Queen’s Knight Boss Battle Impression (TGS 2017)
Ahead of its anticipated release next year, Code Vein teases yet another crucial aspect of the action role-playing genre – boss battles. For our first look at one of the game’s many challenging encounters, Shift and Bandai Namco showcase the Queen’s Knight boss for this year’s Tokyo Game Show at the Makuharri Messe convention center. We break down our impressions of this interesting boss based on released gameplay footage of the playable demo during the event.
Boss Design
The Queen’s Knight boss is quite the intimidating figure – an ashen armored warrior brandishing a hellish sword with serrated edges and a demonic-looking shield. The boss has a pair of asymmetrical wings on its back, which are themselves weapons as much as they allow the boss to jump high or fly somehow. I’m not much a fan of these kinds of designs (especially anime-inspired ones), but the Queen’s Knight boss’ design strongly invokes images of Personas found in the popular JRPG franchise bearing the same name.
Combat Behavior
The Queen’s Knight boss may seem like your run-of-the-mill towering spawn from hell. It somehow is, but in a good way – a good nostalgic way. Of course, it also has some other abilities to make it a more refreshing encounter.
Source: Youtube
The Queen’s Knight boss’ basic sword attacks are somewhat reminiscent of the greatsword-wielding Black Knights in the first and third Dark Souls games. This includes sword thrusts, slashes and cleaves with varying timings to throw you-off. It’s made even more challenging by the fact that its sword attacks have extremely wide range, so dodging in the right direction is a must.
Sword moves aside, the boss can also teleport away, toward or even above you (do we dare mention Lorian, the Elder Prince?). It also has a charge attack to quickly close the distance, as well as a spin attack that can knock you down. It will occasionally jump into the air and perform a sword crush. But despite its formidable moveset, the Queen’s Knight boss seems to telegraph its moves reasonably to give you time to react.
As you whittle down the boss’ health, it will more frequently try to combo with its sword and teleport more. Its most damaging move seems to be a blood magic-infused sword crush, which sends waves of red energy in the area. The boss also becomes a lot more aggressive as you drop it below half its health. I’ve also noticed that the Queen’s Knight boss even has that devious wake-up game, so it’s important to stay alert when you’re getting up after being knocked down.
Difficulty
There’s no real gauging the difficulty of this boss at the moment. Despite only watching it and imagining myself with the controller, it really looks like a good challenge towards the end. The fact that you have a companion gives you a bit of breathing room to heal or get in a few hits, though not too safe to take it easy at any point during the battle. The boss looks reasonably aggressive, and isn’t anything we haven’t seen in any Souls or Soulslike game (think Flamelurker, Artorias, Orphan of Kos or Soul of Cinder).
Conclusion
The boss looks to provide that familiar challenge with fresh visuals, adapting the anime-style graphics very well to the Souls formula. There’s still a lot of time for the game’s developers to tweak and refine the boss in terms of the AI and mechanics, though we’re pretty impressed with how it looked during the TGS 2017 demo. Let’s hope Code Vein outdoes its subsequent bosses and make it into the thrill ride the Souls games are, or even more.
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