User blog:TyrantRex/TyrantRex's thoughts on Shovel Knight

Note: This isn't a proper review, but rather my thoughts and opinions on the game!

I recommend listening to this while reading this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGBFDut-MgI

Background
Ah the good old Nintendo Entertainment System, who doesn't love the NES and respect how legendary it was? Well, not me... I sarted gaming around 1999, by then the NES was long discontinued and I never owned one. I do however have played a few NES games over the years, either in compilations, bootleg cartridges that I was unaware were bootlegs, occasional emulators, the such.

For as legendary as the NES is, we also have to be honest and accept that it was still a very primitive console, not just for the graphics. Even the best NES games suffered from very archaic design choices like BS difficutly spikes, cheap level design, overly punishing game over systems forcing to start the whole game over, etc. We all know this was done because most NES games can be beaten in less than an hour so they were made near-impossible levels of difficult to extend length. For kids in the 80s this was fine, but nowadays... yeah... that design philosophy is better left to rest.

Enter Shovel Knight, an indie platformer game that's advertised as an homage to the NES days, it looks like an NES game and borrows elements from the most iconic games from that era. Now, I don't have any memories of those games Shovel Knight is inspired from, I'm not a big fan of intentional 8-bit graphics on modern games, and indie games tend to be very short. HOWEVER, I do like mascot platformers, the Nintendo Switch port comes with all the DLC campaigns AND any future DLC for free, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze doesn't come out on Switch until May, and one day I found it for sale on the Eshop.

The Game
First off, I know I said I'm not a big fan of 8-bit graphics in modern games, most of the time they feel completely unneeded and they're seriously overused in Indie games, however I think it works a little better in Shovel Knight. For one thing this game came out before the overuse of 8-bit graphics and it actively works with the 8-bit theme. That being said, I'm pretty sure this was the game that began the overuse of retro graphics so eh.

The interesting thing about Shovel Knight is that it doesn't focus on any specific NES game to be inspired from, instead it draws inspiration from multiple games. The overworld map is straight out of Mario Bros 3, the 8 levels with a boss each comes from Mega Man, breakable walls hiding secret items and rooms = Castlevania, pogo stick jumping and collecting as much gold as possible is obviously Duck Tales, and the list goes on. While it borrows all those elements from these games, none are copied exactly like the originals, the game feels surprisingly original despite the obvious inspirations.

The other VERY interesting thing about Shovel Knight, is that it doesn't repeat the archaic flawed design from those games. We all saw from Mighty No.9 and to a MUCH lesser extent Sonic Mania and Yooka-Laylee that if you try too hard to be a faithful recreation of the game you're inspired by, you end up repeating the same mistakes that game did. MN9 had the same BS difficutly spikes and cheap deaths from Mega Man, Yooka Laylee had overly big worlds with empty space like Banjo Tooie, and Sonic Mania overuses nostalgia to the point that it gets very intrusive. Shovel Knight avoided this pitfall by not trying to be an exact replica of those old games, in fact it actively tries to correct many of the old mistakes from NES games.

The most important thing is that  THERE ARE NO LIMITED LIVES NOR GAME OVERS . NES games were overly punishing and filled with difficulty spikes so that you'll die, get a game over, and have to replay the whole level over again so it takes longer to beat the game. Without limited lives, Shovel Knight's levels don't have to be that punishing because it doesn't expect you to replay them over and over. The same applies to bosses, when I played Mega Man X every single boss felt like it was designed around trial-and-error and pattern memorization, even when you have the weapon they're weak against, which again was so done so you'll get a game over because you'll die a lot while trying to figure out how the boss works. In Shovel Knight bosses are rather challenging but don't autokill you if you haven't memorized every single attack they have. Sure pattern learning helps but it isn't strictly mandatory to stand any chance.

That being said the game does punish deaths and in my opinion in a very smart way. When you die you lose three bags of treasure, how much treasure each bag has depends on your total treasure at time of death. If you can reach that part of the level again you can recollect the lost treasure, but if you die again the treasure is lost forever AND you lose three more bags. This is a great system, it encourages you to try harder to recover the lost money, rewards you for beating what killed you last time, and if you die too often you'll lose lots of treasure so you can't play recklessly. This system isn't perfect though, there are times the treasure bags fly away and end up in an area impossible to reach so you have zero chance of getting them back. Still, this system is much better than "3 lives no check points die and do everything again!" Speaking of checkpoints, you have the option to destroy them for more treasure.

However there are two major outdated design choices Shovel Knight forgot to fix, neither are deal breakers but they're still worth mentioning. The first is knockback damage. Everyone who played any game with knockback damage knows how annoying it is when an enemy hits you and the knock back throws you into a bottomless pit, and that did happen a few times here. Not very often but still knockback was uneeded.

The second one is powerups. In this game you use powerups by pressing Attack + Up? This makes total sense on an NES controller because it only has A and B for buttons. But on a modern controller that's plain dumb, there are more than enough buttons on a modern controller, in fact both Y and A (Nintendo controller) are used for attacking, why not make one of them the powerup button? Actually, the devs realized this was a mistake because one of the DLC campaigns DOES use A for powerups. Now this may not sound too bad but there were many times I accidentally used a powerup in the middle of a jump, this is a problem because some powerups cancel your momentum and can get you killed if they activate while you're over a bottomless pit.

 (UPDATE:  Turns out there's an option in the pause menu to change control scheme and map the powerups to A. Now if you excuse me I'll put on an "I'M AN IDIOT" hat.)

Speaking of the DLC campaigns, they're very cool. They're based on the main bosses of the game, each boss goes through the same levels as Shovel Knight but they have their own mechanics that play very differently so levels are redesigned to accomodate, they also get their own full plots and hub worlds. It's quite impressive that so much extra content comes from mere DLC, which is good because the main game is about 5 hours long. Currently Plague Knight and Specter Knight have campaigns and another boss will get a campaign soon. I will say though, while it is cool that you indirectly get three whole games with these DLCs, that doesn't change the fact that you're playing the same levels three times even if each time is different. I'd say don't play all the campaigns one immediately after the other so you won't get burnt out.

So yeah, Shovel Knight. It's a really good platformer, I was worried about the potential NES nostalgia pandering especially after Sonic Mania, but I was surprised how non-intrusive the callbacks were.