Shovel Knight's Specter Knight campaign dropped today. I was sort of looking forward to it after the Plague Knight campaign which was enjoyable but had a lot of its own faults. I was hoping after feedback from two campaigns the devs would be able to really knock the third one out of the park. They didn't, it's really a disappointing piece of shit.
The base campaign got some criticisms for being too easy from a lot of people but I felt the difficulty was in an alright place, the movement mechanics were enjoyable, the levels and bossfights had good identities and overall it was just a really enjoyable experience. In comparison to that Plague Knight's campaign felt pretty underdeveloped with most of the levels being completely identical to the originals with only a few new side areas and some minor changes to account for the bomb jump being a lot less interesting than the shovel bounce. Bossfights were pretty much all the same too though they felt very different because of how different Plague Knight's attack system was.
I'm only two levels into Specter Knight's campaign, but so far it's all been worse than either of the other two. The level designs are still pretty much the same as the originals but with more bottomless instant-death pits or autoscrolling sections presumably to address the complaints about it being too easy. The platforming still isn't what I'd call difficult, or at least I wouldn't if Specter's new platforming moves didn't suck gallons of cock, but there's a lot more random sudden death and repeating areas. The wallrun ability feels wonky as shit and tends to stick you to shit you don't want to stick to and the ranges to be able to use the airdash attack seems to change randomly based on the target. Both bossfights I've tried, King Knight and Tinker Knight, have been pretty similar but like the levels have randomly added instant death pits and Tinker's second form becomes an autoscroller for some reason with his robot breaking platforms which makes the already fucked up wallrun function even more fucked up. They ditched even having an overworld map too, you just pick levels from a list in the hideout and automatically teleport to them which not only kills a lot of the feeling in the world but probably means every level and boss is tuned to be the same difficulty which probably means more random instant kills added to every level.
TL;DR the new expansion fixes none of the problems the last one, and the character feels shitty to control, and it feels like they bought into the handful of dumb articles calling them "the dark souls of retro sidescrollers" or whatever because every level is 50% instant kill pits now. But hey, at least you can hand pick whether each character uses male or female sprites and male or female pronouns now, isn't that something?
I just can't stand the "lolsorandumb XD" designs of this game. The platforming and stuff is OK, and some of the writing and the puns are admittedly good, but goddamn does the random suck so much ass. Shovel Knight is OK, but it's no Oniken.
Blake Murphy
It's made by a bunch of SJW's who fluked the original, who'd of thought they didn't know how to actually make a game.
Jeremiah Bailey
user I played two levels as well and enjoyed it. It's sorta like a cross between Shovel Knight and NES ninja gaiden. The Gender swap shit is stupid but you can take it or leave it. Overall its not bad tbh.
William Mitchell
that was an extremely fast response user
James Baker
Which two have you done? If not the same two then maybe King and Tinker just got shitty remakes.
Henry Lee
Didn't this game have a sexy gryphon?
Michael Brown
I found it more analogous to the PSX Mega Man X games' Zero gameplay than anything else, but I see what you mean by Ninja Gaiden. Genderswap shit is goofy fun if you take it completely at face-value.
Camden Gutierrez
Reported "NO ARM" for RDM'ing. Hey no arm I'm going to get you banned from this server just so you know. I got an admin coming to this server right now as we speak and I have you recorded, so you better leave.
Owen Reed
the intro stage and Litch Yard. I also picked up the armor that lets you ride your scythe like a skateboard. I'm not a huge fan of Shovel Knight to begin with but for free content it's comfy.
Brayden Scott
Holy shit, even the music is worse, I tried doing mole knights level and it sounds like they ran the old mole knight stage music through a machine with Parkinson's.
Mason Gonzalez
I'm just before the last level and I have to agree with you becoming much more frustrating. The only reason I didnt die as much is because I was using one of the cloaks that allowed you to retry your jump with a mana/health penalty. After that, I found myself making too many mistakes. I lost about 20000 gold in the second to last level.
I somewhat like the faster music. The levels haven't been bothersome because most of them feel similar to the base campaign, yet they are pretty nicely built around the scythe mechanic. However, they have the same problem that Plague of Shadows has: you rarely die from any damage now, since your death are mostly caused by platforming mistakes, which make Plague Knight a bit similar in the regard where you don't wanna go into certain spot and misclick, sending you to your doom. I've died about 10 times before getting to the last boss because Specter Knight can barely recover from shit. Even then, the only thing that made it enjoyable was the easy mode cloak. I don't see any use for the other cloaks, nor I've found tremendous use of the relics. Perhaps I'm too much of a purist. For any anons who want to design a platformer, never have one of your characters have more extra jumps than others, It screws up your muscle memory for when you have a mediocre jump height. I'll go back and finish it and tell you what I think. It's not perfect, but it's not terrible.
David Campbell
It already dropped a month ago. You could say "it dropped for an actually good device instead of a meme machine" or something, but don't pull some revisionist bullshit.
Landon Miller
Did it really? I knew it was getting some kind of Switch release that may or may not have been exclusive and early but I hadn't heard anything else about it so I just assumed I'd misheard or that hadn't happened yet.
I also went for the retry cloak though it doesn't seem to work for shit in the autoscroller areas, sometimes it puts me way up ahead of where I was and sometimes it just gives up trying and lets me die. So far all the relics are just generic attack things without much use, the claw and the shield seem maybe okay but I've used the healing thing the most to try and recover after falling and having the retry cloak set me to 1 health.
