This, like ActRaiser, is another white whale of mine that I bought long ago on Wii Virtual Console but never ended up completing. I even gave this one a second try years later when I tried to get through the GBA port, but I ended up putting it down then too. I pledged to myself that this WOULD be the time I finish Breath of Fire 2, and I wouldn't let myself give up. I certainly did kinda wanna give up at some points, but after 30 or so hours and getting the best ending, I finally have beaten this game from my childhood.
Breath of Fire 2 is a 1994 JRPG made by Capcom and released in America in 1995. It follows the story of Ryu (not that one), who grows up in a small village until the day his father and sister disappear, and the entire village forget who he is. He escapes with another orphan, a dog person named Bow, and go to a nearby cave where they're attacked by a horrible monster. Following a time jump to Ryu and Bow as adults, they live in a completely different town doing odd jobs as "Rangers", and after trying to clear Bow's name when he's framed as a thief, a cascading series of events reveals that there is more to both of their destinies than either of them ever could've imagined. Breath of Fire 2 on the SNES is pretty infamous for having a pretty terrible English translation, and boy howdy is that reputation ever deserved. Characters whose names don't stay consistent, poorly localized place names, basic spelling and grammar mistakes, constantly mechanical and unnatural dialogue. They don't completely prevent either understanding or appreciating the story, but they constantly get in the way and they really made me with I had picked up the Japanese version of this on VC instead. That all said, the story that's there is pretty good. It has very strong themes around sacrifice and what it means to be a good leader. There aren't many musical tracks, but the emotional ones really stick their landing when they're used (and what's there ranges from alright to pretty good, especially some of the unique boss themes). While I certainly wouldn't recommend the game wholly on the merits of the writing, I think it really speaks to the quality of the narrative that the story manages to be quite good despite the poor localization. For what it's worth, the GBA port does improve the translation, but from what I remember, that version's translation is still bad (although there has been a fan re-translation that apparently does a pretty good job of fixing things). The mechanics are pretty basic for a JRPG. You have a party of four for battles, you have members that leave and join as the story goes on, you can swap out your favorites but sometimes you need one specifically for one section, Ryu always has to be in the party. There's a shaman-fusing system that can give certain characters big stat boosts that last until they're either killed or knocked to low health, but it's easy to miss a lot of those shamans and the game is still overall an experience that shouldn't feel very foreign to anyone who's played RPGs before. However, this game has its fair share of rough patches that can really test your patience at times. In addition to some routinely very vague signposting (whether that's an effect of the localization or if the game has always been that way is anyone's guess), the game has a really uneven difficulty curve. Sudden difficulty spikes of normal enemies and bosses are quite common, and the XP and gold you earn is relatively low overall (they even made you earn 2 or 3 times as much of each per battle in the GBA port). You will very likely need to do some grinding at some point through the game, especially if you realize too late (like I nearly did) that only Bow can learn multi-person healing spells (don't make my mistake and leave him by the wayside! XD). It's certainly not Final Fantasy III-levels of vindictively hard, but the last dungeon or two of the game is pretty damn long and can really test your patience after a while. The visual design and presentation of the game are quite nice. Given this came out the same year as FFIV, it's certainly not the best looking game on the system, but it still has some nice character and monster designs and some very fluid battle animations (especially on the big, pretty character sprites during battle). As previously mentioned, the music can get a bit repetitive for overworld and dungeon themes (to the point the game even has an option to just turn off the music, as if it expects you to put on your own music while grinding XP), but they do change after certain story events for a nice change of pace. Verdict: Recommended. Even though I really was struggling at certain points to keep my motivation up during the difficulty spikes, the fact that I'm still considering doing a playthrough of this in Japanese to see that version of the script makes me think that I liked this game more than that initial emotional response. It certainly isn't Final Fantasy (although I'd' say I definitely enjoyed this more than FFIV last year), but it's a commendable effort by Capcom that has really piqued my interest in checking out the rest of the series. If you really want a SNES RPG and want something a little bit different than SquareSoft's stuff, Breath of Fire 2 may not be the best out there, but it's certainly not a bad choice.
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This is another game I played when I was little but could never beat. I got stuck on the Sigma levels and could just never complete them. However, I was talking about it with MrPopo and Gunstar in the Slack the other day, and they mentioned how to get past the certain area I had been stuck on. I decided to use my Classic Controller Pro with my SNES Classic and give this one another go. I ended up 100%-ing it (even got the Hadouken ^w^) and beating it in a little under two hours, and I only used save states for time-saving purposes (I needed to retry Sigma quite a few times, and didn't really care to hadouken my way through the first two forms every single time XP).
