BobOnTheKebab
There's many great 3D platformers I have unfortunately never beat or even experienced before, and the Spyro series is one of 'em. I've never so much as touched a Spyro game before this playthrough of Spyro 2. A sequel's typically not the best starting point, I know, but I do know this isn't exactly a story heavy series (aside from when they tried that later to...uh, varying degrees of success), so I don't think I missed out on much. I quite liked my time with this game, its simple but effective. It can be a decent challenge, especially with some of the tasks you have to do for collectibles, but if you're just looking to beat the game, most of the game's not gonna give you problems. Took me a good three days or so to beat, split over a long period of time since I took significant breaks between play sessions.
Spyro 2 is a fun little collectathon, somewhat similar to your Banjo-Kazooie and Mario 64 type games with a bunch of decently sized 3D levels to explore for collectibles. If you're looking to just complete the levels normally (as in not 100%), you just need to grab the Talisman, which is usually very easy to get since, most of the time, you just need to reach a certain end point. Sometimes you will have to do something special to get the Talisman, like freeing the shaman in Crystal Glacier, but its always something very simple and quick to do. If you do decide to go for 100%, the Guidebook in the pause menu has pages for each level that tell you what you're missing to get 100% completion in each: beat all the enemies, collect all the gems (basically the game's currency which you can find either lying around or in vases, crates, or big gems you need a special weapon to break), and find all the orbs...and get the talismans, but I mentioned that already. Orbs are probably the most important collectible; each level has around 400 gems, so it won't be long until you rack up WAY more than you need to spend for upgrades. As for orbs, there's a certain amount of orbs different between each level - per level minimum of 2, maximum of 4 - which you'll almost always get as a reward for fulfilling some sort of side mission for an NPC. The only thing that I don't really like about this system is the way the game gates content behind orbs. That in itself isn't much of a problem, but the orb requirements aren't really communicated to the player well, since the amount is pretty small throughout most of the game until you reach the final world, where you go from needing a measly 15 orbs to needing 25 orbs for the final level and a whopping 40 orbs for the final boss. The game has 64 orbs, so having to grab 40 orbs does let you skip a good chunk of 'em (and thank god because some of those are a PAIN to get, I heard the horror stories of the Alchemist escort quest even as someone who's unfamiliar with Spyro), but it feels like such a drastic leap when the game makes you think it'll be smooth sailing before that. The core gameplay loop is fun and enjoyable, but I will say that I can't shake how Spyro's controls feel rather clumsy, especially when you're trying to quickly turn around or walk in a straight line instead of from an angle. Granted, you can definitely get used to how Spyro controls and the movement can even feel pretty good at times, but sometimes it feels quite rough, especially when you're trying to do those orb missions to chase down bandits. Flight controls also kinda suck, but at least they don't feel anywhere near as terrible as Super Mario 64's (to me that game's flying feels horrible) and the flying challenges aren't TOO challenging. I do really like how simple yet fun Spyro's toolkit is, though: all he does is dash, jump, and glide, and, though he gets some extra tools, most of it just feels like slight enhancements to your base kit like how swimming in this game is pretty much just dashing underwater.
There isn't a ton of story here, so I'll instead talk about the visuals. The environments are VERY pretty, possibly one of the most pleasant looking PS1 games I've played so far. Colors are so vibrant and, despite the technical limitations of the time, you can tell this game is going for a unique art style. There's a sort of dreamy nostalgic feel to so many of the levels, especially if you're playing on a CRT. The game's character models do look very goofy and outright bizarre; I admittedly can't tell if that's part of the art style or just a product of the PS1's limitations, but I feel it overall enhances the game's charm once you get used to it. I mostly played this game on low volume so unfortunately I missed the majority of the music, but, from what I got to hear of it, that's also pretty good.
Overall I quite liked Spyro 2. There are definitely some more frustrating bits and I would have liked if the game better communicated just how many orbs I need to beat it normally, but, as a whole package, the game's a good time. Sounds like another 4 star to add to my collection.
Spyro 2 is a fun little collectathon, somewhat similar to your Banjo-Kazooie and Mario 64 type games with a bunch of decently sized 3D levels to explore for collectibles. If you're looking to just complete the levels normally (as in not 100%), you just need to grab the Talisman, which is usually very easy to get since, most of the time, you just need to reach a certain end point. Sometimes you will have to do something special to get the Talisman, like freeing the shaman in Crystal Glacier, but its always something very simple and quick to do. If you do decide to go for 100%, the Guidebook in the pause menu has pages for each level that tell you what you're missing to get 100% completion in each: beat all the enemies, collect all the gems (basically the game's currency which you can find either lying around or in vases, crates, or big gems you need a special weapon to break), and find all the orbs...and get the talismans, but I mentioned that already. Orbs are probably the most important collectible; each level has around 400 gems, so it won't be long until you rack up WAY more than you need to spend for upgrades. As for orbs, there's a certain amount of orbs different between each level - per level minimum of 2, maximum of 4 - which you'll almost always get as a reward for fulfilling some sort of side mission for an NPC. The only thing that I don't really like about this system is the way the game gates content behind orbs. That in itself isn't much of a problem, but the orb requirements aren't really communicated to the player well, since the amount is pretty small throughout most of the game until you reach the final world, where you go from needing a measly 15 orbs to needing 25 orbs for the final level and a whopping 40 orbs for the final boss. The game has 64 orbs, so having to grab 40 orbs does let you skip a good chunk of 'em (and thank god because some of those are a PAIN to get, I heard the horror stories of the Alchemist escort quest even as someone who's unfamiliar with Spyro), but it feels like such a drastic leap when the game makes you think it'll be smooth sailing before that. The core gameplay loop is fun and enjoyable, but I will say that I can't shake how Spyro's controls feel rather clumsy, especially when you're trying to quickly turn around or walk in a straight line instead of from an angle. Granted, you can definitely get used to how Spyro controls and the movement can even feel pretty good at times, but sometimes it feels quite rough, especially when you're trying to do those orb missions to chase down bandits. Flight controls also kinda suck, but at least they don't feel anywhere near as terrible as Super Mario 64's (to me that game's flying feels horrible) and the flying challenges aren't TOO challenging. I do really like how simple yet fun Spyro's toolkit is, though: all he does is dash, jump, and glide, and, though he gets some extra tools, most of it just feels like slight enhancements to your base kit like how swimming in this game is pretty much just dashing underwater.
There isn't a ton of story here, so I'll instead talk about the visuals. The environments are VERY pretty, possibly one of the most pleasant looking PS1 games I've played so far. Colors are so vibrant and, despite the technical limitations of the time, you can tell this game is going for a unique art style. There's a sort of dreamy nostalgic feel to so many of the levels, especially if you're playing on a CRT. The game's character models do look very goofy and outright bizarre; I admittedly can't tell if that's part of the art style or just a product of the PS1's limitations, but I feel it overall enhances the game's charm once you get used to it. I mostly played this game on low volume so unfortunately I missed the majority of the music, but, from what I got to hear of it, that's also pretty good.
Overall I quite liked Spyro 2. There are definitely some more frustrating bits and I would have liked if the game better communicated just how many orbs I need to beat it normally, but, as a whole package, the game's a good time. Sounds like another 4 star to add to my collection.
I was really curious about this game since I've only played the other SNES Power Rangers game (the one based on MMPR the Movie). Never beat that one, but I actually did manage to beat this game. As it turns out, there are some significant differences between this Power Rangers game and the movie game, but I'd say there's more similarities than differences overall. Not sure if that's really worth covering, though, so I'll just be reviewing this game based on its own merits. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is a beat-em-up with light platformer elements, and its quite a simple one. That's not to say the game won't give you any trouble, but it certainly isn't a super hard game by any means. The game is also very short; only took me nearly two hours to beat, and I could've took less time if I didn't get any game overs.
Gameplay's just alright overall. You can select between five different rangers: Jason, Kimberly, Billy, Trini, and Zach, who are the Red Ranger, Pink Ranger, Blue Ranger, Yellow Ranger, and Black Ranger, respectively. I played all five characters, although I was a little disappointed to find that they don't really play differently from each other. The beat-em-up action in this game is unfortunately rather underwhelming to me, though that's not to say it isn't decently fun. You start every level in human form and, at a certain point in the level, you get a glimpse of the boss and a little transformation sequence turning you into your ranger form. You do have some options for attacking, including crouch attacks, aerial attacks, and grabs, but nothing beats the basic punch "combo" of spamming Y, and many enemies will take forever to die from anything that isn't that. Ranger form doesn't really change the gameplay much, but it does at least give an extra move different between each ranger that you can do by holding up after pressing Y (as well as an admittedly really cool screen-nuke from pressing X). This move is also never stronger than your Y-spam combo but it does tend to have some utility in fringe cases. Pink Ranger, for example, gets a bow move; it does pitiful damage and it doesn't hit ducking enemies, but you could still use it to get some distance from your foes. The game does have some cool little platforming elements like jumping over pits, wall-jumping, or hanging onto poles to either cross gaps or throw yourself up onto platforms. One level was particularly annoying for having water that rises and falls, since when you're in the water you can't attack anything, leaving you a sitting duck until the water goes down. The platforming elements are quite light overall, but they do spice the game up just a tad. There's also a small gameplay switch-up in the last two levels, where it pivots to an almost fighting game style (though very simplified) and has you play as the Megazord. You can build up meter to use a special move, move backwards to block, and you have to fight opponents that can actually block too. It took me a bit to understand these levels, but basically its like a diet fighting game with no real combos and no specific inputs to do special moves. You'll want to mix up your attacks to throw off the enemy's defenses, remember to block, and press X whenever that special gauge is full.
I'm skipping both the story section and the presentation here since, honestly, both are pretty much exactly what you'd expect out of a video game based on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Overall, this game is a bit on the short and easy side, and the gameplay just wasn't all that engaging to me. Middle of the road beat-em-up, I give it 3 stars.
Gameplay's just alright overall. You can select between five different rangers: Jason, Kimberly, Billy, Trini, and Zach, who are the Red Ranger, Pink Ranger, Blue Ranger, Yellow Ranger, and Black Ranger, respectively. I played all five characters, although I was a little disappointed to find that they don't really play differently from each other. The beat-em-up action in this game is unfortunately rather underwhelming to me, though that's not to say it isn't decently fun. You start every level in human form and, at a certain point in the level, you get a glimpse of the boss and a little transformation sequence turning you into your ranger form. You do have some options for attacking, including crouch attacks, aerial attacks, and grabs, but nothing beats the basic punch "combo" of spamming Y, and many enemies will take forever to die from anything that isn't that. Ranger form doesn't really change the gameplay much, but it does at least give an extra move different between each ranger that you can do by holding up after pressing Y (as well as an admittedly really cool screen-nuke from pressing X). This move is also never stronger than your Y-spam combo but it does tend to have some utility in fringe cases. Pink Ranger, for example, gets a bow move; it does pitiful damage and it doesn't hit ducking enemies, but you could still use it to get some distance from your foes. The game does have some cool little platforming elements like jumping over pits, wall-jumping, or hanging onto poles to either cross gaps or throw yourself up onto platforms. One level was particularly annoying for having water that rises and falls, since when you're in the water you can't attack anything, leaving you a sitting duck until the water goes down. The platforming elements are quite light overall, but they do spice the game up just a tad. There's also a small gameplay switch-up in the last two levels, where it pivots to an almost fighting game style (though very simplified) and has you play as the Megazord. You can build up meter to use a special move, move backwards to block, and you have to fight opponents that can actually block too. It took me a bit to understand these levels, but basically its like a diet fighting game with no real combos and no specific inputs to do special moves. You'll want to mix up your attacks to throw off the enemy's defenses, remember to block, and press X whenever that special gauge is full.
I'm skipping both the story section and the presentation here since, honestly, both are pretty much exactly what you'd expect out of a video game based on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Overall, this game is a bit on the short and easy side, and the gameplay just wasn't all that engaging to me. Middle of the road beat-em-up, I give it 3 stars.
I was reluctant to get this game because of all the complaints I heard. When a friend of mine gave a glowing recommendation, that caught my interest. Its 60 bucks, sure, but Good Feel hasn't disappointed me, so this should at least be a good time, shouldn't it? Well, I'm glad to say that, for me, it was a good time indeed. I will say that I think this game absolutely should have been cheaper, though; it does not feel like a premium experience, even if I did enjoy my time with it. I think its best to go into Princess Peach Showtime with the right attitude: a willingness to engage with a very simple, cutesy, easy game. It almost feels like embracing your inner child in a way, decorating cakes and figure-skating away while taking out some baddies trying to muck up your theater plays. Good Feel is great at that sort of thing, though this unfortunately did not get close to the magic and charm of Kirby's Epic Yarn (the only other Good Feel game I've played admittedly). Every once and a while, I think its good to kick back and play a cute, relaxing, easy game. The game does get much more frustrating when you try to 100% it, though, judging from what I heard. It doesn't seem hard to do but the game very often prevents you from turning back to get stuff you missed and there's a major lack of quality of life for replaying levels. Thankfully, I didn't worry one bit about that, so I had the whimsical simple experience that was likely intended.
As mentioned earlier, the gameplay is extremely simple. There are only two buttons you need to press, one being the jump button and the other being an action button that changes depending on what costume you have. Regular Peach just spins her ribbon to interact with stuff, like cheering up sad Theets or making plants grow, and the other costumes switch (heh) it up in decently varied ways that introduce different play styles. There's a total of 10 costumes, plus two more unlocked in the final boss. There's five floors that each have four levels plus a boss, so the game has 20 regular levels. The basement has 10 extra levels that you unlock after completing two regular levels themed after a certain Peach costume; I thought these were optional content at first but the game has you do all of them first before you can fight the final boss. So, all things considered, the game isn't content-dry, but it is quite short. I suppose it could take you a while to grab all the Sparkle Gems - the main collectible - since some of them are hidden cleverly enough and some are tied to performance, so if you don't do good enough at a certain part of the level you won't get it. I felt that, overall, the gimmicks behind each costume and the different play styles they introduced were quite fun, none of them were a bore to play through for me. They aren't exactly deep, which I could see some complaining about, but they are genuinely fun and change up the game enough to keep it feeling somewhat fresh. Cowgirl, Pâtissière, Kung Fu, and Detective (surprisingly enough) were my favorites. Ninja, Dashing Thief, and Figure-Skater also get some really fun levels designed after their gimmicks. I heard people dislike the Mermaid because its gimmick is just holding B to lead fish around to lift stuff (as well as a short and sweet rhythm game section at the end of its levels), but I thought that one was fine. Unfortunately the game does have a rough start in my opinion; the first floor and the second floor are all basically tutorial floors and man do they feel like it. The game could really benefit from letting you skip the dialogue, honestly. For a game with little to no story, it is very chatty (it makes sense because these are meant to be theater plays but it could get grating at times with the constant interruptions just to see more dialogue). Also, the boss fights were surprisingly pretty fun in my opinion, if a bit too simple and short for their own good. The final boss almost reminded me of something out of a Kirby game, like the Robobot final boss fight (particularly the Star Dream parts) or the Star Allies final boss.
I think the presentation of this game is pretty great, you can tell some major focus went into it. Music is great, cutscenes are pretty good looking (not on the same level as something like Luigi's Mansion 3's gorgeous cutscenes but still pleasant), and the design choice of making each level be made of a bunch of props makes the game stand out. I personally REALLY love Peach's costumes and the way her voice changes to fit the role, its such a unique idea for this character that makes a lot of sense and is delightful to see in action. I have never been a big Peach guy myself but I couldn't get enough of Cowgirl Peach's southern drawl and the silly southern slang she uses in that outfit ("yippie-ki-yay", "yeehaw", "shucks", etc.), give me more of that please! Also, I hadn't mentioned her before, but Madame Grape is a really cool villain design and I think she could work great as a recurring villain for Peach if she were to get a full-on side series like Yoshi and Wario got. Princess Peach Showtime definitely has some real charm to it, I don't think I could ever agree with the people that call this game soulless. However, the game does have some very noticeable performance issues that have really drawn home just how badly we need a "Switch 2" to come soon. It will rarely lag while you're already playing the game, but the loading times can be downright painful and you'd have to not be looking at the screen to not see all that lag that happens during the loading screen. I have no idea why that keeps happening but it is distracting.
