This review is just for shovel of hope.

It's fun I guess.

To my knowledge, this game is supposed to pay homage to the NES era of platformers and adventure games. It does a really good job of that, so much so that it includes some of the bullshit enemy placement and level design that turned me off NES games in the first place.

To Shovel Knight's credit though it is a lot more lenient with checkpoints than games of those ilk so I won't babyrage too much about my lack of skill when faceplanting into a spike pit for the billionth time.

I admittedly was not enjoying my playthrough too much until I completed my first Knight lair. The Order of No Quarter are the lifeblood of this game, a colorful assortment of personalities who wear their Robot Masters influences on their sleeves. They vary in difficulty but I appreciate how much thematic attention was put towards each of their levels, dialogue and boss fights.

The narrative itself while basic, does have you care enough about Shovel Knight's journey, with an especially sweet conclusion after the credits roll.

I'm curious how the rest of treasure trove iterates on this formula.