Once Upon a Knight

aka: Knight Shift, KnightShift, KnightShift (Director's Cut Special Edition), KnightShift (Second Edition), KnightShift: Příběh rytíře, Once Upon a Knight - Heroism. Sorcery. Cows., Polanie II
Moby ID: 10636
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Once Upon a Knight is a hybrid of the RPG and the RTS genre. The singleplayer RTS part consists of three campaigns, in a fantasy setting. During the campaigns, your characters gather items, develop skills and can level their stats to gain new abilities.

In the RPG mode, you can explore a larger selection of maps, quests, actions and enemies. This mode features improved character development with new skills and the ability to hire new characters or trade items.

In the multiplayer mode, servers support up to 65.000 players through the EarthNet® server system. Every player on the server has his/her own account protected by a password. With each server account up to 8 self developed RPG characters with their own inventory, skills and level ups can be managed. League and Companion MP matches are supported. MP matches are possible in RTS Battle, RTS destroy structure and RPG adventure mode with predefined or self created maps and mods.

Spellings

  • Рыцари за Работой - Russian spelling
  • 骑士往事 - Simplified Chinese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Windows version)

124 People (112 developers, 12 thanks) · View all

Producer
Director of Marketing
Senior Brand Manager
Executive Producer
Director of Technology
Director of Creative Services
Director of Editorial & Documentation Services
Art Director
Graphic Designer
Documentation Specialist
Copywriter
Director of Publishing Support
Director of Quality Assurance North America
I.T. Manager/Western Region
Manager of Technical Support
Senior Q.A. Testing Magager
Q.A. Testing Managers
Lead Tester
Testers
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 65% (based on 24 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.1 out of 5 (based on 16 ratings with 2 reviews)

An RPG that does have a small touch of flaws

The Good
The originality and creativity for Unce upon a knight is seems kind of average for an age of empires clone. The game developers decided to allow characters from the game to "equip" items, in order for the players to keep on searching around every corner for the best weapon or armour there is. The game has 5 modes to select from, campaign, RPG, duel,multiplayer (online) and level editor as well.

The Bad
The only problem here is that the game is ridiculously generous to the player. The player can keep on gaining exp points from killing the generic wolf. That and the fact that it just doesn't play as well as AoE, as there aren't that many options of gameplay making Unce upon a knight, again, a very average game.

The Bottom Line
Though the game does possess quite a few flaws, the graphics are god, the music(only in the demo) is great to listen to and if you like the common RPG/RTS type of game, then this game will suit you very well!

Windows · by Arejarn (7353) · 2008

RPG as in "Really Poor Gaming"

The Good
The installation screens and background music

The Bad
All the rest

The Bottom Line
You slip the CD in the drive, the installation screen fires up, you are treated to stunning graphics and fine Celtic music, it all bodes well. The installation will take a while, grab a beer. Or a cup of coffee. Being right out of bubble gum and whisky I settled for a beer. Ready? Go. I picked "Campaign" since it starts with a tutorial. So there I am, Prince John, greeted by a bent old wizard, and soon off I go to claim what's rightfully mine, the usual story. Wolves, though. Still with the mellifluous sound of the Celtic harp in his ears, Prince John does not mind too much. Bashing wolves is good training for a start isn't it? Prince John soon learns that he cannot take on all those wolves without taking a break to restore his hit points. There are two ways to do that: stand in a patch of magic mushrooms (easy to spot: they glow blue), or hit the sack and have a good shut-eye. Prince John also soon learns that he cannot hit the sack unless his hit points need replenishing. No way. You 100% hale and sound, Johnny boy? Stay awake then, old trout. The poor fellow then remembers how, in a former life, as the Avatar roaming the fair lands of Lord British, he carried a bedroll in his backpack, and was allowed to sleep when he wanted. Like, man, at night. Iolo and Sparks even kept watch over him. Ah, for those Halcyon days!

Travel at night is seldom advisable but tough hey, Prince John, just carry on walking my good Sire, like it or not. Oh, you can always crack another beer, read the paper, watch Bugs Bunny, and hope that when you're back at your computer screen it will be daytime, and no roaming wolves have mistaken you for their favourite dinner. So you battle wolves, get hurt, retreat, sleep, wake up, battle wolves, get hurt... you get the picture. And every time you wake up you get treated to Prince John whingeing about how much more comfortable his royal four-poster bed was. Once is fun, twice OK, but after the tenth wolf you feel like feeding the miserable sap to the eleventh. To be fair though, you do get to battle a couple of bears when a beekeeper asks for your help.

By and by, Prince John gets to escort a snotty-nosed kid and his three cows to a pasture south-east of some village. Wolves of course get in the way. After having turned a baker's dozen of them into pet food, John gets a bit bored, and returns to the village for some shut-eye. Wake up John. Uh? Where's the kid? Where are the cows? Search wherever you may, you don't find them. They've gone AWOL. Have they really? How can you continue with the tutorial? You can't, John, unless you find the brat and his cows. In other words: you're stuffed, my beauty. Quit. Do you really want to exit? You bet your sweet fundament I do.

Back to his real self, ex-Prince John picks the RPG option. I'm an archer now. Why not? I could have been... whatever, but I sure wasn't going to spend Xmas, New Year's Eve, Easter, and Bastille Day dithering about what to be.

I lasted the whole of... oh perhaps 30 seconds as an archer. No, no, no, not fried by a passing dragon. Just the first fellow I met. A prepothterouth lithping dialogue ensued, which made both of us sound like perfect cretins. Quit. Do you really...? You bet I do. And uninstall too.

There was a third option, which by the sound of it is some WarCraft clone. Why bother when I can play the real WarCraft?

Oh sure, nice graphics, sort of. Much of a Baldur's Gate look-alike, really. And you do get to watch fish swimming in the rivers, birds flying in the sky, and so on. Why, if you have a super-duper Radeon card, you can even have them cast shadows. For just a few hundred bucks, wotta bargain! Wow! Zowie! Yummy yummy goody gum drops!

Final score.

Graphics. Zero. Yes, zero. It's just stupid eye candy that brings nothing to the gameplay. Wanna watch fish swimming? Get off your chair and go to a real river. Or buy yourself a fish bowl and a couple of goldfish.

Gameplay. Minus one. Because I don't like being taken for an imbecile.

Replay value. You must be joking.

Windows · by Jacques Guy (52) · 2004

Discussion

Subject By Date
new game group: Polanie series Rola (8486) Oct 4, 2009

Trivia

After the review from German gaming magazine GameStar in issue 10/2003 (69 of 100 points) publisher ZUXXEZ Entertainment AG unsuccessfully sued GameStar to stop the distribution of the review. ZUXXEZ claimed that GameStar's version of the game was only classified as preview version and that they based their valuation on false data.

In the next issue (page 52) GameStar printed a correction for two false statements in their review regarding packaging and multiplayer mode but claim that this had no influence on the valuation. They also rejected ZUXXEZ' other blames and printed an e-mail from ZUXXEZ were they demand a "cover story" and an "eight page review with neutral mark" for the next issue.

Two months before ZUXXEZ had another disagreement with German magazine PC Games which wrote a non-enthusiastic preview in issue 08/2003. ZUXXEZ claimed that PC Games had no playable version of the game and that they "possibly didn't like the game because they received a Spellforce-order from above". PC Games rejected the accusations.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Sciere.

Linux added by Plok. Macintosh added by Kabushi.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Indra was here, Jeanne, JRK, chirinea, Klaster_1, Patrick Bregger, Plok, Đarks!đy ✔.

Game added October 11, 2003. Last modified March 6, 2024.