Jeremiah Perez
It was one of those timed exclusive shits, they also made it so you could either buy it for 10 bucks or buy everything including the future king knight campaign for 25 dollars. I honestly have no idea how you somehow missed an entire month's worth of people uploading content everywhere, unless you only browse Holla Forums. That would explain it, the only person I know here that for sure has a switch is the BO.
Chase Rivera
Alright, I did it. 98% item completition. About 24 deaths in the last autoscroller section compared to the 60 I had: Every boss is different from SK and PoS at least. Legit spoilers below. >Reize becomes evil apparently >Specter Knight has a friend >They fight shield knight over the phase locket (or some locket, idgaf >They win, but Specter AKA Donovan punches his friend, Luan for the prize, not sure if he died or not >Fast forward, Reize comes to stop Specter Knight >Enchantress makes him evil >Specter knight gives no fucks about it >Later in the game >Beat Enchantress, batlle isnt much more different than before >"ILL LET THE AUTISTIC OC FINISH YOU UP, LOL" >The final boss fight is a skateboard railing part >are you fucking kidding me >superman.mp3 >Second phase isn't even lengthy, special or memorable. >felt more like a second-to-last boss phase >big reveal, reize is the son of the friend of specter knight >specter knight saves him while offering his loyalty to enchantress >when gave less than a femtofuck about him becoming evil in the first place >mfw he took care of his friend's son >mfw plague knight was better. even with the difficult learning curve >mfw the expansion fell short
It's okay, but no cigar. Falls flat compared to plague of shadows and the main campaign.
Elijah Rogers
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Jonathan Barnes
Really if you want a clear-cut way to figure out somebody doesn't have a Switch, look for shitposting about the lacking library or claiming it's not powerful enough to run anything, or really any crowing about how doomed it is.
Parker Ross
Beat it just half an hour ago.
I like the wall-running and slash-dashing, it's really fun. Chaining slash-dashes together was fun as hell. Scythe-grinding is really cool but honestly only useful in like three rooms, the level design doesn't do much for it. Story fucking sucked. Reizen is dumb, Specter goes from "I don't give a shit" to "I WILL THROW AWAY MY LIFE" for a reason that isn't revealed until literally the last minute. Body swap is dumb.
IMO Plague > Shovel > Specter, but I wouldn't really say I hate Specter, just that vanilla and Plague were better. King Knight when?
Jeremiah Clark
Christ I really can't get over the scythe and wall run shit, it just feels so awful for game flow and it's particularly egregious in that stupid climbing challenge in the tower base It actually feels like I'm doing platforming significantly slower and have significantly worse combat options than I was as Shovel Knight since when you're just jumping and bouncing you don't have to worry about hitting the bounce input a fraction of a second too early or too late and plummeting to your death, or having to try and guess when you're close enough to bounce on someone because you can clearly see the arc of your jump but the dash indicator doesn't show up until you're practically right on top of some objects.
Aiden Turner
is the skate cloak any good?
Juan Johnson
shit taste, tbh.
Isaac Sanchez
Most of the maps dont have a good structure for you to rail and style on. Perhaps you can use it for speed in certain sections, but youll fall short in the lengths which you can use the cloak's ability. If you unlock everything, sure. I really don't think any of the other cloaks are better either, except the retry cloak.
Levi Anderson
with this campaign it's become abundantly clear that Yacht Club fluked the original game. Plague was only good because it was what the original game should have been.
Ian Johnson
Guys it's out on GOG so I assume that there's a torrent available.
Link to torrent?
Grayson Sullivan
I've only played a couple of levels but I can't really be bothered to continue, I guess it just doesn't grab me anymore.
Kek, I would to have been a fly on the wall when this was decided.
Tyler White
it's pretty radical but not very useful
Ethan Bailey
I wish they had just put it in without the big fucking preachy blogpost about how [CURRENT YEAR] things are and how we need to treat tumblr snowflakes like a legitimate oppressed group.
Levi Richardson
Is it the same one that's in all other Kickstarter games?
Wyatt Turner
I just looked him up because I was curious and he's only in this and Valdis Story, I just found a wiki page that the OC creator dumped all his info on, which was surprisingly not the trainwreck I was expecting, just old online RP brand autism. seizui.wikidot.com/reize-seatlan
Jonathan Butler
He spends money like a furry, though; commissioned theme music for his OC, managed to even get one of those old school square rpg composers to do shit.
Jeremiah Lewis
Scratch that. The rail cloak does add speed for the goddamn tower challenge. Using it was the only way for me to beat it. It took me dozens of tries, got nothing, except for 7000 gold earned from multiple failed runs, just to earn a measle 1700 as a prize. Fuck this game.
Hudson Evans
>suddenly having fun tearing through enemies with that Judgement Rush Felt like a goddamn maniac once it clicked for me.
Story is still shit, though.
Logan Scott
And any intention I had to play it just evaporated.
Oliver Long
There's a gender swap mode now but all the best porn will still remain gay
That aside, I already own the game, so no harm in trying Specter Knight's thing, I guess.
Dylan Long
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Angel Gonzalez
what do you get if you collect all the skulls and beat that one guys challenge?
Carter Hughes
Donovan's Garb for skulls. Just an achievement and a lot of money for the tower climb.
Joseph Harris
You can only claim this after beating the game due to the last two skulls being placed there for whatever boneheaded reason, but you get a Donovan skin and the one relic he got during the flashback sequences. It's already fully upgraded, before you ask.
About 1700 gold (at least, that's what I got) and an achievement. Not completely satisfying, but better than golden shit.
Evan Gray
Was there ever confirmation on what the third and final DLC campaign was going to be?
Ethan Collins
King Knight. It's been confirmed ever since the Kickstarter campaign votes got in.
