Knights of Fiona Review: Jack Of Some Trades, Master Of None

Knights of Fiona brings nearly every element of a typical JRPG to VR while exposing the challenges the genre presents when translated to virtual reality.

I have been playing JRPGs my entire life, starting with the first Final Fantasy in the ’80s through Persona, Xenoblade Chronicles, and the Trails series today, just to name a few. I offer this qualifier to start this review of Character Bank’s Knights of Fiona so you understand that my words come from a love and appreciation for both mediums. I want this to work, which is all the more disappointing when Knights of Fiona doesn’t.

The game starts with stylized opening cinematics detailing the war-torn history of the land of Gallia. This is presented with a striking red-on-black presentation, followed by the introduction of the lead protagonist who is not the player character. The titular Fiona is a seventeen-year-old girl serving as the typical “chosen one” fantasy stories have built around for years and you play as one of her knights, a passive background character in this fantasy story. The paid Story Pass add-on has five chapters, with a sixth due out before the end of 2026.

The central town square itself is lovely, but I cannot say the same for the bland battle environments. They are not bad. There is just nothing to them. The town, as nice as it looks, is sadly not fully open to explore. There are a half dozen designated areas to shop, trade (only for paid players), collect achievements, and select your next quest. You get to these areas via signposts in the town square with a fade out and in on a button press to enter. The music, however, is very good. RuinsMagus, a previous Character Bank title, has an excellent musical score and while Knights is not on that level, I will still be picking up the soundtrack.

Trying To Please Two Different Player Types

After RuinsMagus had you traversing dungeons in ten-to-twenty-minute runs, Knights of Fiona cuts this combat time to a few minutes, excluding boss fights. You load into an arena-like environment to dispatch several waves of enemies, usually in less than three minutes, and the mission is over. That’s it. Rewards are distributed on the victory screen, then off to the next mission. It plays more like Thirdverse’s Soul Covenant, which had similar arena battle-style missions, than RuinsMagus. Given the combat itself is mostly a pedestrian affair with weightless weapons and standard block/dodge and attack mechanics, this shift to quick arena battles feels like a step back. Also, because you have to keep selecting new missions every few minutes, expect a lot of loading screens.

Knights of Fiona feels like it badly wants to be a free-to-play title. The short missions, constant rewards, in-game shop, and quantity-based achievements all feel very free-to-play coded. Even the cinematics count as a mission completion, victory screen and all, but uninterested players will simply button-mash to speed through the dialogue and get the completion check.

On the other hand, the spliced missions and cutscenes as a whole form an interesting story with different personalities, interpersonal relationships, and world-building that fantasy gamers would likely enjoy over twelve hours of main story. Combined with weapon customization and progression systems, there’s a good, lengthy (by VR standards) JRPG experience here. However, the start-and-stop combat loop may grate on that crowd.

It feels like Knights of Fiona wants to have two target audiences, but the preferences of one may hurt the attractiveness of the end product for the other.

Hitting All The JRPG Tropes

The overall vibe of Knights is not going to be for everyone. The time from the first cinematic and mandatory tutorials to the first official mission in the game is nearly twenty minutes. To be fair, this is very typical of a JRPG. As a genre, these games are usually slow starters. The scenery-chewing voice acting is often over the top. Cinematics can veer into a silly direction. There are a lot of names, races, and lore to keep up with right from the start. Your health and stamina persist as a UI element on the screen and hitting an enemy pops up a damage number. As a lifelong fan of the genre, I expected all of this and enjoyed every bit, but it is an acquired taste. If you are not into JRPG-like fantasy games, Knights of Fiona is not changing your mind.

Gripes about the combat aside, the weapon loadout and party building are terrifically executed. Weapons have different stats, charged attacks, and secondary functions. A shop in the town allows you to reassign functions from one weapon to another, in essence making custom weapons. You collect glyphs from books discovered throughout the game that offer buffs to your character. Each has a point value with limited points to spend that increase as you level up. A restaurant in town has dishes that grant temporary buffs. The progression and loadout systems are genuinely well designed.

Then there are the bugs. Thankfully, nothing that prevents progression or soft locks the campaign. Just sloppy little inconsistencies that weighed on me the longer I played.

• The game is voice-acted and subtitled in Japanese and English. However, some of the English subtitles do not match the spoken dialogue.
• Some of the Japanese, like the names of at least two bosses, is not translated into English when they flash on screen.
• There are multiple typos in the subtitles, including the name of a fairly important character when they are introduced.
• The English dialogue sometimes cuts off, missing the last few words and advancing to the next character’s line instead.
• Sometimes the voice lines for AI party members stack on top of each other, doubling up the same line. In one mission, I had an ally go down and still keep speaking as if they were attacking.
• There would randomly be a slight delay using the bow and arrow. You aim, fire, and a full second or two later, the arrow actually shoots off, usually missing the target that has already moved.
• The skip cutscene button selectively works. If I was defeated and had to replay a mission, none of its cinematics were skippable. The ‘skip’ countdown would get to zero and the scene would continue on, ignoring my controller input.
• After customizing my character, including changing the skin color, the original default hand models show up in some cutscenes, but not in others.

Knights of Fiona Review – The Final Verdict

Knights of Fiona feels like it wants to serve two masters: the free-to-play crowd and those seeking a layered fantasy campaign. These two play tug-of-war, resulting in a final product that is constantly at odds with itself and thus not truly great for either group. Ultimately, it lands right in the middle, with some satisfactory elements offset by bland combat on the battlefield.

Since it is free-to-start, I recommend at least giving Knights of Fiona a try if you are into fantasy action games to see if there is enough there to keep you interested.

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