By Olivia Davies I find it hard as a video game reviewer to review bad games. The flow of jotting down your complaints can feel relatively smooth especially when you have that fire lit under you after a bad experience. But being conscious that a team of people have worked hard on a game can weigh heavily on you when the game doesn’t deliver. I don’t like to bash games but as a reviewer, it’s my job to help players know whether a game is worth their time and money. But with more and more games releasing in an ‘Early Access’ state, they ask for money for a product that isn’t done and may never be done, or in this case, may improve. That’s why I feel a bit bitter when games like Scramble Knights Online release in this state when it’s just not fit for release full stop – specifically on Xbox – and is definitely not ready for someone to buy it unless significant fixes are made. That’s not to say that the game could drastically change in the first day or week of release, but I can only give my own experience and this MMO-lite was a buggy mess for Xbox Series X|S and just isn’t a fun game underneath that mess.
To preface, Scramble Knights Online has been released as a Game Preview which is important to note. This is a game state that means the game isn’t finished and will have updates to enhance and flesh out the game. This can be a common occurrence for MMOs which are games that constantly evolve or get content to reel players back in to play again and again. However, it’s one thing to release a game preview and another to release a game that just isn’t ready for launch at all.
Lack Of Story
Scramble Knights Online doesn’t really have a narrative to follow, with a lack of ‘Main Quests’ that tell one overarching story so there’s not much to say on this front. You get snippets of worldbuilding (if you can call it that) through the quests you embark on, like raiding a bandit den and killing their leader, or helping a merchant to get to the barracks. I guess you don’t really need a story to make a good MMO, you just want to be jumping in and doing quests with buddies so I wouldn’t say it’s a bad thing. It would have been nice though to get some narratives that thread through different quests or quests that just overall make the Terracotta Kingdom feel lived in. I think the fact that Scramble Knights used to be a battle royale is the reason for a lack of narrative.
For those who don’t know, Scramble Knights Online was a 32 player battle royale for the first 3 years of development. However, after negative feedback from fans and a worry that they wouldn’t be able to sustain matchmaking through their current player base, they changed the game into an MMO-lite. They decided to focus more on having players team up to tackle ‘Zelda-like’ dungeons and play an RPG style adventure together. This pivot is probably why this game completely lacks a story element so you should bear that in mind.
Mii Maker Style Customer Customisation
Before you dive into your quests, every player will begin their journey in Scramble Knights Online’s character customiser which was decent. The game has this (what I like to call) ‘goober’ aesthetic where your character looks like a little goob, with child-like, stumpy body types. You can customise everything you’d think you’d be able to customise but the fun part about it is how you can place each feature of your face. If you’ve used Nintendo’s Mii maker, hello who hasn’t, you’ll know you can move eyebrows, lips and whatever else up and down your face which can be done here too and can make for some rather silly faces.
Home Sweet Home
After you’ve created your lil guy, you will get to know the Scramble Knights Online’s hub world where you’ll do all your classic RPG stuff like upgrading your gear, taking on quests, and more. Everything is in close proximity which I appreciated when I just wanted to do my business and jump straight into another quest, but most of the time the lobbies I would join would be so buggy I would just find prepping annoying. I’ve included some pictures down below but NPC and player models would just bug out and cover half the screen. Then every time I’d talk to the blacksmith or another NPC I would just be randomly teleported back to the spawn point so I’d have to run back and forth after every upgrade. Some items I would have in my inventory would also just be straight up unresponsive. For example some quests give you special items on completion which you can then give to the blacksmith to unlock more weapons or armour, but half the time he just wouldn’t accept them or if he did the item would just reappear in my inventory after doing another quest. There are other parts of the hub world, like a merchant and a black market you can buy and sell items with, even though the items you can buy are incredibly easy to craft.
Crafting itself is straightforward with materials being picked up when exploring the map whilst doing your quests. You can either freestyle recipes or you can pick from a list that shows what makes what once you’ve picked up the item. You’ll rely on crafting a lot more if you’re a bow user as you can craft different elemental arrows, but as a sword user I only found myself crafting potions and healing items.
Other features in Scramble Knights Online’s hub world include a PVP ring where you can participate or watch other players battle. Lobbies were never busy enough for me to witness or engage in this feature but it seemed neat. The game also hints at a homestead feature they’ll include in the future which will be nice too. Overall, the hub world is just plain and lets you do what you need to do, but the bugs and the lagging players who would join a lobby just made prep for my quests really annoying and frustrating.
Quests Unfit For A Hero
Once you’ve done what you need to do in the hub world, you can accept quests from the quest board with more opening up as you complete them. They’ll range in requests from defeating ‘X’ amount of enemies, to retrieving an artefact from a dungeon. There’s some nice range to them but some feel better than others. I only got to play around 5 quests before they literally became unplayable. This was especially in the quest to defeat Daz the bandit leader where you’re tasked to infiltrate their hideout. Enemies would simply not load in quick enough so they would be able to jump me before I even got a chance to see them swing and they would be so laggy that trying to fight them became infuriating. I would swing my weapon but the stagger/break animation for an enemy would just lag and make combat clunky. Scramble Knights Online’s combat is already incredibly spammy so this just made the whole experience feel even worse.
