If you’re wondering how the game keeps things fresh, the characters you unlock can massively change up your playstyle. You’ll need to consider these, as well as how much health they have and how much damage they dish out. There are a bunch of different enemy types and many have unique behaviors. Picking one up heals two HP, so you really have to plan out your moves. Another thing worth mentioning is that, as hitting enemies damages you, you’ll constantly find your health emptying. You can unlock new relics for runs by purchasing them in your home base at the start of Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon. The other kind of chest takes you into a merchant’s room, where you can buy relics, which grant you upgrades that last for the entire run. They can reduce your damage for a certain number of hits, increase your damage, freeze foes, let you attack in a line, and various others. Regular chests have items with a set number of uses that give you temporary bonuses or abilities. Not only do they open doors, but also chests, which come in two kinds. Keys drop onto the board and you’ll be grabbing them as you go. I found this to be a very pleasant throwback. You attack enemies by bumping into them, a la the early Ys games. Your character takes up one block of space and can move freely about the field. Shovel Knight is the only one who’s initially unlocked, but you’ll get a new character to play as every time you beat one of the game’s bosses. Instead of using a cursor or maneuvering pieces, you directly control your chosen character. You’ll need to remove things to keep the board from filling up. Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon drops enemies, blocks, and potions from the top. And I do mean that, as every last square needs to be filled. If you’re not using the default ‘die once and lose method,’ you’ll also be kicked back to the start if the level you’re on completely fills with blocks. Doing the latter two will turn off achievements, though, so that’s good to keep in mind. Not only can you pick how many lives you have, but you can select the game speed, give yourself more health, or even increase your damage. Instead, this game makes use of custom difficulty options. Getting the true ending is quite the challenge on top of the existing game structure, though, and will likely take some figuring out for most players. You can also just beat the default final boss and get the basic ending. There isn’t really much plot beyond the intro and outros, but the game does have a true ending route that adds an extra level and tough additional boss fights. The basic gist of Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon is that Shovel Knight has been pulled into the titular locale and the Puzzle Knight has asked him to assist with getting everybody out of it. It might not keep everyone busy for a long time, but this is a hectic, inviting time. It’s much of an action game as it is a puzzle game, while also giving players something they’ve never quite seen before. While, yes, it is very much based around block matching, it does this in a completely unique way. But I misunderstood the kind of game this was. I love Tetris, but I don’t tend to play any other “match the blocks with other blocks” games. Especially when you have to restart the entire game every time that happens.I wrote off Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon a while ago. The crash when you're fighting the shrine guardian isn't so bad because you can prevent it from occurring if you know how (don't kill him with an attack that would also kill you) but I've also had random crashes during the last level and that's just unacceptable. There are no story differences regardless of who you're playing as and because there's so little dialogue from the Knights, I didn't feel like I was unlocking new characters, just different abilities.įinally, the switch version has an annoying tendency to crash at the worst times. There are so few NPCs that you could count them on both hands and most of them only tell you tips on how to play. It's missing the trademark Shovel Knight charm. Also, Shovel Knights ability sucks to the point where Polar Knights ability is just an unambiguously better version of it. Having to ignore the things that are supposed to make each playthrough varied and fun in order to win is not good game design. I found that once I started ignoring half of the relics and only got the good ones, my win rate spiked dramatically. Only a couple levels have unique gimmicks and you barely notice them when you're playing. They're all almost entirely the same except different enemies.
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