That the phrase "free-to-play" is only marketing-speak is not a thought lost on those wise enough to realize that games in this genre ultimately aim to derive revenue from players.
The wiser still would not be turned completely away from "free-to-play" games on an impulse upon realizing this, but would rather assess what a free-loader may get from spending only time with the game, versus what a paying customer may get.
Of course, ultimately, a paying customer would get advantages of some kind, and this is where most players would measure the value of the game – if they are not turned away already. Some games merely have paying customers getting stuff earlier than free-loaders do, while others give them far more contentious bonuses, like powerful in-game goodies that are exclusively premium. However, most of them implement their premium features as optional choices that the player can forgo without any loss in the quality of the experience.
Spiral Knights is an exception, which is unfortunate.
Spiral Knights' premise appears to be somewhat refreshing for an MMO, though not entirely original. A space-ship carrying a race of semi-humanoid creatures who are always clad in power armor has crashed onto a peculiar planet – called the Cradle – that happens to have less-than-stable ecologies and a seemingly artificial super-structure that is given another name – the Clockworks. Despite this, its surface levels are plenty stable, and is the home of the many indigenous creatures, including the Strangers who are quick to accommodate the arrival of the Spiral Knights and trade with them.
The Knights eventually set up a base of operations in the settlement of Haven, effectively occupying and using it as a base of operations to delve deeper into the Clockworks to harvest the technology and materials that they need to repair their space-ship and leave. However, they will have to contend with the less friendly of the natives along the way, especially the technologically-inclined and very hostile race of Goblins and their cohorts (who occasionally remind the Spiral Knights that they are technically foreign invaders).
If this seems like a lofty and interesting backstory, it certainly is. Unfortunately, in addition to intriguing the player, the developers also use it as an excuse to justify the introduction of the mechanic of "Energy". There will be more elaboration on this later, when other aspects about the game are out of the way.
The Spiral Knights' ship, the SkyLark, is supposedly an immense ship carrying an innumerable number of Knights, most of them rookies. Apparently, before it crashed, the Skylark ejected its living cargo into the orbit of the Clockworks; the emergency pods eventually get pulled down onto the Clockworks, supposedly landing somewhere near the rescue camps that the established Spiral Knights have set up to receive these new arrivals.
The player can experience this part of the story in the tutorial of the game, which guides the player around pieces of terrain with on-screen text telling the player about the gameplay basics. It can be a bit fourth-wall breaking at times, but otherwise, the tutorial is plenty adequate.
However, upon starting the game proper, it appears that the backstory takes a backseat (pun not intended). The very few – if any - glimpses of the crashed Skylark, the lack of any explanation on the Knights' original mission and the inexplicably unending arrivals of rookie Knights are gaps in the narration that Three Rings appear not to have bothered filling thoroughly. That is not to say that the backstory has been completely ignored, but how Three Rings utilized it to give the justification for some mechanics can be contentious, to say the least.
Anyway, Spiral Knights' greatest appeal, its presentation, is apparent right from the start – the login screen in fact. The music, which is composed by one talented Harry Mack, are surprisingly stirring electronic tracks.
To cite some examples, slightly melancholic tracks accentuate the view of the unfathomable depths of the Clockworks, hinting that the tasks ahead can be quite daunting. When the player has arrived at the Haven, pleasantly soothing tracks constantly remind the player that his/her avatar is in safe grounds. The most notable and memorable track, however, is the one that plays when the player accesses his/her logs, mail and other databases through the Hub screen. The levels in the Clockworks also have their own tracks, usually appropriate to the theme of the level in play as well as the current situation.
The other main appeal of the game, its artstyle and animations, is also apparent from the start. The average Spiral Knight appears to be a short humanoid with disproportionately large extremities and heads, but then, there are not any other vaguely human-looking characters. The Spiral Knights are always clad in power armor, and even under light pieces of armor, there appears to be a skin-suit that may or may not be part of the Spiral Knights themselves. The only facial features that a Spiral Knight has is his/her eyes, which emote like regular eyes except that they appear to be part of the Knight's suit. Therefore, the only reliable way that Spiral Knights express themselves is through their body language.
It's not the first time that these kinds of player characters had been made of course, but such visual designs make for a peculiar charm.
