@nate38

It'd be awesome if they made the other characters playable as paid DLC. I'd gladly throw $5 their way for the rest of them.

@OrbitalBeard

Wow, I forgot all about those stretch goals. It will be great to be able to keep coming back to the game.

nvm... Got it for the Wii U. Need that HD!

@Brook

Not sure if serious.

@OrbitalBeard Really?! Man I should have kept up with the news. This sounds awesome. Challenge modes are pretty much my favorite thing in games nowadays, every game should have them.

GOTY?!!!? Ok fine, Smash will probably be, but GOTFHOTY?

@TriforceBun SHOVEL KNIGHTTTTTTTTTTTTT.

Nah actually you make a good point. And the funny thing is I keep forgetting that this game exists, and then someone mentions it, and I'm like HOLY F I STILL DON'T HAVE THE NEW DKC GAME WTF IS WRONG WITH MEEEEEE!? In part it was just the fact that I had way too many games I was in the middle of when it came out so I decided to hold off a bit and get it cheaper, but it should be time to take the dive soon.

I won't say one or the other until I've played both. But Shovel Knight is pretty awesome.

Anybody finding bosses to be easy? Like, all you have to do is use that dive strike thing, (jump then hold down) and just keep hopping. If I am about to get hit I just use that phase locket. Speaking of the phase locket, that thing is super abusable. Overall, the game is easier than I thought. It is actually has just about the right amount of difficulty, but I was expecting something much harder. If it controlled exactly like the old NES games then I bet it would be harder. I was expecting it to be as hard and unforgiving as mega man. I suck at those.

@TriforceBun

Tropical Freeze is an amazing game and I honestly didn't think anything would be able to touch it this year but Shovel Knight is making me rethink things. I've finished it twice already and I'm considering going back for a third run before the weekend's over. I love it that much.

@Brook

The phase relic is definitely overpowered. Because of that, I only used it a handful of times throughout both of my playthroughs. The game is much more satisfying that way. I absolutely refused to use it on any boss encounters.

I think it is funny that I use to think that this game was nothing special. I wasn't even think about getting it until about 11 PM yesterday. I just beat Persona 3 FES two days ago and needed something to play. Then I saw Man VS Game fight the specter boss and thought that boss looked bad ass. I had Nin-cash leftover from the SMT and FE promotion awhile back and didn't see myself spending it on anything thing, so I figured, what the hell! Then I bought. It is pretty good. Just got past the tinker knight.

EDIT: OH GOD THAT LICH YARD TRACK!

@Brook
I've been using the locket a bunch too. I hope it's not too OP because I'm tempted to keep on using it. Perhaps the magic cost should've been even higher.

@Zero
Yeah, the first half of 2014 was actually quite strong for Nintendo, especially with the Mario Kart deal giving a bonus game. Hope they keep this momentum going for the rest of the year, because 2015 already looks like a winner.

@OrbitalBeard
I agree that Shovel Knight is good stuff for sure--definitely looking forward to playing more and experiencing the bonus modes. But my heart still belongs to Retro in this case.

I think the difficulty is just right, like I said before I've beat most of the tough NES games but I'm not interested in that level of frustration any more.

Maybe they should have a one-hit-yer-dead mode, that should satisfy the crowd looking for an extreme challenge, they should patch that in!

Edit: and/or remove all magic items.

Yeah, the difficulty seems fine to me. I'm finding many ways to die... and don't you take double damage in New Game+ mode?

Plus, as already mentioned, there's plenty of ways to make the game more challenging through choices. Magic items and potions are optional, as are health, armor, weapon, and magic upgrades... and you can crush the checkpoints for extra cash, which is actually a very brilliant risk/reward gameplay element that I hope to see other games copy.

I don't see the issue here.

Yeah, I think the game's difficulty is nicely balanced. You can use all the advantages you get and it'll make things a lot easier, but you'll still probably take a spill here and there without the game ever feeling cheap. And the achievements will push you towards tougher challenges, like destroying all the checkpoints, skipping all the relics, and never buying anything.


