Shovel Knight: King of Cards (2019)

The latest in the extremely successful Shovel Knight Treasure Trove game series, King of Cards combines a silly and surprisingly well-crafted story with a keen spin on the previous games' movement mechanics and a card game that people can really sink their teeth into.

The game starts out with King Knight questing to defeat three judges of the incredibly popular card game, Joustus, in order to become The King of Cards. Along the way the player grabs an airship and a whole gaggle of friends, throwing down with Joustus to whoever the King bests.

If you're already familiar with Shovel Knight, King Knight's movement spins things up pretty well. The King may bash into walls and spin upwards, hitting enemies with a spin and being able to chain hits. King also has Heirlooms (aka Relics), alternate level exits, and the game of Joustus. Joustus starts off as a simple game of pushing cards onto special gem spaces but soon ramps up into a variety of strategies and board setups, with a sharp difficulty curve that leans into addicting fun.

The game deftly builds upon older designed areas (plenty of fun tracks from the previous games) and looks and sounds as gorgeous as ever, especially with the Joustus additions.

King of Cards is a fun adventure that proves you can remix the Shovel Knight formula even now and stick a great card game in there too! One day we might hope for a standalone Joustus app...

After playing through Shovel of Hope, the original campaign in Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove (review pending), I've decided to go the chronological way of storytelling and go for King of Cards first. The King Knight's move set makes for an interesting change of approach through the levels, as much as it gets with every other playable characters.

The Justus card game was also quite a substantial addition to the SK gameplay, which appeals for those who enjoy the more strategic aspects of gameplay. I didn't feel hot for it myself but I finished the tournaments anyway.

The ending turned out as I expected, though it lacked satisfaction after dragging myself through the campaign levels. The characters were varied and had their own charms, so there was still an enjoyable factor along the journey and exploration, true to the Shovel Knight's neat standards. Next up: Specter of Torment!

Shovel Knight: King of the Cards es el gran cierre a la franquicia Shovel Knight y no podría quedar más contento con el resultado. Es, para empezar, un juego diferente al resto; si las anteriores campañas giraban sobre los mismos elementos (con una tercera que, aunque atrevida, no dejaba de ser deudora de la primera entrega), este ofrece por primera vez un personaje con unas mecánicas muy reducidas y un minijuego asociado que casi podría ser su propia obra.

En el primer aspecto, el resultado es dispar: por una parte, el pulido de Yacht Club Games es tan sobresaliente como siempre y hace que apenas dos movimientos de personaje se conviertan en un desafío gracias al espectacular diseño de niveles; por otra, muchas veces es fácil sentir cierta falta de movilidad y se habría agradecido, quizá, alguna mecánica más. Sin embargo, cumple adecuadamente en este apartado.

El minijuego de Joust es, quizá, lo más interesante de todo el título. Es un juego de cartas diseñado con mucha gracia y una profundidad que uno no esperaría de una obra que responde al nombre de Shovel Knight. Aunque, personalmente, no guste mucho de este tipo de juegos, el 100 % de progresión en mi menú de inicio presupone que algo de disfrute he sacado del Joust. Al César lo que es del César: hacia el final del juego, el arsenal a disposición del jugador y de la CPU es tan amplio que parece un combate estratégico de mucho nivel. Exige del jugador tanto en las mecánicas de plataformas y combates como en el componente ponderante. El mayor problema con este ejercicio de acción y reflexión es que, aun adquiriendo una profundidad sorprendente, da la sensación de que detiene el juego antes que aportar a él. El Joust está relacionado con el argumento y muchos personajes giran alrededor de él, pero en ocasiones he sentido que me tiraba para atrás con tanta fuerza que me ha llegado a resultar un poco tedioso. Por suerte, nunca se queda lo suficiente como para molestar.

En el resto de aspectos, King of the Cards es una campaña dignísima para terminar la franquicia. No solo trae un soplo de aire fresco mecánico, sino que también innova en muchos elementos de la trama e hila muy bien su guion con el resto de campañas. Es más, el argumento es de los mejores y más profundos de la saga; sin ser jamás una obra maestra, sabe cómo juntar todas las piezas para las secuelas e intercuelas, es tremendamente divertida y da un colofón merecido a todos los personajes. Vamos, que hasta el pez tiene relevancia. No solo eso: es uno de los pocos juegos que, aun con su estética accesible y su tono cómico, se atreve a presentar un protagonista villano que no hace más que empeorar a cada nuevo segmento de historia.

Los de Yacht Club Games no necesitaban esforzarse tanto con este último juego, pero han querido darle un final digno a la franquicia y, sinceramente, no creo que hubiesen podido hacerlo mejor. Aunque haya apartados algo mejorables, el conjunto es realmente bueno y da esa sensación de finitud que tanto buscaban en el estudio con una duración que incluso excede a las anteriores entregas. Un gran juego para terminar una gran franquicia. Menudo viajecito.

8.5/10

Amazing DLC game like the others in the Shovel Knight Treasure Trove.

Right off the bat when i start up the King Knight playthrough, i try out the new movement mechanic that always differ between the characters/games, and just as with the others, the controls feels solid. Even when they re-use assets it feels like a game of it's own in a series.

The card game and the story that the game brings is very enjoyable aswell, although i did get my butt whopped several times against some card-opponents.

Now that Shovel Knight Treasure Trove is complete and just wonderful, im looking forward to their upcoming projects.

I honestly didn't care for Shovel Knight's campaign that much, or Plague Knight's of what I played, so I wasn't expecting much for King of Cards. ... I especially wasn't expecting to really like it, lol. Nuanced movement mechanics plus a strategy card game? Heck yeah this game was great. ... I should probably play Specter of Torment.