Even though I fully understand why others dislike this game, I had a great time with it. I was thinking this would be another Mario VS Donkey Kong remake situation where I spend most of the review nitpicking and whining about minor things, but for whatever reason I just didn't feel the same way about Princess Peach Showtime. Don't get me wrong, I do share some common complaints here (gameplay is too simple, game is too short, game is way too expensive, etc.), but my experience with this game was surprisingly really positive for me. I do think you need to be in the right state of mind with your expectations set on the lower side to fully enjoy this game, so keep that in mind if you want to give this game a whirl. I think I liked this game enough to give it a genuine 4 stars, so that's what I'll rank it.
As mentioned earlier, the gameplay is extremely simple. There are only two buttons you need to press, one being the jump button and the other being an action button that changes depending on what costume you have. Regular Peach just spins her ribbon to interact with stuff, like cheering up sad Theets or making plants grow, and the other costumes switch (heh) it up in decently varied ways that introduce different play styles. There's a total of 10 costumes, plus two more unlocked in the final boss. There's five floors that each have four levels plus a boss, so the game has 20 regular levels. The basement has 10 extra levels that you unlock after completing two regular levels themed after a certain Peach costume; I thought these were optional content at first but the game has you do all of them first before you can fight the final boss. So, all things considered, the game isn't content-dry, but it is quite short. I suppose it could take you a while to grab all the Sparkle Gems - the main collectible - since some of them are hidden cleverly enough and some are tied to performance, so if you don't do good enough at a certain part of the level you won't get it. I felt that, overall, the gimmicks behind each costume and the different play styles they introduced were quite fun, none of them were a bore to play through for me. They aren't exactly deep, which I could see some complaining about, but they are genuinely fun and change up the game enough to keep it feeling somewhat fresh. Cowgirl, Pâtissière, Kung Fu, and Detective (surprisingly enough) were my favorites. Ninja, Dashing Thief, and Figure-Skater also get some really fun levels designed after their gimmicks. I heard people dislike the Mermaid because its gimmick is just holding B to lead fish around to lift stuff (as well as a short and sweet rhythm game section at the end of its levels), but I thought that one was fine. Unfortunately the game does have a rough start in my opinion; the first floor and the second floor are all basically tutorial floors and man do they feel like it. The game could really benefit from letting you skip the dialogue, honestly. For a game with little to no story, it is very chatty (it makes sense because these are meant to be theater plays but it could get grating at times with the constant interruptions just to see more dialogue). Also, the boss fights were surprisingly pretty fun in my opinion, if a bit too simple and short for their own good. The final boss almost reminded me of something out of a Kirby game, like the Robobot final boss fight (particularly the Star Dream parts) or the Star Allies final boss.
I think the presentation of this game is pretty great, you can tell some major focus went into it. Music is great, cutscenes are pretty good looking (not on the same level as something like Luigi's Mansion 3's gorgeous cutscenes but still pleasant), and the design choice of making each level be made of a bunch of props makes the game stand out. I personally REALLY love Peach's costumes and the way her voice changes to fit the role, its such a unique idea for this character that makes a lot of sense and is delightful to see in action. I have never been a big Peach guy myself but I couldn't get enough of Cowgirl Peach's southern drawl and the silly southern slang she uses in that outfit ("yippie-ki-yay", "yeehaw", "shucks", etc.), give me more of that please! Also, I hadn't mentioned her before, but Madame Grape is a really cool villain design and I think she could work great as a recurring villain for Peach if she were to get a full-on side series like Yoshi and Wario got. Princess Peach Showtime definitely has some real charm to it, I don't think I could ever agree with the people that call this game soulless. However, the game does have some very noticeable performance issues that have really drawn home just how badly we need a "Switch 2" to come soon. It will rarely lag while you're already playing the game, but the loading times can be downright painful and you'd have to not be looking at the screen to not see all that lag that happens during the loading screen. I have no idea why that keeps happening but it is distracting.
Even though I fully understand why others dislike this game, I had a great time with it. I was thinking this would be another Mario VS Donkey Kong remake situation where I spend most of the review nitpicking and whining about minor things, but for whatever reason I just didn't feel the same way about Princess Peach Showtime. Don't get me wrong, I do share some common complaints here (gameplay is too simple, game is too short, game is way too expensive, etc.), but my experience with this game was surprisingly really positive for me. I do think you need to be in the right state of mind with your expectations set on the lower side to fully enjoy this game, so keep that in mind if you want to give this game a whirl. I think I liked this game enough to give it a genuine 4 stars, so that's what I'll rank it.
(Note: I played this on the Nintendo Switch Online service, but I did not use any of the extra emulation features like save states or rewinds. Figured I'd clarify that.)
Its kinda crazy to think about how this little game started a series that gets new releases on every console since. That's not to imply anything about this game's quality, I just think its interesting and was probably quite unexpected, especially since its the only Wario related property that's still going after the 2000s. Wario's Woods, Mario & Wario, and Wario Land all died, but thankfully WarioWare survived. I think people playing this first game in the series nowadays will find it pretty barebones in comparison to any other WarioWare game; there's no special gimmick to this one, just the microgames. Its also very short, you can probably beat it in less than an hour. It took me just a few more minutes longer than an hour to get through. That's fine, though, since I don't really think stretching out the length of a game like this would be all that beneficial. Its surprisingly pretty tough near the end, the microgames can get very fast which really tests your reaction speed and ability to quickly understand what you need to do. The concept of the WarioWare series is pretty genius in my opinion and, of course, this game started it all. It makes for such a great party game, which is probably why the GameCube game is basically this one but focused entirely on multiplayer shenanigans. In comparison, this game focuses much more on single-player content, though it does have some multiplayer modes that I unfortunately won't be able to play. My familiarity with the GameCube game also meant that I knew every microgame in this one, but that didn't really sour anything for me.
I don't think there's anything left to cover for the gameplay section, since I just summarized my thoughts on it in the intro paragraph. I'll discuss the presentation, which I thought was really good and probably a big part of the draw here. The game is split up into different survival gauntlets (plus some side modes I couldn't play) that have a different amount of microgames you need to play and each one is followed by a series of cutscenes that are quite fun to watch. There's a sort of mini story given for each, whether that be Mona running away from cops for speeding or Orbulon trying to get to a rescue ship after his own ship got hit by a rock, and the visuals associated with each is tied into the story in a cool way. 9-Volt, for instance, has a retro Nintendo theme to his gauntlet, so before each microgame you see a parody of a traditional JRPG on an original Game Boy screen with 9-Volt as the protagonist and textboxes telling you that you defeated a microgame. The characters all feel really unique and charming in their own ways, ESPECIALLY for a Mario related title; aside from the aforementioned retro Nintendo levels, there's no sign of any traditional Mario stuff anywhere, so WarioWare's world really sticks out (which I personally think is a good thing). You can really feel all the soul, for lack of a better term, put into this game's presentation.
Usually, my reviews are longer than three paragraphs, but this game really doesn't give me a whole lot to talk about. Its a good game imo, if a bit barebones and very short. It doesn't take long for the microgames to start repeating. I think it's intended to be very replayable, which I would say is something that it pulls off well. The game does include a few little sidemodes that aren't the multiplayer stuff, but they're either endless versions of one of the microgames or a much longer version of the survival gauntlets you were already playing. Still, though, its nice content to have. Overall, I'd give the first WarioWare 3.5 stars; after so many other WarioWare games, I can't help but feel like there isn't much special about this one, and it can feel a bit too simple. But, at the same time, I think it is a good game overall.
Its kinda crazy to think about how this little game started a series that gets new releases on every console since. That's not to imply anything about this game's quality, I just think its interesting and was probably quite unexpected, especially since its the only Wario related property that's still going after the 2000s. Wario's Woods, Mario & Wario, and Wario Land all died, but thankfully WarioWare survived. I think people playing this first game in the series nowadays will find it pretty barebones in comparison to any other WarioWare game; there's no special gimmick to this one, just the microgames. Its also very short, you can probably beat it in less than an hour. It took me just a few more minutes longer than an hour to get through. That's fine, though, since I don't really think stretching out the length of a game like this would be all that beneficial. Its surprisingly pretty tough near the end, the microgames can get very fast which really tests your reaction speed and ability to quickly understand what you need to do. The concept of the WarioWare series is pretty genius in my opinion and, of course, this game started it all. It makes for such a great party game, which is probably why the GameCube game is basically this one but focused entirely on multiplayer shenanigans. In comparison, this game focuses much more on single-player content, though it does have some multiplayer modes that I unfortunately won't be able to play. My familiarity with the GameCube game also meant that I knew every microgame in this one, but that didn't really sour anything for me.
I don't think there's anything left to cover for the gameplay section, since I just summarized my thoughts on it in the intro paragraph. I'll discuss the presentation, which I thought was really good and probably a big part of the draw here. The game is split up into different survival gauntlets (plus some side modes I couldn't play) that have a different amount of microgames you need to play and each one is followed by a series of cutscenes that are quite fun to watch. There's a sort of mini story given for each, whether that be Mona running away from cops for speeding or Orbulon trying to get to a rescue ship after his own ship got hit by a rock, and the visuals associated with each is tied into the story in a cool way. 9-Volt, for instance, has a retro Nintendo theme to his gauntlet, so before each microgame you see a parody of a traditional JRPG on an original Game Boy screen with 9-Volt as the protagonist and textboxes telling you that you defeated a microgame. The characters all feel really unique and charming in their own ways, ESPECIALLY for a Mario related title; aside from the aforementioned retro Nintendo levels, there's no sign of any traditional Mario stuff anywhere, so WarioWare's world really sticks out (which I personally think is a good thing). You can really feel all the soul, for lack of a better term, put into this game's presentation.
Usually, my reviews are longer than three paragraphs, but this game really doesn't give me a whole lot to talk about. Its a good game imo, if a bit barebones and very short. It doesn't take long for the microgames to start repeating. I think it's intended to be very replayable, which I would say is something that it pulls off well. The game does include a few little sidemodes that aren't the multiplayer stuff, but they're either endless versions of one of the microgames or a much longer version of the survival gauntlets you were already playing. Still, though, its nice content to have. Overall, I'd give the first WarioWare 3.5 stars; after so many other WarioWare games, I can't help but feel like there isn't much special about this one, and it can feel a bit too simple. But, at the same time, I think it is a good game overall.
I'm gonna be honest, most of this game got a resounding "ehhhhh it's alright" reaction from me. Don't take this as a negative, though; not every game needs to blow my mind (man I say that in a lot of reviews don't I) and I did have a decently fun time with this game. This remake just doesn't feel like it has much content and what is here felt pretty middling overall. I'll try not to say anything too definitive, though, since I've heard good things about this game's extra levels that I'll be playing after I've typed up this review.
I haven't played past the first world of the original Mario vs. Donkey Kong, so I am basing this remake off its own merits. Its a bite-sized puzzle platformer where the goal is to find the key and figure out how to get to the door, then in the second room you just gotta find the mini Mario capsule. Each level has three presents (except for the Mini Mario levels which have you lead Mini Marios to find letters that spell "toy"), kinda like Pauline/Lady's three accessories in the arcade Donkey Kong, and you get a gold star from finding them all in a level. I have no idea what these gold stars do, but I did manage to get all of them in the main campaign, so...maybe its just a marker for 100% completion? The big gimmick for most levels are the different color switches that activate blocks of the corresponding color. They do find some unique ways to mix it up, but admittedly a good amount of the levels sorta blended in with each other to me because they mostly rely on this gimmick. Unfortunately the level design did not feel especially clever or interesting to me, but I will say that later levels were a bit challenging. Also, when I say this game is bite-sized, I mean more so in how the levels are structured rather than the content. Mario vs. Donkey Kong does have eight worlds and six levels (eight counting the DK boss level and Mini Mario levels) per world, which isn't bad at all, but the fact that each level only takes like five minutes at most to complete - consisting of no more than two, sometimes three, rooms - makes the game feel so short. I'm guessing this was done in the original to make it feel more like a game suitable for the handheld experience, playing in short bursts. I said the game is a puzzle platformer, but, if I'm being honest, for like half the game I hardly had to think to finish these puzzles. It did get a bit more challenging in the later half and a handful or so levels were quite tough for me (I won't act like I didn't get a Game Over at least once), so I won't try to paint it as some mindlessly easy game, but nonetheless I couldn't help but feel a tad disappointed. I remember Donkey Kong '94 on the Game Boy was so cool and creative to me and I don't even have nostalgia for that game because my first time playing it was around two or three years ago, but even though this game is a remake of the successor to Donkey Kong '94, it felt weaker overall. Maybe that's just me giving DK '94 more of a pass though since its a Game Boy game and this is a shiny new 2024 Switch title.
Brief shoutout to the small stuff that makes up this game. The visuals are nice, I'm not sure why people think they're soulless since I think they're fun in their own way and look pretty good overall. Something I see get talked about a lot with this game is the voice acting and I can see why, its a little jarring since it has a lot of obviously reused sound clips (one of them even still sounds a bit compressed, that being the Donkey Kong Country Returns voice clip they reuse in the final DK fight), but it is nice to hear Charles Martinet again. I imagine there's probably people confused that Nintendo didn't have Kevin Afghani record some more brand new Mario audio for this game but I imagine they kept the Martinet voice clips just to keep that energy from the original, with Mario saying "Hey, come back!" and other similar lines ripped from the original. I'm an absolute sucker for good video game music and I must say that this game's soundtrack really surprised me with how great it sounds. I don't remember the original Mario vs. Donkey Kong having very memorable music but I've been repeatedly listening to this remake's OST for a few days, it tends to either go for atmosphere or a smooth jazzy sound and it absolutely nails both. Highly recommend everyone reading this review goes and listens to it...well, assuming Nintendo hasn't already taken down all uploads of the game's soundtrack.
Overall, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed with this game, but I don't mean to constantly complain and nitpick in this review since I did genuinely enjoy my time with the new Mario vs. Donkey Kong. I thought the levels, though mostly really easy, were fun to play through since Mario's movement felt nice and it was cool figuring out the puzzles. I'm hoping that I end up really loving the postgame content (expert levels since I don't plan on doing the Time Trials).
I haven't played past the first world of the original Mario vs. Donkey Kong, so I am basing this remake off its own merits. Its a bite-sized puzzle platformer where the goal is to find the key and figure out how to get to the door, then in the second room you just gotta find the mini Mario capsule. Each level has three presents (except for the Mini Mario levels which have you lead Mini Marios to find letters that spell "toy"), kinda like Pauline/Lady's three accessories in the arcade Donkey Kong, and you get a gold star from finding them all in a level. I have no idea what these gold stars do, but I did manage to get all of them in the main campaign, so...maybe its just a marker for 100% completion? The big gimmick for most levels are the different color switches that activate blocks of the corresponding color. They do find some unique ways to mix it up, but admittedly a good amount of the levels sorta blended in with each other to me because they mostly rely on this gimmick. Unfortunately the level design did not feel especially clever or interesting to me, but I will say that later levels were a bit challenging. Also, when I say this game is bite-sized, I mean more so in how the levels are structured rather than the content. Mario vs. Donkey Kong does have eight worlds and six levels (eight counting the DK boss level and Mini Mario levels) per world, which isn't bad at all, but the fact that each level only takes like five minutes at most to complete - consisting of no more than two, sometimes three, rooms - makes the game feel so short. I'm guessing this was done in the original to make it feel more like a game suitable for the handheld experience, playing in short bursts. I said the game is a puzzle platformer, but, if I'm being honest, for like half the game I hardly had to think to finish these puzzles. It did get a bit more challenging in the later half and a handful or so levels were quite tough for me (I won't act like I didn't get a Game Over at least once), so I won't try to paint it as some mindlessly easy game, but nonetheless I couldn't help but feel a tad disappointed. I remember Donkey Kong '94 on the Game Boy was so cool and creative to me and I don't even have nostalgia for that game because my first time playing it was around two or three years ago, but even though this game is a remake of the successor to Donkey Kong '94, it felt weaker overall. Maybe that's just me giving DK '94 more of a pass though since its a Game Boy game and this is a shiny new 2024 Switch title.