Whilst you defeat these bandits, you’ll also need to find keys and unlock doors through using your newly acquired boomerang to aim at switches. Very Zelda-esque. But once again, the game is SO buggy that trying to direct your boomerang to hit moving platforms was nearly impossible because they would chug across the screen. What was supposed to be a fun little puzzle, just lost all its fun instantaneously.
And that is the overarching take away from the quests in Scramble Knights Online. They are just too buggy to actually judge properly but even then underneath all the mess they are pretty underwhelming quests anyway with very simple dungeon design and missions. If I ventured deeper into the game, maybe this would have changed but there is only so much buggy mess I can withstand.
All of your quests will take place in the Terracotta kingdom which is a giant map with different areas to explore, albeit most of those areas are gated by progression so I didn’t get to explore the entirety of it. You will get to venture through different terrain and approach different settlements with citizens to talk to. You can even loot their houses for useful crafting materials. There isn’t much to the world apart from doing a quest so there’s no incentive to stick around apart from getting extra materials or grinding XP.
There are a nice variety of enemies to fight, from elemental slimes, to crabs in boxes so getting XP can be fun. My biggest problem with enemies though is how quickly they respawn. Because they have to account for other players coming past where you have just been, the respawn for them is ridiculously fast to the point where I would be completing a dungeon only for enemies to respawn half way through, making it feel repetitive and monotonous.
Spamming The A Button
As I said before, combat in Scramble Knights Online feels rather spammy but overall is fine. You get the choice of various weapons when you start the game, with your chosen one given to you for free. But you can just easily craft any of the other ones if they don’t strike your fancy. They along with armour can all then be upgraded, with a plethora of options to choose from with them costing various materials and currency to create. There seems to be plenty of customisation in what kind of warrior you’d like to be. I experimented with a bow and a sword and found as a solo player, closer combat felt better. I am normally a long range attacker but enemies will kind of pile on top of you before you can sling an arrow so it becomes rather annoying. You have access to a light and heavy attack and a block which forms a bubble around you to deflect an attack. Enemies will turn red when they are about to attack so you have a visual cue for when you need to block but executing the block can be annoying. There’s a bit of a delay when you do it and there’s a cooldown period so if you get swarmed you just get battered around the place. Obviously this game is an MMO so you are encouraged to team up with players, but I don’t really like feeling punished for not choosing this option. Combat is manageable on your own but it feels more annoying than fun at times.
Speaking of multiplayer, if you join a lobby you’ll share the map with various online players that can chip in to help on a quest. I teamed up with a couple of other players to slay some enemies which felt much more fun than doing it by myself so I do recommend grabbing a buddy. But like the rest of the game, bringing another member into the team will just make the game lag even more. Their character model will just crash in framerate when moving around, meaning that teaming up to defeat a horde of enemies can feel really clumsy. I didn’t get to try actually inviting people to my party, but I can only imagine it will feel similar.
Mouldy Visuals
Finally, we will leave on a positive note. The art direction of Scramble Knights Online is a nice one. Characters and the environment look like they are made of playdough with the skin and clothes of players looking smudged and moulded. They also have subtle moving animations that make it feel like a crafted storybook, reminiscent of Yoshi’s Crafted World or that Kirby game with the paintbrush. It adds a child-like quality to the game that was endearing and felt reminiscent of top down Zeldas and Fantasy Life.
Scramble Knights Online Verdict
I started off writing this review in a rather sombre mood as I couldn’t find many things I liked about Scramble Knights Online, but as I wrote more it made me realise it’s not even just down to taste. This game is border-line unplayable and if you can play it you’re not going to want to for very long. At a surface level, Scramble Knights Online is buggy with a hub world populated with broken character models and combat that erases its enemy models and chucks you through the digital floor. However, digging deeper to find the game the developers want to make, I’m still left with a bitter taste in my mouth. Combat doesn’t feel very intuitive and instead feels spammy, its quests are boring and surface level and the map doesn’t feel very fun. It’s one thing to release a game I don’t like though and one that is just not playable. Scramble Knights Online is entering the Xbox store as a Game Preview which is the only positive I can take away because there is still time to change, even if it is just the beginning of tackling its many bugs. But as of now, I can’t recommend this game to anyone.
If you’re looking for something a bit on the spookier side this Halloween, I just reviewed the final instalment in the survival horror trilogy Remothered, Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy. You can find the review on our website.
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Scramble Knights Online Game Preview – A Scrambled Mess
+ What works
- Can be fun when playing with others
- Hub world has things to do and is easily navigable
− What holds it back
- Combat feels spammy
- Doesn't feel fun as a single player game
- Dungeon designs feel uninspired
- Game can feel unplayable due to so many bugs
- Available on
- Xbox Series X|S · Xbox PC · Windows PC
- Developer
- Funktronic Labs
- Publisher
- Funktronic Labs
- Release date
- 26/10/2026
- Age rating
- EVERYONE 10+
- Price
- £10.59
Matt Cabral
Jordan Campbell