In part 1 of our Shovel Knight review, we talked about how the game is completely awesome and how you should buy it, buy it with money (for Wii U, 3DS, or Steam-PC only for now) and play it with your hands and eyes. You should read that first to put these criticisms in perspective. These are minor; the game is great. But it's not perfect.
Read More:
Shovel Knight Preview: It's Basically Super Nintendo On Wii U, In The Best Way Possible
Shovel Knight Exclusive Interview: Yacht Club Games Talks Release Date, Upgrades, Battle Mode & Secrets
Shovel Knight: The Flaws
Shovel Knight Difficulty
My first and biggest complaint about Shovel Knight is the difficulty. No, it's not too hard. No, it's not too easy. It has a different problem: The difficulty curve is highly variable. Some levels are much harder than other levels in the same section, and there's no indicator of it in advance. This is most obvious in the second and third levels. One of them, King Knight, scales up nicely in difficulty from the first level, and the boss is relatively easy. The other, Spectre Knight, is one of the hardest levels and bosses in the game-at least considering you only have five or so hearts at the time. If you jump right in there after the first level, as I did, you're in for a rude awakening. I almost thought this was going to be a game with Mega Man level difficulty (read: impossible) for that point.
The problem persists after that, with some Knights and levels being much easier than others, and some levels are easy and have a very difficult Knight. Basically, the difficulty doesn't scale perfectly: It's all over the place, up until the very end, where the last few levels scale nicely, by which I mean get really bloody hard. As they should.
Shovel Knight Saving
I have a minor beef with how saving works in Shovel Knight as well. This problem mainly applies to the Wii U version, as shall be seen. It's this: You can't suspend or quit the game and then resume from a checkpoint later. You can only resume from the world map, i.e., the beginning of a level. Why is this a problem? Well, levels are pretty long and they're longer if they're harder, since you'll, well, die a lot. One of my biggest frustrations was getting to the last checkpoint in a level, getting stymied by the boss, and growing exasperated and wanting to take a break-or having to, when real life beckons. But there's no way to save that checkpoint progress.
Again, I'm not saying you should be able to do this on multiple levels at once-just that you should be able to take a break and come back mid-level. It's frustrating that you can't, especially when the levels really ramp up in difficulty near the end. Nobody wants to bail on a level, least of all when you feel like you have to. On Steam you can (presumably) just alt-tab away, and on 3DS you can just close the clamshell, but on Wii U you really don't have any recourse unless you don't mind leaving the system on indefinitely. It's a quibble, but it's real.
Shovel Knight: Minor Quibbles
A few other issues are even more minor. For instance, some items are-or at least seem-a lot less useful than others. The anchor, for instance, is very difficult, and the alchemy coin has minimal utility as well. In fact, two of the earliest items are some of the best-you'll be using the Fire Wand and the Phase Locket all the way until the end of the game. But I've read that others had very different strategies, so it may just come down to personal playstyle.
These are all very minor beefs, though. Shovel Knight is one of the best indy games in years. It's a must-buy, and it will surely get even better when some of the other promised features-like multiplayer battle mode-come out in a few weeks or months. Shovel Knight is fantastic. You should buy it.