I'll probably write out my more in-depth thoughts of this game soon.

Shovel Knight: King of Cards

Platform: Wii U

Time to beat: 8 hours, 24 minutes

Pros

• The same polished, nostalgia-inducing aesthetics and overall design that made Shovel Knight a masterclass in how to make retro-likes without actually confining you to the past

• A lot of content to dive into compared to other expansions

• Much of that content is available via branching paths and other optional methods, leaving a main game that’s still fairly quick to beat if you want a short experience

• Story carries the usual Yacht Club wit, with an extra emphasis on humor and silliness this time around

• King Knight’s main movement — a shoulder bash that upon contact converts into a spin behaving similarly to Shovel Knight’s downward plunge — combined with Yacht Club’s usual tight and punchy platforming design, can result in exhilarating strings of bounce combos that are satisfying to pull off

• Hallmarks of quality Shovel Knight level design, such as introducing new elements and mechanics in a relatively safe environment before escalating the complexity (thought not as much, see Cons), are present once more

• More plentiful levels are also much shorter, giving a quicker sense of progress and more stopping points for short-winded players

• Several of the new level mechanics were a delight to figure out and experiment with

• The card game component is thankfully not at all required to beat the game

Cons

• King Knight’s core mechanics are my least favorite in the series of campaigns. They never stopped feeling counterintuitive throughout the game — why should I have to ram my head against a wall before jumping on an enemy? How does spinning suddenly make the attack more effective? “Clunky” comes to mind as a descriptor for the movement, but that’s probably too harsh. It’s just not as good as Specter Knight’s midair slicing, Plague Knight’s high-flying bomb propulsion, or even Shovel Knight’s simple plunge.

• The bite-size levels don’t do nearly as good a job of ramping up the difficulty of the mechanics and mixing them together in interesting ways by the end of the level. This isn’t without exceptions, but more often than not, things would just start to get interesting and then I’d see the exit and say, “That’s it?”

• The above point is much more frustrating when combined with the fact that many of the campaign’s best level mechanics are practically one-and-done. I thought the various levels placed within each villainous knight’s setting would build on one another, but they often don’t at all, opting to simply introduce brand new mechanics and leave the previous ones underdeveloped.

• I don’t care about King Knight or his journey to become an even worse individual. At all. The humor hit home fairly frequently, but I wasn’t expecting a complete gag story to close out a saga that was actually pretty compelling in its storytelling up to that point.

• An absurdly frustrating final boss did not juxtapose well with a campaign that had been, for the most part, the easiest of the bunch.

• Oh yeah, the card game. It’s fine, it has some interesting depth to it, but nothing compelled me to play it when the platforming is out there waiting. Biggest complaint about Joustus is that a multitude of the finite resource Medals are hidden inside this out-of-place addition.

• Sadly, the smallest amount of new music by far

Conclusion: All of the complaints have to be considered within the context that this is another completely free update to a game that’s approaching six years old, so all hats off to Yacht Club for this amazing gift that is Treasure Trove. That being said, King of Cards is probably my least favorite of the Shovel Knight campaigns and the least likely one I would replay. However, I would have still paid something like $20 for it if it hadn’t been given away.

Played a little more than an hour today. Four levels and the second boss. That's about as long as I can go in one sitting with most platformers.

I'm still liking the smaller levels. The designs are still nice and tight, though maybe they don't develop their ideas quite as thoroughly in a challenging late section since they're not very long. At least, not yet.

I liked some of the level design ideas introduced today, such as the long dragon-ish fellas that you bash to make them move into different positions. It's an interesting idea of getting to somewhat control the layout of the room with your main move. Encourages spatial awareness. It also supports the idea that King Knight will do anything and hurt anyone to get what he wants, including ramming repeatedly into innocent creatures.

Speaking of spatial awareness, I also really liked the Troupple King boss. Usually the Shovel Knight bosses can be beaten by just relentlessly attacking until they die. You don't even have to learn their patterns sometimes. But this one makes you be aware of your surroundings and take things a tad slower to survive. Or at least, I had to.

On the not-so-positive side, I'm just not sure how I feel about King Knight's movement and basic attack compared to the other playable characters. If I want to jump on an enemy, I want to just jump on him, not have to go smack my head against a wall first.

What makes King Knight able to kill things while he's spinning but not when he's just jumping? Why can't he spin whenever he wants? The other three characters' mechanics made sense with their MO and just physically made sense. King Knight... spins because he's trying to be fancy? Maybe thematically it sorta fits but it also just kinda seems like Yacht Club ran out of ideas.

That's probably not fair. Combo bouncing on enemies is still quite fun. It just hasn't been as instantly intuitive as Shovel and Specter Knight were.

More play and thoughts to come. Transistor is next on my backlog but I've decided not to boot up anything else until I finish this.

King of Cards is meticulously crafted. Yacht Club Games' eye for detail is seen in every colorful pixel, every note of chippy music, every dynamic shoulder bash, every hilarious line of dialogue (accompanied by waggling text), every achingly real and tragic human moment, every screen of platforming perfection...

King of Cards is perfect and generously perfect. We don't deserve a game this good. We deserve busted kinda good games that get patched but never truly fixed. King of Cards feels like Christmas came early for every year for the rest of my life.

And none of this is surprising. Yacht Club Games has delivered such high quality over the last four years that we can place them side by side with the greats. I'm as confident in their next game as I am in Retro's or Rockstar's. What will their next game be? I don't know. But I know it'll be more of a video game than I could hope for.

...But my personal hope is that their next game is King of Cards 2. I really want to know what happens to King Knight next.

*Also, Joustus is great. I'm ready to buy the physical cards whenever they sell them.