Shovel Knight: King of Cards
acts as a prequel to the events of the original game in the same way
that Specter of Torment did, following King Knight prior to his
induction in the Order of No Quarter. It's a humorously written tale
that gives more insight into the petulant and egotistical (but
consistently entertaining) self-proclaimed King as you battle across the
land to claim your namesake through a frivolous Joustus tournament.
This is a new card game sweeping the kingdom, controlled by three of its
best players in each of the regions you'll visit and claim for
yourself.
King Knight's adventure falls squarely into
standard Shovel Knight fare, with King of Cards feeling the most similar
in structure to the original adventure out of the three expansions and
the closest to a sequel in its scope. There's the same Super Mario Bros.
3-styled overworld map that you can work through in various ways. You
can choose the shortest path to the region's boss battle or enjoy
exploring by using alternative exits in levels to create paths to secret
stages filled with valuable loot or new weapons and abilities. Side
boss battle and optional treasure challenges pop up on the map to tempt
you into treading off the beaten path, rewarding your detours with
unsurprisingly stratifying platforming puzzles or nail-biting bouts that
the series has become known for.
Stages adopt familiar themes from the series, from the
neon-soaked labs of Plague Knight to the gold-laden walls of King
Knight's future abode. Revisiting these areas is initially welcoming--a
trip back to a familiar world--and does make some of the newer stages
stand out more, given that you're not seeing them for potentially the
fourth time like with the returning ones. King of Cards often feels like
a celebration of Shovel Knight and its world, but it can at times feel
overindulgent in its return to boss fights and stages you may have
experienced multiple times already. While stages are altered enough to
feel different beyond their visual makeup to account for King Knight's
new moves, boss fights can feel much easier given that their attack
patterns and abilities haven't really changed since their first
appearance in the original Shovel Knight.
King Knight's
own move set does make combat and platforming feel fresh, though, while
also feeling faithful to the original flow of Shovel Knight. His
standard attack is a horizontal dash and bash, flinging you into the air
on contact with an enemy or a wall. When launched into the air, King
Knight pirouettes into a dangerous spin, letting you hop between enemies
while damaging them until you hit the ground again. It's reminiscent of
Shovel Knight's vertical attack without the added benefit of choosing
when you can enact it. Instead you have to carefully connect multiple
dashes with reactive movements in the air that keep the chain going for
the best effect, studying enemies' various attack patterns to pick the
right moment to engage and the best window to get out. It gives combat a
much quicker pace than any other previous protagonist, and retains the
satisfaction of it despite the recycled enemies.
This
puts a different spin on platforming, with each stage being suitably
designed to challenge your understanding of King Knight's unique
movement. While Specter Knight was able to wall jump and glide through
lanterns, King Knight feels more restrained. Most walls can be dashed
into to initiate a higher jump, but levels will routinely shake things
up with elements that both restrict and change the way you perform this
simple action. Slippery, ice-slicked platforms add a dangerous momentum
to each of your landings, for example, while walls overgrown with vines
prevent you from jumping against them from certain angles. Learning when
you can chain together dashes and jumps and using the opportune
positioning of enemies to bounce between long stretches of dangerous
falls feels great. The designs of each stage make you feel like you're
constantly on the brink of failure, but are forgiving enough to make
each attempt feel fair. It's incredibly rewarding to push past each of
King of Cards' challenging platforming gauntlets, and the varied level
design makes consistent use of your limited movement in inventive ways.
King
of Cards features many, many stages for you to tackle, and scratches
the same sort of itch previous entries in the series have. But it also
features an entirely new avenue of play in Joustus. Central to King
Knight's quest is a card game that has captivated the land, filling
taverns in each of the game's unique areas with challenging opponents.
In Joustus, you use a deck of 16 cards to strategically move cards
you've placed on a board onto green gems. Once the board is full and a
player can no longer make a move, the player with the most cards on the
gems on the board wins. Unlike card games such as Hearthstone or Gwent,
Jousts feels more akin to strategic games like Go. It's less about
individual card abilities and more about using specific cards to push
around ones on the board, where thinking three steps ahead of your
opponent and anticipating how they might affect the board is paramount
to victory.
Vendors and beaten opponents will reward you
with cards to build your deck, with their unique abilities adding to
the complexity of the matches that follow. Initially, cards are
inscribed with arrows that indicate directions that can push others on
the board, but it doesn't take long for them to include effects that let
you destroy other cards, alter their player allegiance, or push them
much further than the standard single square. It takes some time to
adjust to the rhythm that Joustus demands, especially when thinking
about how your cards on the board can be moved around into inescapable
areas. But it's a challenging side activity that acts as a rewarding
respite from the demanding platforming, balancing the overall pacing of
King of Cards.
Standard progression isn't gated by
Joustus if you choose not to engage with the card game at all, despite
the rewards attached to them. Vendors even offer cheats that turn each
Joustus game into a trivial affair, letting you reap the rewards without
needing to engage with deck construction and card collection if you're
just here for standard Shovel Knight fare. It's easy enough to ignore
the cheats if you want to feel the rush of a strategically demanding
game of Joustus, but not obscure enough to miss if you're just looking
for an easy way out.
Whether you're challenging foes at a
table in a tavern or bashing them into oblivion with your scepter, King
of Cards is like comfort food if you already have a taste for Shovel
Knight. It doesn't stray from its established formula and often sticks
closer to the format of the first game in the series rather than the
more experimental expansions that came after it. And while its
well-balanced platforming and demanding combat are a treat, its use of
existing boss fights and enemies with little to no change in their
mechanics saps some of the surprise out of these exciting encounters.
It's been a persistent issue in each of Shovel Knight's expansions, but
the King of Cards' attention to level design and deeply engrossing
gameplay do help mask it better than before. If this is meant to be a
farewell to Shovel Knight's first adventure, it goes off with all the
spectacle and confetti it deserves.
