It was alright. I liked the mechanics quite a bit, enjoyed the tunes, and felt that the level design was strong (Chapter 5 in particular easily being my favorite), but the story just wasn't doing it for me.

I'm sure there's an audience for it. I can see the merit and value of something like this, but I wasn't really a fan of how bluntly heavy-handed its theme was. It felt to me like the theme was written first, and the story was shaped around justifying it. And I dunno, I'm just saying- I wouldn't be anywhere near this insecure if I had a sick as hell 8-way airdash that turned my hair blue.

Humble publisher name though. I enjoyed my time.

It's weird. I remembered this being way harder than it actually is, and I feel like a lot of that was due to my only real memory of the game being its shitty and tedious final boss.

The level design doesn't really do anything too new or interesting, and because very little of it stands out, all you're left to remember it by is some irritatingly placed enemies who all just so happen to be standing in the worst spots imaginable. I can appreciate that they tried to vary up the stages in comparison to Rondo of Blood with more verticality, more stairs, and more moving platforms... but it doesn't DO anything with these gimmicks. It's all just different types of moving platforms. Sometimes they're sideways, sometimes they're up and down; if a stage's got some platforms, it's 50/50 whether it moves. It's a shame, because I can see they wanted to make something more in line with the NES entries, but it's just not very creative. Not that it would matter if it was, because very large chunks of the levels can just be skipped with backflips!

A lot of the enemy types are reused from Rondo, but there's not really a lot to go around- it seems like they just took what they knew would be general-purpose and left it at that. A lot of the more interesting / challenging enemies were omitted from this game, so you're really just encountering the same Axe Armors, crows, and whatever the lance dudes were called over and over again. They're not an issue with proper spacing... and since you see them so much, you'll figure out what that was and not need to put much, if any, thought into it at all.

It kind of stings that so many of the cooler types of enemies are absent, since that game had more of a combat focus- Richter has all the same abilities here, but no real need to apply any of it since nothing difficult enough to justify it shows up. The bosses aren't anywhere near as capable as they were in Rondo either, so it's an utter curbstomp once you get to them.... and it's honestly really easy to put yourself on autopilot, walk forward, and whip them to death. I'm still reeling over how I stunlocked the minotaur boss. By accident.

I don't know. It's got some snazzy new backgrounds, the sound design is satisfyingly punchy, and the soundtrack is filled with some pretty faithful recreations of Rondo's soundtrack (Bloodlines in particular might even be an improvement over the original track!), but I left the game feeling underwhelmed by how much shorter and easier the package as a whole was. Especially compared to everything that came before it at the time...


Also, is it just me, or does Richter's walking animation feel like it's too fast? Boy you are NOT running what's going on

I don't really know how to rate this one because of how mixed my feelings are on it.

I didn't really care that much for the main campaign back when the game was new. I still don't. But now that I've come back to this and tried the new campaigns, both Plague and Specter Knight are so, so, so much more interesting and intuitive to play than Shovel Knight himself.

I'd suppose for Specter, say this is a 10/10. Plague, not so much, just because the flow of bomb switching slows the gameplay down a bit more than I'd like. It's still a really great mechanic! I just spent.... maybe more time than I needed to dropping everything to concoct the PERFECT bomb for the situation every single screen transition.

Shovel and King.... ehhhhh...... I dunno.... Shovel just felt like a weird mix of Ducktales and Castlevania that didn't control as nicely as either, and King didn't really hold my interest past the intro stage for me to think I wanted to go through the game a 4th time in a row. I probably would've been more interested in King's campaign if I didn't already play Plague and Specter's... and considering that was the last piece of content released for this game, I feel like that's a little bit disappointing for a finale.

I know they had a vote and all that but..... King Knight, man? Really? The easiest boss in the game? Not Treasure with his grappling anchors, not Propeller with his flight fencing, not Mole with his gigantic claws and furnace abilities? The majority of people didn't want to play Black Knight with the teleports and charges, or the Enchantress so that they can get a taste of what the final boss is capable of?

King Knight?

Goddamnit, dude.
Oh well.

Some of the reviews of this game made me think that there'd be like, some insane difficulty spike that'd sour the experience, or parts of the level design that'd REALLY make me wish I had a crouch (seriously, why isn't there a crouch?)

I finished it blindly with less than 80 deaths in a few hours. That difficulty spike never came, every single one of my deaths felt like my fault for being overzealous with my dashes.

What's the problem? Sure, it's not very original. Sure, it pays homage to the NES games it's inspired by, maybe a little too closely sometimes. But wasn't that immediately evident from the screenshots alone?

