By: Jay Barnson, Rampant Games

So I am an 18-year-old girl, and a classmate is trying to sabotage my budding career as a chef. I wonder if she'd be so quick with her tongue if she knew that I was as skilled with the sword as I am with the ladle. Losing money at my tavern job because of her meddling, I may be stuck trying my luck down in the dungeon fighting monsters. Or picking pockets in town square. Anything to help me pay for another week of magic classes…

Such is the world of Cute Knight Deluxe. Cute Knight Deluxe is the improved version of the original best-selling “casual RPG,” Cute Knight (AKA Kishi Kawaii). For the uninitiated, Cute Knight is a delightfully strange hybrid of an old-school Role-Playing Game (RPG) and a “Sim.” Often, this sort of Frankensteinian melding of genres yields a monstrosity that is less than the sum of its parts. While Cute Knight is far from seamless, developer Hanako Games demonstrates that this hybridization really can work to create a fresh concept that is fun to play.

The game's target audience is undoubtedly people younger and more female than myself. The plight of a young girl on her 18th birthday meeting a fairy godmother is somewhat cringe-worthy to the ears of an adult male. But it provides a quick-and-dirty introduction to the overall challenge of the game. The player character has until her 21st birthday to “find herself” and determine her course for the rest of her life in a fantasy world of knights, dragons, wizards, and a monster-infested randomly generated dungeon.

The game takes place entirely within one town, its outskirts (the slums), and the aforementioned dungeon. Activities are chosen on a daily or weekly basis, including taking on odd jobs, studying at school or at the library, taking a day off to rest, picking pockets in town square, adventuring in the dungeon on the outskirts of town, participating in special events during festivals or holidays, and much more. Periodically, special opportunities and choices come up that can have far-reaching effects.

Dungeon exploration is completely optional, but can be the “meat” of an entire game. The dungeon perspective is the pseudo-3D style used in older mainstream RPGs like Wizardry, The Bard's Tale, and the old “Gold Box” D&D adventures. Combat is very simple, limited to fighting (using spells or melee combat), “taming” the creature, consuming potions, and fleeing. While the dungeon is only five levels deep, exploration of even a few rooms literally takes days of game time. While absurd, this was clearly done to mesh and balance the dungeon-delving with the in-town experience.

Besides the usual concerns of gold, health, magic points, and skills, Cute Knight Deluxe also challenges you to balance two other resources: Dream, and Sin. “Dream” represents your character's optimism – if you let it slip too far, she will give up and settle for whatever menial profession is available before the three-year time limit expires. You accumulate Sin by performing morally or ethically questionable actions (like killing sentient creatures – even if they need killing – or picking pockets), and is reduced by charitable actions. If Sin grows too high, you are barred from entering the town by the magical barrier that prevents monsters from overrunning the town - at least until you manage to reduce Sin to a more reasonable level. Several of the more interesting endings require some time in exile in the slums.

Cute Knight Deluxe improves upon the original with new graphics (principally the monster graphics and endings), increased variety of equipment, new secrets, and a revamped “Wizards Challenge” – the weakest part of the original game, where victory was only possible through luck and frequent reloading of saved games. There are rumors of a few additional endings as well, though I have not been able to discover them yet.

Graphics:
While the monster and end-game graphics are vastly improved over the original version, overall the graphics are still uneven and inconsistent. If you are a fan of the anime style, they are functional, do not detract from the game, and keep the atmosphere light and appropriate for casual audiences.

Sound:
The sound effects are minimal and repetitive. The music fares no better, and is simply midi performances of common folk music during various events.

Gameplay:
After too many hours of play, I still have yet to explore the depths of the crafting system, and I keep uncovering new secrets and events. While at times the choices can get repetitive and formulaic, there always seems to be something different to try. The push-and-pull of complementary and opposing statistics makes it impossible to perfectly optimize any path through the game, requiring the player to constantly juggle different activities.

Concept:
Merging sim-style gameplay with that of an old-fashioned dungeon-crawler is fresh and interesting, but can be clumsy at times. These two aspects of Cute Knight Deluxe are almost two separate games, but balanced well enough together to actually work as two viable paths. Finally, the more “girl-friendly” focus may be off-putting to RPG fans, it will hopefully win over a new audience.

Value:
Cute Knight Deluxe features over fifty endings, plus variants for tons of replayability. It has a relatively complex spell system, a crafting system, and many different secrets and events in the game to explore. Even so, it can get repetitive at times, and the added value of the “Deluxe” version over the original is questionable.

Fun:
In spite of being far outside the game's intended audience, I found myself really having fun playing Cute Knight Deluxe, and I've completed several different games. In spite of being such a “light” RPG, Cute Knight Deluxe offers a great deal of interesting things to do beyond combat, and lots to explore outside the dungeon. The game remains challenging without ever getting frustrating.

Overall: Try
Cute Knight Deluxe is not for everyone, and may not appeal to all casual gamers or to many hardcore RPG fans. Existing Cute Knight players might not find enough in Cute Knight Deluxe to justify an upgrade. But the game is intriguing and fun, and is a refreshingly original twist on the fantasy-RPG genre. It is definitely worth a look!

Cute Knight Deluxe: Available at http://www.rampantgames.com/cuteknight.html