If you’re at all familiar with games since around 2011 you’ll know FromSoftware, the Dark Souls series and perhaps also their earlier King’s Field games. They stamped out a whole (sub)genre called “soulslike” so what else needs to be said?

FlyKnight’s title song sounds incredibly like “Souls of Fire” from Dark Souls. The first armor you find is a cosplay of the Elite Knight armor. The architecture in some locations is reminiscent of places like Firelink Shrine and the dreaded swamp of Blighttown.

These are just some of the homages to DS that aren’t gameplay mechanics. I could go on listing similarities. Let’s rather talk about what FlyKnight does different from Dark Souls, OK? (Besides being 1st person POV of course. Did someone say King’s Field!?)

Let’s emphasize this: Despite what you might expect, FlyKnight doesn’t have experience, character levels or stats like Strength, Dexterity and so on.

You can’t go around grinding levels and improving your character. Also you’re not expected to upgrade your gear to power up. You don’t have to focus on melee combat or spells, as you can change everything about your character by changing your gear loadout, either on the fly (no pun intended!) while you’re out and about or at the storage chest near each bonfire that will hold whatever exceeds your inventory limit.

It’s still a good idea to go exploring, because you might find new and interesting spells, or weapons that fit your playstyle better.

I think it’s a bold move by the dev to not put in these expected mechanics. In Dark Souls, it can be annoying if later in the game you want to use a different weapon but find you’ll have to collect upgrade materials before the weapon is effective.

I haven’t finished Fly Knight yet, but from what I read, it’s not a long game. There is some variety in enemy types, but it’s not huge. But since you move through environments and get presented with new scenarios at a steady pace, it doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s the right decision not to try and arbitrarily stretch the game by putting in grind mechanics. Replacing a “Sword +1” with a “Sword +2” isn’t a real decision, and I like it better when every decision in a game has some kind of trade-off.

PS: Right after finishing the writing of this article I returned to the game and wouldn’t you know, I faced the last boss. That came a bit unexpected.

But the game is in it’s “Enhanced Edition” (I think that’s the only edition) version and offers a hard mode that’s more like a remix. I only took a short look so far, but in the first few minutes I faced a handful of new enemies and found equally as many new items that weren’t in the “normal” difficulty. It also adds a “chitin” meter that can be used to throw shuriken and caltrops.

This is really nice because now I have mentally checked the game off as finished, it’s not weighing heavily on my pile of shame, and I still get to play some more and explore new mechanics if I wish to.