The charm doesn't end with just the Spiral Knights. In stark contrast with the Spiral Knights, most of the native inhabitants of the Cradle and Clockworks have more completely defined and emotive faces, giving a visual reminder that the Spiral Knights are aliens on a foreign world; they are far from humanoid, however, and most of them happen to be enemies that the player has to fight. They do have plenty of charm to contribute to the game though; most of them have animations, sound effects and model designs that can be generally considered cute and cuddly, at least until that disarming façade is broken when they approach to attack.
An example is the Wolver family of critters, who resemble a cross between foxes and squirrels; these rear to yip and bark as they approach the player, possibly presenting an innocuous appearance to unsuspecting rookies until they come close enough to make their biting animations. Another example is the Spookats, which are ghostly cats with sweetly cute faces and meows, at least until the Spiral Knights get close, at which they turn ghastly.
The other enemies are more immediately severe-looking, though generally not so monstrous to the point that they might frighten minors or make them uneasy (that is not to say that there are affirmatively monstrous looking creatures in the game); they also have animations that followers of anime or anime-inspired cartoons would recognize.
The Goblins are one such example. Being a force that is openly hostile to the Spiral Knights and are somewhat addled by their lives spent in the ever-changing Clockworks, they appear feral and yet are armed with technology that would be decidedly troublesome for the Spiral Knights. They have ferocious attacks, yet have amusing animations like the dodging move that they perform when their AI scripts detect incoming attacks from Spiral Knights.
All these charming animations and appearances are not just for show. They are often used to telegraph attacks, together with icons that appear underneath their models that show the direction of their attack and the type of secondary damage that they would inflict. This allows the player to study their animations, though this does not mean that the game is easy all the way; the first few strata of the Clockworks have very easy to defeat denizens, but the deeper ones have much tougher and fiercer variants; in fact, the same creature that was weak in the shallower strata is more vicious in the latter.
When the player character hits enemies, there are particle and sound effects that they emit to denote whether the attack did mundane damage, is ineffective or particularly harmed them. The more experienced of players would recognize these almost immediately as visual cues that help the player mix and match gear against the enemies that they would face, if they are not inclined to make use of the official Wiki archives for this game. There are several different damage types, but it should suffice to describe them as just ways to vary the defensive and offensive properties of gear and enemies.
The more interesting – but more contentious - properties that they have are status effects that they can dole out. Each attack that can inflict status effects have probabilities that govern whether they are inflicted or not, so their infliction is a matter of luck. Of course, it can be argued that luck-based minor game mechanics like these are nothing new in MMOs, but players that are weary of luck-dependent mechanics would still be apprehensive of them anyway. Fortunately, when it comes to resisting status effects, there is a very reliable way for Spiral Knights to avoid them, though this will only be elaborated later.
Perhaps the greatest complaint about status effects is how overwhelmingly potent that some of them can be. There is Poisoned, which does not appear to do much but removes the ability of the victim to be healed. This is very useful if there are healer-type enemies around, but it can also prevent the Spiral Knight from using Health capsules, which can be debilitating. Then there is Stun, which in the case of the Spiral Knights, disrupts their animations and renders them helpless. For enemies, they turn slow and sluggish for a longer time.
The two most contentious status effects are Fire and Shock. Fire deals damage over time, and appears to be the only major damage-over-time method of harm in the game. Shock is a pseudo-damage-over-time effect, as it only deals damage at seemingly random intervals, but more importantly, when it does, it also disrupts the victim's animations.
If status effects are inflicted on a player character, he/she can still quaff a Remedy capsule to remove them, but otherwise there does not appear to be any other way to remove status effects; a Spiral Knight can only carry up to three of these too. Enemies have access to no such means, so inflicting status effects on them is often a reliable method to defeat them, if the player can succeed in the probability rolls.
Enemies in the shallower strata do not inflict status effects, but the later ones do, adding to the challenge. However, there appears to be some balancing problems that are still present in the game at this time of writing. One example is how the genus of enemies known as the Greavers, which resemble bats, can inflict status effects not only through their regular attacks, but also through the haze of harmful vapor that they leave behind after their swoops; the latter, indirect attack appears to bypass shields (more on these shortly).
Of course, with enough complaints from players, these can change, but it won't change the fact that these contentious designs were in the game in the first place.
Speaking of shields, they are one of the kinds of gear that a Spiral Knight may equip. Before elaborating on gear further, it has to be mentioned here that Spiral Knights treat gear a bit differently from other MMORPGs. In fact, it treats character progression differently.
