Knights of Pen and Paper +1 Edition Review

Knights of Pen and Paper +1 Edition is quite the game. It looked interesting on the Steam store, so I contacted the publishers, Paradox Interactive for a review copy (a big thank you to them by the way), and I installed the game. What I got sucked into was something truly unique.

Take Dungeons and Dragons, the actual board game, and fuse it with Earthbound. There you go; Knights of Pen and Paper. It feels like Earthbound was the main inspiration for the gameplay, and D&D was the subject. When I first booted up the game and tried it out, I thought it was stupid beyond belief; but then after about a half hour, hour of playing it, I couldn’t stop. It’s so addictive.

The gameplay is nearly identical to Earthbound. You click your action (attack, ability, items) and then click on your target. It does get a bit dull and repetitive, but I was so far into Nostaliga Central with Earthbound that I gave it a big pass. It is probably the biggest flaw in the game, but it isn’t that big of an issue. When it comes to loot you win from battles/dungeon crawling, I can’t really talk about it: it’s terrible. I never bothered looking into it, because the game does a pretty bad job of talking about it.

Visuals and Audio? Forget about it. This is a game that relies on gameplay over having pretty things to look at. That’s not a negative though. That’s what games generally should be about; the gameplay. I’m not one of those bleeding hearts that believes that all games can look like shit as long as it’s fun, that’s not true in my opinion. In this case however the gameplay makes up for it. The audio was so dull and boring I ended up muting it to play some of my own music in the background, or run Youtube on my PS3 on the screen next to me.

All in all? This game is a must buy! (If it’s on sale for about $5) Currently it’s priced on Steam for $10 for the standard game, and $15 for the Deluxe edition:

“The Deluxe Edition of Knights of Pen & Paper includes the following bonus items:

Special Guest Character – A Yellow Wizard with passive MP +20

Farm Village Map – A new location that will allow players to farm experience efficiently. Also includes the exclusive Scarecrow monster!

Sci-fi Pack for Bedroom – This gives players 4 exclusive items to customize their “in-game, real-world room”

Treasure Chest with 800 Gold – in-game gold that helps any new player get a head start on their adventure”

That brings me to my final complaint: IN GAME TRANSACTIONS! What the hell. This isn’t a free to play game or even a game good enough to excuse this fatal Gaming sin. Pay real money for in-game gold. That wouldn’t be a biggie if it was free-to-play, but no, you pay for this game, AND YOU MAKE MONEY EASILY JUST PLAYING IT. Ugh. I wanted to give this game an 8/10, but with the Micro-transactions, I’m going to give this game a strong 7/10.