Mega Man X takes place far in the future from the original Mega Man games (although who knows exactly how far). X and Zero are maverick hunters who used to work with Sigma, who has gone mad and wants to kill all the humans to make a world just for robots. The story isn't terribly important and a decent deal of the back story is in the manual (I assume, as a good portion of stuff I just didn't understand and had to infer from context). The presentation is very nice for an earlier SNES game though, and the music is absolutely excellent~ The main gimmick and difference of this game compared to the original MM series is that there are hidden power ups in each stage. Every stage has an upgrade to your maximum health, half of the eight Maverick stages have a sub-tank (no more E-tanks for you!), and half of them also have an upgrade for Mega Man's general abilities. These upgrades for his fighting abilities are one of the game's greatest strengths as well as one of its greatest weaknesses. For starters, the first upgrade you get (or rather the first one you're intended to get) is a dash move. I have never found performing the dash all the comfortable or easy to do if I need to do it in conjunction with wall climbing (another new mechanic in this game) and/or charging your weapon, even though the game does let you rebind all the buttons if you want. The bright side is, however, that that is why I used the Classic Controller Pro to play this on my SNES Mini. It made hitting the shoulder buttons way easier than the awkward way that pressing buttons on the original SNES controller works (at least when you have to hit them in conjunction with anything on the face of the controller). From a larger design element, the hidden nature of these ability upgrades really mess with the pace of the game, and they also really advantage someone who already knows where they are. If you've never played Mega Man X before, you'll likely have a very difficult time if you don't do Chill Penguin's stage first, you won't have the charge move, and doing any of the other stages will be far harder (although I think still technically possible) since the game seems to think you'll have that. You also better get all of the secret powers (hadouken aside, which is super secret on purpose, and requires all other upgrades to get, but can one-hit any boss if you get it!), because that allows you to charge your weapons other than your Mega Buster, and the invincibility granted by Sting Chameleon's charge move (among other benefits from the powers) are gonna be pretty invaluable during Sigma's stages. The secret powers are neat in concept, but they're so necessary (and I think may genuinely be necessary because I don't think you can damage Sigma without the buster upgrade, the last of the four normal ones) that them being hidden is more frustrating than fun for me. If you just look up where they are (or like me, remember where they were from watching AGDQ a couple years back ^^;), it isn't so bad, but it makes playing the game blind far more frustrating than the original Mega Man games. Verdict: Highly Recommended. I still prefer the way the classic Mega Man games work compared to X, but I still had a lot of fun with this game. It's an excellent action game I'm glad I finally went back to finish after giving up on it so many years ago. While I have the Wii U (and therefore the contents of my old Wii that was transferred into it) hooked up, I figured I would play through some of the other games I've had sitting on there for ages that I'd never gotten to playing through before. First up on the list was the Castlevania entry in Konami's ReBirth series they did for WiiWare. I picked it up back before the Wii store shut down, but I never got around to playing it until now. It took me around two hours to play through the whole thing.
I haven't played Gradius: ReBirth, but I have played Contra: ReBirth, and unlike that game, Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth is a remake of an old game rather than an entirely new one. That said, only in the scantest sense is this actually the old GameBoy game Castlevania: The Adventure. Other than some recurring enemies (like the big rolling eyeballs), your whip shooting a fireball at max power, and the protagonist still being Christopher Belmont, this is an entirely separate game (and thank goodness). There are 6 stages instead of only 4 (granted stage 6 is just Dracula, really), all of the stages have been completely reworked, and THANK GOODNESS your whip doesn't power down when you get hit. While I haven't played every one of the non-Metroid-y Castlevania games, I've played enough of them to say pretty confidently that this is both a faithful entry to those games as well as the easiest of those games by a significant margin. Part of this is due to how the game plays. You can unlock a "classic" playstyle by starting the game once (you can immediately quit and you've unlocked it) where your controls are like the NES games (namely your fixed jump), but the standard play mode is with far more play control. You can still only whip left and right, but being able to modify your jump midair, even a little, makes it SO much easier to get through. This on top of being able to choose your starting number of lives (1-9) and difficulty mode make this game a far more easily completed beast than its ancestors. It's got great music with some great remixes of old tracks, and a really pretty art style that's far more fluid and HD than the DS games of the time. It has some great new bosses, and a really excellent final Dracula fight as well. Plenty of checkpoints and a good difficulty curve to boot make this a great entry to this style of Castlevania game. Verdict: Highly Recommended. Igarashi shows he can not only do Metroid-y Casltevanias but classic-syle ones as well. This is a fantastic entry into the action/platformer lineage of Castlevania, and it's well worth checking out if you're itching for that kind of action but don't want something quite as unforgiving as the older games. This is a game I bought a veeeery long time ago on my Wii Virtual Console, and haven't played in over a decade. I got stuck on the final boss rush and gave up way back when, but Note was talking about it in the Slack chat and it inspired me to give it another try. It wasn't nearly as hard as I remember it, so I'm glad to see that I've in fact gotten a bit better at action platformers in the past ten years XD. I played it on my Wii Virtual Console with my Classic Controller Pro (which I'm loving more and more every time I use it), and it took me about four hours to finish with an ending population of 4620.