Finished New Game +. The toughest part of that, by far, was the boss rush. Would have been nice to get a more substantial Hard Mode, but it was pretty good.


So what Relic(s) do you guys keep coming back to? I'm actually a big fan of the coin, which I sure didn't expect when I first got it. It deals two shovels worth of damage, continues past enemies it kills, and bounces off tougher enemies so you can hit it back at them again. Plus, a chance for extra booty! It's great for taking out quicker, smaller enemies that mostly stay grounded, and helping you inch towrards that 50k gold achievement.

I'm also a big fan of the grey armor, where your shovel charges after you do two bounce attacks.

Finally got to start this game today. I beat four of the not-robot masters and two field bosses (A ninja-like guy and... The Baz?!). It's been a lot of fun and I don't really have any complaints. I'm tempted to try to get every collectable and item in this game, but I'm not sure if that would be worthwhile.

@Brook

Yea really! Brook kept saying, "this game ain't nothing special, blah,blah,blah..." I will admit, until I watched the trailers for the game on Thursday, I had not planned on buying it. I knew about the game cause of everyone continually talking about it and that it took forever for the game to receive a release date. Once I watched the trailers, I was really hooked, esp. because of the soundtrack and how colorful the game appeared.

I was a little surprised that the game was $14.99, I thought it would have been $9.99, which I still think is a better price point and many more people would end up buying the game. Don't get me wrong, I think the game is great and the developers did a wonderful job making SK such a pleasure to play. The gameplay, control, presentation are perfect, imo. I think the one thing I keep seeing as a complaint is the game is too easy. Well, I've through the first three levels and I think the difficulty level is perfect. I actually think it is more difficult than what I was expecting, esp. from the way everyone was saying its too easy. I'm glad the game isn't any harder AND as far as breaking the checkpoints, no way will I do that! I've seen people saying, "well, to make the game harder, break them." No, that doesn't make the game harder, it just makes it more irritating to have to go all the way back to the beginning cause I screwed up and ended up falling into a hole or lost all my life. It sucks bad enough that I have to go back to the last checkpoint. I don't find it fun at all to have to do the entire level over again, it makes the game more monotonous, not more difficult.

I really had a little bit of trouble deciding whether to download this for my 3ds or Wii U. I really would love to have it for both and it goes back to that old argument that for those people who own both the handheld and console, once you buy the game you should be able to play it on either system. No one should have to buy the game again to play it on whichever platform they didn't initially download. If I bought the game on the pc, I could have downloaded it on my desktop, laptop, ect and wouldn't had to pay twice or more times.

Anyways, since I did pay $15 for the game, I had no issues at all with downloading the game's soundtrack for free. I saw where Jake Kaufman and Yacht Club Games was offering, 'Pay what you feel' to receive an email to download the game's soundtrack, so I entered a 0 in the field box and now have the soundtrack on my sd card in my 3dsXL.

It's kind of funny. Despite a much more successful Kickstarter, I think Inafune and his team have their work cut out for them when it comes to delivering a game that is up to the quality of Shovel Knight, from a gameplay and design perspective. Hopefully they are up to that challenge though!

I don't think Mighty No. 9 is going to come close to this game, honestly.

@nate38

I use the grey/silver armor as well.

Okay, I've found a frustrating glitch. If you're using a controller other than the GamePad and the GamePad's battery dies while you're playing, a prompt will pop up telling you to plug in the gamepad or whatever. After you plug the Gamepad in and turn it back on, the game freezes and you have to unplug the system to reset it? Has this happened to anyone else? It's really frustrating to be tied to the Gamepad even when you're using a different controller. Someone may have already posted about this, but I didn't search through 6 pages of discussion to check.

@nate38

I use the Silver Armor the most, with Red Armor taking second place. I tend to favor using the fire wand, the anchor, and the knuckles. These covers long distance, aerial, and armored enemies, respectively.