It plays fine. It controls nice. The music sounds good.
Didn't particularly care for the story in this one, but the cutscenes were well-drawn. I don't think it was trying to be a deep narrative to begin with, just a reason for you to stab things. And so, stab things I did. I enjoyed my time with it.


I guess my standards aren't very high these days, but sometimes "enjoying my time with it" is really all I'm asking for.

Still fucks me up that this game technically released before Sonic Adventure 1 and still somehow managed to be a more consistently entertaining experience.

I haven't played it in a long time. It's had many updates since my last fair go. But, man.... mastering the stage layout and rocketing through as Sonic without the game EVER taking control away from me is something I wish the official entries offered.

I had my issues with it, but I really can't blame the devteam if they had so few games to take as a reference point. It's lovely. That's all I really have to say, but on top of already being a solid base experience, the modding community is thriving- adding more to this game even to this day. It's so nice!

Fuck Egg Rock though.

A LOT of the music in this game loops just as it sounds like it's about to kick in and that just drives me up the fucking wall

Bubble Crab is half a song
X-Hunter stage 1 is a third of a song
Zero's theme is a quarter of a song

So, I came back to this one more recently to commit to Hard Mode. I enjoyed my first playthrough, but I didn't really "get" the new mechanics and the balance of them- while I definitely had the initial highs of more surface-level stuff like, say;
"Holy shit I have a chainsaw gun!"
"Holy shit, you can shoulder check the bosses too???"
"Oh my god I got a MOTHER FUCKING GATLING GUN"

I knew I wasn't good at the game, and I wasn't sure how much of it was really an improvement over the previous games. Most people weren't happy with the changes from the previous games, because 1 airdash as opposed to 3 is, well, limiting. And I can see how that'd be frustrating if the new mechanics to replace it don't offer much depth to make up for it.

Now that I've gotten a few X ranks though, I dunno. I'm singing a different tune. Copen doesn't feel nerfed at all.

I think.... he's simply just been rebalanced into a character whose strengths have to be earned. They realized that the airdash mechanic was a little bit excessive, and they wanted to encourage more aggressive play.
GV2 and IX1 Copen have a very passive playstyle where you can kinda just bounce your way around the arena and float just out of harm's way. You were always locked on to the opponent, and always capable of stacking on extra layers of damage with your EX weapons. Stellar Spark gave you that reliably from the start, but bosses granted you even more ridiculous shit like the twin sabers in GV2 or... well, literally anything in IX1, really.

IX2 sidesteps that in favor of the Razor Wheel. Racking up points requires that you get in an enemy's face and slash them up. Whether that's through your triple slash combo, bashing them out of their attack animations, or locking on for safer homing shots; you HAVE to find a safe angle to approach, and you need to find a way to focus your damage before an enemy can hit you. Damage output is high, and you're rewarded for your efficiency- every quick kill nets you 30 points, so if anything, you're scoring HIGHER than in previous games as long as you're just careful about spacing.

It's when you finally get 1000 and go into Overdrive that the game opens up. While Copen starts with 1 airdash, once he enters Overdrive.... he has a meter that grants him infinite airdashes for a set amount of time. The amount of flexibility he has in Overdrive is absolutely NUTS, and when paired with the significantly higher damage output of both your Razor Wheel and this game's EX weapons... it's really a treat to breeze through levels ripping through enemies like nothing. Infinite Anchor Nexus + Whirling Chopper covers so much ground that it doesn't even feel fair anymore. But with the way the levels are designed and how much more capable some enemies are, you still have that routing aspect, so nothing's really been lost.

I get that it kind of sucks that you have to earn it now, but I feel like the game gave you all of the tools necessary to succeed. You just have to apply them.

This is my favorite of Inti's new games. The plotline is absolute nonsense and I don't... really think I care about Gunvolt lore anymore? But the gameplay, the graphics, the music and the stage / boss design all feel top notch, better than anything that they've offered in previous games... or even in GV3.

Really looking forward to an eventual IX3. I HOPE they build on the Razor Wheel, but I'm not sure if they'll go in that direction after the reception they got...

One of the greatest competitive games ever made, no question about it. Simple to get into, and fun no matter how many times you play it. There is no universe where rapidly countering supers back and forth isn't cool to do AND exciting to watch.

Weird aside, but I don't know why Steve Miller is replaced by Beeho Yoo in some versions. I always thought Steve was the more charming of the two.

Guess they thought it was lame to have two English speakers. Which does make sense, I guess.