You play as the god of a world, awakened by a little angel follower of yours to save the world from the Tanzra, an evil demon lord who defeated you long ago. You go through six worlds saving the people of that world from the monsters that are terrorizing that area. ActRaiser is a balancing act of two main game modes: the action mode and the sim mode. Each of the six worlds has an introductory action platforming section to save that land from monsters on the surface, and then there is a second action platforming stage to finally rid that world of the monsters lurking beneath. There's also a final boss rush composed of the six bosses in the second action stages from each world followed by Tanzra himself. The American version's action segments were apparently made easier from the Japanese version's, and I appreciate it. For a very early SNES game, it's got a really pleasant sweet spot of difficulty where it isn't too hard but isn't too easy either (despite the controls being a little stiff). In between the two action segments in each world are a sim section where you play as the little angel follower as you shoot arrows at monsters who spawn around the map. You guide the villagers who live there to start building out their settlements from their starting temple, guiding them to each monster lair to seal it shut. Once all the monster lairs are shut, then you get the opportunity to fight the second action segment in that world. But all is not quite that simple. Each world is plagued with the monsters you must fight, but also physical hindrances you'll need to use your god powers to get rid of. Eliminating trees with lightning, drying up marshes with the sun, fertilizing deserts with rain, and even connecting islands via an earthquake. The citizens themselves also have conflicts between each other that you'll need to solve, and it often involves taking their offerings and bringing them to other settlements to solve problems like needing wool to keep warm, or needing wheat to feed themselves better than existing crops. Helping out the citizens in these extra ways is usually optional, but it's very important because of how the action and sim segments compliments each other mechanically. The more points you earn in the action segments, the higher your maximum population in that area can be. Your player level is determined by how much total population the world has, and the higher your level, the higher your maximum HP. In addition, your followers can find MP scrolls, magic spells, and even extra lives to help you get through the action segments. It may be an early SNES game, but the presentation and mechanics hold up really well. There aren't a ton of musical tracks, but what is there is really nice. While there may not be many animations, the player and enemy models are big and detailed. A really impressive bit of design for developers more or less pioneering on what then was such new hardware. Verdict: Highly Recommended. Both types of gameplay are quite simple, but that works really well for the pacing of the game. If either were more complicated, it would bog down the pacing and harm the overall experience. Both aspects may be too simple to be their own game in a satisfactory manner, but paired together like this they make for an all around very complimentary experience. It may be short, but it's well worth trying out if you like action platformers and simple strategy games ^w^ I absolutely adored the first Dragon Quest Builders when I played it a couple years ago, and was really stoked to hear a sequel was coming out. It came out in Japan a long time before it came out in English, and I was tempted to buy it but put off buying it for long enough for it to come out in English. I really like how the DQ games are localized, so I opted for an English copy (also because the English version of this game is already pretty darn cheap for a game that isn't that old). DQB was a game that I loved, and DQB2 enhances it to the point that it's sorta mind blowing just how much of an improvement it is while still feeling so familiar. I did almost all of the tablet challenges and got every achievement for the game over the course of a week. The game doesn't keep track of play time, but I'd hazard I played it at least 45 hours if not more.
