Honestly it feels great when a hyped up game manages to live up to your expectations and even overdelievers

Shovel Knight: Shovel of Hope is a really great Indie 2D Platformer made by former Wayforward employees called Yacht Club Games, after a successful Kickstarter, this game was graced to the many consoles it's on. Shovel Knight I feel not only does exactly what it sets out to do (I.E being a modern styled NES Platformer) but is one of the best 2D Platformers I've ever played.

The game takes a lot of inspiration from the world/level structure from Mega Man and Super Mario Bros 3 along with movement from Ducktales while standing on its own and being better than all 3 of these inspirations. Shovel Knight's level design is great as it feels pretty challenging and fair while using Shovel Knight's simple, tight and fun movement as you traverse these mystically 8 levels with many enemies and unique landscapes as this game will test all of your platforming skills ending with some gruelling yet fair boss fights (apart from Propeller Knight he sucks)

While it's reminiscent of a late 80's NES Game, the game isn't stuck in the past unlike say Sonic Mania, Mega Man 9 or 10, which are the pinnacle of the series (not Sonic Mania lol) but admittedly don't advance the series in any way at all. Shovel Knight obviously isn't a part of the series but does this for these types of platformers in general, many tropes in this game are either gone or completely subverted.

Most notably, lives are gone and the punishment is losing at a maximum of 3 Bags of the Treasure. I'm not gonna talk about whether or not lives belong in games or not since it depends on the game, but it works in its favour like Super Mario Odyssey which shamelessly stole this system. You don't need to get the Treasure but you probably want to, since you need them for buying shovel/Health/Armour/Magic upgrades or relics, optional items which can be bought by a vendor. These are pretty hit and mis. and one of the only major issue with the game, on one hand they can provide a nice little game changer such as the Mobile Gear, Phase Locket and Propeller but most of them come of sort and are very situational. Another issue is that i kinda feel there needed to be a bit more enemy variety and how you approach them since a lot of the encounters feel really one note.

Shovel Knight also adds a few other new ideas that makes it really feel like a great follow up to this enjoyable while dated era of games, such as digging stuff with your shovel, collecting music notes which can unlock music to be played in the Hub World earned by doing a challenge in the stage, along with the World Map system that's sorta a mix between Mega Man & Basa of all games and Super Mario Bros 3 where you unlock multiple boss stages at once, this allows for a good amount of choice/replayability while also increasing the challenge significantly, You've also got 3 Hub Worlds (4 with an exclusive Streetpass Arena from the 3DS) which allow you to talk to NPCs and upgrade your equipment, finally similar to Super Mario Bros 3 you've got optional Boss fights with characters such as Solar Strike or Black Knight which are harder than the main bosses but give you a lot of treasure, There's even a neat risk reward system with the Checkpoints where you can break them to gain a Gem but you can't spawn there anymore.

One last thing that Shovel Knight excels at is its presentation and surprisingly the story. The game has this really charming 2D Pixel art that doesn't hold back with a colour palette that's not limited by Console limitations and with great animation , along with great designs for the main knights and even with the unique side characters. The music is also pretty great and memorable, i find music that's trying to element an older soundfont doesn't sound that great in my opinion but here the soundtrack uses the limited soundfont to produce some amazing themes. But lastly, the story isn't anything amazing but it's surprisingly in depth, it follows Shovel Knight going on one last adventure after finding out the Enchantress has gathered 7 Knights to take over the land it has a lot of charming dialogue with the main theme of what it means to be a Knight/Adventurer and without delving into spoilers, there's a lot of moments where there's a good amount of character development/moments, it's not super in-depth but it's definitely admirable that the game wants to develop it's world and characters such as every boss having a Mega Man Powered Up of Boss Preludes.

So overall Shovel Knight is a great 2D Platformer that isn't a major game changer but definitely shakes up a lot of NES Platforming tropes making it probably better than any of the games it's taking inspiration from so I'll give it a good recommend if you haven't played it already, if this is how good the first game is then i hope the DLC can uphold or even surpass this game.