For a free-to-play game, it was great. I enjoyed most of my time playing with friends, and the large quantity of weapons and armors seemed very enjoyable. However, the game has numerous difficulty spikes, along with areas that (thanks to newer updates) almost force you to pay to get the best type of armor you want. However, thanks to the varying damages and damage resistances, as well as status effects, newer players are basically punished for not paying. Although they have made quite a few changes to the game since it began, some of which making it much easier for newer players (such as doing away with elevator costs, and removing "Mist energy", they replace those things with more difficulty spikes.

Also, while the game is nice when you begin, and harder later on (forcing you to play with others, and hopefully good players at that), the other portions of the game (PvP, and the DLC's) are extremely lacking. PvP is a mashup of horrible pings, buttmad children, and people using the game's auto-aim feature. The DLC's offer you two things: A useless couple costumes, along with extra lives and such, or an extremely annoying (and difficulty spike filled) raid on a Gremlin base. However, at the end you get an overpowered weapon, decent bomb, and the ability to make a decent gunner mask.

The story of the game is also lacking. It seems almost like they aren't sure what to do with the game. They have plenty of lore, whether it be about the Spiral Knight Order, or any of their enemies, however they seem to have nowhere to take the game's story from here. The "end" of the game was supposed to be getting to the core to find an energy source and leave. Instead, you get to the core, find out its locked, and have an option (if you save up a lot of in-game money, or pay roughly $7.50) to re-play any of the four boss levels, only more satanic, leading you to believe that you're in that world's version of hell, perhaps. However, the game stops there. It leaves so many questions that I'm sure everyone wants answered. What happened to the recon unit, what happened to the Shadow Lairs, what happens to Warmaster Seerus, what is in the core, or even if you will escape?

Sadly, i've been playing this game for around two years, and in my time they havn't added much in story progression since then. I'll reccomend the game now, but I feel they're losing players, and if they don't finish the story in a good way, or at least expand more, the game will kinda get empty, and eventually die.

This game has a multitude of things to do. The storyline and environment are very unique and interesting. Also with many things to do even after you reach “end game” of the storyline. New content is added quite often though, expansions to the game it's self are rare, they do happen. Overall this game has been quite a lot of fun for me through the years of play and I think it will continue to be so for me. Some people however do a lot of complaining (even me sometimes) about how the game needs to expand in many different ways of functioning content of the players instead of cosmetic, but I think this game has actually stayed fairly true to the origin of being an "arcade game" type and has kept that in mind when add-in’s have happened. This is not a game to run around in open and endless fields, fighting monsters at random locations, but actual arcade play where we have different levels or "depths" as they're called with mostly set setups, though still with a very large variety of monsters and types of depths through the game to experience many new things and keep the game entertaining. I think as long as you can keep that in mind this game can be endless fun and just down right enjoyable for it's uniqueness.

Spiral Knights (SK) is a free-to-play MMORPG that I started playing in 2011. I was instantly hooked on this simple game primarily due to the community of friends that played this game with me. To understand the perspective of this review, I believe it would help to understand the type of player I was. I reached the end-game completing every dungeon available. I played at the top tier player-vs-player (PVP) level with - at the time - a vast variety of superior gear.

PROS: You do not need to invest a a single penny into SK to beat the game, or to enjoy it. The majority of its paid content is cosmetic and to speed up the farming process. The game can be played solo, but has its benefits for being played in a co-op party up to four players (random or friends). These benefits include more loot drops, a teammate revival system, and the normal benefits with playing with a party of friends. There is no character leveling system, and your advancement comes from upgrading your armor and weapons.

CONS: For an MMORPG, however, SK has many flaws. The game does not offer a spell casting system (aside from the addition of pets in late 2013), only the choice of swords, guns, bombs, and a shield. By and large, swords are the superior weapon of choice, though balances over the course of 4 years have attempted to narrowed this superiorty gap. In addition, the game is extremely limited in its end-game content, with the storyline still not being completed for over 3 years. SK is constantly riddled with latency issues, and simple balances suggested by the community are largely ignored despite the community's desire to be involved with the direction that SK will take.

Verdict: SK is honestly a cute, fun, and simple game. The game has undergone a variety of changes over the several years it has been out; these changes are largely aesthetic, however. SK suffers from the lack of new content and a completed storyline. It is plagued with latency issues and the lack of balancing. While I would recommend more avid gamers to look into other free MMORPG game such as Warframe, Vindictus, or Neverwinter. SK does draw from its strengths - being cute, free, and simple - and it can truly offer many hours of fun memories with the right group of players.

It's a rather fun game on the journey to get to end-game. Once you're at end-game however, the game more or less runs out of new content to offer, updates providing new content do not come out often either. The downloadable content mission is worth a try as it is one of the more difficult dungeons in the game. Playing with a full party of friends you know makes the game greatly more enjoyable l've found. A unique game that is worth a look at the very least.

Aside from being a game filled with hazardous paywalls (which can be easily averted), and other nasties with the ingame economy, I really don't see why this title gets so much flak from the community.

Solid Multiplayer RPG, four man dungeon crawling. Wearing armor and items while you complete levels allows you to gain EXP (Known as Heat) to further level the items to a maximum of level 10. From there you can transmute and pick different branches that you want to evolve your weapon for a cost of in-game currency.

The game used to employ a revive system where you would share your HP to revive them, and uses now items known as Spark of Life. The game used to be much more limited in terms of how much you could play per day, your Knight would store "Mist Energy" in their armor as time passes, and you could use this energy to power the Elevators (which help you advance to lower dungeons in the specific dungeon series).

The dungeons in general are randomly generated based on user contributions to that specific elevator, by adding different crystals (which you can find in almost every level), you may influence how the next dungeon will be generated. I believe it is a nice addition to the randomness of the stages, and it forces you to be prepared for the dungeons you go into.

The netcode is rather solid, I have not had many problems with my connection and playing the game, aside from the occasional lag spike between other players.

The themes and atmosphere are well designed, and the music compliments said environments.

All in all I would very much reccomend this game to my friends and family, even though my opinion may be unpopular.