When the ps4 came out I honestly had no desire for Knack, I was actually just going to skip it until I heard of Amazons deal that week where you could buy 2 games and get the third free, so I figured since Knack was a playstation exclusive I might as well pick It up and see if it was any good, and well It's not the worst game I've ever played but it has quite a bit of problems to it I'll talk about each.
Story: Their is a lot going on in Knacks story so excuse me If I leave certain things out, but the start of the story goes like this, the goblin's in the wasteland attack a human settlement with human weapons, you can obviously guess that the humans will retaliate but how our they going to do it, well the doctor introduces a creation he has created that he calls by the name of Knack, he is this little robot type creature that is able to collect relics and become huge. After seeing Knack in action the board of this settlement agrees to let knack go and find out where the goblins our and punish them but also to find out where they got human technology. Before I continue I got to be honest I have no clue on any names of these characters and I even tried too look the names up online, and I can't find anything so uh... this is bad, i'll just try to explain who they our. Their is another guy who follows you with his robots to help out finding the goblins, and lets be honest the first couple of scenes I could tell that this guy was the bad guy and I just knew what was going on from the start, so the story was pretty cliche already, basically they find the leader of the goblins destroy his robot he's in (Spoiler Alert) and he threatens to call his leader, after this the guy with the robots take the doctors nephew and tells the doctor to bring knack to his mansion, the doctor does so to find out that the guy with the robots has found a door that he wants to open that contains a crap load of Relics that could be a huge power source, to open this though he must use Knacks parts to open it. I'm going to try to fast forward this a little. Throughout the story their is a ton of filler that will have knack being at places just for the sake of being at places, but the main plot is trying to keep the bad guy away from the key for this door and that basically the main plot.
Presentation: At the first glance of Knack it looks breathtaking and beautiful to look at, and that is until you start to play it for a little bit and start to notice, wow these levels look quite a bit similar to each other and the more you play it you really start noticing wow... a lot of these levels design wise look pretty much the same, and that's basically the actual look of the game. the voice acting in this game isn't bad, nothing great but nothing to ride home about, Knack was probably my favorite character cause I will admit the person who dubbed him did quite a great job. The soundtrack for this is basically nonexistent, not much too listen to while your playing so that's quite another disappointment, When it comes to presentation Knack could use some work.
Gameplay: Most people would agree that this is where Knack loses it's luster. Knack is a platforming beat em up game, the combat, is simple, a bit too simple, you got square that does youre main attack and circle where you can unleash some speacial moves, this is basically it for combat and the reason that is a problem is because the combat is so complex in this game because you can only get hit a few amount of times this can make the combat unfair, and not only that but you also have to go through checkpoints and some people complain that the checkpoints are too, long but I don't agree with that, they feel long because you have to constantly go back and forth over and over again, and if it had fair challenge this would be ok, and not only that but the constant monotony of the combat will make you throw your controller on the floor. The reason I think the difficulty is so cheap also is because it's so unbalanced, I could understand getting hit a couple times as little Knack and dying, but when I'm huge Knack and one hit nearly drains my health, I don't understand it, isn't Knack supposed to be strong espescially when he is at his full potential. I do agree while challenging Knack does have a strategy to it unfortunatley it's not executed well enough to help and make the difficulty fair, you must execute your moves fast and try to dodge your enemys precisley, but as I mentioned it's executed poorly because if you make one little mistake(which you will) you will go back over and over again. What I think bothers me so much about Knack is the constant switching from small Knack to big Knack this is a constant theme for the beggining of the chapter to the ending of the chapter and it's just a tease I wish this would not have happened every single chapter because it sucks feeling so powerful and then losing all that power like that. The gameplay is shallow and lackluster, but it's not the worst I've played and to be honest their were points where I even enjoyed it during some points of the game.
(Spoiler Alert) You learn near the end that the doctors wife is still alive, and that she is actually making the weapons for the goblins she does this because the goblins supposedly saved her and also because they said that they would harm no one with them(so why are they making the weapons?) after this the doctor try's to bring her to join them, but she says she doesn't want to go back, isn't this the love of her life? and after like two more chapters she decides she needs his help. A lot of people would give this game a pass since this is a game pointed towards children but I can't give it a pass when it comes to story, because it takes itself so seriously. The bad guy in this game opens the door and all hell breaks loose and Knack must face this giant relic type guy and to do this Knack becomes colossal, after this Knack and this thing fight. Well... I got to say this is probably the worse boss battle I have ever played in gaming the whole way of fighting him is by getting in range of him and hitting him, and after that he shrinks you, and then you must run to the relics you have lost, and their our all sorts of projectiles everywhere that want you dead and not only that but you have enemies near you and you run sooo slow, you could dump ass faster. it's a miserable experience that taints the game.
Overall Knack is bad, lets be honest it's got some major flaws but if you our willing to take your time at it and our just looking for a good time you just might like it.