The Spiral Knight does not have any character levels of any kind. Instead, whatever progression that the player earns go to the gear that he/she is using, i.e. his/her gear is able to gain levels. Defeating enemies cause them to drop loot called "Heat", which can also be obtained from breaking containers. The player must reach the exit of the current map to cash in the "Heat", which is otherwise lost if the player character is taken down permanently and sent back to the Haven. Cashed-in Heat is distributed evenly among the gear that the player has equipped on his/her Spiral Knight, contributing towards progress meters that give a rough gauge of the power of the gear.
It is unfortunate though that the counter for Heat that the player has collected and the power ratings of the gear pieces are not numerically presented, which would have helped more meticulous characters better track the progress of their advancements. However, the graphical presentations are adequate enough to be used to compare the power ratings for different gear pieces.
As gear is the only way that a Spiral Knight may overcome the challenges within the Clockworks, the player would be wise to collect as many gear pieces as he/she can (there is no limit to inventoy space) so as to be well-prepared for any level. However, the Spiral Knight generally cannot change gear pieces during a level, so the player will have to identify the theme of the level and prepare accordingly. It can be a bit difficult to do so initially, but there are helpful designs in place such as icons and names that hint at the themes of the levels; eventually a determined player can associate certain levels with certain gear load-outs.
As for the gear pieces themselves, they consists of armor, shields, swords, handguns and bombs. There are other gear types, but unfortunately they are hidden behind deliberate barriers in gameplay; there will be more elaboration on these later.
Armor gives protection – as is typically to be expected of armor – to the Spiral Knight, Swords are the only means of melee attacks, Handguns give ranged attacks and Bombs are meant to be used to clear bunches of enemies more efficiently than the rest. These gear pieces in turn are differentiated into many sub-types depending on their animations and attack patterns, each offering advantages in return for disadvantages.
The first few swords that the player would get lets the Spiral Knight perform the usual slashes; the later ones let the player perform thrusts and/or lunges, allowing the player to strike multiple targets or focus his/her effort on a single target. The initially available handguns are mere pea-shooters, but there are more variants later that fire slow but powerful bolts, mini-bombs that explode with minor splash damage and weak but very fast and torrential shots.
Bombs, which appear to be a tribute to the Bomberman franchise, cannot be simply dropped around. Instead, they have to be charged up before they can be dropped. This can make them cumbersome to use, but this design is an appropriate gameplay-balancing tactic.
Although Bombs must be charged to be used, the other weapons can also be charged by holding down the attack button. Once fully charged, they can be released to unleash powerful attacks that often have properties different from the regular ones. For example, certain swords release waves of energy when fully charged, thus somewhat overcoming the restriction on range that swords typically have.
There are some minor complaints to be had with some of the designs of the weapons. While it is understandable that handguns slow down Spiral Knights when they are aimed and fired and that charging bombs render them incapable of attacking, attack combos with Swords lock the Spiral Knights into animations that may get them into trouble, such as environmental hazards. The animations for the latter parts of the combos cannot be cancelled out of too.
Of course, a fan of Spiral Knight would point out here that the first phase of the sword-swinging animations can be cancelled out of by raising shields, but this is actually a minus-point to the game instead of a plus. This is ultimately a glitch, and one that allows players to circumvent deliberately implemented drawbacks on certain swords, such as the slow but powerful, knocking-back swings that the cleaver-like swords have.
Moreover, some of the implemented drawbacks are too debilitating to render the use of their associated weapons practical. For example, there are certain handguns that require the Spiral Knights to stand completely still; considering that many of the most effective strategies to defeat enemies involve being always on the move to avoid lunges, pounces and projectiles, not many players would be using these. Of course, one can argue that when playing in teams, these players can hang back while the rest distract the enemies, but it also means that these weapons are not useful for solo play. Furthermore, the best team strategies still involve having the entire team on the move.
Armor does little more than grant bonuses when donned, but Shields require more active usage. Shields have bonuses and such, but these only come into play when the Spiral Knights raise them. On their own, they are just pieces of steel and plastic that are inadequate against the denizens of the Clockwork. However, when raised, they bring up hemi-spherical shields that can block many attacks, even the status effects that accompany the usual attacks that enemies perform . (There are some attacks that shields cannot block though, such as the haze that Greavers leave behind after a swoop.)