Brief shoutout to the small stuff that makes up this game. The visuals are nice, I'm not sure why people think they're soulless since I think they're fun in their own way and look pretty good overall. Something I see get talked about a lot with this game is the voice acting and I can see why, its a little jarring since it has a lot of obviously reused sound clips (one of them even still sounds a bit compressed, that being the Donkey Kong Country Returns voice clip they reuse in the final DK fight), but it is nice to hear Charles Martinet again. I imagine there's probably people confused that Nintendo didn't have Kevin Afghani record some more brand new Mario audio for this game but I imagine they kept the Martinet voice clips just to keep that energy from the original, with Mario saying "Hey, come back!" and other similar lines ripped from the original. I'm an absolute sucker for good video game music and I must say that this game's soundtrack really surprised me with how great it sounds. I don't remember the original Mario vs. Donkey Kong having very memorable music but I've been repeatedly listening to this remake's OST for a few days, it tends to either go for atmosphere or a smooth jazzy sound and it absolutely nails both. Highly recommend everyone reading this review goes and listens to it...well, assuming Nintendo hasn't already taken down all uploads of the game's soundtrack.
Overall, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed with this game, but I don't mean to constantly complain and nitpick in this review since I did genuinely enjoy my time with the new Mario vs. Donkey Kong. I thought the levels, though mostly really easy, were fun to play through since Mario's movement felt nice and it was cool figuring out the puzzles. I'm hoping that I end up really loving the postgame content (expert levels since I don't plan on doing the Time Trials).
This review contains spoilers
I've never played Explorers of Time or Darkness, just Sky, so I'm treating it as its own game here. And...I mince no words when I say this game is such a beautiful, gorgeous, emotional experience, at least when it comes to the story and characters. Everyone knows how impactful the ending of this game is, and its actually a big reason why I never replayed this for the longest time. It was just as much of a gut punch as it was when I was around 11 years old beating this game for the first time, way more emotional than Rescue Team DX was even though I have more nostalgic connections to it than I do this game. Man this game hit me hard and, despite its reputation, I was not expecting that at all. The game's a bit short and I never did the extra episodes, but I do remember those being pretty solid and expanding the story well, so maybe I'll play those sometime.
I'll start with gameplay. Its pretty good. Not much has changed from Red/Blue Rescue Team but sometimes you don't need a big change to a solid foundation. Still randomly generated dungeons that end at a certain amount of floors, still got basic attacks and the IQ system, still got the iconic Monster Houses, team recruitment, asking for online help (sadly unusable because DS Wi-Fi stopped working a long while ago)...the fundamentals are all here. Unfortunately it is lacking some nice quality of life features that the newer games have, like letting you choose the Pokemon you control (that isn't available until post game in Explorers of Sky), but they're ultimately pretty minor and didn't affect me much at all. The AI gets a lot of flack for being dumb and...well yea, it isn't very smart, but it is serviceable. At the very least, you won't get your team killed because of a mistake the AI made, but it will be a little annoying having to deal with the AI not attacking enemies when it should, occasionally being useless in combat because it likes to spam status increasing moves, or getting lost and separating from the team in tight corners (this one is mostly a problem when you have a full team with four party members). If you like dungeon crawlers with some RPG elements, you'll like this game, and I fit that criteria so I like it. One Mystery Dungeon tradition this game has that I appreciate, though, is that type matchups aren't everything. Of course, Super Effective moves are always preferred and can deal a ton of damage, but you can definitely get by with not very effective moves since they don't do as little damage as you'd think they would. This is super important because you can't choose your starter unless you want to retake the quiz over and over, and, regardless of which starter you get, you'll inevitably come across bosses or enemies that are Super Effective to you. Not all hope is lost with these bosses, so if you have a good number of healing items and some kind of move that deals decent damage, you can beat them. It also helps that all status effect items work on bosses and you can get some pretty damn cheesy boss kills if you're lucky with them. The X-Eye Seed is the go-to boss killer since it makes them unable to do anything and causes them to randomly wander the room, plus the game seems to give you them somewhat often. Don't feel bad for abusing the shit out of these, especially for Dialga since he is one tough cookie.
So, the gameplay's good, but I feel like fans are really in it for the story when it comes to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. Certainly not often that I can say that about a Pokemon game; this has by far the best out of any Pokemon game imo and not in a lackadaisical "well its a little better than the rest" way. I also think it is much better than Rescue Team's story since I feel it remedied most of my problems with that: the stakes are high but they don't come out of nowhere, everything is connected in a way that feels more natural, and you just feel a lot more attachment to the characters along the way. Even the most minor members of the Wigglytuff Guild are very likeable in their own ways and there's just a sense that they all really care for you and your partner that makes the moments when things get tough all the more impactful. The partner character was pretty good in Rescue Team but I think they're more likeable in this game because of how you see them grow and change over time, from a nervous little guy with big dreams to a determined and kind adventurer who still gets tripped up with fear, but is ultimately able to get through anything thanks to his friendship with you. I really appreciate the pacing of this story, too; it does take a bit to get to the real meat of the plot, so I could imagine some people dropping the game for that, but I felt like there was much less meandering around on pointless side stuff than in Rescue Team. The most you do is like three repeats of previous dungeons with requests from the request board and then you're right back into the actual plot. The big thing about the plot of this game is the twist that comes into play a little over halfway through, when its revealed that Grovyle - the guy that's been stealing Time Gears (they keep the fabric of time in balance) - was actually doing the right thing and that he is tied to your past as a human. This is kinda sorta like the relationship between the player character and Gengar in Rescue Team, but flipped on its head since Grovyle was always a Pokemon (Gengar was a human) and you're made to think he's the bad guy even though he isn't. The supposed "great Dusknoir" that the people idolize for doing good deeds was actually a minion of the corrupted Dialga of the future, which he reveals soon enough by dragging the player character and the partner into the future with him. Speaking of the future, yea you see quite a bit of that here. The desolate future, where nothing moves and life is at a standstill, carries some real good imagery. Everything is grey and it really sells the future looking super bleak. Nonetheless, this whole twist was done pretty well imo, even if I would have preferred it was alluded to more; I feel like, if I didn't already know about this twist, it would have felt like it came out of nowhere. I was especially relieved to see that they don't pull the whole trope of being hated by the world for telling the truth. Instead, the Guild is naturally suspicious at first, but they very quickly come around because they trust and support you...and because, the more they thought of it, the more they realized how suspicious Dusknoir was. Before all this meaty plot thickening, though, you get some small little subplots that are entertaining in their own right. Admittedly it doesn't really feel like the story is going anywhere solid until Dusknoir shows up and starts dropping hints to the player character's past, but it isn't too big of a deal since it feels like you're building yourself up as the new rescue team on the block. The only one of these subplots I didn't like was the one with Team Skull (the bullies that have been relentlessly trying to mess with the partner character since the start of the game) weaseling their way into the guild in search of treasure, but that's not the fault of the story and its just because of how well they conveyed that sheer frustration of knowing someone is a bad person yet you can't tell anyone without them thinking you're crazy. Thankfully they get themselves expelled by getting too big for their britches and thinking they can take on the Guildmaster.
I'm gonna dedicate a section to the characters here since I really love them and I've already prattled on long enough on the story paragraph. Chatot is somehow both so hateable and so lovable at the same time, the guy is like the definition of an egotistical manager who's also desperately trying to earn brownie points with his boss. He keeps a cheery singsong disposition for the sake of his image but he's pretty two-faced. The Guildmaster, Wigglytuff, is funny for how bizarrely he acts and how almost childish his personality is. Definition of "power of friendship", naive and yet very powerful. Later on in the game he gets more focused and serious, so it seems to be implied that that's either an act or he just doesn't take anything seriously before things really get serious. His dynamic with Chatot always got a chuckle out of me, this uptight hoity bird hardly understands the Guildmaster at times and yet is always the one speaking for him. The two do have a close friendship, though, and I hear it is elaborated on in the Igglybuff episode I haven't played. Grovyle was a surprisingly pretty interesting character in my opinion; he was the partner of the player character back when he was a human and the two were both born into the desolate future that they are now fighting so hard to change. Of course the player character doesn't remember because amnesia, but it really recontextualizes the scenes in which Grovyle knows the player character's identity but has to withhold that information because he knows the player doesn't remember. It's not super deep or anything but it is a pretty cool dynamic, especially when Grovyle reveals just how close they were and how nice it was to be back together (I can only imagine how much ship art these scenes inspired). Already praised the partner character a lot but I like how he stubbornly denies the truth about Grovyle even though he knows in his heart that its true, the kid idolized Dusknoir and desperately wanted to believe he wasn't lied to all this time. I like some of the minor guild members, too; they don't really do a ton in the story but they are cute little one-note characters with some fun personalities.
Last thing I want to shout out is the music and visuals. I genuinely think this game has some of the nicest looking sprite art on the DS, especially the art for the environments that the game loves to show off on the top screen. There's a scene with artwork depicting Chatot in a cave about to be ambushed by Kabutops and some Omastar and that one especially looks just like something I'd expect to see in an official Pokémon artbook. Usually I don't care for games that only use the top screen to show off stuff but this game earns it in my opinion. The only downside I can think of for the visuals is that a lot of the actual Pokémon sprites are reused from Blue Rescue Team, but they work great here so I won't complain about that. The music is also just absolutely fantastic, whether its a catchy bop of a dungeon theme or the sheer emotion present in the songs that play during emotional moments. I love the themes for Treasure Town and the Wigglytuff Guild, they have such a positive energy and are pretty catchy tunes.
Overall, I really do think Explorers of Sky is something special, especially for being a Pokémon game. The story puts every other Pokémon game to shame. The ending was heart-wrenching to me and a big part of that is because the characters were ones you could feel an attachment to. The gameplay is pretty fun, too, but there's a reason I keep emphasizing other stuff here. I can't not give this game 5 stars.
I'll start with gameplay. Its pretty good. Not much has changed from Red/Blue Rescue Team but sometimes you don't need a big change to a solid foundation. Still randomly generated dungeons that end at a certain amount of floors, still got basic attacks and the IQ system, still got the iconic Monster Houses, team recruitment, asking for online help (sadly unusable because DS Wi-Fi stopped working a long while ago)...the fundamentals are all here. Unfortunately it is lacking some nice quality of life features that the newer games have, like letting you choose the Pokemon you control (that isn't available until post game in Explorers of Sky), but they're ultimately pretty minor and didn't affect me much at all. The AI gets a lot of flack for being dumb and...well yea, it isn't very smart, but it is serviceable. At the very least, you won't get your team killed because of a mistake the AI made, but it will be a little annoying having to deal with the AI not attacking enemies when it should, occasionally being useless in combat because it likes to spam status increasing moves, or getting lost and separating from the team in tight corners (this one is mostly a problem when you have a full team with four party members). If you like dungeon crawlers with some RPG elements, you'll like this game, and I fit that criteria so I like it. One Mystery Dungeon tradition this game has that I appreciate, though, is that type matchups aren't everything. Of course, Super Effective moves are always preferred and can deal a ton of damage, but you can definitely get by with not very effective moves since they don't do as little damage as you'd think they would. This is super important because you can't choose your starter unless you want to retake the quiz over and over, and, regardless of which starter you get, you'll inevitably come across bosses or enemies that are Super Effective to you. Not all hope is lost with these bosses, so if you have a good number of healing items and some kind of move that deals decent damage, you can beat them. It also helps that all status effect items work on bosses and you can get some pretty damn cheesy boss kills if you're lucky with them. The X-Eye Seed is the go-to boss killer since it makes them unable to do anything and causes them to randomly wander the room, plus the game seems to give you them somewhat often. Don't feel bad for abusing the shit out of these, especially for Dialga since he is one tough cookie.
So, the gameplay's good, but I feel like fans are really in it for the story when it comes to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. Certainly not often that I can say that about a Pokemon game; this has by far the best out of any Pokemon game imo and not in a lackadaisical "well its a little better than the rest" way. I also think it is much better than Rescue Team's story since I feel it remedied most of my problems with that: the stakes are high but they don't come out of nowhere, everything is connected in a way that feels more natural, and you just feel a lot more attachment to the characters along the way. Even the most minor members of the Wigglytuff Guild are very likeable in their own ways and there's just a sense that they all really care for you and your partner that makes the moments when things get tough all the more impactful. The partner character was pretty good in Rescue Team but I think they're more likeable in this game because of how you see them grow and change over time, from a nervous little guy with big dreams to a determined and kind adventurer who still gets tripped up with fear, but is ultimately able to get through anything thanks to his friendship with you. I really appreciate the pacing of this story, too; it does take a bit to get to the real meat of the plot, so I could imagine some people dropping the game for that, but I felt like there was much less meandering around on pointless side stuff than in Rescue Team. The most you do is like three repeats of previous dungeons with requests from the request board and then you're right back into the actual plot. The big thing about the plot of this game is the twist that comes into play a little over halfway through, when its revealed that Grovyle - the guy that's been stealing Time Gears (they keep the fabric of time in balance) - was actually doing the right thing and that he is tied to your past as a human. This is kinda sorta like the relationship between the player character and Gengar in Rescue Team, but flipped on its head since Grovyle was always a Pokemon (Gengar was a human) and you're made to think he's the bad guy even though he isn't. The supposed "great Dusknoir" that the people idolize for doing good deeds was actually a minion of the corrupted Dialga of the future, which he reveals soon enough by dragging the player character and the partner into the future with him. Speaking of the future, yea you see quite a bit of that here. The desolate future, where nothing moves and life is at a standstill, carries some real good imagery. Everything is grey and it really sells the future looking super bleak. Nonetheless, this whole twist was done pretty well imo, even if I would have preferred it was alluded to more; I feel like, if I didn't already know about this twist, it would have felt like it came out of nowhere. I was especially relieved to see that they don't pull the whole trope of being hated by the world for telling the truth. Instead, the Guild is naturally suspicious at first, but they very quickly come around because they trust and support you...and because, the more they thought of it, the more they realized how suspicious Dusknoir was. Before all this meaty plot thickening, though, you get some small little subplots that are entertaining in their own right. Admittedly it doesn't really feel like the story is going anywhere solid until Dusknoir shows up and starts dropping hints to the player character's past, but it isn't too big of a deal since it feels like you're building yourself up as the new rescue team on the block. The only one of these subplots I didn't like was the one with Team Skull (the bullies that have been relentlessly trying to mess with the partner character since the start of the game) weaseling their way into the guild in search of treasure, but that's not the fault of the story and its just because of how well they conveyed that sheer frustration of knowing someone is a bad person yet you can't tell anyone without them thinking you're crazy. Thankfully they get themselves expelled by getting too big for their britches and thinking they can take on the Guildmaster.
I'm gonna dedicate a section to the characters here since I really love them and I've already prattled on long enough on the story paragraph. Chatot is somehow both so hateable and so lovable at the same time, the guy is like the definition of an egotistical manager who's also desperately trying to earn brownie points with his boss. He keeps a cheery singsong disposition for the sake of his image but he's pretty two-faced. The Guildmaster, Wigglytuff, is funny for how bizarrely he acts and how almost childish his personality is. Definition of "power of friendship", naive and yet very powerful. Later on in the game he gets more focused and serious, so it seems to be implied that that's either an act or he just doesn't take anything seriously before things really get serious. His dynamic with Chatot always got a chuckle out of me, this uptight hoity bird hardly understands the Guildmaster at times and yet is always the one speaking for him. The two do have a close friendship, though, and I hear it is elaborated on in the Igglybuff episode I haven't played. Grovyle was a surprisingly pretty interesting character in my opinion; he was the partner of the player character back when he was a human and the two were both born into the desolate future that they are now fighting so hard to change. Of course the player character doesn't remember because amnesia, but it really recontextualizes the scenes in which Grovyle knows the player character's identity but has to withhold that information because he knows the player doesn't remember. It's not super deep or anything but it is a pretty cool dynamic, especially when Grovyle reveals just how close they were and how nice it was to be back together (I can only imagine how much ship art these scenes inspired). Already praised the partner character a lot but I like how he stubbornly denies the truth about Grovyle even though he knows in his heart that its true, the kid idolized Dusknoir and desperately wanted to believe he wasn't lied to all this time. I like some of the minor guild members, too; they don't really do a ton in the story but they are cute little one-note characters with some fun personalities.
