Every day I get more impressed at how many games have come out of Steam’s early access program. Some have been giant disappointments while others such as Portal Knights, developed by Keen Games and published by 505 Games, do so well that they end up coming to consoles. Portal Knights is literally playable by everyone, even with the classification of being an independent survival action role playing game. Portal Knights doesn’t make you feel alone considering you can do multiplayer and quest together with friends or you can do single player for solo questing or just play it akin to Minecraft just going around killing enemies and crafting items from the materials you find. I believe Portal Knights found its home with Nintendo and the Switch. Multiplayer can be enjoyed with three other players online, local wireless or straight up classic split screen! Not many games offer that many multiplayer options and it’s great that we are given so many ways to play with friends or even complete strangers.
You have three classes to choose from and the game plays very differently depending on what you choose. Your options are Mage, Warrior and Ranger. I played as the ranger just because I’m a fan of ranged attacks; all my Skyrim characters inevitably end up going ranger. The world you enter is randomly generated, so not everyone ends up playing the same way due to the fact that the generated worlds all have different enemies and resources available to collect. Resources are necessary to craft just about everything in this game, so it all serves a purpose. You won’t be finding armor drops from killing enemies; you have to create it yourself. You progress through the game by killing enemies for XP, finding resources and crafting said resources into weapons and armor, but you also have to collect and craft items called portal stones to get to the next level.
It took me sometime before I realized I needed to create furnaces and forges to actually make some items instead of just combining them, but I wasn’t really made aware of that through the game itself. Overall, the crafting system could use a bit of work. Other than a quick general tutorial in the first island you don’t really get much clarification on how you learn recipes to improve your items and how all items are created. Just to clarify, there are crafting stations that you must create for each kind of item; a furnace to make metal items, altar is consumables and archery station is for bows and ranger armor. There are other stations, but I didn’t quite play around with them all.
Crafting isn’t just about weapons and armor. I mentioned you could play this like Minecraft and I meant it. The resources you gather can be made into blocks to build houses and bases for yourself, and they can be as simple as a wood cabin or go big and create a giant stone castle. This aspect isn’t nearly as expansive, as the things you can create are pretty basic. You won’t be running programs within this game. You can use these blocks to get to higher areas by making them stepping stones and even destroy them if you are being chased. Potions can also be crafted using resources you find, and you can create ones ranging from just health regen to increased range damage, elemental damage and even elemental damage reduction, so it’s good to craft these whenever possible.
As you progress further you will encounter a boss every ten levels. There are technically six bosses in the game but when you defeat the first three you have to craft an item from a recipe they drop to fight a corresponding hard mode version which is scaled to level 35 while you stay at level 30. Speaking of levels, you do gain attribute points to allocate towards stats such as Dexterity, Wisdom, Constitution, Agility and Strength, as you level up to improve your character. Some stats are much better than others depending on what class you are using.
There is also skill tree that lets you diversify yourself a bit by allowing you to create a build that even further suits your own playstyle. Rangers can specifically go for a glass cannon build where they just do tons of damage either to enemies at a certain range or by not moving, there were also talents that relied heavily on dodging to decrease damage taken to help you survive longer, you want to really go fairly balanced when it comes to the dodge chance talents unless you cram your attribute points into health. 
Now, the talent system is where you think you would find spells/abilities, but actually those all drop from bosses and monsters you find. This part of the gameplay bothers me, as I can’t get any cool skills until I fight something and it just happens to have it drop. As the ranger, you are only single target damage until you get skills such as Acid Rain, which bombards an area with poison, and its huge to have that when there are enemies bunched up together. You might that that from the first boss, or the last.
Portal Knights is pretty straightforward when it comes to what it wants you to accomplish. There are only three worlds and a total of 48 islands to explore, so you have to craft the portal stones I mentioned earlier to explore it all. It doesn’t feel linear due to the random generation of the worlds and thankfully with the ability to warp back to islands you’ve already explored you aren’t just locked out of old resources just in case you need something you haven’t found recently to craft.
If there’s one complaint to be mentioned it’s apparently very well-known at this point that after about two hours of constant playing I started to have general lag and frame rate took a hit as well. Keen Games is aware and has said they are looking into it, so I’m not nearly as annoyed by it as I would be with other games where there is no feedback at all. Will I continue to play Portal Knights? Yeah, it’s enjoyable and pretty entertaining when you play with a few other people.
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