However, shields have "health" ratings of their own, as well as resistances; shields that lose their health completely lose their integrity, rendering themselves useless. However, given enough time (and this is usually a short time), shields can regenerate to full health, even from complete failure; the resistances that they have also determine how much damage that they can deflect instead of having to absorb.
Shields can also bump away enemies when they come into contact with the latter, thus giving players some breathing room, especially against the slower of enemies. Eventually, an experienced player will learn to use shields to prevent harm as much as dodging out of the way, especially considering that there are some enemies in the game that are just too fast to run away from.
Crowns, crafting materials, heat orbs and very rarely gear pieces are the main types of permanent loot that the player may obtain from delving into the Clockworks. A rarer type of loot comes in the form of tokens, which can be exchanged for equipment, rarer crafting materials or recipes from the Knights' token trader, or certain other merchants. Some of these tokens can only be obtained from fighting major bosses. This is all good, except that tokens are bound to players and are not exchangeable, which is a bit disappointing to those hoping to use them as bargaining chips.
Like their denizens, the environments within the Cradle also have their own charm, consisting of mostly objects with clean textures and cartoony visuals. However, they do a poor job of hiding their grid-based limitations: all of the maps in the game, including those in the Haven and the surface of the Cradle, appear to depend heavily on quadrangular building blocks for their designs.
It has to be mentioned here that the game also relies heavily on the creation of instances. To handle the multitudes of players online, instances of the Haven and its various sections are created to accommodate the players that are currently in the Haven trading and crafting. Instances are also created with the forays into the Clockworks. The former form of instances may cause problems if players are looking forward to approach other players for trade in specific items.
When contrasted with the more sophisticated-looking models for characters and creatures in the game, the environments do make it easier to discern enemies, player characters and loot from their surroundings, assuming that the player has the highest graphical settings turned on; considering that this game is far from pushing the boundaries of cutting-edge graphics, this should not be out of the reach of most players. On the other hand, toning down the graphics settings make non-environment objects look very mundane and more difficult to pick out.
Every level appears to have a few discrete segments, separated by force-fields or gates. The first segment is always a safe zone that has an armory nearby that players can use to finalize their equipment load-out; as mentioned earlier, the player generally may not change their load-out once the level starts proper. (There are certain levels that are the exception, though these are levels with tremendously greater challenges - and far less rewards for putting up with them.)
The player will often be fighting the environment as much as he/she would the hostile denizens of the Clockworks. There are plenty of environmental hazards, such as rows of spike traps and fire vents. These can sometimes be turned off, but otherwise the player will have to observe their rhythms and work around them. Some others can be shot to bits, such as living traps that revolve around an area endlessly.
These would have been manageable, if not for the less-than-satisfactory lag compensation system in the game. A player may think that he/she has passed through a trap before it triggered, but sometimes, he/she will find that his/her Spiral Knight was damaged anyway, or that a trap has retracted enough for him/her to pass through but finds that damage was still inflicted. This issue with the lag compensation also extends to the attacks of enemies.
Such occurrences appear to make a mockery of the player's timing. Of course, the player can always learn to compensate, but the player will have realized that the lag compensation system is not very reliable.
It also has to be mentioned here that most traps do not affect the denizens of the Clockwork at all, which can be disappointing. The only ones that do are explosive cubes and charges sprinkled throughout levels that can be detonated via attacks from either the Spiral Knights or enemies, and these are not renewable.
Gates are placed within levels to somewhat act as yardsticks of progress throughout the level. Most of the time, they are just obstacles that the player has to lower by finding and hitting switches or bringing keys over to them. Sometimes, they are used in cleverer ways, such as either blocking the player from shooting at something or cover that the player can use when convenient.
Gates are also used to prevent the player from backtracking; there are special podium-like buttons that the entire team of Spiral Knights have to stand upon to trigger, upon when gates will raise behind the player characters to permanently bar any backtracking. This may not be pleasing to players who recall that there are health-replenishing loot behind them, but it also helps keep up the pace of the exploration of the level.
There are also gates that lead to either areas with more loot to retrieve or greater challenges that promise more rewards than those that the player would get if he/she took the regular path, but these are tied to the "Energy" system, which will be elaborated on later.