Like DQB1 was based on Dragon Quest 1, DQB2 is based on the story of the original Dragon Quest 2. Hargon and Malroth have been defeated by the Scions of Erdrick, and his followers are in full retreat across the land. You play a builder who was unlucky enough to be caught in a slave raid by some of these retreating followers, but in the process of the ship's captain asking you to do odd jobs around the ship, you begin to develop a kinship with the monsters who've captured you. That is until you get caught in a horrible storm and the ship sinks. You wake up on a mysterious beach next to another unfamiliar person who wasn't on the ship. He's lost all his memory, but knows his name is Malroth. The Builder and Malroth embark on an adventure to figure out the mysteries of this strange world as well as build their Isle of Awakening into the best kingdom it can be. I really enjoyed the story and the writing for this game. It has a lot of silly puns (especially the monsters) and quirky characters but put together with a story that still has something to say in the end. It almost feels like an animated kids movie in that regard. It has some tone problems at points, where narratively some pretty serious things are happening, but the dialogue, art style, music, etc, don't really mesh well with the gravity of the situation the characters find themselves in. Despite that, it's a really sweet story about how coexistence between presumed opposites is possible, and the duality of destruction and creation. It's hardly gonna win any awards, but it was far more than I was expecting from the game, and is a really neat reimagining of the DQ2 universe (and remarkably, in a very different fashion to how DQB1 reimagines the universe of DQ1). The gameplay will be very familiar to anyone who played the first DQB, but it also has many meaningful changes that really shift how you play the game. The first DQB is very much an action/adventure game with Dragon Quest aesthetics & setting all around the mechanics of a Minecraft clone. Most significantly is how a multiplayer mode is not some sectioned off piece of content from the main game. In the first DQB, the main game was a series of stages totally separate from each other, with nothing carrying over to the next island you went to, and the multiplayer mode was a cooperative building mode that used recipies from the single player mode but was otherwise an entirely separate entity. DQB2 changes this entirely with the Isle of Awakening where you start the narrative proper. You go to a series of islands, but under the conceit of collecting new inhabitants and materials to create your kingdom on this personal island, and activities both on and off this main island make up the bulk of the game's narrative. You can invite other players over to your island to cooperatively build your island together, and you can even go off to procedurally generated extra "explorer's shores" islands to collect new materials (and if you explore those extra islands well enough, you can unlock infinite supplies of certain common crafting materials so grinding for materials like wood or string is just never a thing). I don't have PSN online, so I never tried this, but it's a fantastic reworking of how you can enjoy building with other people. Beyond that, there are a lot of other mechanical shifts as well. No longer do weapons break. Tools are a thing you always have, can be shifted between with the X button (which also sometimes means you're talking to people/activating things instead of it, but it's fine most of the time) and activated with R2. This includes a hammer to break stuff, but also a trowel to swap out blocks or put them down a bunch at a time, a bottomless jug to actually manipulate liquids (a feature totally absent in the last game), as well as other tools you'll unlock as you complete challenges on the Isle of Awakening (which themselves are all about building and crafting). Even your weapons don't break, although combat itself is largely the same from the first game. This is all on top of other things like being able to recruit and utilize monsters (for everything as a mount to a terraformer), build buildings in a way to have your villagers automate things like food production, and customize how you physically look irrespective of what weapons and armor you're technically using. The last cherry on top being that the mission design has also been refined a fair bit. It's a fantastic mechanical overhaul that I never realized the series needed until I played this, and now I can't imagine not having them (despite how much I wanna go back and replay the first game X3). The presentation is fairly similar to the first game in many ways. There's a lot of new furniture (with most all of the unused old stuff being unlockable eventually in the post-game) and block types, but also not THAT much that the game looks totally different. The aesthetic and presentation is still very much that Dragon Quest Builders-style of chibi Toriyama designs, Dragon Quest music, and blocky landscapes, and if you didn't like that in the first game you won't like them here either. I liked them, though, even if the music does get a bit old after a while (especially while story things aren't happening). Negatives are mostly little quality of life things. The fact that your inventory has been MASSIVELY expanded so you basically never need chests (you can hold hundreds of items at once) is nice, but finding things in it can be very irritating without a search feature. The same goes for finding a recipe you need in the ever-growing crafting list. The same thing being bound to the same button is also kind of a pain, particularly with how R1 is run but also "climb onto monster", which not infrequently led to me getting clobbered in the face when I was trying to flee but instead climbed onto my Sabercat's back. The game is also really weird with how it doles out certain aspects and mechanics of building on the Isle of Awakening, locking them fairly arbitrarily behind completing certain building challenges on the island. It tells you about the challenges, but not about what rewards they might actually hold. It's nothing ever super duper significant, but knowing beforehand that those were there would've been nice, and there's nothing ultimately deal-breaking about any of the game's shortcomings. Verdict: Highly Recommended. If you liked Dragon Quest Builders 1, this is an absolute must-play. It is everything a sequel should strive to be and more with how well it refines the first game's building mechanics, multiplayer mode, and quality of life features. Even if you aren't a huge fan of the building aspects (I'm not reallllly a big fan of them, but I liked putting new rooms together), it's still an excellent action/adventure game with some Minecraft-esque trappings. I would never expect Omega Force to produce a game like this, but I'll be damned if they didn't absolutely outdo themselves with this one, and I really hope they keep going with this series. I had completely forgotten that this game even existed, but when I bought Shovel Knight on Switch, I was very pleasantly reminded that that also meant that I was getting the Smash Bros-style platform fighter that was released at the same time at King of Cards (but only included in console versions of the game). This was the final stretch goal that the original kickstarter campaign reached, and at the time (wayyyyy back in 2013) I remember being really excited that even though every character in the Order of No Quarter wouldn't be getting their own game, they'd at least all be playable. The game doesn't record your time spent in the Showdown game mode like it does with the individual campaigns, so I'm not sure exactly how much time I spent in it, but my guess is around 10-13 hours to unlock all the characters and stages.
