2/5 ★ – astrotyler's review of Knack.

I really tried to enjoy Knack - I really did! - but clunky movement, boring combat, and a consistently punishing level of difficulty have made me resign to giving up on Dunkey's game of the millennium around chapter 8. I've seen some criticize the story as being a Saturday morning cartoon, but honestly that's the one place I found any charm in this game at all. The characters are all one-note and the plot is utterly predictable (at least as far I managed to get), but in a way that's almost nostalgic. The voice performances are great for what they're intended to be (it's hard to go wrong with talent like Travis Willingham, Jennifer Hale, and Matt Mercer), but sadly they just aren't enough to pull you along through the grueling inanity of the gameplay. The one gameplay mechanic I thoroughly enjoyed was the way collecting more relics causes Knack to grow to towering size, but you're so rarely able to hold onto relics for long enough to reach that size due to the insane amount of damage even the weakest enemies are able to deal in a single hit. Perhaps Knack 2 is a big step up, but I'm unsure that I'm willing to find out.