Last thing I want to shout out is the music and visuals. I genuinely think this game has some of the nicest looking sprite art on the DS, especially the art for the environments that the game loves to show off on the top screen. There's a scene with artwork depicting Chatot in a cave about to be ambushed by Kabutops and some Omastar and that one especially looks just like something I'd expect to see in an official Pokémon artbook. Usually I don't care for games that only use the top screen to show off stuff but this game earns it in my opinion. The only downside I can think of for the visuals is that a lot of the actual Pokémon sprites are reused from Blue Rescue Team, but they work great here so I won't complain about that. The music is also just absolutely fantastic, whether its a catchy bop of a dungeon theme or the sheer emotion present in the songs that play during emotional moments. I love the themes for Treasure Town and the Wigglytuff Guild, they have such a positive energy and are pretty catchy tunes.
Overall, I really do think Explorers of Sky is something special, especially for being a Pokémon game. The story puts every other Pokémon game to shame. The ending was heart-wrenching to me and a big part of that is because the characters were ones you could feel an attachment to. The gameplay is pretty fun, too, but there's a reason I keep emphasizing other stuff here. I can't not give this game 5 stars.
I'm kinda surprised with just how much I enjoyed this game. Granted, I don't think it'll blow anyone away, but the game overall just has a lot of charm to it in my opinion that elevated it over its flaws. It feels practically tailormade to lend itself to a truly great cartoon or comic series, to the point where I was shocked to find out it had neither. I really love the animated cutscenes and the fun cast of characters; I am excited to get to Sly 2 once I grab the game.
The gameplay's pretty good. I will say, you'd think that stealth would be more of a central mechanic here than it actually is, but it really isn't that all-encompassing and the game is pretty forgiving if you mess up stealth bits. This is kind of a blessing in disguise for me since I am pretty bad at being stealthy in games. There are definitely levels where you need to sneak around, but this is definitely a platformer through and through so the platforming is the focus. The platforming here is good, took a bit to get the feel of and sometimes it can be janky (mainly with those special parts of the environment you need to interact with through pressing circle) but it still feels good overall. Those segments where you need to swing from hook to hook with your cane were probably the hardest platforming segments for me since I had a tough time getting the timing down between jumps to reach the hooks. I never really felt like I was super "in the flow" like some of my other favorite platformers, but nonetheless it was fun to make my way through these levels. I think the only real downside with the gameplay is that they shove a lot of different play styles in here, which sounds good on paper to break up the monotony but they all feel either half-baked or just plain mediocre. Twin-stick shooters were never quite my thing and this game throws a good number of 'em at you, same with racing minigames where you need to get first place. There's also a few escort missions that are still shoot-em-ups but done through first person and you gotta have pretty quick reflexes for some of those. One boss has a rhythm game section that felt like it went on forever and was pretty challenging for me, I hear the PS3 collection of this game messes up the timing in that minigame and I can't imagine how much worse it would be if I was playing it that way lol. I also died a lot in this game but I'm not sure how much of that I can chalk to the game being actually hard or just me being a complete doofus at 3D platformers. Nonetheless, aside from the rather disappointing forcing of different play styles, I did think the gameplay was solid overall; I just think the game should have stuck to more pure platforming. My favorite levels were in the China world and the Haitian jungle world.
The game doesn't have much story, so I will use this paragraph to talk about the minor stuff making up this game that I enjoyed. I know I already mentioned this but I did quite enjoy the characters, Sly's crew feels very much like a typical cartoon series team dynamic with Bentley being the verbose and nerdy brains of the operation, Sly being the cool charismatic leader, and Murray mostly being the comedic relief sidekick. I think Bentley talks a little TOO much and for some reason his voice feels much louder than the others, but I suppose that suits his character well. Carmelita Fox has a fun dynamic with Sly Cooper, with the master thief often teasing the detective and just barely avoiding capture every time. It was nice to see them come to an understanding and work together briefly at the end, even if they went right back to business as usual after. Also, shoutout to the animated cutscenes in this game, they look really great and it makes me wish we had an animated show that looks just like it. There's a surprising amount of them, too, and you even get a little surprise one at the end which is a reanimated version of the opening trailer stylized to look more like an anime (complete with Japanese narration). From what I hear you can unlock a few more of those in the game but I didn't bother with it.
Overall, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus is a fun time. The game's got some noteworthy flaws that I complained about, but the positives outweigh the negatives in my opinion. I am looking forward to playing the whole series (although I hear Thieves in Time is rather divisive).
The gameplay's pretty good. I will say, you'd think that stealth would be more of a central mechanic here than it actually is, but it really isn't that all-encompassing and the game is pretty forgiving if you mess up stealth bits. This is kind of a blessing in disguise for me since I am pretty bad at being stealthy in games. There are definitely levels where you need to sneak around, but this is definitely a platformer through and through so the platforming is the focus. The platforming here is good, took a bit to get the feel of and sometimes it can be janky (mainly with those special parts of the environment you need to interact with through pressing circle) but it still feels good overall. Those segments where you need to swing from hook to hook with your cane were probably the hardest platforming segments for me since I had a tough time getting the timing down between jumps to reach the hooks. I never really felt like I was super "in the flow" like some of my other favorite platformers, but nonetheless it was fun to make my way through these levels. I think the only real downside with the gameplay is that they shove a lot of different play styles in here, which sounds good on paper to break up the monotony but they all feel either half-baked or just plain mediocre. Twin-stick shooters were never quite my thing and this game throws a good number of 'em at you, same with racing minigames where you need to get first place. There's also a few escort missions that are still shoot-em-ups but done through first person and you gotta have pretty quick reflexes for some of those. One boss has a rhythm game section that felt like it went on forever and was pretty challenging for me, I hear the PS3 collection of this game messes up the timing in that minigame and I can't imagine how much worse it would be if I was playing it that way lol. I also died a lot in this game but I'm not sure how much of that I can chalk to the game being actually hard or just me being a complete doofus at 3D platformers. Nonetheless, aside from the rather disappointing forcing of different play styles, I did think the gameplay was solid overall; I just think the game should have stuck to more pure platforming. My favorite levels were in the China world and the Haitian jungle world.
The game doesn't have much story, so I will use this paragraph to talk about the minor stuff making up this game that I enjoyed. I know I already mentioned this but I did quite enjoy the characters, Sly's crew feels very much like a typical cartoon series team dynamic with Bentley being the verbose and nerdy brains of the operation, Sly being the cool charismatic leader, and Murray mostly being the comedic relief sidekick. I think Bentley talks a little TOO much and for some reason his voice feels much louder than the others, but I suppose that suits his character well. Carmelita Fox has a fun dynamic with Sly Cooper, with the master thief often teasing the detective and just barely avoiding capture every time. It was nice to see them come to an understanding and work together briefly at the end, even if they went right back to business as usual after. Also, shoutout to the animated cutscenes in this game, they look really great and it makes me wish we had an animated show that looks just like it. There's a surprising amount of them, too, and you even get a little surprise one at the end which is a reanimated version of the opening trailer stylized to look more like an anime (complete with Japanese narration). From what I hear you can unlock a few more of those in the game but I didn't bother with it.
Overall, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus is a fun time. The game's got some noteworthy flaws that I complained about, but the positives outweigh the negatives in my opinion. I am looking forward to playing the whole series (although I hear Thieves in Time is rather divisive).
1994
This review contains spoilers
A long while back, I claimed I was going to do a playthrough of this game only after beating Gargoyle's Quest 2. Well, I found that game kind of boring, so now, a few years after saying that, I've beat Demon's Crest. I think I'd say this game was a fun experience overall, its definitely better than Gargoyle's Quest but still has some sore spots and signs of missed potential. Its a bit of a shame how this game removes a good amount of the RPG elements from Gargoyle's Quest, for example, although I think that's ultimately for the better since they were usually more annoying than interesting in the previous games (stuff like random encounters, a more involved overworld, minor side quests, etc.).
Demon's Crest is a pretty standard platformer. Firebrand can float in the air and shoot fireballs, just like Gargoyle's Quest except you no longer have a gauge for it so you can just fly infinitely. One could argue that this change removes some challenge from the game, but trust me, Demon's Crest is still tough even with unlimited flying. Most of the difficulty is with the bosses, though; its not often that I died to the actual levels. I see folks criticize the game's length since it only consists of 7 levels, but I feel like Demon's Crest still makes good use of these levels, especially if you're trying to grab everything (which this game is pretty much built around encouraging you to do). You can do the levels in whatever order you want except for Level 1, but it does seem like the game has a certain order of progression you're intended to do. If you really want to, you could go straight to the final level and beat the game right there, but you get the bad ending for doing that and the final boss is incredibly difficult to beat without any upgrades. It's already tedious enough to beat him when you're supposed to fight him in my experience. Something cool that Demon's Crest does is that each level (except for Level 1) has at least two different paths, some may be hidden and others are available in plain sight. Level 5, for example, has an area you get to with a green tornado you can fall through to reach the hidden area; if you instead just keep going forward, you get the normal path. Demon's Crest sometimes does an almost sort of Metroidvania thing by gating those extra paths in levels behind the transformations you get. A good example of this is how, when you get the Earth Gargoyle form after beating the first level, you can then use the Earth Gargoyle's shoulder bash move to open up a few secret paths in other levels. The Tidal Gargoyle form is also used to hide a few underwater paths with their own bosses to fight. The only problem with this more free-form structure, in my opinion, is that it isn't clear which order is best to beat the game with. Sure, you can skip areas or do them in whichever order you want, but some bosses will be WAY harder without the moves they're more susceptible to. It's not quite a Mega Man style weakness chart, but the bosses do take more damage from certain powers; Gwemon, the white wolf boss in Level 6, takes a ton of damage from the basic fireball you start the game with despite being a boss I thought the game wanted me to beat later on, which actually probably makes him a decent boss to start with aside from his annoying invincibility gimmick. Flame Lord in the forest level takes a ton of damage from the Earth Gargoyle's earthy fireball that travels across the ground and I fought the final Arma battle (he's a recurring boss you fight a few times) with the Demon Flame and destroyed him like it was child's play. I watched videos where people do the final Arma fight without it and it takes forever in comparison. Because of these hidden weaknesses the game never tells you about, it can feel like you're wasting your time fighting these bosses without them. Nonetheless, I mostly enjoyed the open-ended system this game abides by, and its a big reason why I think its short length is actually a good thing. I used a guide and the game still took me around 9 hours to beat since I wanted to get everything...well, I ALMOST got everything, but the game locks the final health upgrade to a stupid headbutting mini game that is ridiculously hard and I hate it with the fury of a thousand suns. No secret final boss for me, I guess.
The game really doesn't have much of a story, so I'll move on to other parts of the game. One thing I will complement the hell out of Demon's Crest for is the visual and sound elements. They really nail that spooky gothic vibe, everything from the character designs to the level aesthetics. The music is also great, I love listening to many songs in the OST and even the ones that I'm not as big a fan of are still quite atmospheric and interesting. If you guys ever want to check it out for yourself, I recommend the songs Beyond the Colosseum, Metropolis of Ruin, Caverns of Ice, and The Hell of Civil War (bad ending theme).
Overall, I had a great time with Demon's Crest. The core gameplay is fun, exploring the levels fully bit by bit as you get more upgrades is fun, the visuals and music are immaculate...only thing is, if you don't want the bad ending, you might need a guide on you, and the game doesn't tell you things that would be nice to know. Admittedly part of this might be me being stupid, but I had no idea that the Earth Gargoyle can shoulder bash or that the Aerial Gargoyle can flap its wings straight up, so I wasn't getting full use out of those forms until quite a bit later in my playthrough.
Demon's Crest is a pretty standard platformer. Firebrand can float in the air and shoot fireballs, just like Gargoyle's Quest except you no longer have a gauge for it so you can just fly infinitely. One could argue that this change removes some challenge from the game, but trust me, Demon's Crest is still tough even with unlimited flying. Most of the difficulty is with the bosses, though; its not often that I died to the actual levels. I see folks criticize the game's length since it only consists of 7 levels, but I feel like Demon's Crest still makes good use of these levels, especially if you're trying to grab everything (which this game is pretty much built around encouraging you to do). You can do the levels in whatever order you want except for Level 1, but it does seem like the game has a certain order of progression you're intended to do. If you really want to, you could go straight to the final level and beat the game right there, but you get the bad ending for doing that and the final boss is incredibly difficult to beat without any upgrades. It's already tedious enough to beat him when you're supposed to fight him in my experience. Something cool that Demon's Crest does is that each level (except for Level 1) has at least two different paths, some may be hidden and others are available in plain sight. Level 5, for example, has an area you get to with a green tornado you can fall through to reach the hidden area; if you instead just keep going forward, you get the normal path. Demon's Crest sometimes does an almost sort of Metroidvania thing by gating those extra paths in levels behind the transformations you get. A good example of this is how, when you get the Earth Gargoyle form after beating the first level, you can then use the Earth Gargoyle's shoulder bash move to open up a few secret paths in other levels. The Tidal Gargoyle form is also used to hide a few underwater paths with their own bosses to fight. The only problem with this more free-form structure, in my opinion, is that it isn't clear which order is best to beat the game with. Sure, you can skip areas or do them in whichever order you want, but some bosses will be WAY harder without the moves they're more susceptible to. It's not quite a Mega Man style weakness chart, but the bosses do take more damage from certain powers; Gwemon, the white wolf boss in Level 6, takes a ton of damage from the basic fireball you start the game with despite being a boss I thought the game wanted me to beat later on, which actually probably makes him a decent boss to start with aside from his annoying invincibility gimmick. Flame Lord in the forest level takes a ton of damage from the Earth Gargoyle's earthy fireball that travels across the ground and I fought the final Arma battle (he's a recurring boss you fight a few times) with the Demon Flame and destroyed him like it was child's play. I watched videos where people do the final Arma fight without it and it takes forever in comparison. Because of these hidden weaknesses the game never tells you about, it can feel like you're wasting your time fighting these bosses without them. Nonetheless, I mostly enjoyed the open-ended system this game abides by, and its a big reason why I think its short length is actually a good thing. I used a guide and the game still took me around 9 hours to beat since I wanted to get everything...well, I ALMOST got everything, but the game locks the final health upgrade to a stupid headbutting mini game that is ridiculously hard and I hate it with the fury of a thousand suns. No secret final boss for me, I guess.
The game really doesn't have much of a story, so I'll move on to other parts of the game. One thing I will complement the hell out of Demon's Crest for is the visual and sound elements. They really nail that spooky gothic vibe, everything from the character designs to the level aesthetics. The music is also great, I love listening to many songs in the OST and even the ones that I'm not as big a fan of are still quite atmospheric and interesting. If you guys ever want to check it out for yourself, I recommend the songs Beyond the Colosseum, Metropolis of Ruin, Caverns of Ice, and The Hell of Civil War (bad ending theme).
Overall, I had a great time with Demon's Crest. The core gameplay is fun, exploring the levels fully bit by bit as you get more upgrades is fun, the visuals and music are immaculate...only thing is, if you don't want the bad ending, you might need a guide on you, and the game doesn't tell you things that would be nice to know. Admittedly part of this might be me being stupid, but I had no idea that the Earth Gargoyle can shoulder bash or that the Aerial Gargoyle can flap its wings straight up, so I wasn't getting full use out of those forms until quite a bit later in my playthrough.
This review contains spoilers
So I technically started this in December (Dec 17, 2023), but I didn't really feel like playing through it then. To be honest, its mostly because Teal Mask was disappointingly mid to me. Took me until today (Jan 5, 2024) to really go and complete it; to my knowledge, there's a bit of post-game content, too, but frankly I think I've had enough Pokémon Violet for a long time. It didn't really seem worth doing for me judging on what the game was hinting at it being (refighting the gym leaders - which we already did in the base game - and elite four again), so I'm fine leaving my save right after beating the game and earning some goodies from it like being able to Terastalize whenever you want or fly with Miraidon. In my opinion, Indigo Disk is better than Teal Mask, but I think I have significantly less to say about this DLC than I did about Teal Mask since there just...wasn't much here that gripped me. I felt Teal Mask had a lot of potential to be really interesting, even though it wasn't. Meanwhile, Indigo Disk is a DLC I felt mostly fulfilled its promises, but was still a bit boring to me. It seems evident this was the one that saw the most care put into it, but its still not that much better than Teal Mask. Unfortunately its building upon a pretty flawed base game, so I suppose that was only inevitable.