Shovel Knight: Showdown is a platform fighter bundled in with the Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove game. The narrative conceit is that, near the end of Specter of Torment, when Specter Knight is off to fight the Enchantress, his friends who also work in the Tower of Fate want to help him out. Hoping that Specter Knight will never have to fight the Enchantress in the first place, they heavily modify the Magic Mirror (which Specter Knight uses to teleport around to each of his stages) to attempt to use it to trap the Enchantress within it. This, of course, goes horribly wrong, and instead ends up trapping all of the main cast (and then some) inside this pocket dimension inside the mirror when it shatters and explodes. It's a narrative that's really just a framing device as an excuse for the fighting game, and it more than does its job. The bits of writing that are more interesting are how each of the characters has a story mode. There's a 4-player multiplayer mode where you can play with friends or against CPUs in a ton of game modes (and you can have another 4 CPUs for an 8-player match), but there's also a story mode that is a lot like the Classic mode in Smash Bros. You go along 8 stages + a target breaking bonus stage (which you do need to win to progress past, it's not optional like in Smash Bros) + a final boss to win each. On stage 3, the chosen character will bump into their rival, and then this rival is fought at the end. Each character has their own rival, and this rival is usually who you unlock when you beat the current story mode. It's only little bits of banter at their first and second meetings, but it's really fun to see smaller characters like Treasure Knight (a new favorite of mine <3) or Propeller Knight get some more time to shine in the spotlight. In total, the game has 20 playable characters (12 of whom are locked to begin with) and 29 playable stages (around 20 of which are locked to begin with, iirc). There are honestly way more characters than I ever expected there to be, and I just kept being surprised that I was STILL unlocking more of them. The main good guys and the Order of No Quarter are playable, of course, but then all the wanderers around the map, a couple normal enemies, and even an extra character who isn't even a fightable character in the base games are included. They play really differently from each other as well, which is nice considering there are generally only a few button commands for each fighter. The stages are all quite different from each other as well, and offer a really good variety of obstacles and hazards. In a really cool move, Yacht Club Games published their own simple cheat codes online before the game even came out to unlock all the content. Even cooler, there's one to permanently unlock everything immediately, and another one that does it only temporarily (in case you just wanted to play it first with a friend and then unlock everything properly yourself later). It's an absolutely brilliant way to structure the unlockables in a fighting game (especially one that is ostensibly a party game, given that this game doesn't even haven an online mode) that I really with more games would take on as a feature. There are challenges to unlock everything, but alternatively you can also just play a bunch of multiplayer, and you'll slowly unlock more stuff as you do that too. The game itself is similar to Smash Bros, but not quite. There are two base game modes: stock mode and gem mode. Stock mode is just "fight until the last person standing", but gem mode is about collecting gems that appear around the stages trying to reach the necessary target you need (first to 5, first to 13, etc). There are tons of variations on these as well, mixes and spins with different focuses on the types of usable items that appear in each stage and such, and there's even a setting in the multiplayer mode that has the game just pick randomly from the included modes (a little more than 20). It makes for a really fun experience, and I really enjoyed the more the time I messed around in just the random mode by myself. The game's balancing, is... unbalanced but deliberate. This definitely feels more like a party game than a dedicated EVO-focused fighting game, and characters feel like they play how their in-game variations would be able to fight. It's not quite Guardian Heroes, but at the same time there are some very clear ability gaps between different characters. I found most characters have pretty good equal-levels of broken-ness compared to one another, but some are clearly far worse, particularly those with worse mobility. Not all characters have a double jump (or extra jump-equivalent), which makes them far harder to play as. Ironically, even though it's his game, Shovel Knight is one of the characters I found hardest to play as as he lacks any kind of extra jumping other than his pogo-ing ability. Compared that to the Enchantress, who can hover/fly for a really long time and has several extra jumps, and there's a pretty clear disparity in mobility depending on the match-up you're looking at. There's also a fairly big move disparity between characters at times as well, with characters like Mr. Hat having basically two whole move sets since he can swap hats for a melee-focused or range-focused move set. Again, it's really silly fun since it fits into how the characters play in the actual game, but it can make certain story modes far harder than others. I imagine, if you were to get very very good, certain characters would rise even above those who seem very good and some (like the Enchantress) would end up being far worse since their attacks are so easy to telegraph and parry, but the single-player experience is quite varied as you come to grips with just how each character plays. Verdict: Recommended. It's hardly a super deep or complex fighting game, but Shovel Knight: Showdown is a great thing to pass the time as a little party game or even by yourself if you just want some casual platform fighting. The way it plays takes a bit of getting used to if you're more used to something like Smash Bros Ultimate, but it has a really mind-blowing amount of content given that this is a free update that was just a kickstarter stretch goal. They didn't need to go nearly this above and beyond for this game, and I have to give it props for just how well it succeeds in doing what it's doing, even if it's far from perfect as a stand-alone product. As an addition to the Treasure Trove, it's an excellent experience. My Shovel Knight replays come to a close as I wrap up Specter of Torment. Specter Knight's campaign was what I would've called my favorite until this session of replays. Now I'm not sure quite what to think, given how much I've enjoyed all of them X3. It took me around four and a half hours to complete the game and get all the collectibles.
