Shovel Knight

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li0li
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Joined: Sat Oct 02, 2010 2:42 pm

Shovel Knight

Post by li0li »

So unbalanced. I would say it's an improvement over the NES classics, but it still borrows way too much from them. Knock back is a terrible mechanic and should never be used in any video game. I got the armour upgrade to reduce knock back but then they put in this bullshit auto-move instead. The amount of times I fell off platforms because of that stupid bullshit.

The checkpoint system is also dumb, in a game like this you should just respawn at the start of the screen, instead of having to re-do challenges that you've already completed. These are huge flaws but apart from them there are a lot of cool mechanics (some which could've been used more often) and when the game isn't being bullshit it's fun.

However when I say unbalanced I mean it doesn't follow the human interest arc, the second level is really bullshit, the worst level of them all, but then the game mellows out for a couple of levels and is at its most entertaining for like the 3rd to 6th level, then later the final boss is a complete walkover. It looks like they didn't test the game enough, which is perhaps understandable as its an indie developer, but the game did well, they could've gone back over it to fix at least the balance issues.

The player moves too slow, it happened a lot in the first two levels that an enemy or enemy bullet moved too fast for me to dodge because I moved too slow. The attack distance is also too slow, for the spectre knight boss he comes within a certain distance, which is just perfect to be out of reach when you jump at him and swing. There are other enemies too where you're expecting the shovel to hit them and instead it just misses.

There are other bullshit parts though, especially the bosses where there are often just tons of shit flying at you at once, going in arcs and moving too fast for you to dodge. It's empowering to have bullets moving at you in a predictable way which you can dodge and then attack the enemy at the same time in a fluent movement, it's just annoying when you have to just run in, keep mashing the attack button and just hope your health lasts long enough to kill the boss, all the while getting knocked back and put in impossible situations.

Basically, the game just repeated too many mistakes from the NES era rather than learning from them. It's a while since I played it so my memory could be flawed, but AVGN Adventures 1 and 2 were games which got this right, they''re really well balanced, they use the good retro mechanics while updating the gameplay to make it faster. They make it seem like you have a huge challenge ahead of you but then actually you're able to beat it and you feel empowered and satisfied as a result, like you achieved something, not like you just endured something. And AVGN Adventures are probably harder than Shovel Knight but a lot more satisfying. Most bosses with Shovel Knight I beat in one or two goes, but I still felt really pissed off after a lot of them, with AVGN Adventures I remember dying and dying and dying to the last boss, but I just kept going with it until I beat him, that's the mark of a good game, the one where you don't even think about starting again, you just hit the continue button immediately, it's just automatic and before you know it, you've spent like an hour or more playing. With Shovel Knight, after each level or checkpoint I thought to myself 'will I go on or is this too annoying?'.

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