The story goes in pretty much the same direction you'd likely be expecting it to. After helping out the folks in Kitakami, now you're going to the Blueberry Academy since Director Clavell and Ms. Briar are interested in having you transfer there. Blueberry Academy is supposed to be in Unova, but, since you don't get any glimpses of any locations outside of the academy, you don't really get a sense of where exactly this place fits on the Unova map (perhaps saved for whenever they inevitably remake Black and White). The design doesn't feel especially Unovan to me, either, though that's a very unimportant gripe. The goal here is to explore the Terrarium, which is like a big high-tech dome with simulations of different natural environments, to find new Pokemon and fight the elite four. This time, you're fighting the Blueberry Academy's elite four, consisting of Crispin, Lacey, Drayton, Amarys, and then the champion Kieran. Kieran basically gets a full-on villain arc here, becoming the "mean rival" of the game while Carmine takes a backseat into the minor supporting character role after you helped her in Teal Mask. I was on record as a big defender of Kieran in Teal Mask, but unfortunately he is super hard to like in Indigo Disk because he's nothing but a complete ass to everyone around him here and he never gets called out for it. Worse yet, STILL no one has any idea how to help him with his obvious low self-esteem and insecurities, and the main character can't do anything about it either since you're basically a cardboard cutout of a character. You're kinda just left to watch this kid fester in jealousy and rage, bullying anyone he feels he can get away with bullying, until you inevitably win against him. It at least doesn't make you feel bad anymore, though, since now he's a jerk and you gotta knock some sense into him, whereas before it was like you were fighting some poor shy kid who's constantly teased (at best) by his sister and thought he had any chance against you. Annoyingly, Carmine is still brushing off Kieran's problems as just teenage angst, though at least now she isn't being mean to him anymore. I will say that I found it really funny just how hard the game almost seems to play into the whole trope of the main character having plot armor; everyone is almost self aware of how you're just better than everyone else, you've been to the Area Zero and discovered one of its greatest secrets before the authorities of this world did, and you win against everyone who could possibly challenge you. You are a transfer student who beat the Blueberry Academy elite four and champion Kieran in the span of...like, one day. Kieran is forced to accept that he will never be as good as you, which lets him finally let go of his grudge and his very harmful coping mechanism of pushing himself (and everyone around him) to the limit. I guess its a pretty great arc as far as Pokemon goes, but I can't help but feel it could've been pulled off better, and the whole time I was just annoyed that I couldn't help Kieran (though, again, not nearly as bad here as it was in Teal Mask because Kieran is in villain arc mode and not some shy kid being pushed around all the time). Also, right at the end, you go back to Area Zero and use the titular Indigo Disk to go further down. They play this as some big epic thing but really it just felt like going through some small corridors, stopping to talk to the characters, do a battle, talk to the characters again after the barrier opens, rinse and repeat until you reach Terapagos and fight it. Terapagos is the new legendary, of course, and its kinda neat I guess? It really doesn't have much of a role in the DLC, though; it just kinda pops up at the very end of the story after you trudge through Area Zero again. There is buildup to it since this was what Ms. Briar was dying to get to Area Zero for throughout the whole story of Teal Mask and Indigo Disk, but I dunno it just didn't leave much of an impression on me. Certainly not the same kind of impact the AI Turo fight from the base game did, anyway.
I know I'm being a negative Nancy throughout a lot of this review, but I think I was hyperaware of Pokémon Violet's repetitiveness here and this DLC does next to nothing to spice it up. I'll talk about some things I liked in this paragraph to balance it out. Despite my gripes with how they handled Kieran, I do still like him as a character. I think the fact that he was so consumed by self-loathing and jealousy was interesting to see, though still rather frustrating since, again, we can't help him through it. The resolution to his arc is rather bittersweet: he realizes he will never be able to be as good as you, but he's also humbled by that experience and it seems like it was the only real way to get him to let go of the grudge. As for non-story related stuff, a few other people already mentioned this, but I do enjoy the shift towards a double battle focus here. The fights against the elite four were surprisingly really competent, I actually lost to each of them (except for Crispin) once or twice. My team is far from the most optimal team in the world, but even with the huge level advantage I had (since these DLCs don't seem balanced towards someone who kept the same team for the whole game) I still got clobbered by most of the Blueberry Elite Four at least once. It'd be interesting to see how I would fare against these guys if I was on the same level as them. Ironically, champ Kieran was one of the few that didn't beat me once. I also liked that we're back in Unova again; there's nothing about the design or environment of Blueberry Academy that really hints towards it being a Unovan location, but we do get some nice remixes of Gen 5 music and there are a good amount of returning Unova Pokemon here. Was really disappointed to see some of my favorite Pokemon - Vanillite and its evolutions - not return, though; I know they get a bad rep, but come on, throw me a bone here man! Nonetheless, I still found there was stuff to enjoy in this DLC.
I can't help but feel like this review has devolved into unfocused ramblings now, so I'll wrap it up here. I think that, overall, Indigo Disk is just okay. Its better than Teal Mask, but not by much. I give it an "alright" rating of 2.5 stars. At first, I gave it a 3, but in retrospect I think I have too many complaints about this DLC to justify it being a 3. I'm going to demote my rating of Teal Mask to a 2.5, as well.
The story goes in pretty much the same direction you'd likely be expecting it to. After helping out the folks in Kitakami, now you're going to the Blueberry Academy since Director Clavell and Ms. Briar are interested in having you transfer there. Blueberry Academy is supposed to be in Unova, but, since you don't get any glimpses of any locations outside of the academy, you don't really get a sense of where exactly this place fits on the Unova map (perhaps saved for whenever they inevitably remake Black and White). The design doesn't feel especially Unovan to me, either, though that's a very unimportant gripe. The goal here is to explore the Terrarium, which is like a big high-tech dome with simulations of different natural environments, to find new Pokemon and fight the elite four. This time, you're fighting the Blueberry Academy's elite four, consisting of Crispin, Lacey, Drayton, Amarys, and then the champion Kieran. Kieran basically gets a full-on villain arc here, becoming the "mean rival" of the game while Carmine takes a backseat into the minor supporting character role after you helped her in Teal Mask. I was on record as a big defender of Kieran in Teal Mask, but unfortunately he is super hard to like in Indigo Disk because he's nothing but a complete ass to everyone around him here and he never gets called out for it. Worse yet, STILL no one has any idea how to help him with his obvious low self-esteem and insecurities, and the main character can't do anything about it either since you're basically a cardboard cutout of a character. You're kinda just left to watch this kid fester in jealousy and rage, bullying anyone he feels he can get away with bullying, until you inevitably win against him. It at least doesn't make you feel bad anymore, though, since now he's a jerk and you gotta knock some sense into him, whereas before it was like you were fighting some poor shy kid who's constantly teased (at best) by his sister and thought he had any chance against you. Annoyingly, Carmine is still brushing off Kieran's problems as just teenage angst, though at least now she isn't being mean to him anymore. I will say that I found it really funny just how hard the game almost seems to play into the whole trope of the main character having plot armor; everyone is almost self aware of how you're just better than everyone else, you've been to the Area Zero and discovered one of its greatest secrets before the authorities of this world did, and you win against everyone who could possibly challenge you. You are a transfer student who beat the Blueberry Academy elite four and champion Kieran in the span of...like, one day. Kieran is forced to accept that he will never be as good as you, which lets him finally let go of his grudge and his very harmful coping mechanism of pushing himself (and everyone around him) to the limit. I guess its a pretty great arc as far as Pokemon goes, but I can't help but feel it could've been pulled off better, and the whole time I was just annoyed that I couldn't help Kieran (though, again, not nearly as bad here as it was in Teal Mask because Kieran is in villain arc mode and not some shy kid being pushed around all the time). Also, right at the end, you go back to Area Zero and use the titular Indigo Disk to go further down. They play this as some big epic thing but really it just felt like going through some small corridors, stopping to talk to the characters, do a battle, talk to the characters again after the barrier opens, rinse and repeat until you reach Terapagos and fight it. Terapagos is the new legendary, of course, and its kinda neat I guess? It really doesn't have much of a role in the DLC, though; it just kinda pops up at the very end of the story after you trudge through Area Zero again. There is buildup to it since this was what Ms. Briar was dying to get to Area Zero for throughout the whole story of Teal Mask and Indigo Disk, but I dunno it just didn't leave much of an impression on me. Certainly not the same kind of impact the AI Turo fight from the base game did, anyway.
I know I'm being a negative Nancy throughout a lot of this review, but I think I was hyperaware of Pokémon Violet's repetitiveness here and this DLC does next to nothing to spice it up. I'll talk about some things I liked in this paragraph to balance it out. Despite my gripes with how they handled Kieran, I do still like him as a character. I think the fact that he was so consumed by self-loathing and jealousy was interesting to see, though still rather frustrating since, again, we can't help him through it. The resolution to his arc is rather bittersweet: he realizes he will never be able to be as good as you, but he's also humbled by that experience and it seems like it was the only real way to get him to let go of the grudge. As for non-story related stuff, a few other people already mentioned this, but I do enjoy the shift towards a double battle focus here. The fights against the elite four were surprisingly really competent, I actually lost to each of them (except for Crispin) once or twice. My team is far from the most optimal team in the world, but even with the huge level advantage I had (since these DLCs don't seem balanced towards someone who kept the same team for the whole game) I still got clobbered by most of the Blueberry Elite Four at least once. It'd be interesting to see how I would fare against these guys if I was on the same level as them. Ironically, champ Kieran was one of the few that didn't beat me once. I also liked that we're back in Unova again; there's nothing about the design or environment of Blueberry Academy that really hints towards it being a Unovan location, but we do get some nice remixes of Gen 5 music and there are a good amount of returning Unova Pokemon here. Was really disappointed to see some of my favorite Pokemon - Vanillite and its evolutions - not return, though; I know they get a bad rep, but come on, throw me a bone here man! Nonetheless, I still found there was stuff to enjoy in this DLC.
I can't help but feel like this review has devolved into unfocused ramblings now, so I'll wrap it up here. I think that, overall, Indigo Disk is just okay. Its better than Teal Mask, but not by much. I give it an "alright" rating of 2.5 stars. At first, I gave it a 3, but in retrospect I think I have too many complaints about this DLC to justify it being a 3. I'm going to demote my rating of Teal Mask to a 2.5, as well.
2010
I know there's a decent chunk of people that prefer the first Mario Galaxy, but I'm sorry Mario Galaxy 2 was so much more fun to me than the first game. To put it in perspective, I had to give Mario Galaxy a 4 star because of my frustrations, but this one is getting 4.5 stars from me. With the exception of a few frustrating sections (I hated those stupid bird gliding levels and they brought back the annoying ball rolling gimmick for a level or two), I really enjoyed my time with Galaxy 2 and I felt like it addressed a lot of my criticisms with the first game. The only thing I think was a bit disappointing was that the presentation overall is lacking, they give up a lot of that epic cinematic vibe the first game had and instead go for some kind of interactive storybook feel. Its not inherently worse, but it did feel like a downgrade to me. Still, though, I think that was worth sacrificing for an overall better experience. I think it also helped get me more invested from the beginning, whereas Galaxy 1's beginning felt slow and kinda boring to me.
I'll start with address the controls. Its only fair since I spent a whole section of my Galaxy 1 review talking about controls and gameplay feel. Most of my issues with the forced motion controls in Galaxy 1 are gone in Galaxy 2; though one frustrating gimmick returned and one annoying new one was introduced, the game's design focuses much more on regular platforming and not Wiimote motion gobbledygook. Also, is it just me or does Mario move much more smoothly in this game? Maybe I'm seeing something that isn't there and there's no real difference between the two games in this regard, but that issue I mentioned in the previous review of how Mario is always moving at an angle is pretty much gone here. I assumed it was the fault of the nunchuck stick, but I guess that's just how the first game was built to control? I don't really know. Point is, I was so glad to see that the vast majority of this game's levels drop the forced motion stuff and instead focus on the fundamentals, all the while introducing cool new powerups and stage gimmicks to play around with.
The core gameplay is fun. Like I said before, it generally feels like a return to form, taking Galaxy 1's good ideas while pivoting into a more standard direction. I really love all the new powerups they added, especially the Yoshi ones. He gets the Dash Pepper (makes him run really fast but you can't make him stop), Blimp Fruit (makes him continually float upwards), and the Bulb Berries (illuminates nearby areas to reveal invisible platforms), and all three get some really fun uses in the level design. Mario gets some neat powerups too, though mostly you'll be using the returning ones since this game seems to really like the Fire Flower. As for the new powerups, the Rock Mushroom is fun to use but gimmicky and a bit hard to control, while the Cloud Flower is used in some creative ways in levels but is mostly just creating another platform for yourself (and letting you jump slightly higher). Everything they did with Yoshi was the highlight for me, basically. As for the structure of Galaxy 2, its definitely more linear and straightforward than Galaxy 1; rather than having about five different areas that encourage finishing levels in the order you want, Galaxy 2 takes a rigid world structure kinda like Mario 3, where you need to beat the levels in order to progress. This comes at the cost of being less open-ended than Galaxy 1 since you don't have as much freedom to skip galaxies, plus the game seems to be tighter on how many stars you can avoid to beat the game; if I wasn't grabbing most of the Hidden Stars and prankster comets (some of which for the latter are really tough and I can see people wanting to skip), I'd be struggling. I will say that I think the prankster comets and hidden stars are easier to get this time around and more fun overall, so maybe that helps with the game's increased linearity for some.
Overall, this game is a grand ol' time. I know Galaxy 1 fans don't like that this one downscaled on cutscenes and the like (some may even argue that the music is less memorable even if I don't agree), lamenting the loss of stuff like Rosalina's storybook, but I don't really mind personally. I give this game 4.5 stars, very close to a 5 but my nitpicks were just enough to bump it down a notch.
I'll start with address the controls. Its only fair since I spent a whole section of my Galaxy 1 review talking about controls and gameplay feel. Most of my issues with the forced motion controls in Galaxy 1 are gone in Galaxy 2; though one frustrating gimmick returned and one annoying new one was introduced, the game's design focuses much more on regular platforming and not Wiimote motion gobbledygook. Also, is it just me or does Mario move much more smoothly in this game? Maybe I'm seeing something that isn't there and there's no real difference between the two games in this regard, but that issue I mentioned in the previous review of how Mario is always moving at an angle is pretty much gone here. I assumed it was the fault of the nunchuck stick, but I guess that's just how the first game was built to control? I don't really know. Point is, I was so glad to see that the vast majority of this game's levels drop the forced motion stuff and instead focus on the fundamentals, all the while introducing cool new powerups and stage gimmicks to play around with.
The core gameplay is fun. Like I said before, it generally feels like a return to form, taking Galaxy 1's good ideas while pivoting into a more standard direction. I really love all the new powerups they added, especially the Yoshi ones. He gets the Dash Pepper (makes him run really fast but you can't make him stop), Blimp Fruit (makes him continually float upwards), and the Bulb Berries (illuminates nearby areas to reveal invisible platforms), and all three get some really fun uses in the level design. Mario gets some neat powerups too, though mostly you'll be using the returning ones since this game seems to really like the Fire Flower. As for the new powerups, the Rock Mushroom is fun to use but gimmicky and a bit hard to control, while the Cloud Flower is used in some creative ways in levels but is mostly just creating another platform for yourself (and letting you jump slightly higher). Everything they did with Yoshi was the highlight for me, basically. As for the structure of Galaxy 2, its definitely more linear and straightforward than Galaxy 1; rather than having about five different areas that encourage finishing levels in the order you want, Galaxy 2 takes a rigid world structure kinda like Mario 3, where you need to beat the levels in order to progress. This comes at the cost of being less open-ended than Galaxy 1 since you don't have as much freedom to skip galaxies, plus the game seems to be tighter on how many stars you can avoid to beat the game; if I wasn't grabbing most of the Hidden Stars and prankster comets (some of which for the latter are really tough and I can see people wanting to skip), I'd be struggling. I will say that I think the prankster comets and hidden stars are easier to get this time around and more fun overall, so maybe that helps with the game's increased linearity for some.
Overall, this game is a grand ol' time. I know Galaxy 1 fans don't like that this one downscaled on cutscenes and the like (some may even argue that the music is less memorable even if I don't agree), lamenting the loss of stuff like Rosalina's storybook, but I don't really mind personally. I give this game 4.5 stars, very close to a 5 but my nitpicks were just enough to bump it down a notch.
