Played this quite a bit when I was a kid and definitely had fun. Knights of the Round was one of a whole slew of beat-em-ups crowding the arcades in the early 90s, and with such plentiful (though not always high-quality) competition, it would need some kind of gimmick to set it apart.

That gimmick was not the point-based level-up system (which seems more cosmetic than anything else) - it was the inclusion of a parry in an otherwise very small moveset. It added some depth by allowing the player to gain a brief window of invincibility and counterattacking opportunity once they got the timing of enemy attacks down. In later levels, mastery of positioning and parrying is essential to survival. I only wish blocking had its own button tied to it; activating it with attack+direction made it unreliable to pull off and also rather unintuitive. (I suspect that a fair few of the reviewers here that criticise the barebones combat may not have discovered the parry at all)

While blocking is a cool mechanic that the game does build around pretty well, I can't give Knights a high score because it doesn't quite nail two things that beat-em-ups live and die on. The first is game feel - it simply feels too sluggish and stiff compared to the best brawlers of the era. But the second one is a bit harder to quantify: I call it the sense of "oh, cool!" It's not just the presentation and spectacle but also the little details that make you raise your eyebrows, smile inwardly, and continue to play and have fun with a genre that has the simplest gameplay loop ever. Beyond the amusing idea of being able to 'ration' health drops by attacking them (you swing your sword at a salad and suddenly it turns into four smaller plates, LOL), the game as a whole feels rather stodgy - playable but joyless.

This is far from a bad game... but it appears in this instance my childhood memories were embellished.