Dungeons & Doomknights is a NES game released in 2021 that describes itself as a “ZeldaVania”, combining gameplay elements from MetroidVania’s and Zelda 1, and honestly Zelda 2. And despite limitations imposed by being a physical NES release, it managed to pack a ton of content into 512KB.

Beaten on: 1/5/22
Hours Played: 7.5
Rating: 8/10

I browse Kickstarter pretty frequently, at least the Video Games category, and when I saw a campaign based on Adventure Quest, a flash game I played back in the early 2000’s, I couldn’t resist. Fast forward 1.5 years and the ROM was released, and the physical edition a few months after that. I started streaming my backlog recently, and figured this would be a great game to tackle, and I was right.

You start the game after a short intro explaining that you’ve traveled to this land to fight the Doomknights, whom you’re obligated to stop as a Paladin. The game then transitions into your character, Artix, riding a dragon and being told by his Moglin companion that it’s a good spot to jump. It’s a silly start, but I feel like it sets the tone for the game right away. Anyways, you jump and land on a cliff with a path to your right and a drop to your left. Me being the curious fellow I am, I jump off the left side, expecting to die. And I do, but first I get to talk to death (the grim reaper) and fight him, before he eventually kills me.

Now, I’m going to avoid spoiling the story as much as I can, but this is more of an easter egg, so it’s fair game.

After I played through a good portion of the game, I came back to fight death again, where I won. I’m then brought back to the top of the cliff and I have an orb of some kind in my hands. I spend a bit of time trying to see if it does anything, when a whirlwind spawns and carries me up to what I can only assume is heaven. I jump onto the clouds making my way over to the NPC, which I’m guessing is an angel, and I destroy the moon along the way. Once you make it to this NPC, she offers to change your armor color and you can cycle through the different colors by talking to her. I really wanted red armor, but for story reasons, I think, it wasn’t there. I settled for a dark grey and finished the game that way. While this scene was the most ridiculous in the game, the whole playthrough was just as interesting.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. I’m out here spoiling easter eggs and I haven’t even talked about the game, but honestly, it’s pretty easy to summarize by saying it’s heavily heavily inspired by Zelda 1 and 2. The game switched between top down and side scrolling gameplay, essentially alternating between the gameplay of Zelda 1 and 2. It features NPCs in the same way Zelda 2 does, and even kind of copies the towns and buildings, to an extent. And don’t take that the wrong way, this is in no way a ripoff or a clone, but a beautifully executed homage to these classic games. I was super excited to see so many elements from what I think is a very underrated game, Zelda 2.

Beyond the Zelda elements, we of course have MetroidVania ones, as ZeldaVania implies. This comes mainly in the way of new abilities, and while I’d love to tell you about them, I feel like it would be pretty spoiler-y. With that said, though, there are a bunch of abilities that you get, and I think they mostly feel unique, maybe not so much in function, after all, the genre is almost 40 years old, but definitely in design. They also do a great job of tying in the abilities thematically, giving the explanation that everyone you’re fighting is a servant to the Doomknight.

I do have a complaint, and I think this is just a me thing, but I definitely got pretty lost and a little frustrated at at least 3 points during the game. I think not having a map was a huge mistake, and it’s extra frustrating because Zelda 1 came with this awesome printed map, and this game got so close by releasing a copy of what they call “Pretendo Power” which includes a map, but it was too low res to be usable. Had this had an in-game map, or a usable map outside of the game, even, I think this would have been a 9/10 for me, to be completely honest.

Aside from the map, I don’t have a ton of negatives, but I’ll list them out kind of rapid fire.

• Some of the hitboxes are weird. It’s like they made the tip of the axe the hitbox, rather than the whole axe. This might have been a technical limitation, but it can be frustrating.
• They reuse a lot of boss mechanics, and at first it got a little annoying, but you discover an ability that kind of nullifies a lot of the mechanics that are reused and the choice to rely so heavily on it made a lot more sense.
• And the final boss level does something that Zelda is kind of known for, and it’s one of my least favorite video game tropes; they make you fight all the game’s bosses in a different form one after the other. I played Wind Waker for the first time a while back and that aspect of the game really left a sour taste in my mouth. While it’s not as bad in this game, it was still un-fun.
• During the side-scrolling sections it can be hard to trigger your special ability because it’s tied to the same button as jump. They make you hold up, but it can be finicky, at least with an emulator and Xbox controller. And I’ve seen other games do this in the past, so I know it’s possible, but I wish they had added key rebinding and controller support into the digital release. That would have solved my issues entirely.

Having covered the negatives, how do the other elements of the game feel? Pretty great, honestly.

The level design is really good, with almost all the areas being connected and traversable with abilities you obtain. I know this is a staple of metroidvania, but it reminded me a lot of Dark Souls as well; it was a welcome surprise.

The game also had platforming during the side scrolling sections, and while it’s nothing noteworthy, it adds some variety and it’s good enough to never be a bother.

The combat is another area of the game that’s done well, with a mixture of top down sections, a la Zelda 1, and the aforementioned side-scrolling sections that are a staple of the genre, and reminiscent of Zelda 2. Aside from the couple issues I already mentioned, the combat never felt like a slog, and the challenge from some enemies was surprising, but in a good way.

Despite most of the mechanics being passable, and even good, none of them quite compare to the variety of the abilities in the game. Unfortunately, like I already mentioned, I don’t want to spoil much, so I can’t really go over the abilities in depth, but I’ll do my best.

You get a couple traversal abilities that make for some interesting gameplay; one of which granted one of my early wishes (kind of) by giving me a way of quickly traversing the map without having to fight 1,000 and 1 enemies . You also get a host of new abilities that relate to your axe. Some let you destroy things that were previously blocking your path, others are purely damage upgrades, and there are a couple unique ones I don’t want to spoil.

Talking about combat, though, I will spoil one element; there’s a dog and he can kill anything and everything. His name is Daimyo; he’s based on a real pup and he’s awesome.

I feel like I’m getting a bit long winded, but I want to mention the ending(s) briefly before I go. And mainly that’s what I wanted to say, that there’s two endings. It’s such a neat thing to see included in a NES game. More important than the novelty, the story is actually well thought out and the exposition of the final boss combined with the endings themselves really put a nice bow on an otherwise fun game.

And that’s just what Dungeons & Doomknights was, a short, fun NES adventure with fun ideas and mechanics, a good story, and tons of charm, all wrapped up within the restrictions of a physical NES cartridge. Games like this do an incredible job illustrating the variety of the gaming industry; is this as time consuming as something like Red Dead Redemption 2? Of course not, but do I think it delivered on it’s premise? Hell yeah! At $14 for the ROM, this game definitely punches above it’s weight, and I think anyone that likes MetroidVania’s and games from the era should check out this fresh take on the genre.

- Zack

P.S.

Here’s a link to buy the ROM And check me out on Twitch if you want to see me play games live, I usually stream Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7PM MST. Aaaaannnnnd if you want more content; ramblings and the occasional picture, go follow me on Twitter.

And I promise I’ll set up Mastodon at some point. I plan to self-host it, but it’s got about 18 dependencies and I haven’t had the time.

Anyways, as always thanks for reading. Until next time, keep backlogging, and stay gold.