Specter of Torment isn't a side story, but a prequel to the main game. As a servant of the Enchantress, Specter Knight must travel throughout the land to recruit the members of what will become the Order of No Quarter. Throughout, he is haunted by memories of a tortured past of how he came to be in these circumstances in the first place, and has to choose what he is ultimately fighting for. Specter of Torment still has its silly and lighthearted moments, but it's certainly the most serious and somber out of the four campaigns in Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove. The construction of the game itself is also quite different from the other expansions. Instead of a kind of post-level shopping center (or a main village like Shovel of Hope has), Specter of Torment doesn't even have a world map. You operate out of the Tower of Fate (the Enchantress' base), and while you can talk with the NPCs there to upgrade your equipment and play a mini-game or two, you also talk to the magic mirror's operator, who gives you a list of playable missions. There are no side-levels like in the first two campaigns, but you can play any of the 8 main stages in any order you like. Certain ones have higher bounties than others, implying a kind of intended order of play, but the ultimate choice of in which order to do most stages is up to the player. The music is also pretty drastically remixed, and I prefer it significantly over the first two expansions' soundtracks. Also a first for the expansions (which King of Cards would later continue and expand on further) is no more reused levels. Specter Knight plays very differently to Shovel Knight and Plague Knight, as he has a wall run as well as a homing slash. The levels are sorta familiar and have some areas to them that are recognizable to a point, but they've been drastically altered and added to to make them compelling and challenging to operate with this new set of controls. There's been a few new bosses added, but just as in Plague of Shadows and King of Cards, the new fighting mechanics you have to use make old fights feel as new as ever. The sub-weapon system is even changed again, with it being a bar that refills as you do combos to enemies or do pick-ups (and in hard mode your mana bar and health bar are the SAME THING, so you need to constantly be going fast and doing combos just to stay alive). I really love how Specter Knight's combat plays. It has a really fun fluidity and tempo to the action given by his homing strikes, and it makes for really satisfying boss fights. Verdict: Highly Recommended. I think I might like King of Cards just a little bit more than Specter of Torment, but I still love this expansion a lot. The mechanical action and level design feel great and are some of the best in the Treasure Trove. The writing may not be my favorite, but damn if this isn't an impressive piece of modern retro platforming goodness. The Shovel Knight-palooza continues, but on a new console! My hands were really starting to cramp after so many hours holding the NEW 3DS XL, so decided to spring for a Switch copy of Shovel Knight to give my back and hands a rest from using the 3DS so much ^^;. It's been a little under 2 years since I last played Plague of Shadows, so it's way fresher in my mind than Shovel of Hope was. That said, it was still surprising just how much about it I'd forgotten. It took me a little over 5 hours to beat the game on normal mode and getting all the collectibles.
This is not a prequel, but an alternate story telling what Plague Knight was doing in the meanwhile of Shovel Knight's quest to rescue the kingdom from the Enchantress. He wants to brew a potion of ultimate power, and to do that he needs to steal the essence of all of his "friends" in the Order of No Quarter. Plague Knight is a really eccentric character compared to someone a bit more muted like Shovel Knight, and the wacky way he views the world and interacts with people is a fun window with which to view this sideways glance into the world of Shovel Knight. Out of all the expansions, I'd say this one has the strongest writing, as Plague Knight's quest and what the actual ultimate goal is may not be the most original story in literature, but the way its told here is a really sweet counterpart to the bittersweet twist of the original Shovel Knight. This being the first expansion of Shovel Knight's eventual three, Plague of Shadows exists in a weird middle ground of "new but not quite that new" content. Plague Knight himself plays radically differently to Shovel Knight. Where Shovel Knight is more about pogos and jumps and slashes, Plague Knight has no use for traveling along the ground. Just as his boss fight does in Shovel of Hope, Plague Knight has all sorts of bombs he can throw to attack. More than just attacking, however, he also can charge his main attack to do a detonation on himself that sends him flying for a ton of extra distance, and that's in addition to a small double jump. This new method of platforming takes a while to get used to and can be really daunting at first, but luckily one of the first power ups you can buy is something that gives your explosive burst jump less damage power but a slow hovering fall after instead of a hard drop to the ground. You can get all sorts of sub weapons (which this time work on a recharging mana bar rather than Shovel Knight's meter bound by mana pickups) as well as tons of different blast jump effects, fuse timers, bomb types, and explosion effects. You can also hold R to quickly freeze time and toggle between these different main attack varieties. It can be a bit of a pain doing these toggles all the time to deal with different enemies, and it would've been really nice if you could've used the ZR and ZL buttons to toggle between presets or something. However, given this had to be a game that would work on the original 3DS (which lacked such buttons), the absence of such an option is understandable though unfortunate. All that said, the main reason I think all of these different types of weapons are at your disposal and can be swapped between at any time are as much an addition of necessity as they were a creative design choice. Plague Knight for the most part (aside from a few optional side-stages) has almost no levels crafted specifically for him. He's going through all of Shovel Knight's stages from Shovel of Hope, but with some slight changes here and there to incorporate using Plague Knight's bomb