2007
So, I've never really been a big 3D Mario guy. I would play them here and there but inevitably I'd hit a roadblock where I either got frustrated or bored. 64 and Sunshine I've still never beat to this day, and until now I had never beat either Mario Galaxy game. 3D platformers in general aren't really something I'm super big on, tbh. However, Super Mario Galaxy was actually pretty fun for me. I certainly had my gripes, but, for the most part, the game was solid in my opinion. The later parts (from the third galaxy onwards) were especially great.
I am dedicating an entire paragraph to controls and gameplay feel because, to be honest, I thought I was going to really dislike this going in. I do not like motion controls in my platformers and this game has them in spades since Super Mario Galaxy was kinda built to sell you on the Wii. The gravity swapping also really threw me off and was a bit annoying for me to wrap my head around, but, once I got the hang of it, it was actually pretty fun. Mario's movement feels a bit strange to me; it is mostly smooth, but it took some getting used to how far he moves, so sometimes I'd get hit by an enemy that I thought I got close enough to hit but Mario wasn't actually close enough. I really don't know how to describe that better, but it was certainly a weird feeling and it made me very worried that I'd hate the game's movement. I dunno if its just me but I also felt like the nunchuck's stick makes it to where Mario is always moving at an angle, which makes tight platforming very challenging since you can't just move straight forward. Sometimes when I turned Mario around he'd make like a full circle instead of just turning direction, though this was very rare and might've been my fault. The motion controls are mostly unobtrusive, thankfully. My hand would get pretty tired having to keep a Wiimote constantly raised to grab any Star Bits or interact with Pull Stars in the level, but the spin move was decently fun to use and most usage of motion control felt fair to me. The problem is in levels like Sling Pod Galaxy, where you need to precisely fling Mario from sling pod to sling pod, which was ridiculously difficult for me (though I did eventually do it). I later realized the issue was more so with me having a hard time understanding what exactly the trajectory was rather than the motion controls themselves. Also, the ball levels suck. I tried doing one of them and it felt so clunky to control that I just completely skipped them because I hated it so much. Overall, the controls and gameplay feel definitely have their quirks in my opinion, but by the end the game seems to ease up a lot more on the motion controls and I got more accustomed to the way the game feels. I was really enjoying the last couple of galaxies with little to no complaints, they were tough but felt fair.
Now that that's out of the way, I can talk more about the general gameplay. I think the level design here is pretty good, there's some galaxies here with levels that I found very enjoyable like Honeyclimb Galaxy, Freezeflame Galaxy, Ghostly Galaxy, Toy Time Galaxy, and Gold Leaf Galaxy, among others. Even the boss galaxies were pretty fun; rather than just taking you right to the boss, most have a sort of mini level beforehand, and some are quite challenging. Most of the galaxies I loved were nearing the end of the game, though I didn't get to experience any levels from the very last galaxy since I took the opportunity to end the game with the final Bowser fight right after unlocking the final galaxy. Despite my gripes with the motion controls, there were some levels that used it to good effect; I liked how Bubble Breeze Galaxy uses motion controls for you to blow a bubble around a dangerous pond with a bunch of spikes for you to avoid, for example. Of course I would rather there be no motion controls at all, but, since they had to be here, I'm glad that Nintendo used it in fun ways like this. I could definitely see why people liked this game so much by the end, but I will say that the early parts of the game were quite boring and annoying to get used to for me. Maybe that's just a "me" problem, I dunno.
I will give a brief shoutout to the visuals and music here. The visuals won't blow you away (maybe they did back in 2007 though), but you can really tell just how cinematic Nintendo was going here and it looks great for the Wii. That sorta cinematic vibe also transfers to the music, which...I don't think I need to tell you is truly amazing. You get some more standard sounding Mario tunes in there (that doesn't mean they sound bad of course), but a lot of this soundtrack is really flexing the fact they got a full orchestra and it just sounds amazing. You listen to the Gusty Garden Galaxy theme and try to tell me that doesn't sound majestic as hell. This also has easily the best Bowser fight theme in my opinion, its very epic (one of the rare times you'll see me use that word unironically) and conveys the grand scale of Bowser's plan this time. Really awesome stuff, genuinely.
Overall, I wanted to think of Super Mario Galaxy as this masterpiece everyone seems to tout it as, but I just don't. I still enjoyed my time with it, but it took until at least halfway through for me to start really liking it and seeing where people were coming from. Admittedly, those last few galaxies I played were truly great. I think I'd give Mario Galaxy 4 stars. My frustrations early on are just enough to bump it down to 4 stars, but if the early parts of the game were as good as the late game was, I'd definitely give it 4.5 stars. Am I just missing something? Guess I'll find out when I start Super Mario Galaxy 2 later today.
I am dedicating an entire paragraph to controls and gameplay feel because, to be honest, I thought I was going to really dislike this going in. I do not like motion controls in my platformers and this game has them in spades since Super Mario Galaxy was kinda built to sell you on the Wii. The gravity swapping also really threw me off and was a bit annoying for me to wrap my head around, but, once I got the hang of it, it was actually pretty fun. Mario's movement feels a bit strange to me; it is mostly smooth, but it took some getting used to how far he moves, so sometimes I'd get hit by an enemy that I thought I got close enough to hit but Mario wasn't actually close enough. I really don't know how to describe that better, but it was certainly a weird feeling and it made me very worried that I'd hate the game's movement. I dunno if its just me but I also felt like the nunchuck's stick makes it to where Mario is always moving at an angle, which makes tight platforming very challenging since you can't just move straight forward. Sometimes when I turned Mario around he'd make like a full circle instead of just turning direction, though this was very rare and might've been my fault. The motion controls are mostly unobtrusive, thankfully. My hand would get pretty tired having to keep a Wiimote constantly raised to grab any Star Bits or interact with Pull Stars in the level, but the spin move was decently fun to use and most usage of motion control felt fair to me. The problem is in levels like Sling Pod Galaxy, where you need to precisely fling Mario from sling pod to sling pod, which was ridiculously difficult for me (though I did eventually do it). I later realized the issue was more so with me having a hard time understanding what exactly the trajectory was rather than the motion controls themselves. Also, the ball levels suck. I tried doing one of them and it felt so clunky to control that I just completely skipped them because I hated it so much. Overall, the controls and gameplay feel definitely have their quirks in my opinion, but by the end the game seems to ease up a lot more on the motion controls and I got more accustomed to the way the game feels. I was really enjoying the last couple of galaxies with little to no complaints, they were tough but felt fair.
Now that that's out of the way, I can talk more about the general gameplay. I think the level design here is pretty good, there's some galaxies here with levels that I found very enjoyable like Honeyclimb Galaxy, Freezeflame Galaxy, Ghostly Galaxy, Toy Time Galaxy, and Gold Leaf Galaxy, among others. Even the boss galaxies were pretty fun; rather than just taking you right to the boss, most have a sort of mini level beforehand, and some are quite challenging. Most of the galaxies I loved were nearing the end of the game, though I didn't get to experience any levels from the very last galaxy since I took the opportunity to end the game with the final Bowser fight right after unlocking the final galaxy. Despite my gripes with the motion controls, there were some levels that used it to good effect; I liked how Bubble Breeze Galaxy uses motion controls for you to blow a bubble around a dangerous pond with a bunch of spikes for you to avoid, for example. Of course I would rather there be no motion controls at all, but, since they had to be here, I'm glad that Nintendo used it in fun ways like this. I could definitely see why people liked this game so much by the end, but I will say that the early parts of the game were quite boring and annoying to get used to for me. Maybe that's just a "me" problem, I dunno.
I will give a brief shoutout to the visuals and music here. The visuals won't blow you away (maybe they did back in 2007 though), but you can really tell just how cinematic Nintendo was going here and it looks great for the Wii. That sorta cinematic vibe also transfers to the music, which...I don't think I need to tell you is truly amazing. You get some more standard sounding Mario tunes in there (that doesn't mean they sound bad of course), but a lot of this soundtrack is really flexing the fact they got a full orchestra and it just sounds amazing. You listen to the Gusty Garden Galaxy theme and try to tell me that doesn't sound majestic as hell. This also has easily the best Bowser fight theme in my opinion, its very epic (one of the rare times you'll see me use that word unironically) and conveys the grand scale of Bowser's plan this time. Really awesome stuff, genuinely.
Overall, I wanted to think of Super Mario Galaxy as this masterpiece everyone seems to tout it as, but I just don't. I still enjoyed my time with it, but it took until at least halfway through for me to start really liking it and seeing where people were coming from. Admittedly, those last few galaxies I played were truly great. I think I'd give Mario Galaxy 4 stars. My frustrations early on are just enough to bump it down to 4 stars, but if the early parts of the game were as good as the late game was, I'd definitely give it 4.5 stars. Am I just missing something? Guess I'll find out when I start Super Mario Galaxy 2 later today.
1993
I've always had fondness for this game due to nostalgia, but, if I'm being honest, revisiting it was a bit disappointing for me. I'm not gonna have a lot to say about this one in comparison to other games I've reviewed. It literally only took me around an hour to beat, which is just absurdly short, even for a SNES platformer. From what I hear, the Genesis game is a different beast and is typically seen as the better game, but I never had a Genesis so that's not the version I know.
The gameplay is extremely simple. Aside from a rather situational apple toss move that stuns enemies (can be quite useful but I wasn't using it much despite the game showering you in apples to throw), the only thing Aladdin can do is run and jump. Simple isn't inherently bad, but its made worse by the fact that I found the game to be not very fun to control. I'm not sure if its just because I needed to get used to how the game feels or not, but generally movement just felt kinda clunky. Aladdin goes farther than I expected him to, like just inching upwards makes him walk forward more than you'd think, and that made platforming a bit tricky. I remembered this game being really easy but I actually got a few game overs since I just had a hard time getting used to how this game feels. Some of it was also me being stupid, yea, so you could call it a skill issue if you want, but generally I just didn't like how the game feels to control. One thing that does help is that this game has an item you can find in levels that lets Aladdin use a cloth as a parachute. Honestly, the times I didn't have this item was rough with how much I relied on it. Structurally, the game is divided into four...I guess I could call them "worlds"? Or is it more like acts? Regardless, each one has three levels, except for the bonus carpet ride level. I will say that I absolutely loved the Genie world, that was by far my favorite part of this game as a kid and its just really fun seeing a big cloudy world with the Genie's face plastered all over everything. It was probably the most creative world when it came to level obstacles, too, though it certainly won't blow your mind. Lastly, the bosses were pretty alright. I liked the semifinal boss, that being the first Jafar fight where you need to avoid his attacks and wait for him to float down so you can jump on his head. The final boss is kinda hilariously easy. I died a lot to the first boss since my tiny brain didn't really get the rhythm of baiting his attack then jumping on his head. The third world doesn't have a boss and neither does the second world, though the final level of the second world sorta makes up for that by being a decently tough autoscroller with moving waves of lava and rocks you gotta avoid (plus you can't touch the walls, which are often different heights). Aladdin SNES is a serviceable platformer in my opinion, but it felt kinda middling overall, especially in gameplay feel and length.
It's been forever since I've seen the movie, so I don't remember its story, but, as far as I know, this game's story is pretty much just retelling the movie's story. I won't cover it just because there's not a lot to it.
Overall, Aladdin SNES is just an okay game. I have my gripes with it that I covered here and some of those were pretty disappointing for me, but I definitely don't think the game is bad. Gets a "meh" 3 stars from me. I was a little sad to have my childhood bubble burst like this, but I suppose it is what it is
The gameplay is extremely simple. Aside from a rather situational apple toss move that stuns enemies (can be quite useful but I wasn't using it much despite the game showering you in apples to throw), the only thing Aladdin can do is run and jump. Simple isn't inherently bad, but its made worse by the fact that I found the game to be not very fun to control. I'm not sure if its just because I needed to get used to how the game feels or not, but generally movement just felt kinda clunky. Aladdin goes farther than I expected him to, like just inching upwards makes him walk forward more than you'd think, and that made platforming a bit tricky. I remembered this game being really easy but I actually got a few game overs since I just had a hard time getting used to how this game feels. Some of it was also me being stupid, yea, so you could call it a skill issue if you want, but generally I just didn't like how the game feels to control. One thing that does help is that this game has an item you can find in levels that lets Aladdin use a cloth as a parachute. Honestly, the times I didn't have this item was rough with how much I relied on it. Structurally, the game is divided into four...I guess I could call them "worlds"? Or is it more like acts? Regardless, each one has three levels, except for the bonus carpet ride level. I will say that I absolutely loved the Genie world, that was by far my favorite part of this game as a kid and its just really fun seeing a big cloudy world with the Genie's face plastered all over everything. It was probably the most creative world when it came to level obstacles, too, though it certainly won't blow your mind. Lastly, the bosses were pretty alright. I liked the semifinal boss, that being the first Jafar fight where you need to avoid his attacks and wait for him to float down so you can jump on his head. The final boss is kinda hilariously easy. I died a lot to the first boss since my tiny brain didn't really get the rhythm of baiting his attack then jumping on his head. The third world doesn't have a boss and neither does the second world, though the final level of the second world sorta makes up for that by being a decently tough autoscroller with moving waves of lava and rocks you gotta avoid (plus you can't touch the walls, which are often different heights). Aladdin SNES is a serviceable platformer in my opinion, but it felt kinda middling overall, especially in gameplay feel and length.
It's been forever since I've seen the movie, so I don't remember its story, but, as far as I know, this game's story is pretty much just retelling the movie's story. I won't cover it just because there's not a lot to it.
Overall, Aladdin SNES is just an okay game. I have my gripes with it that I covered here and some of those were pretty disappointing for me, but I definitely don't think the game is bad. Gets a "meh" 3 stars from me. I was a little sad to have my childhood bubble burst like this, but I suppose it is what it is
This review contains spoilers
Well, beating King of Cards marks the end of my Shovel Knight marathon (I don't have Dig and I got no interest in playing Showdown). Somehow, these DLC campaigns always found a way to surprise me, so it only feels fitting that this campaign was perhaps the biggest surprise of them all for me. I remember King of Cards got delayed and everyone was a bit disappointed, but now that I've finally played through this one for the first time, it definitely feels like something that needed the delay (not in a bad way); the mode overall feels much meatier in content than the others, with every idea included feeling fully realized. We have come a long way from Plague of Shadows mostly reusing the level design of Shovel of Hope. Admittedly, despite how good this was in my opinion, I did take some extended breaks. I kinda tired myself out of Shovel Knight from beating all these campaigns back-to-back, you know? Still, though, I had a great time with the whole thing, and I really think this was the best possible way to end it.
The gameplay of King of Cards tends to get compared to the Wario Land series a lot. I can kinda see why, since King Knight takes a page out of Wario's book by stealing his shoulder bash. King Knight is no Wario clone, though; this pompous blueblood's shoulder bash will also send him upward and make him start spinning in a drill-like fashion just below him. The spin can be used to hit enemies, dirt blocks, dig up dirt mounds, and be used for certain level gimmicks like spinning through tornados to warp to the next one, and King Knight will keep spinning until he touches the ground. If you bounce off an enemy or obstacle at least once, you can then bash again, which is a trick that gets used a lot in the game's platforming. Its nuts just how much this one mechanic adds to the game's feel; literally all King Knight has (aside from Heirlooms which are basically just Relics from Shovel of Hope again) is this one move in his repertoire, yet the game's combat still feels fun and the level design finds many creative ways to make use of it. That being said, I think this one attack is really where the Wario Land comparisons end. The structure of the game or the level design didn't remind me of the Wario Land series, unlike other indies that homage Wario Land much more blatantly like Pizza Tower, and I just had a marathon playing through all those games (except for Shake It and the one on Virtual Boy) this year. Speaking of the game's structure, this one seems to take more after the typical 2D NES era platformer than the other Shovel Knight campaigns did. Shovel of Hope, Plague of Shadows, and especially Specter of Torment were all more akin to a Mega Man game in structure, consisting of just a few levels that always end in a boss (plus maybe some bonus levels or bonus event fights ala Super Mario Bros. 3), whereas King of Cards actually has several levels - a good chunk of which have no bosses - and three different worlds of sorts. Playing through King of Cards reminded me a lot of playing through a 2D Mario game, especially with all the really awesome mechanics the game was constantly introducing to spice things up. Huge potion vials you need to bash into to shoot out corks you can use as platforms, continually spinning on tiny cannonballs, skating on small ice platforms while avoiding annoying wolves, long worm-like axolotls that move and you need to stand on (they reminded me of that one Battletoads level with the snakes)...there's a lot of really enjoyable and also really difficult mechanics thrown your way very often. I didn't think to check, but I would not be surprised at all if I died at least two times more often here in King of Cards than I did in any other campaign. Also, there's a card game called Joustus that the game pushes in both the narrative and in the game. I don't like card games and I am so grateful that I'm not forced to play this one, although admittedly I don't get why it feels like it had so much focus but you can also just completely ignore it. Most of the NPCs you talk to are folks you can play Joustus with.
