Blood Knights received generally negative reviews upon release, with a large number of critics faulting the game for showing a lack of creativity and having uninteresting gameplay.

The game follows a traditional top-down and sometimes dynamic camera, as the two playable characters jump and fight enemies and get loot through the scenarios in classic dungeon crawler fashion.

Players can discover equipable weapons and armor that improves effectiveness in combat by exploring levels for chests.

Combat takes the form of set-piece battles, in which a number of enemies appear and must be defeated before the player can continue to progress through the area.

[1][2] Players assume control of Jeremy, a sword-wielding, melee-focused character, and Alysa, who uses crossbows to deliver ranged attacks.

At the beginning of the game, the order travels to a set of ruins to protect the Blood Seal, a powerful artifact, from being captured by the vampires.

The order suffers heavy losses in the attempt, and in desperation, the priest Bartholomew uses a ritual to bind Jeremy to the vampire Alysa.

With the seal removed from its resting place, the moon begins to crack apart, causing unpredictable and violent tides.

After retrieving the weapon, Jeremy is informed that the Lords of Pikehold, a group of knights that defends the area, have defeated the vampire army carrying the blood seal.

Bartholomew meets Jeremy and Alysa at the top of the mountain and informs the pair that the vampires have already summoned a powerful demon that will slaughter mankind.

When Jeremy and Alysa confront the demon, it explains that it was summoned because the humans have become too numerous, and with increased numbers, they have gone from fearing vampires to hunting them.

Klose called the game 99.9% complete, and blamed the delays on financial difficulties at dtp entertainment, which necessitated that Deck 13 become a co-publisher and take on responsibilities that the studio not planned for.

[19][B] The UK Official Xbox Magazine remarked that "Blood Knights holds as much annoyance as satisfaction",[4] while the US version of Official Xbox Magazine contended that "Blood Knights is too easy to ever become actively irritating, but its deficit of danger makes it too darn dull to hold even a devoted horror nut's attention for long".

[20] The gameplay was considered by critics to be too easy, with a terrible enemy AI that made combat unchallenging,[2][5][20] interspersed with what Henry Kelly called "painfully simple non-puzzles".

Cameron Lewis of Official Xbox Magazine US, in the summary of his review, noted that "complementary characters make local co-op effective".