jumps. Even the bosses are largely exactly the same with only a couple new additions (although with how different Plague Knight has to fight them, that is a pretty insignificant lack of change compared to the lack of new levels). Even the music is mostly reused from Shovel of Hope, or the remixes are very similar (they seemed largely exactly the same to me). The lack of new stages isn't entirely bad, as I dread to think just how incredibly difficult custom-crafted stages would be if they really took advantage of just how much you can do with Plague Knight's platforming abilities, and they do feel quite different to go through given how different your mode of travel is. This is yet another aspect of Treasure Trove's earlier campaigns that look bad more in retrospect than in and of themselves simply due to how much more ambitious the later two expansions were. Verdict: Highly Recommended. It may not have changed that much from Shovel of Hope, but that doesn't ultimately matter that much. Aside from just being a free bit of content in Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove in the first place, Plague Knight's new attacking and platforming abilities breathe new life into old stages and boss fights in a way that isn't immediately obvious when you look at how little has been changed on paper. It may not be my personal favorite out of the Treasure Trove, but it's still a fantastic 2D action platformer well worth your time. I hadn't quite kicked the urge for more Shovel Knight after finishing King of Cards, so I decided to just start replaying all the campaigns. It's been since Shovel Knight came out back in 2014 since I last played the original campaign, so I was long overdue for a replay of this game anyhow. This is technically my third time through the game, as back when it first came out, I didn't realize that the other campaigns weren't done yet, and thought maybe you unlocked them by beating hard mode XP. It took me a little under 5 hours to 100% all the collectibles and beat the game on normal mode.
Shovel of Hope is the original story of Shovel Knight. After his companion Shield Knight fell in battle to the curse of an ancient medallion, Shovel Knight went to live in isolation and grieve. But now the evil tower has reopened, and the Evil Enchantress with her Order of No Quarter seek to rule the land. It's up to Shovel Knight to set out and save the kingdom from their evil doings! The banter between Shovel Knight and the various members of the Order of No Quarter is fun and silly, as are the townspeoples' interactions with Shovel Knight (who doesn't talk all that much, comparatively speaking). There's less overall dialogue compared to the later campaigns, but given that this is the first one, it's an understandable shortcoming. While on the topic of presentation, the graphics are as pretty as they've ever been, but the music is probably the weakest of the 4 games (again, an understandable shortcoming). Then, that may just be the result of me being more familiar with this soundtrack compared to the other 3 campaigns. The last bit of presentation I'll mention is something I think was added around the time Shovel of Hope was given it's own subtitle (and not just called "Shovel Knight"), but I had completely forgotten about. You have the option at the start of the game to change both the gender of any of the main cast of characters (Shovel Knight, Shield Knight, and all the main bad guys). Even cooler, this can be selected individually for each character's body presentation AND the language used for them (pronouns, basically). Male bodies with male pronouns, female bodies with neutral pronouns, male bodies with female pronouns, anything is allowed and can be changed via the pause menu at any time. It's a really cool feature that I was really jazzed to see put in a game like this ^w^ The gameplay is the NES homage action platformer Shovel Knight has become so famous for. A short-ranged melee attack combined with a NES Duck Tales-style downward pogo strike make up the bread and butter of your attacks, and you can also find Castlevania-style sub-weapons to use as you progress that you can use by expending what are basically a stand in for Casltevania's hearts. It's honestly really annoying that the sub-weapons don't have their own dedicated button and you have to use the attack button + up on the D-pad to use them. HOWEVER, since Yacht Club Games are so smart, they put in the ability to make the older campaigns play like the newer ones, with the sub-weapons having their own dedicated button instead of that old button combo! It's been polished up a bit since the original release, and it's still a really solid action game that takes place over a series of over a dozen stages, each with their own boss encounter at the end (aside from a couple side-stages with no bosses). The only real downside to Shovel of Hope is how much it's been overshadowed by the successive Shovel Knight games in what is now the Treasure Trove pack. Compared to Plague Knight's explosive bomb throwing and jumping, Specter Knight's wall running and homing slashes, and King Knight's shoulder charges and spinning jumps, plain ol' Shovel Knight's simple slashes and pogos feel REALLY slow to go back to. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but after knowing how fun the later Shovel Knight campaigns are, Shovel of Hope left me wanting a little bit more with its action elements. Verdict: Highly Recommended. It may live in the shadow of its three sister campaigns, but the original Shovel Knight is still as good as it ever was. Though it's a bit simple, it's an easier game overall as a result of this simplicity, and it makes for a really nice entry-level adventure for Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove. It's not the best Shovel Knight game, but the competition in that department is so damn stiff, that being so close to the quality of those games is still a really impressive achievement. The end of last year brought us, at long long last, the final expansion to the base Shovel Knight game that the original Kickstarter promised. They really saved the biggest (and best?) for last too! King Knight's prequel campaign is one of the most different of the campaigns, and has proven that Yacht Club Games really can keep teaching an old dog new tricks. I spent a good few hours trying to just grind for the last of the playing cards, but all in all it took me 13-ish hours to 100% the collectibles.
