Just a quick review here on my first impressions of "Portal Knights" which I played for around 10 hours on PS4 (it was a PS Plus game a few months back that I decided to give a blast).
Very much inspired by "Minecraft", "Portal Knights" is a similar mix of gathering resources, crafting weapons & tools and building dwellings. Where it differs somewhat though, is that the game has more of a continuous progression, as you try to mine enough crystals to build a portal and jump to the next world. There are enemies in these worlds all the time, not just a night, though they do change at night, so each world has constant threat levels. Graphically it's a bit of a step up from "Minecraft" though still utilising that blocky world building mechanic. Everything can be demolished, and theoretically anything can be built.
There's a lot to get your head around in this first few hours or the game, a number of progressions taking place, skill choices to make, items to build and upgrade - as well as learning the fighting mechanism, starting a bunch of sidequests and building portals. It did prove a little overwhelming at first, but I did get used to it fairly quickly and powered through the first few worlds before deciding that I was going to build a base, and heading back to the first world to dig out a cliff face for that. This was quite an enjoyable time. Controls worked well, although building was a little fiddly at times, building in a straight line for example. Progression was fair although occasionally there was a spike with a new enemy.
I didn't engage with any of the shared game aspect, keeping my world to myself and not interacting with anyone else, so I don't know what the player base is like in late 2019. I did, however, see that there is a Switch version of the game, so I decide to end my PS4 run here and start again with that version, in the near future.