Experienced players would learn to thoroughly explore levels, if only to uncover loot. However, there are pieces of loot that the player may not keep permanently. These include health-boosting tanks that raise the player character's health capacity and the aforementioned health capsules. There are also capsules that can be thrown at enemies to inflict status effects on them for certain. However, a Spiral Knight can only carry a limited number of these, and they often take a short while to use due to lengthy animations. Yet, these are understandable drawbacks, considering how useful they can be.
However, whether they will drop from enemies or containers as loot is a matter of luck. If a player is lucky enough to have health capsules or hearts dropping regularly from enemies, he/she will have a much easier time than a player with terrible luck. Of course, such luck-dependencies in the mechanics of loot drops are nothing new in MMOs, but players who do not appreciate reliance on luck would not be pleased regardless.
If the player would rather not depend on luck, he/she may purchase items from the only Stranger that appears in the Clockworks, Basil. However, as mentioned earlier, these items are not permanently kept, thus presenting a degree of risk.
Recognizing that some players may not appreciate the fact that such items are not permanently kept, Three Rings has wisely introduced supply kits, which can be purchased from certain merchants; these kits contain the aforementioned items. Kits can be opened at any time during a level to automatically insert these items into the player character's inventory, with excess amounts spilling onto the ground.
As mentioned earlier, levels have themes that determine the properties and variety of enemies that the player will face. While the levels and their themes are of certain designs – there appear to be no procedurally generated levels – their distribution throughout the Clockworks are not certain, and are in fact, somewhat controlled by the players themselves.
Throughout out most levels, the player may come across chunks of minerals, which are described in-game as some of the Cradle's energy that have solidified in manners different from those of Crystal Energy (more on this later). These minerals can be destroyed to release smaller chunks that the Spiral Knights can collect and cash in at the end of the level.
The minerals can be deposited at "gate" terminals in the Arcade section of the Haven. There are four terminals, each with their own peculiar names, that can receive these minerals and grant crowns in return; the player can also deposit minerals in different strata of any gate. Depending on the mix of the minerals that were deposited into a stratum, it will determine the combination of themes of the levels that occur in this stratum when the gate "recycles" (which occur every few days). Once a gate is recycled, it will retain these levels and themes until the next period.
Theoretically, this allows players to avoid themes that they do not prefer by dumping minerals strategically, or grief other players by dumping minerals to influence the inclusion of levels with troublesome themes. However, some strata become impossible to influence, seemingly on random, which is a hint that these strata contain boss levels.
Bosses are very powerful monsters, as befitting bosses, and these are often visually scarier-looking than most enemies. They have a lot of patterns of attack, some of which may render them vulnerable. Other bosses require the player to use environmental objects to render them vulnerable. One example is Snarbolax, a massive and fast beast that happens to be invulnerable until the player stuns it with strategically placed bells.
Every other level also generally ends with a mini-boss fight, or a fight with waves of enemies within a small arena. The composition of enemies is also dependent on the themes of the levels. For example, a level with mechanical themes may end with a fight with waves of Mecha Knights, or it may end with a fight with a factory-like machine that do not take kindly to being thrashed. These fights are accompanied by very suspenseful and surprisingly memorable music, which adds to the excitement.
When a team of players finish a level in the Arcade gates, they not only get to cash in their Heat but also gain a chance to win something from a prize wheel, which gives out random prizes. Most of them tend to be minor and common loot, but there are rare ones like actual gear pieces; generally, the deeper strata give better prizes. Such a minor mechanic gives an additional incentive to complete levels.
The later strata in the Clockworks are much harder; since the player has to depend on gear to prevail through them, the game has understandable restrictions on how deep a Spiral Knight can go. There are NPCs known as Spiral Wardens who will prevent the player character from moving forward if he/she lacks equipment that is powerful enough.
The traders in Haven often sell only low-level equipment, even though they switch their inventory almost daily. However, Basil, the aforementioned Stranger in the Clockworks, appears in terminals located between strata and may sell higher-level equipment and crafting recipes, thus giving an incentive to play through the levels in the Arcade more than once. (Unfortunately, there are restrictions against this; more on these later.)
However, the gameplay to be had from going through the levels in the Arcade do little to expand more on the backstory of the game. Three Rings has noticed this, and has implemented special levels known as missions that can be accessed using the Hub screen.