King Knight is a foolish momma's boy and a selfish simpleton, but he's utterly driven by his desire to be a real king and not just some guy with armor still living with his mother. There's a tournament for the hot new card game Joustus going on, and whoever wins it will be declared King of Cards! All they need to do is defeat the three Joustus Judges. Seeing an opportunity for greatness, King Knight sets out on his entirely selfish and silly quest with his armor full of gold polish and his head full of hot air. Where the original Shovel Knight was a fairly typical but silly adventure homage to old games, Plague Knight's story was a silly but sweet side story to his tale, and Specter Knight's story was a bit more serious and somber at times, King Knight's journey is very much focused on being silly. King Knight is a selfish jerk and the game really doesn't bandy that point about as it continuously puts him in situations where he'll embarrass himself. Yacht Club's usual writing is as top notch as ever, and the story elements are very entertaining despite their ultimately surface-level importance. The game Joustus, mentioned in the story isn't just for fun. It's an actual card game you can play against all kinds of opponents (over 40 different opponents) during the story if you want to. It's entirely optional to partake in it, but there's good fun to be had if you decide to. Joustus revolves around cards with arrows on each of their four edges. You place cards on a small board, trying to get them underneath specific gems that start out placed on the board. The thing is, you can't place your cards directly on them. You need to push your cards under the gems, and your opponent is trying to do the same thing. There's a lot of strategy involved with it, but the game ultimately has a fair bit of power creep with many later cards just being outright better than earlier cards. I'm sure there is SOME strategy to be used with the weaker earlier cards, but that is never a level of strategy needed to beat the in-game opponents. It's a fun diversion from the main action, and has a lot of pretty art to go with it. The main action itself is as excellent as ever and mixed up once again. Where Shovel Knight had pretty standard platforming, Plague Knight propelled himself with bombs, and Specter Knight could home in on targets, King Knight has a shoulder charge not unlike Wario. Quite different from Wario, however, is that King Knight launches himself up in the air once he hits an opponent or a normal wall (there are some walls that he just bounces off of lightly, very similarly to how there are some walls that Specter Knight can't climb on). It takes a little getting used to through the first few stages, but it's a really interesting new way of maneuvering that really makes King of Cards feel like an entirely different game. To go with these new movement mechanics are an entirely new set of levels, but many of these levels are just reaching the end of a stage with no boss at the end. Many of them even have hidden exits to unlock more stages, kinda like Super Mario World. The other members of the Order of no Quarter are just world map-roaming encounters without their own stages (for the most part), and the Joustus Judges are your real opponents to look out for (as you just defeat them in combat rather than at cards). Similarly to Specter Knight's campaign, you also have a home base of sorts where you can purchase upgrades and chat with characters you've gathered along the way. It's a nice convenence for a one-stop-shop for your upgrades, and it's where you can play Joustus with characters outside of the Joustus dens on the world map. The graphics for the stages are the standard Shovel Knight-fare, and that is to say they are as beautifully animated as ever. The music is absolutely fantastic though. I don't have a brilliant memory for the old Shovel Knight music, but there was never a time I wanted to turn on anything but the in-game sound because the music is always so excellent. Verdict: Highly Recommended. Shovel Knight's main adventure may finally be coming to a close, but dang did it go out with a bang. All 3 extra campaigns are included as free downloads with any physical copy of the game, so if you like retro platformers and somehow haven't picked up Shovel Knight yet, there's never been a better time. I can't wait to see what's next from Yacht Club games, as Shovel Knight has proven that they really know how to deliver on the projects they're passionate about. |
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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