingenuity and persistence rather than simply following obvious clues and a quest compass, and, of course, it also doesn't take itself too seriously. When getting deep into the game's mechanics and presentation, it's easy to come across a few weak points, and, were this not an indie game, those problems would be much harder to forgive. For a one-man labor of love, however, I'm willing to give Frayed Knights a pass on a lot of these issues, especially because so many other things about the game are done so well.
The bottom line on Frayed Knights: The Skull of S'makh-Daon is that it provides a great, traditional, and well-designed CRPG experience, the likes of which we rarely see these days. Players who are used to the polish and streamlining more modern RPGs, and who don't take kindly to the game's less serious tone and style may not find themselves drawn into the game, but the underlying mechanics are, provided you enjoy combat and dungeon crawling, some of the best I've seen in years. I think fans of some of the genre's classics, like Might & Magic, Wizardry, and Betrayal at Krondor will really appreciate Jay Barnson's tribute to old-school CRPGs, and, perhaps, it will also convince some newer fans of the genre to get into the classics as well. My hope is that Jay will take a close look at the strong and weak points with his first outing, and do his best to resolve the problems while building on the strengths. For now, while I can't recommend it to absolutely everyone (so play the demo and check it out for yourself!), Frayed Knights is, quite simply, the kind of game a lot of CRPG fans have been waiting for.
