Knuckle Sandwich is a good experience. Is it a good game? Not reeeally... I would give Knuckle Sandwich a big "Yes, BUT". To make a long story short, almost everything this game does it does with style and flourish and then fails to stick the landing. The style and flourish is really impressive! I finished the game in its entirety, and I'm always going to recommend a game that I actually decided to see through to the end. BUT. If the opening hour of the game fails to grab you, put it down. It will not get better.

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To make a long story long, the single largest caveat to enjoying this game is the combat. It's bad. There's not really any two ways about it. Microgame combat, as a concept, is an interesting idea. It feels nice when succeeding the microgame for an enemy attack not only prevents damage, but also hurts the opponent. In concept, it adds extra incentive to learn the microgames to give yourself an additional edge in combat and keep things moving.

In practice, the amount of damage that is dealt is entirely trivial and almost never meaningfully shortens a fight. Microgames also vary wildly in difficulty, even for the more 'please grind me' overworld encounters. Some are entirely based on luck, some felt wildly impossible, and some had execution schemes that the game seemed to expect you to use a d-pad for but could be completely trivialized by using a stick.

Enemy health pools is the second biggest problem. Enemies in this game have too much health, and I consistently felt like I did entirely too little damage. It felt like I was supposed to be doing the traditional RPG 'buff stats and deal status effects to manage the enemy' but I had no tools to afflict status effects or change my stats for half the game, and the incredibly restrictive inventory didn't allow for me to effectively use items in battle.

Then Thea, one of the party members, learns Heat Wave and the entire game completely falls apart. When my standard attacks were doing somewhere between 30-70 damage (thanks wildly inconsistent microgame damage ranges!), a max damage heat wave (which targets all enemies on screen) would do 500 !!. I was never able to tell what moves or attacks would do what kind of damage to what enemies in the game. There was some kind of elemental resistance / weakness system??? Some abilities did like, lightning, or ice, or fire damage, and it never made sense to me.

Eventually, I turned on the option to enable a skip combat button in most fights, and I just did that instead of actually slogging through it. Unfortunately, enabling the accessibility helpers also disables achievements, so uh. Sure. (EDIT: maybe just a bug that cropped up at the same time? I've seen some other people mention it.)

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How about all the things that aren't the combat? Well, they're better on the whole but still a bit wonky. The music is unconditionally good. Bangers all around, for sure. But there's also no place to purchase the soundtrack in its entirety in a single spot...? Odd. The art is gorgeous and helped cement the world the game takes place in.

The writing was... hit or miss. Mostly hits for sure, but I feel like it doesn't reach the highs of the opening couple hours and the ending was sort of a wet fart. It felt... like it just didn't come together. The people who eventually make up the 'hero's party' never felt very fleshed out, and while each party member got a 'focus' chapter, Dolus especially never felt like anything more than 'a party member', and I don't really know how to articulate that further.

The darkly comedic tone of the opening is quickly replaced with a lighter tone of quirky absurdism that was funny but eventually wore thin. A few encounters in the game sort of happen, get brushed aside with a 'well that was weird', and then you move on. Who is supposed to be the actual antagonist of the game isn't really clear until the end of the game, and then you just sort of hit it with a rock and game over. There's an epilogue chapter, but it felt more like a 'I am out of time to make more game and must wrap up loose ends / cram in story ideas I had but couldn't execute fully'. Enjoyable, entertaining, but ultimately unpolished and incomplete.

Final verdict- enjoyable but ROUGH. I recommend enabling combat skip from the start and simply ignoring all fights (still gives XP and rewards) that aren't clearly bosses. It'll save you some time, for sure.

Knuckle Sandwich is a good experience. Is it a good [i]game[/i]? Not reeeally... I would give Knuckle Sandwich a big "Yes, BUT". To make a long story short, almost everything this game does it does with style and flourish and then fails to stick the landing. The style and flourish is really impressive! I finished the game in its entirety, and I'm always going to recommend a game that I actually decided to see through to the end. BUT. If the opening hour of the game fails to grab you, put it down. It will not get better. [hr] To make a long story long, the single largest caveat to enjoying this game is the combat. It's bad. There's not really any two ways about it. Microgame combat, as a concept, is an interesting idea. It feels nice when succeeding the microgame for an enemy attack not only prevents damage, but also hurts the opponent. In concept, it adds extra incentive to learn the microgames to give yourself an additional edge in combat and keep things moving. In practice, the amount of damage that is dealt is entirely trivial and almost never meaningfully shortens a fight. Microgames also vary wildly in difficulty, even for the more 'please grind me' overworld encounters. Some are entirely based on luck, some felt wildly impossible, and some had execution schemes that the game seemed to expect you to use a d-pad for but could be completely trivialized by using a stick. Enemy health pools is the second biggest problem. Enemies in this game have too much health, and I consistently felt like I did entirely too little damage. It felt like I was supposed to be doing the traditional RPG 'buff stats and deal status effects to manage the enemy' but I had no tools to afflict status effects or change my stats for half the game, and the incredibly restrictive inventory didn't allow for me to effectively use items in battle. Then Thea, one of the party members, learns Heat Wave and the entire game completely falls apart. When my standard attacks were doing somewhere between 30-70 damage (thanks wildly inconsistent microgame damage ranges!), a max damage heat wave (which targets all enemies on screen) would do [b]500 !![/b]. I was never able to tell what moves or attacks would do what kind of damage to what enemies in the game. There was some kind of elemental resistance / weakness system??? Some abilities did like, lightning, or ice, or fire damage, and it never made sense to me. Eventually, I turned on the option to enable a skip combat button in most fights, and I just did that instead of actually slogging through it. Unfortunately, enabling the accessibility helpers also disables achievements, so uh. Sure. (EDIT: maybe just a bug that cropped up at the same time? I've seen some other people mention it.) [hr] How about all the things that aren't the combat? Well, they're better on the whole but still a bit wonky. The music is unconditionally good. Bangers all around, for sure. But there's also no place to purchase the soundtrack in its entirety in a single spot...? Odd. The art is gorgeous and helped cement the world the game takes place in. The writing was... hit or miss. Mostly hits for sure, but I feel like it doesn't reach the highs of the opening couple hours and the ending was sort of a wet fart. It felt... like it just didn't come together. The people who eventually make up the 'hero's party' never felt very fleshed out, and while each party member got a 'focus' chapter, Dolus especially never felt like anything more than 'a party member', and I don't really know how to articulate that further. The darkly comedic tone of the opening is quickly replaced with a lighter tone of quirky absurdism that was funny but eventually wore thin. A few encounters in the game sort of happen, get brushed aside with a 'well [i]that[/i] was weird', and then you move on. Who is supposed to be the actual antagonist of the game isn't really clear until the end of the game, and then you just sort of hit it with a rock and game over. There's an epilogue chapter, but it felt more like a 'I am out of time to make more game and must wrap up loose ends / cram in story ideas I had but couldn't execute fully'. Enjoyable, entertaining, but ultimately unpolished and incomplete. Final verdict- enjoyable but ROUGH. I recommend enabling combat skip from the start and simply ignoring all fights (still gives XP and rewards) that aren't clearly bosses. It'll save you some time, for sure.