I am on a journey to beat 360 random Xbox 360 games. Here's my next adventure

Game number 32 was Knight’s Contract. This is an action game similar to Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, or God of War. You play as a former Executioner named Heinrich and have to help a witch named Gretchen to stop all the other witches who are trying to destroy the world.

The story of this game is actually better than I would have previously thought (not that I had heard of this game before). Your character, Heinrich, was an executioner for the church during the middle ages/crusades period of time and you were known to execute suspected witches. Unlike real life, these witches actually do have magic powers… but they were all good and mostly helped the people around them. They were murdered by the church out of fear that they were actually causing a plague (which they were not).

During one of these executions, Heinrich started to have doubts that what he was doing was right. The witch he was set to execute was Gretchen herself and he didn’t believe that she had done anything wrong. After much debate between himself and the bishop who ordered the execution, Faust, he eventually capitulated and proceeded to execute Gretchen. Before dying, she cursed Heinrich to forever roam the Earth and he would not be allowed to die.

100 years later, all the witches are miraculously resurrected and want to take revenge on the society which murdered them. Heinrich is forced to team up with Gretchen to take down all these witches and the mysterious powers behind their resurrection.

That was a lot of time dedicated to me explaining the story… but it was actually really good. I am personally the type of person who loves this church associated fantasy and really ate all this up. In fact, I wrote that whole section 2 weeks after I actually beat the game and was still able to remember that much of the story. It's definitely my favorite part of the game.

The gameplay is where Knight’s Contract really starts to show its weaknesses. As I said earlier, Heinrich can not die so he isn’t the main focus here… However, Gretchen can die. This means that you play the entire game (except for two chapters where you play as Gretchen herself) escorting Gretchen around and protecting her. Nobody likes escort missions so why did Bandai think that it would be a good idea to release a game that is only 1 big escort mission.

GRETCHEN’S AI IS MISERABLE!!!!! She will constantly run into lava, get in between you and the enemies, and get hit in all the most inopportune moments. She takes a ton of damage and everything is exacerbated by this AI. You would think that a game so centrally focused on protecting an escort character would have good AI or at least comprehensive commands to move around the escort… but no. There is one button that can get Gretchen to move towards your location (which she will use the shortest path lava, spikes, damage traps, or no) and you can carry her with the same button when she is next to you. Let me explain how most of the boss fights work out. First you will attack when the boss shows it’s weak point, then you will carry Gretchen around while you wait for a good opportunity to attack again. That’s it.

Another sad thing is that the combat in this game is actually good! Heinrich has really powerful and cool combos and he will eventually be able to use a myriad of badass magic spells (through using Gretchen as a conduit). These spells can be upgraded throughout the game and are super powerful and fun to use! The enemy and boss design are also well done and thought out. Many enemies are weak to specific attacks (like the rock golems who are super weak from attacks which come from under the ground). Bosses also usually have in depth mechanics and require precise positioning… it's just always mucked up by having to escort Gretchen around everywhere.

In conclusion, I really think this game was a missed opportunity and had all the workings to be a major hit during the 7th generation. The story is really thought out and is actually really interesting, the locations/environments vary widely and are fun to travers, and the combat is done super well… but the team had to mess everything up by forcing the game to be one big escort mission. I understand that action games like this are a dime a dozen and they wanted something to set them apart from the competition… but the gameplay and story were good enough on their own; they didn’t need to add the escort mechanic to the game. Sadly, it is ever present and infuriatingly bad. I would not really recommend playing this game. (4/10)

I spent 11 hours and 46 minutes playing Knight’s Contract.

I have spent a total of 338 hours and 7 minutes on the Road to 360 challenge so far.

Next game: Nail’d