Each mission is practically a few levels, usually of the same theme, strung together with some vague objectives. The story elements that they have are mainly contained within the briefings that the player gets and the description of the mission (and there are no voice-overs to be had from these – or the rest of the game for that matter). Otherwise, most missions play little differently from the Arcade levels, which can be a disappointment. However, there are some memorable ones though, such as one that has the player character paying tribute to fallen Spiral Knights by completing their memorials, only to be ambushed by animated statues that commemorate said fallen heroes.
These missions do not offer random rewards when completed, but rather certain ones. However, repeating these missions do not grant these rewards again, though the certainty of the themes of these mission levels are an incentive to replay them.
Before starting the missions, the player is inserted into a mission lobby, which looks very similar to the Terminals in the Arcade; even Basil is there as well, though his inventory is composed of fixed selections instead of random ones. The player may choose to start the mission proper, wait for other players to enter the lobby (either by having the game randomly insert them into the same instance, or waiting for friends to accept invitations), or leave for the Haven if he/she hasn't done anything significant in the lobby. If the player intends to launch the mission, the lobby is a useful location to dispense information to other players and purchase supplies from Basil.
To access the higher-level missions, the player needs to finish the earlier ones to gain rank advancements. For now, the rank advancements mean little other than a requirement to be met to unlock more missions for launch.
There is a mechanic of Prestige, which acts like a score of sorts. To increase Prestige, the player either performs story-related Missions or Prestige Missions, which are similar to the story-related ones, or fulfill certain item requests that are randomized every day. As of this time of writing, Prestige does absolutely nothing, but may be used for a new game mode later.
The game modes mentioned so far do not concern player-versus-player gameplay. At this time of writing, the only player-versus-player mode is King Krogmo's Coliseum. This game mode is described in-game as an attraction that King Krogmo, an influential native of the Cradle, has devised to make money from the presence of the Spiral Knights on the Cradle; the Knights' central command, Spiral HQ, appears to have no compunction in having the Knights battle each other in environments that are otherwise better controlled than those in the Clockworks.
Players can join the matches in the Coliseum any time while in the Haven or Hub mode, by paying entrance fees; King Krogmo takes a cut from the pool of fees for each match, while the rest is offered to the winners of each match. All participants of a match earn tokens known as Krogmo's Coins, which can be exchanged for special goods – usually special recipes - that cannot be obtained in other ways; the winners of matches get more of these tokens. Players can also gain some unique cosmetic items (which, like Bombs, are tributes to the Bomberman franchise) from the Coliseum, though this requires the expenditure of Energy (more on this later) and a little bit of luck getting the desired item.
At this time of writing, there are only two types of matches to be had in the Coliseum. Blast Network is yet another tribute to the Bomberman franchise and like in the Bomberman games' multiplayer matches, Blast Network has players trying to take out each other with Bombs, which amusingly charges a lot faster. There are even upgrades for Bombs littered throughout the match area, which further strengthens the impression that this is a tribute to Bomberman.
The other match type is Lockdown, which has teams scrambling to capture and defend strategic points that contribute towards their own progress counters, filling which signifies victory for the team that managed to do it first. To make the gameplay more interesting, the participants are given special shield upgrades that change the properties of their shield, such as the Guardian upgrade that gives the user the ability to shield others as well as himself/herself.
If the player only intends to play the Coliseum matches to experience gameplay that is different from the rest in the game, then the Coliseum would be plenty alright. However, if one is playing it for the rewards, he/she would eventually realize that claiming the final form of the rewards involve the spending of Energy.
Minor features in the game include the Auction House, which allows players to put up unbinded items to attract bids. Unfortunately, like the other game designs mentioned, they are affected by the overarching mechanic of Energy.
With the otherwise solid gameplay designs and charm mentioned above, it can be difficult to accept that Spiral Knights can still go very wrong for the average game consumer. But go wrong it can, no thanks to barriers on gameplay that goad the player into paying money to overcome them.
These barriers are associated with the "energy" mechanic. "Energy" is a currency separate from Crowns, the other currency in the game that acts like the staple currency typically found in games of the MMO genre. They come in two types: "mist energy" and "crystal energy". Both are described as products of the Cradle's peculiar ecologies and geologies, and there are even attempts at canonized explanations for how the player can get them.
"Mist energy" is described as the energy that any Spiral Knight can collect from the atmosphere of Cradle over time, up to 100 units. In practice, this means that the player can regain Mist Energy even when not logged onto the game. However, such a benefit may not seem generous once the player realizes how limited it is if he/she intends to remain a free-loader. There will be more elaboration on this shortly.