Here's the obligatory story section here. In comparison to Specter of Torment, this one tones down both the general story tone and presence of plot by a lot, mostly using dialogue to be witty and funny (which it absolutely succeeded at in my opinion) more than anything else. Still, though, we do get a nice look into things just before the Order of No Quarter came to be. Apparently, everyone was obsessed with a card game called Joustus, trying to compete for the Joustus Crown. King Knight, of course, wants to claim that position for himself, so he sets out on a journey to bulldoze over anyone in his way. He must meet with the three Joustus Judges - King Pridemoor, the Troupple King, and a mysterious Birder King - and defeat them in a match of Joustus...or, well, that's what you'd think, but the game instead has you just fight them as bosses (big relief for me). It was pretty interesting that this gives the only opportunity to fight these minor supporting characters that show up in most of the other campaigns. King Pridemoor and the Troupple King eventually join a sizeable cast of all-new characters to make up King Knight's fleet, all looking to help him get the Joustus Crown for...some reason? I'm gonna be real here, King Knight is so unlikeable that it makes you wonder why anyone would want to help him, but that's something to discuss a bit later. As it turns out, the Joustus Crown is a farce. It was invented by the Enchantress to get all the most powerful kings to show up to her while she's disguised so that she can then reveal herself and take their powers for her own nefarious purposes. King Knight unknowingly falls right for the plan, but he could not care less, in typical King Knight fashion. When she creates a powerful monster out of everyone's life force, he does defeat the monster which returns everyone back to normal. The Enchantress gives him a choice: join her and get a lavish kingdom of your own or join back with your newfound friends (including both kings and King Knight's own mother). In an expected but still tragic act of betrayal, King Knight forsakes everyone and takes the king position he believes he so rightfully deserves...only to be defeated by Shovel Knight right after he gets to sit in the Pridemoor throne in the end credits scene. All in all, the story ain't much, but its really entertaining thanks to the funny writing. I think the best part is King Knight himself. I was worried that the King of Cards story would try too hard to make him sympathetic since it's all about him (and as far as we've seen in the other campaigns this guy takes every opportunity he can to be a trash-talking egotistical moron so it wouldn't feel right to make him sympathetic), but King Knight in King of Cards is a pathetic whiny prick with an ego the size of Jupiter the whole way through and I kinda loved it. He doesn't thank anyone, he doesn't say anything nice to anyone, he just barks orders and talks down to literally everyone he meets. I do wish more characters called him out for it, though; as funny as the guy's interactions are, it feels like everyone just joins him because the story says it should happen. Legitimately I find it hard to believe anyone except his saint of a mother (who he ends up spitting in the face of anyway) would want to associate with this man. He does not have anywhere near enough charisma to be getting away with all that. King Knight also does not take anything that happens in the story seriously, even as the other kings are genuinely trying to give him advice on how to be a good ruler. I found his dynamic with Specter Knight especially humorous; pair a overly serious edge-lord up with a petulant egomaniac and you're bound to get some funny results. While the story isn't much, I still think this was great because of how entertaining it was.
Overall, King of Cards is simply an excellent platformer. Throughout the DLC, it really felt like I understood how Yacht Club Games was improving them more and more, and this definitely feels like the triumphant culmination of Shovel Knight. Now, despite its content and the fact that it is completely different structurally from the other campaigns, I do think Specter of Torment is just a tad better. In my opinion, Specter Knight is much more fun to control than King Knight, and I prefer Specter of Torment's more straightforward short campaign over this more content-rich campaign. I will say that I loved how hard this one goes on making interesting platforming challenges. It seems to focus on that more than any other and pulls it off spectacularly. King of Cards earns a 5 star from me, a great send-off to this great indie going strong from 2014 to 2019.
The gameplay of King of Cards tends to get compared to the Wario Land series a lot. I can kinda see why, since King Knight takes a page out of Wario's book by stealing his shoulder bash. King Knight is no Wario clone, though; this pompous blueblood's shoulder bash will also send him upward and make him start spinning in a drill-like fashion just below him. The spin can be used to hit enemies, dirt blocks, dig up dirt mounds, and be used for certain level gimmicks like spinning through tornados to warp to the next one, and King Knight will keep spinning until he touches the ground. If you bounce off an enemy or obstacle at least once, you can then bash again, which is a trick that gets used a lot in the game's platforming. Its nuts just how much this one mechanic adds to the game's feel; literally all King Knight has (aside from Heirlooms which are basically just Relics from Shovel of Hope again) is this one move in his repertoire, yet the game's combat still feels fun and the level design finds many creative ways to make use of it. That being said, I think this one attack is really where the Wario Land comparisons end. The structure of the game or the level design didn't remind me of the Wario Land series, unlike other indies that homage Wario Land much more blatantly like Pizza Tower, and I just had a marathon playing through all those games (except for Shake It and the one on Virtual Boy) this year. Speaking of the game's structure, this one seems to take more after the typical 2D NES era platformer than the other Shovel Knight campaigns did. Shovel of Hope, Plague of Shadows, and especially Specter of Torment were all more akin to a Mega Man game in structure, consisting of just a few levels that always end in a boss (plus maybe some bonus levels or bonus event fights ala Super Mario Bros. 3), whereas King of Cards actually has several levels - a good chunk of which have no bosses - and three different worlds of sorts. Playing through King of Cards reminded me a lot of playing through a 2D Mario game, especially with all the really awesome mechanics the game was constantly introducing to spice things up. Huge potion vials you need to bash into to shoot out corks you can use as platforms, continually spinning on tiny cannonballs, skating on small ice platforms while avoiding annoying wolves, long worm-like axolotls that move and you need to stand on (they reminded me of that one Battletoads level with the snakes)...there's a lot of really enjoyable and also really difficult mechanics thrown your way very often. I didn't think to check, but I would not be surprised at all if I died at least two times more often here in King of Cards than I did in any other campaign. Also, there's a card game called Joustus that the game pushes in both the narrative and in the game. I don't like card games and I am so grateful that I'm not forced to play this one, although admittedly I don't get why it feels like it had so much focus but you can also just completely ignore it. Most of the NPCs you talk to are folks you can play Joustus with.
Here's the obligatory story section here. In comparison to Specter of Torment, this one tones down both the general story tone and presence of plot by a lot, mostly using dialogue to be witty and funny (which it absolutely succeeded at in my opinion) more than anything else. Still, though, we do get a nice look into things just before the Order of No Quarter came to be. Apparently, everyone was obsessed with a card game called Joustus, trying to compete for the Joustus Crown. King Knight, of course, wants to claim that position for himself, so he sets out on a journey to bulldoze over anyone in his way. He must meet with the three Joustus Judges - King Pridemoor, the Troupple King, and a mysterious Birder King - and defeat them in a match of Joustus...or, well, that's what you'd think, but the game instead has you just fight them as bosses (big relief for me). It was pretty interesting that this gives the only opportunity to fight these minor supporting characters that show up in most of the other campaigns. King Pridemoor and the Troupple King eventually join a sizeable cast of all-new characters to make up King Knight's fleet, all looking to help him get the Joustus Crown for...some reason? I'm gonna be real here, King Knight is so unlikeable that it makes you wonder why anyone would want to help him, but that's something to discuss a bit later. As it turns out, the Joustus Crown is a farce. It was invented by the Enchantress to get all the most powerful kings to show up to her while she's disguised so that she can then reveal herself and take their powers for her own nefarious purposes. King Knight unknowingly falls right for the plan, but he could not care less, in typical King Knight fashion. When she creates a powerful monster out of everyone's life force, he does defeat the monster which returns everyone back to normal. The Enchantress gives him a choice: join her and get a lavish kingdom of your own or join back with your newfound friends (including both kings and King Knight's own mother). In an expected but still tragic act of betrayal, King Knight forsakes everyone and takes the king position he believes he so rightfully deserves...only to be defeated by Shovel Knight right after he gets to sit in the Pridemoor throne in the end credits scene. All in all, the story ain't much, but its really entertaining thanks to the funny writing. I think the best part is King Knight himself. I was worried that the King of Cards story would try too hard to make him sympathetic since it's all about him (and as far as we've seen in the other campaigns this guy takes every opportunity he can to be a trash-talking egotistical moron so it wouldn't feel right to make him sympathetic), but King Knight in King of Cards is a pathetic whiny prick with an ego the size of Jupiter the whole way through and I kinda loved it. He doesn't thank anyone, he doesn't say anything nice to anyone, he just barks orders and talks down to literally everyone he meets. I do wish more characters called him out for it, though; as funny as the guy's interactions are, it feels like everyone just joins him because the story says it should happen. Legitimately I find it hard to believe anyone except his saint of a mother (who he ends up spitting in the face of anyway) would want to associate with this man. He does not have anywhere near enough charisma to be getting away with all that. King Knight also does not take anything that happens in the story seriously, even as the other kings are genuinely trying to give him advice on how to be a good ruler. I found his dynamic with Specter Knight especially humorous; pair a overly serious edge-lord up with a petulant egomaniac and you're bound to get some funny results. While the story isn't much, I still think this was great because of how entertaining it was.
Overall, King of Cards is simply an excellent platformer. Throughout the DLC, it really felt like I understood how Yacht Club Games was improving them more and more, and this definitely feels like the triumphant culmination of Shovel Knight. Now, despite its content and the fact that it is completely different structurally from the other campaigns, I do think Specter of Torment is just a tad better. In my opinion, Specter Knight is much more fun to control than King Knight, and I prefer Specter of Torment's more straightforward short campaign over this more content-rich campaign. I will say that I loved how hard this one goes on making interesting platforming challenges. It seems to focus on that more than any other and pulls it off spectacularly. King of Cards earns a 5 star from me, a great send-off to this great indie going strong from 2014 to 2019.
This review contains spoilers
After having been disappointed by how close Plague of Shadows is to Shovel of Hope, man am I glad to have a DLC campaign that feels truly unique. Specter of Torment is great, starring a very fun to control character, fun level design that takes advantage of said character's enjoyable mechanics, and a surprising amount of expansion into the lore and characters of the game. I'm thinking Specter of Torment is better than the base game, honestly, but we'll see if I still think its the best out of them all once I beat King of Cards and wrap up this Shovel Knight marathon I'm on.
The gameplay is better than Plague of Shadows by default just by actually having level design of its own. I was so glad I didn't have to go through what's basically the exact same levels again, lemme tell ya. The titular character, Specter Knight, has a really fun play style that seems to be speedier than both Plague Knight and Shovel Knight. He's not as weird to play as Plague Knight, but also not quite as simple as Shovel Knight, and his movement feels less floaty than both in my opinion. The main things that set Specter Knight apart are three unique abilities he has: he can position himself through slashing enemies or obstacles (when you're in the air there's a little slash that appears on enemies to indicate when you can propel yourself to cut through that enemy), grind on rails, and very briefly run up walls before falling off if you don't reach the top. The rail grinding is very situational since some levels don't have them at all, but you will need to familiarize yourself with his weak wall-run and positional slashing for every level since a lot of it is built around those mechanics. This contributes to Specter Knight generally feeling like a speedier character who gets a lot of use out of his movement options. Of course, he also gets a wide variety of Curios with spooky undead themed effects from giving red skulls to Red in the hub. They're basically just like Arcana from Plague of Shadows, except the meter used to use these spells is instead called Darkness. You get more Darkness and Will (health) from finding containers located in every level that have either Will or Darkness spirits that Specter Knight absorbs, and I found these weren't very difficult to find. If you miss any, you can just buy them from Missy in the hub; I only had to do that for two of the spirits. Speaking of the hub, I didn't talk about it much in my previous review, but it is worth noting that Specter of Torment ditches the whole Super Mario Bros. 3 overworld map system that both Shovel of Hope and Plague of Shadows had; instead, this campaign goes full Mega Man by letting you pick directly which level + boss you wanna fight in any order you want (except for the Tower of Fate levels at the very end). Instead of having to go to Zelda II style villages to get upgrades, everything is just right there in the hub for you to grab before you set out to fight the next knight. The mode generally feels much cleaner and more streamlined as a result in my opinion, there's no need to fumble with an overworld or anything of the sort and you can just go straight to the next stage. Overall, the gameplay is significantly better than Plague of Shadows, and, although its a tough pick, I think I would say Specter of Torment is also better than Shovel of Hope, the base game.
I feel that Specter of Torment was the first of these campaigns to really try to focus on the story and characters. Perhaps that's because this is a prequel that sets up the events before both Shovel of Hope and Plague of Shadows, although seemingly not King of Cards since, from what I've heard, that one takes place before all the others. Nonetheless, I think it did excellently, showcasing Specter Knight's tragic and interesting story as well as fleshing out a surprising amount of characters, like Black Knight and Reize (I never mentioned the latter in my reviews so far because he's just a random traveling boss who was completely irrelevant before this game). You can kinda already guess what Black Knight's true motivations were by the end of Shovel of Hope, for example, but here you see them get expanded upon through Black Knight's connections to Specter Knight and the dialogue they have throughout the story; Black Knight serves the Enchantress as a front because he hopes he, or someone else, can get through to her and turn her back into Shield Knight (of course Shovel Knight ends up being the one to do that in Shovel of Hope). As for the actual plot, it gets pieced together mostly through flashbacks that Specter Knight has throughout the game. As it turns out, he was a thief named Donovan in life. He had a close connection to another thief named Luan (he's also the father of Reize), and the two went to the Tower of Fate to steal a magic amulet because they believed it would keep Reize safe from the perilous adventures he would try to go on some day. That amulet is actually the Phase Locket, the infamous invincibility Relic from Shovel of Hope and the same Relic that Specter Knight is guarding in that game. When Donovan and Luan raided the Tower of Fate and successfully reached the Phase Locket, Shield Knight stopped them, warning that it was too dangerous to be used. Luan hesitates, but Donovan assumes that she's only saying this because she wants to take it for herself. Boss fight happens, then the tower starts to crumble, and in a very rash decision he would soon regret, Donovan takes the locket and attacks Luan for trying to stop him. The ground gives way and Donovan falls, nearly dying. That's when the Enchantress arrives and persuades him to join her in his dying breath; she stabs him with a scythe to raise him as an undead. As the newly created Specter Knight who wields the same scythe used to kill him, Donovan's goal is now to find eight knights across the land to recruit to create the Order of No Quarter, for which his reward will be an amulet that grants life, presumably so he can bring himself back to life. After a bit of progress in the game, Reize appears, much to Specter Knight's horror. The Enchantress easily defeats Reize and corrupts him with dark power, and now he barks orders at Specter Knight under the Enchantress's authority. Near the end of the game, Specter Knight seizes the opportunity to fight back against the Enchantress after Black Knight appears and reveals that the Enchantress is actually Shield Knight. That was the last straw for him to break free from her control, since Donovan blames Shield Knight for everything and loathes her. In the end, Donovan fights a monster version of Reize created by the Enchantress, and Donovan ultimately gives up his freedom in servitude to the Enchantress after using the amulet to restore Reize back to life. He finally fulfilled his promise to protect Reize, but at what cost? The end credits scene shows him leaving the Phase Locket in a chest, hoping Reize will find it...though, as we all know, Shovel Knight goes and steals it after defeating Specter Knight.
So, yea, I'd say Specter of Torment is excellent. I'm kinda flip-flopping on if I think its better than Shovel of Hope, but I think I would ultimately give it to Specter of Torment. A great expansion to this game. Earns 5 stars from me.
