Amazed by the trailers, not by the game.
The story is simple, yet quite original and interesting; for the most part you are in control of Heinrich an immortal executioner who is assisted by the mortal witch Gretchen that Heinrich had beheaded 100 years ago. These two team up in order to stop the evil man Faust from gaining immortality.
Heinrich is very powerful in battle and never dies, he is only temporarily incapacitated, but Gretchen can die, usually at the time when Heinrich is injured, and when that happens it's game over. Heinrich is almost exclusively dependent on Gretchen's magic spells which are controlled directly by the player, but these spells are only half of the job, Heinrich must land a finisher so that the monster dies. And Gretchen is really helpless without Heinrich's strong finishers. This inseparable couple proves to be most efficient in battle, and a special bondage between these two is created through out the whole game. How much the one needs the other is shown in the levels where Grethchen fights the hordes of enemies on her own.
Grethchen herself is a very beautiful, elegant presence and an instantly likable character. Her "limit break" attacks (borrowing the term from Final Fantasy VII) really steal the show: Gretchen appears as a giant naked idol of herself literally crushing her enemies with various ways, including sitting on them with her butt, or crushing them with her inner thighs and knees, as she crosses her legs! There is no doubt for me, this is the highlight of the whole game.
And this is where the good parts stop.
Knights Contract has three big problems that put in question the whole gaming experience. Firstly, the level design in the last part of the game, with one word is annoying. Basically we have to do with maze-like nightmare versions of the levels that we saw earlier. In other words: copy-paste-edit. Not only it looks cheap, but because of the "nightmare version" of the levels, it's dark, confusing and a real pain to find your way to the exit. I wouldn't want to replay those 5 levels for nothing in the world.
Secondly, the Quick Time Events. There is no reason to elaborate. We all know how annoying they are, especially during hard boss battles. QTE have a dominant presence in Knights Contract, making the game look at least five, or six years older, back in the days of God of War. None likes QTE. Enough already.
Finally, the graphics is also a big disappointment in this game. As you start playing, one of the first images of the game is a medieval building that looks like it was taken straight out of a PS2 game! Fortunately not all images look that bad, but it's the first impression, how didn't they notice it? Generally the graphics have the quality of a 2006 game, something which is difficult to explain. Do you remember those fabulous trailers of the game in last year's E3 show? Well the actual game has absolutely no resemblance. It's rather the quite opposite I would say.
As a conclusion, in my opinion Knights Contract is an interesting game, above the average for sure, that has a lot of new and interesting aspects to offer to the player, but also quite a lot of problems that damage significantly the overall picture. Maybe it's not a good idea to pay the full price, but wait for a drop first.