"Crystal energy" is the more contentious of the two. While it has been described in-game as the Cradle's "energy" in solid and stable form, it can only be obtained first-hand through purchases with real money; this is done in-game through the energy-trading Stranger known as Boost, but practically, the player can bring up the purchase screen at any time to make a purchase, with no in-game explanation for this. Crystal energy is the only one of the two forms of energy that can be stored above 100 units.
The mechanic of Energy would have been acceptable to most players if it had only been used for optional gameplay advantages, such as the Boosters for crowns, Heat and Krogmo Coins, etc., that can be purchased from the Supply Depot tab. However, it is also used to restrict gameplay for the free-loading player in many, many ways, and also give paying players a lot of advantages.
To delve deeper into the Clockworks, the player needs to pay a small fee of Energy to gain access to the next level. If the player intends to only use the renewable Mist Energy, he/she will find that a full tank of 100 units will only last for a few hours of gameplay, even if the player is careful not to unnecessarily spend it. Starting missions also require Energy. These requirements mean that free-loaders can only ever play casually, unless they have paying friends who are willing to sponsor their time in the game. Alternatively, they can always grind for crowns to purchase Energy that other players put up for sale, but it doesn't change the fact that they have been indirectly sponsored by other players anyway.
When players' Spiral Knights perish, they can be revived on the spot by spending Energy. The cost depends on the depth of the strata or the type of game mode that the players are in, but it also increases as the player character suffers consecutive knock-outs. This means that spendthrift players who are flush with energy have the opportunity to keep playing when their Knights are put down whereas free-loaders would have to make a hard choice between spending precious Energy or simply being booted back to the Haven.
Of course, Energy can be used to revive other players who do not have the Energy to do so. Normally, player characters can revive each other by giving half of their remaining health to downed player characters, but they have to do so while next to the downed ones, which further adds to the risk. Using Energy to revive other players simply remove these risks, giving spendthrift players a huge advantage in the game.
The player needs to spend Energy to unlock the more lucrative segments of certain levels. This is a less contentious restriction, as other players get to play these segments after the player has unlocked them; since players in the same team get duplicates of loot such as crowns and heat, players in the same team can split themselves up to garner more rewards, but at the obvious risk of being separated until they meet at common junctions.
Guilds are a common way for players to get together conveniently outside of the Friends system, but Three Rings has slapped a limitation on forming guilds by requiring that players pay a sizable fee of Energy (more than Mist Energy can cover) for their creation.
It is not unusual for MMORPGs to have items like rings and amulets that grant bonuses to player characters who equip them; in Spiral Knights, these items are called "Trinkets". What is unusual though is that Spiral Knights require players to purchase the right to equip these items on their characters, and even so this right is only temporary, i.e. it will expire.
The worst restrictions are those that are slapped on the procurement and disposing of gear pieces. While the game has gear up to three stars in rank available for purchase with crowns, the higher-ranked gear can only be obtained through crafting and the Auction House, and both methods directly and indirectly require the expenditure of Energy on the procuring player's part, if not the offering player's or whoever provided the Energy to do so in the first place.
Crafting not only requires the player to gather the ingredients and recipes needed, but also pay a fee of Crowns and Energy. The gear pieces of four-star and five-star ranks can demand particularly exorbitant costs of Energy, which the player either needs to purchase with real money or grind enough crowns to purchase them off the Energy Market from other players – either way, real money has been spent on the game.
If the player wishes to dispose of his/her gear by selling or giving it over to other players, or putting it up for Auction, he/she will have to unbind it; gear is bound to the player as soon as they are equipped by the player character, or are already bound by default. To unbind them, the player needs to spend Energy to Unbind them.
These restrictions on the procurement of gear and the game's emphasis on having the right gear for the right level ultimately mean that the free-loading player is effectively only getting limited access to the contents of the game. Of course, again, a player may grind for the crowns necessary to purchase Energy off other players, but ultimately, someone has to be spending real money – not to mention that Energy prices on the Market are ever increasing as they are controlled by players, and it can ever only increase due to the need to spend Energy to overcome so many restrictions.
In conclusion, Spiral Knights has gameplay designs that are theoretically balanced and sophisticated, coupled with appealing charm in its backstory and presentation. Unfortunately, the barriers set in place to directly and indirectly wean money from players who wish to advance in the game stifle the experience.