The gameplay is better than Plague of Shadows by default just by actually having level design of its own. I was so glad I didn't have to go through what's basically the exact same levels again, lemme tell ya. The titular character, Specter Knight, has a really fun play style that seems to be speedier than both Plague Knight and Shovel Knight. He's not as weird to play as Plague Knight, but also not quite as simple as Shovel Knight, and his movement feels less floaty than both in my opinion. The main things that set Specter Knight apart are three unique abilities he has: he can position himself through slashing enemies or obstacles (when you're in the air there's a little slash that appears on enemies to indicate when you can propel yourself to cut through that enemy), grind on rails, and very briefly run up walls before falling off if you don't reach the top. The rail grinding is very situational since some levels don't have them at all, but you will need to familiarize yourself with his weak wall-run and positional slashing for every level since a lot of it is built around those mechanics. This contributes to Specter Knight generally feeling like a speedier character who gets a lot of use out of his movement options. Of course, he also gets a wide variety of Curios with spooky undead themed effects from giving red skulls to Red in the hub. They're basically just like Arcana from Plague of Shadows, except the meter used to use these spells is instead called Darkness. You get more Darkness and Will (health) from finding containers located in every level that have either Will or Darkness spirits that Specter Knight absorbs, and I found these weren't very difficult to find. If you miss any, you can just buy them from Missy in the hub; I only had to do that for two of the spirits. Speaking of the hub, I didn't talk about it much in my previous review, but it is worth noting that Specter of Torment ditches the whole Super Mario Bros. 3 overworld map system that both Shovel of Hope and Plague of Shadows had; instead, this campaign goes full Mega Man by letting you pick directly which level + boss you wanna fight in any order you want (except for the Tower of Fate levels at the very end). Instead of having to go to Zelda II style villages to get upgrades, everything is just right there in the hub for you to grab before you set out to fight the next knight. The mode generally feels much cleaner and more streamlined as a result in my opinion, there's no need to fumble with an overworld or anything of the sort and you can just go straight to the next stage. Overall, the gameplay is significantly better than Plague of Shadows, and, although its a tough pick, I think I would say Specter of Torment is also better than Shovel of Hope, the base game.
I feel that Specter of Torment was the first of these campaigns to really try to focus on the story and characters. Perhaps that's because this is a prequel that sets up the events before both Shovel of Hope and Plague of Shadows, although seemingly not King of Cards since, from what I've heard, that one takes place before all the others. Nonetheless, I think it did excellently, showcasing Specter Knight's tragic and interesting story as well as fleshing out a surprising amount of characters, like Black Knight and Reize (I never mentioned the latter in my reviews so far because he's just a random traveling boss who was completely irrelevant before this game). You can kinda already guess what Black Knight's true motivations were by the end of Shovel of Hope, for example, but here you see them get expanded upon through Black Knight's connections to Specter Knight and the dialogue they have throughout the story; Black Knight serves the Enchantress as a front because he hopes he, or someone else, can get through to her and turn her back into Shield Knight (of course Shovel Knight ends up being the one to do that in Shovel of Hope). As for the actual plot, it gets pieced together mostly through flashbacks that Specter Knight has throughout the game. As it turns out, he was a thief named Donovan in life. He had a close connection to another thief named Luan (he's also the father of Reize), and the two went to the Tower of Fate to steal a magic amulet because they believed it would keep Reize safe from the perilous adventures he would try to go on some day. That amulet is actually the Phase Locket, the infamous invincibility Relic from Shovel of Hope and the same Relic that Specter Knight is guarding in that game. When Donovan and Luan raided the Tower of Fate and successfully reached the Phase Locket, Shield Knight stopped them, warning that it was too dangerous to be used. Luan hesitates, but Donovan assumes that she's only saying this because she wants to take it for herself. Boss fight happens, then the tower starts to crumble, and in a very rash decision he would soon regret, Donovan takes the locket and attacks Luan for trying to stop him. The ground gives way and Donovan falls, nearly dying. That's when the Enchantress arrives and persuades him to join her in his dying breath; she stabs him with a scythe to raise him as an undead. As the newly created Specter Knight who wields the same scythe used to kill him, Donovan's goal is now to find eight knights across the land to recruit to create the Order of No Quarter, for which his reward will be an amulet that grants life, presumably so he can bring himself back to life. After a bit of progress in the game, Reize appears, much to Specter Knight's horror. The Enchantress easily defeats Reize and corrupts him with dark power, and now he barks orders at Specter Knight under the Enchantress's authority. Near the end of the game, Specter Knight seizes the opportunity to fight back against the Enchantress after Black Knight appears and reveals that the Enchantress is actually Shield Knight. That was the last straw for him to break free from her control, since Donovan blames Shield Knight for everything and loathes her. In the end, Donovan fights a monster version of Reize created by the Enchantress, and Donovan ultimately gives up his freedom in servitude to the Enchantress after using the amulet to restore Reize back to life. He finally fulfilled his promise to protect Reize, but at what cost? The end credits scene shows him leaving the Phase Locket in a chest, hoping Reize will find it...though, as we all know, Shovel Knight goes and steals it after defeating Specter Knight.
So, yea, I'd say Specter of Torment is excellent. I'm kinda flip-flopping on if I think its better than Shovel of Hope, but I think I would ultimately give it to Specter of Torment. A great expansion to this game. Earns 5 stars from me.
This review contains spoilers
So, Plague of Shadows seems to be a pretty mixed bag overall. I'm not familiar with what the fanbase thinks of this one, but I felt that, although this DLC is still really good, it has more cracks in it than the base game. Perhaps that is to be expected; Plague of Shadows was the first DLC campaign and got released only a year after the base game. Still, I enjoyed my time with this one and I don't want to make it seem like I didn't.
The best way I can describe Plague of Shadows is that its a sort of "dark mirror" for Shovel of Hope. It has some original stuff, mainly through the bonus levels, but you will quickly notice that the level layout is mostly the same here as it was in Shovel of Hope. I especially noticed this in the latter half of the game, since Tinker Knight, Polar Knight, and Treasure Knight's stages felt virtually unchanged outside of small and infrequent additional segments, even though I found all the secrets in them. Both Tower of Fate levels are exactly the same as in Shovel of Hope, except for two extra bosses at the very end. On the other hand, the Explodatorium was considerably different and was easily the longest stage in my opinion, which...well, considering that it is Plague Knight's home turf from Shovel of Hope, perhaps that's to be expected. I think this mode still manages to stand out despite its similarities due to just how different Plague Knight feels to play. He has a weak jump, so to do most of the game's platforming you'll need to get into the groove of using a charge burst (hold B then release B) to propel yourself at an upward angle. It sounds frustrating, which it sometimes is, but you get used to it and it even starts to feel good to use once you do. Trust me, I hated this when I first started playing, and I distinctly remember Plague of Shadows was the only DLC I didn't beat (before King of Cards came around) because of it. Playing it now, though, Plague Knight feels refreshingly different, and I got so into the groove of playing him that I might have liked playing him more than I did Shovel Knight himself. Plague Knight being so slow and floaty is offset by him being a ranged fighter, chucking bombs to blow up his foes. As you can imagine, this makes melee enemies more annoying, but it's balanced since you can also blitz them down before they even touch you. Generally, Plague Knight's play style being so weird encouraged me to slow down, in contrast to my playthrough with Shovel Knight where I was complaining that he didn't have a run button and felt rather sluggish. Plague Knight also has a more expansive and considerably more interesting repertoire of tools for fights or even for help in platforming. There's a cool system involving modifications you can purchase for your bombs in which you can adjust the throwing arc, the powder (affects how many you can throw and the effects of the explosion), and your charge burst in various ways. Make yourself float gracefully whenever you charge burst, make your bombs prioritize going straight up instead of straight down, make the fuse shorter or longer, and SO much more. There's a startling amount of options that spices gameplay up if you swap between 'em. Plague Knight also doesn't use the Relics that Shovel Knight used, instead quite literally trashing them in favor of Arcana. The Arcana are pretty much the same idea as Relics, except they use a rechargeable meter instead of a limited resource; it seems Yacht Club didn't want another repeat of the Phase Locket, so you can actually experiment with different ones now that there is no one obvious best Arcana. Overall, I grew to really love playing Plague Knight, but the initial curve in learning how to play him is really rough, and I wish that this campaign didn't feel mostly like a copy-paste job of the original.
I think I got more to talk about with the story and characters here than I did with Shovel of Hope. The story for Plague of Shadows almost gives off a kind of Saturday morning cartoon villain vibe, with your own evil lair and your own entourage of evil minions to serve you. I thought it was really amusing how it flips certain aspects of Shovel of Hope's story on its head: Shovel Knight goes to the village and is not perceived as a threat, while Plague Knight has the aforementioned evil lair he gets into by blowing up some poor guy's house and traveling through the sewers. You get to really feel like a villain, with my favorite examples being Plague Knight destroying the Hall of Champions and defeating any guard in his path as well as the time Plague Knight raids the armorer village with his goons to conquer it for himself. There's also a running gag I found amusing that Plague Knight never truly defeats Shovel Knight; he will win a fight and then Shovel Knight breaks out of the stun and wreck Plague Knight. Its almost like Shovel Knight has some kind of plot armor because he can't canonically lose, or at least that's how I interpreted it. As for the main plot, Plague Knight is a member of the Order of No Quarter - the group of antagonist knights led by the Enchantress - but he decides to betray them because he wants to create a potion using the essence of each knight. This potion is said to contain the ultimate power. Its natural to assume that he's just doing it to take over the world in some generic, but still potentially fun, villainous plot, but, as the story goes on, his motives go into an unexpected route. While he is still a mischievous little miscreant who likes blowing stuff up and causing chaos, Plague Knight is actually trying to get this potion of ultimate power purely because he feels he needs it for fellow alchemist Mona to love him. She is his partner in crime that helps him throughout the game. The game's story makes it rather obvious they both have feelings for each other but are too awkward to confess, which is a rather cliché but still pretty cute dynamic. They even throw in some relationship drama, since the Magician (the same woman who gave you mana upgrades in Shovel of Hope) is also in love with Plague Knight and thinks he's trying to impress her. Mona leaves him after thinking he's gotten with the Magician, but Mona comes back at the very end once Black Knight explains to her that Plague Knight is actually not in a relationship with the Magician. Its too late, though, and Plague Knight has already made the potion. One boss battle after a freak accident later, and now that both Mona and Plague Knight know they love each other, Plague Knight decides to use the potion to blow up the Tower of Fate, claiming he doesn't need unlimited power anymore because he now has all he ever wanted. A sweet little ending, in which Plague Knight's villainous group becomes recognized as heroes and an adorable end credits scene of the two dancing the night away at the laboratory plays. I really liked this game's story; although its nothing special, its carried by the fun characters and that signature fun writing Shovel of Hope also had (though I'd argue its even better here). Who would've thought this silly villain just wanted the love of a tall goth girlfriend?
Overall, Plague of Shadows is great, but unfortunately does have some issues that Shovel of Hope didn't have. I'm especially disappointed that the levels are mostly the same, and, in some cases, almost (or quite literally) the exact same. Plague Knight's move set surely could have inspired more totally unique level design. Nonetheless, I enjoyed my time a lot with this one, and I suppose the fact that I had more to talk about with this one is worth something. A very solid 4.5 stars from me.
The best way I can describe Plague of Shadows is that its a sort of "dark mirror" for Shovel of Hope. It has some original stuff, mainly through the bonus levels, but you will quickly notice that the level layout is mostly the same here as it was in Shovel of Hope. I especially noticed this in the latter half of the game, since Tinker Knight, Polar Knight, and Treasure Knight's stages felt virtually unchanged outside of small and infrequent additional segments, even though I found all the secrets in them. Both Tower of Fate levels are exactly the same as in Shovel of Hope, except for two extra bosses at the very end. On the other hand, the Explodatorium was considerably different and was easily the longest stage in my opinion, which...well, considering that it is Plague Knight's home turf from Shovel of Hope, perhaps that's to be expected. I think this mode still manages to stand out despite its similarities due to just how different Plague Knight feels to play. He has a weak jump, so to do most of the game's platforming you'll need to get into the groove of using a charge burst (hold B then release B) to propel yourself at an upward angle. It sounds frustrating, which it sometimes is, but you get used to it and it even starts to feel good to use once you do. Trust me, I hated this when I first started playing, and I distinctly remember Plague of Shadows was the only DLC I didn't beat (before King of Cards came around) because of it. Playing it now, though, Plague Knight feels refreshingly different, and I got so into the groove of playing him that I might have liked playing him more than I did Shovel Knight himself. Plague Knight being so slow and floaty is offset by him being a ranged fighter, chucking bombs to blow up his foes. As you can imagine, this makes melee enemies more annoying, but it's balanced since you can also blitz them down before they even touch you. Generally, Plague Knight's play style being so weird encouraged me to slow down, in contrast to my playthrough with Shovel Knight where I was complaining that he didn't have a run button and felt rather sluggish. Plague Knight also has a more expansive and considerably more interesting repertoire of tools for fights or even for help in platforming. There's a cool system involving modifications you can purchase for your bombs in which you can adjust the throwing arc, the powder (affects how many you can throw and the effects of the explosion), and your charge burst in various ways. Make yourself float gracefully whenever you charge burst, make your bombs prioritize going straight up instead of straight down, make the fuse shorter or longer, and SO much more. There's a startling amount of options that spices gameplay up if you swap between 'em. Plague Knight also doesn't use the Relics that Shovel Knight used, instead quite literally trashing them in favor of Arcana. The Arcana are pretty much the same idea as Relics, except they use a rechargeable meter instead of a limited resource; it seems Yacht Club didn't want another repeat of the Phase Locket, so you can actually experiment with different ones now that there is no one obvious best Arcana. Overall, I grew to really love playing Plague Knight, but the initial curve in learning how to play him is really rough, and I wish that this campaign didn't feel mostly like a copy-paste job of the original.
I think I got more to talk about with the story and characters here than I did with Shovel of Hope. The story for Plague of Shadows almost gives off a kind of Saturday morning cartoon villain vibe, with your own evil lair and your own entourage of evil minions to serve you. I thought it was really amusing how it flips certain aspects of Shovel of Hope's story on its head: Shovel Knight goes to the village and is not perceived as a threat, while Plague Knight has the aforementioned evil lair he gets into by blowing up some poor guy's house and traveling through the sewers. You get to really feel like a villain, with my favorite examples being Plague Knight destroying the Hall of Champions and defeating any guard in his path as well as the time Plague Knight raids the armorer village with his goons to conquer it for himself. There's also a running gag I found amusing that Plague Knight never truly defeats Shovel Knight; he will win a fight and then Shovel Knight breaks out of the stun and wreck Plague Knight. Its almost like Shovel Knight has some kind of plot armor because he can't canonically lose, or at least that's how I interpreted it. As for the main plot, Plague Knight is a member of the Order of No Quarter - the group of antagonist knights led by the Enchantress - but he decides to betray them because he wants to create a potion using the essence of each knight. This potion is said to contain the ultimate power. Its natural to assume that he's just doing it to take over the world in some generic, but still potentially fun, villainous plot, but, as the story goes on, his motives go into an unexpected route. While he is still a mischievous little miscreant who likes blowing stuff up and causing chaos, Plague Knight is actually trying to get this potion of ultimate power purely because he feels he needs it for fellow alchemist Mona to love him. She is his partner in crime that helps him throughout the game. The game's story makes it rather obvious they both have feelings for each other but are too awkward to confess, which is a rather cliché but still pretty cute dynamic. They even throw in some relationship drama, since the Magician (the same woman who gave you mana upgrades in Shovel of Hope) is also in love with Plague Knight and thinks he's trying to impress her. Mona leaves him after thinking he's gotten with the Magician, but Mona comes back at the very end once Black Knight explains to her that Plague Knight is actually not in a relationship with the Magician. Its too late, though, and Plague Knight has already made the potion. One boss battle after a freak accident later, and now that both Mona and Plague Knight know they love each other, Plague Knight decides to use the potion to blow up the Tower of Fate, claiming he doesn't need unlimited power anymore because he now has all he ever wanted. A sweet little ending, in which Plague Knight's villainous group becomes recognized as heroes and an adorable end credits scene of the two dancing the night away at the laboratory plays. I really liked this game's story; although its nothing special, its carried by the fun characters and that signature fun writing Shovel of Hope also had (though I'd argue its even better here). Who would've thought this silly villain just wanted the love of a tall goth girlfriend?
Overall, Plague of Shadows is great, but unfortunately does have some issues that Shovel of Hope didn't have. I'm especially disappointed that the levels are mostly the same, and, in some cases, almost (or quite literally) the exact same. Plague Knight's move set surely could have inspired more totally unique level design. Nonetheless, I enjoyed my time a lot with this one, and I suppose the fact that I had more to talk about with this one is worth something. A very solid 4.5 stars from me.