Shovel Knight - Review

Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove is a comprehensive Shovel Knight collection that does a good job of showing off what’s great about the Nintendo Switch, while the new Specter of Torment expansion unearths new depth. These exceptional retro-looking (and sounding!) platformers have previously been released on so many platforms that you’ve probably played Shovel Knight already in one form or another (and if you haven’t, you should – see our original Shovel Knight review), but Specter of Torment, in particular, is well worth returning for.

For one thing, the full bundle – called Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove – is a great peek into how far an indie studio can come in just a few years. The original Shovel Knight is a small but polished 2D action game with great platforming, an arsenal of varied tools, and a surprisingly well-written story. And while Plague of Shadows feels like a remixed addition for hardcore fans, Specter of Torment feels like a completely new game, and one that shows off everything Yacht Club has learned since the original’s release in 2014.

The Switch version has a ton of features that are either new or will be new to many of those who haven’t played Shovel Knight since it first came out. The base game (Shovel of Hope) has co-op now, for example, made even better by the Switch’s multiplayer-friendly Joy-Con controllers (although it’s overall better with the more precise Switch Pro Controller and its actual D-pad) and the system’s general portability. There are amiibo features too – you can personalize a custom knight and easily bring it to a friend’s system for co-op, or if you have a custom knight saved from a previous Nintendo platform you can import it with a tap. New to this iteration is the Fairy of Shovelry, a small sprite amiibo owners can summon to zip around the screen while you play. The fairy isn’t useful, as it mimes picking up treasure and fighting enemies without having any actual effect. But it is cute.

Treasure Trove also has the new “body swap” feature, which lets you fiddle with the gender and identifying pronouns (he/she etc.) for every main character. Making all the knights female and the Enchantress male – turning her into the Enchanter – is a nice way to make Shovel Knight feel fresh again, and you can tune the story to your liking. Unfortunately, body swap is currently only available in the original game, Shovel of Hope, though it’s reasonable to hope the developers might add it to the expansions in a future update.

The real draw for returning players is Specter of Torment.

The real draw for returning players is going to be the brand-new expansion, Specter of Torment. It adds so much to the overall package, more than simply a set of new story missions. Take the new challenge accessible from Specter Knight’s hub world -- a tower that stretches into the heavens and begs to be climbed. An empty suit of armor named Horace guards the entrance to its constantly rearranging heights. He challenges you to reach the top, a feat that can only be accomplished with lightning-fast reflexes and precise platforming. It’s not the most difficult area in Treasure Trove, but its balance of challenge and replayability makes it great.

Then there’s the campaign, which stands easily on its own. A prequel story, this adventure follows Specter Knight on his quest to convince the other knights to join the Enchantress’s Order of No Quarter. With that description, you’d think it would retread the same territory the original and Plague of Shadows did, but Specter breaks a surprising amount of new ground and packs in a lot of brand-new content. It took me over seven hours to get through Specter’s story and beat Horace’s tower, and that time didn’t even count any of the new challenges (which include more alternate boss fights) or the new game plus mode you unlock after beating the story.

Specter Knight's abilities create new opportunities for platforming challenges.

Like Plague Knight before him, Specter Knight gets a huge pool of unique abilities and attacks to play with. He can run up some walls and surf or grind along fast-moving rails, creating new opportunities for platforming challenges. While in the air his attacks cause him to zip toward enemies, and whether he hurtles toward the ground or flies upward depends entirely on your angle and timing. This definitely takes getting used to, and even several hours in you might get flustered by the number of jumps you flub. Frustration can, unfortunately, mount, especially on more difficult levels, although with no overworld map you can tackle each mission in whatever order you choose, so it’s easy to walk away from a problem and come back later when you’re not as angry.

Even so, Specter Knight marks a big improvement over Plague Knight’s arsenal in Plague of Shadows. Although it’s rewarding to tinker with Plague’s bombs to try to make the perfect tool for each new situation, controlling the alchemist through double-jumps and explosion bursts feels awkward and imprecise. In comparison, Specter Knight feels totally fluid and skill-based, bringing to mind old Castlevania classics.

Specter Knight feels totally fluid and skill-based.

It wouldn’t be Shovel Knight without a slew of cool extra upgrades and abilities, and Specter Knight delivers. One of Specter’s alternate cloaks lets him scythe-grind on any surface, including spikes, while another grants him recharging “darkness” (power for using abilities) when you destroy the checkpoint orbs throughout a level, which puts you at risk of losing a lot of progress should you die. Meanwhile Specter’s unlockable “curios” include powerful moves that let you float through the air, pass through walls to attack enemies all over the screen, and recharge your health on a whim.

If playing as Plague Knight sometimes feels like hard mode due to the strangeness of that character’s movements, Specter Knight’s devastating attacks can make playing as him feel like cheating. It was in danger of feeling too easy until the later levels, which really ramped up the challenge to compensate.

One of the best surprises in Specter of Torment is that unlike in Plague of Shadows, which reused the same levels from the original Shovel Knight, the new expansion features almost a dozen completely redesigned or brand-new stages. Each takes advantage of Specter Knight’s versatile movement style and unique abilities in fun ways, including regular sections that require you to scythe-swipe between targets while barely ever touching the ground.

For Specter, the developers went all out.

Specter’s hub world, where you go to chat with minions, buy armor upgrades, test out new abilities, and more, is also totally different from the village in past versions (unsurprisingly, Specter Knight feels more at home in the Enchantress’ fortress than among the cheery villagers). Plague of Shadows toyed with similar ideas by revealing Plague Knight’s secret lab under the village tavern, but for Specter, the developers went all out. And that’s consistent throughout the expansion.

Shovel Knight has always had a surprisingly deep and well-written story for a game in this old-school, pixelated tradition, and Specter of Torment takes it to new depths as Specter struggles to convince the other knights to join his cause – and faces off with each of them in turn. And like the new stages, each boss has been redesigned to better face off with Specter. Black Knight, for example, rides into battle on a spiked turtle/rhino thing named Terrorpin, and that’s just the first boss fight in the expansion.

Each new ally joins the Order for a feast back in the hub area, and you can check in with them for funny dialogue and character moments in between missions. There are even flashback scenes that flesh out the ghostly Specter Knight’s backstory, showing his motivations are more complex than Plague Knight’s “more power!” and even Shovel Knight’s “save your friend!”

Specter Knight’s motivation for spending hours trying to defeat Horace’s tower climb challenge, on the other hand, remains a mystery – unless you count my own obsession.