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Shovel Knight Review


Zera
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Intro: Greetings, folks. This is my review of Shovel Knight, the poster child for "successfully Kickstarted throwback indie game". This acclaimed title is available on all current consoles, and has sold well over a million copies. With the very real possibility that Yacht Club Games actually has a yacht now, other indie developers are trying to get Shovel Knight cameos in their own games for instant indie-cred. But is it worth digging into? (Yes, there is no escaping the shovel puns.) Since I'm a platformer aficionado and never owned an NES, I decided to purchase the Wii U version of this game and judge it on its design merits rather than nostalgia.

Presentation: Shovel Knight is a nice looking game. It's all pixel-art, but it's good pixel art. The color pallets are limited, but they are used effectively to create some vivid and memorable locales. My only problem with the graphics is that on three separate occasions I mistook an "interactible bit" for a "background decoration" and died as a result (This never happens to me normally). The 8-bit chiptune music is composed by Jake Kaufman and is quite catchy. My favorite track is the one that plays in Propeller Knight's stage, The Flying Machine. It's like nostalgia in music form!

Gameplay: Shovel Knight can run, jump, hit things in front of him with his shovel, bounce off things with his shovel, and climb ladders. And that's it! The simple gameplay is accessible and there are no tutorials to sit through. All controllers are supported, and you can even customize your button mapping. But then there are relics, which are used to add variety. Each stage contains one relic with an ability that requires magic to use. These include things like shooting fireballs, turning enemies into money, summoning a moving platform, and fishing. (Why does fishing cost magic?)

The relics can be swapped quickly with the L and R buttons, but cycling through ten of them in the midst of gameplay is messy. You can also use the - button to bring up the Sub Menu and select a relic directly, but this necessitates pausing the game. Aside from a few little bonus stages, relics are not required to beat the game, which makes their merit questionable. Personally, I would've rather had a more versatile base moveset. Shovel Knight's run speed is a bit slow, his physics are rigid, and he doesn't carry momentum from conveyor belts into jumps. Holding down causes him to slightly bend his legs instead of crouch, and pressing the jump button on a ladder makes him drop instead of jump. There's nothing broken about any of this, but with some tweaking Shovel Knight’s basic gameplay could have been deeper and more fun... without the hassle of swapping relics.

Each stage has a completely unique theme with different enemies and mechanics. The stages are long, but have several checkpoints. However, you can destroy a checkpoint to earn a significant amount of extra gold. This turns checkpoints into a gameplay-driven difficulty select that tests your greed against your survival instinct. The stages also have hidden areas with additional challenges and collectible goodies like music for the Sound Test. When you die, you'll drop 25% of your gold and have one chance to return and get it back. PROTIP: You can use your shovel or fishing rod to grab money bags.

Unfortunately, the stages aren't 100% fair. In Clockwork Tower, I decided to attack a suspiciously normal-looking wall, certain that it would contain treasure like the last 500 walls I destroyed. It did, but it also contained a vicious flying enemy that damaged me instantly. I was on my last hit point and had recently destroyed the last checkpoint, certain that I wouldn't need it again. Needless to say, I was frustrated. I was punished for acting on instincts the game taught me and non-transparent level design.

Each stage has a boss, and they range from "Pretty good" to "What is this s***". Very few attacks are properly telegraphed, but King Knight, Specter Knight, and the second phase of Tinker Knight at least have discernable patterns you can master. Then there are bosses like Plague Knight and Polar Knight, who constantly spam projectiles everywhere and don't have discernable patterns. These are some of the sloppiest bosses I have experienced in a long time.

Shovel Knight has many instant-kill hazards despite giving you a large, meaty health bar. If you fall in a pit, you die instantly. If you touch an enemy and get knocked into a pit (an unnecessary mechanic), you die instantly. If you successfully hit an enemy and get pushed into a pit (another unnecessary mechanic), you die instantly. So what's the point of having a damn health bar? Why not fill the pits with spikes that simply damage you? Now here's the cruel joke... there ARE a lot of spikes... and they ALSO kill you instantly!

The only difference between spikes and pits is that spikes can be walked on with the Phase Amulet, a nearly broken relic that lets you cheat your way through certain challenges and entire boss fights. For a mere 8 magic (out of 100 max), you get about four seconds of invincibility. It should cost at least 15 magic, maybe even 20.

Conclusion: Shovel Knight is not the renaissance of gaming some claim it to be, but it’s a respectable homage to the NES days. It can be very enjoyable thanks to its charming visuals, catchy soundtrack, solid core gameplay, and large amount of content. However, it can also be frustrating as it took too many pages out of the "How to NES" book. If I were to recommend an “old school platformer on Wii U”, I would sooner recommend Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, which is better than Shovel Knight on almost every level (literally).

7/10 (Good!)

However, while my rating for Shovel Knight is only a 7/10, my actual recommendation is higher. Due to Kickstarter stretch goals being reached, there is a free update that adds a second campaign where you play as Plague Knight. This sounds like a simple addition, but Plague Knight is so drastically different from Shovel Knight that it actually feels like a different game. On top of that, there are new cutscenes, dialogue, music, and extra areas added to the levels. This is New Super Luigi U scale DLC... and it's free. Campaigns for Specter Knight and King Knight are currently in development. To accommodate the substantial value of these extra campaigns, I have decided to add 1 extra point to my review score.

8/10 (Great!)

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