The game starts off with the story of two adventurers named
Shovel knight and Shield knight exploring their land trying to collect all
kinds of rare and valuable treasures.
One night Shovel Knight and Shield Knight started exploring the tower of
fate, once inside they found a cursed amulet that displayed its evil powers
thus knocking out Shovel Knight. Once he
awoke the tower of fate had been sealed off and Shield Knight was nowhere to be
found. After losing Shield Knight,
Shovel Knight falls into a depressive state and gives up on adventuring and
searching for treasure. This allowed the
evil Enchantress and the order of no quarter consisting of 8 knights to reopen
the tower of fate and take over the land.
Once learning about the Enchantress, Shovel Knight once again picks up
his shovel and sets his sights on the tower of fate to hopefully find and
rescue Shield Knight, but in order to do that he must first defeat the 8
knights of the “Order of No Quarter” before he can even reach the tower of
fate.
I first got to play Shovel Knight back at PAX East in April
and after playing it then, I asked the developers when exactly the game was
going to be released, and regardless of what any article was saying at the
time, even the developers did not have a real idea of when they would actually
be released leaving me questioning whether I would even see this game in
2014. To my excitement the game was
released just a couple of months later in June and I could not wait to play the
final product. After playing through the
game I can tell you that all the expectations I had for the game came true and
the game gave me not just a wonderful gaming experience, but a Nostalgia factor
that really brought me back to the days of playing Mega Man and Ducktales.
The stage designs throughout the game have a strong Mega Man
influence to them but with a Castlevania/Ghouls and Ghosts theme that really
matches the scenery of the game. When
visiting the village and the armory in the game, it took me right back to when
you would play Zelda II visiting a town before heading to the next
dungeon. Even though there were no women
to invite you in their houses and “replenish” your health or magic, the town
did allow the ability to upgrade your health with meal tickets and magic by
spending all of the treasure you find throughout the game. At the armory you could buy different armor
upgrades from armor that would reduce your health but give you more magic, to
armor that with two successful down strikes in a row would let you use a strong
shovel swipe on your opponents. Once
leaving a stage or village, the world map is very reminiscent to Mario 3 as you
move from place to place and also random stages will pop up as well and the
icon on the screen represents whether it is a treasure stage or a stage that
you will fight a bunch of enemies in. Some
of them also are just boss battles that you will go through in order to reach
certain spots in the game but you get rewarded with some nice treasure.
Each stage brings its own unique challenges throughout the
game which include parts of stages in almost complete darkness, to shoveling
weird green goo into lava that creates a springy service for a short period of
time. Each stage does have a whole bunch
of breakable walls that could lead from a secret area that treasure chests
could lie in, to just an enemy popping up getting in your way. The Boss battles for each stage are much
different than any boss battle I experienced in the 8-bit days. Each Knight has their own set of attacks, but
what makes them different from 8-bit games in the past is that they do not
follow a set pattern, each battle can be completely random and the bosses can
do something different from the previous battle you had with them. The last thing about the stages that really
makes them amazing is the music. Each
stage has that classic hybrid of what you would hear in a Mega Man game along with
something you would hear from a Castlevania or Ghosts and Goblins game as
well. The music really brings respect to
the games from yesteryear and yacht club games did very well bringing that
nostalgia factor of the music into this game.
I didn’t have a real problem with the game just a couple
little things. One problem was that each
stage had a secret area that you would go into to receive a helpful weapon that
could get you through that particular stage or future stages, but that was not
the problem part, the problem part was that if you could not find the area
where you would purchase the item, if you beat the stage you would be allowed
to go into the village to visit the genie in the blue treasure chest (which is the
same guy you would find in the stages) and purchase the item right then and
there. This takes away the challenge
that old school games had with trying to collect all the items thus making the
game a little more difficult and the satisfaction of finding an item after hard
work to get it. The other problem was
that the game was very forgiving when you died, because instead of playing with
a set amount of lives and having to work with that, you would only lose some of
your treasure that if you got back to that point where you died you could get
the treasure right back making the game extremely forgiving. Other than that
the game is pretty much flawless.
All in all Shovel Knight is an 8-bit platformer that ranks
up with some of the best platformers to ever grace the video game world. Yacht Club games did a tremendous job for
their first game and I look forward to see what other games they will bring us
in the future. This is one game that I
am happy to see kickstarter help reach its goal to build the game and yacht
club respond with something truly amazing.
Shovel
Knight: 9.5-10
Phenomenal
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