Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment

Well this might be an unpopular take but this might be my least favorite campaign of the three so far. It's still good but there's a lot about it that I don't think is done well.

Let's start with the positives. I praised the controls the last campaign and I think I'll praise them here again, it's pretty fun to control Spectre Knight and I think that's because his movement feels so fluid compared to Shovel Knight, who's clearly the worst movement wise, and Plague Knight, which is a lot more tactical and difficult to pull off. I think that's one reason why I feel this campaign in particular is super well regarded compared to the other two. I also really like the story as well, especially the flashback sequences. It gives a lot more development for Spectre Knight as well as one other character that I won't spoil and the funny more light-hearted parts of it are still funny and light-hearted. Once again, I have to praise Yacht Club Games's writing. I also really liked the tower challenge which is basically a pseudo-roguelike level you can play through and get to the top as far as possible. The most fun and challenging part of the game. We also got all new levels that are designed with Spectre Knight in mind including a lot of new gimmicks, such as railgrinding!, that were very well executed so that's really great too. Overall at its core it's still really a fun game that's absolutely worth playing.

However, then we get to the issues that makes it not as good to me in comparison to the other two games. I think the most important issue is the overall content, it doesn't feel like there's a lot to do and I think I feel this way because they did not add a world map to this. I think this is probably the only campaign to not have a world map and I'm not really sure why they did not include it. It could have been fun to go through a lot of themed bonus levels like the first two campaigns had or even go through several towns. Another issue is that while I praised the controls, I more so praised them on a movement level. The actual combat is not as fun, especially not when fighting bosses, which basically boils down to "borderline mashing the attack button if you think you can hit them". It makes some fights like the Propeller Knight fight seems like a complete joke. The other fights do at least force you to get into range but once you're there you can just press the attack button until you lose range. This is even applicable to the very underwhelming final boss. Another issue is the Curios. The balancing level has completely reverted back to the poor balancing of Relics, or maybe even worse than that, where there's only one relic you would reasonably use and the rest are just not going to be touched. The overpowered item this time around is the Will Skull that basically heals you for little cost and keeps you completely midair for a while. I think this campaign could really benefit from levels that are actually designed around the Curios to give them some use especially since there's arguably a lot of ones that are cool on paper but ultimately useless. It's a missed opportunity that they did not do that. There's also some more minor issues as well such as the OST sounding weirdly a lot worse, and the Red levels feeling like they could have been expanded upon or made replayable in some way.

Overall though, I still wouldn't say these negatives majorly detract from it still being a fun experience. It's still a good fun campaign and I still recommend that people give it a shot, but this is a campaign that definitely feels more like an "add on" than the campaign that was meant to be an "add on" but transcended that. I definitely cannot say it is better than Plague of Shadows, and arguably I think Shovel of Hope, despite being the worst campaign on a controls basis, is the better overall package too.

I enjoyed this campaign. It was a lot of fun to play as Specter Knight, especially after getting used to his aerial attack. Although this game made me realize one of my big platformer pet peeves where you have a character who runs up walls and you can't move into a wall without it activating.

I enjoyed the remixes of the Shovel Knight music even if the original soundtrack Isn't My Thing. The new stages were good and I liked the story taking a darker tone compared to the cartooniness of the other two campaigns. I like how the plot expanded the characters of the Shovel Knight mythos too.