Dylan Del Rio
After years of development Shovel Knight’s final campaign, King of Cards has been released and thankfully it is just as polished and enjoyable as the other story modes. The game is a prequel focusing on King Knight, one of the bosses of the original entering a card tournament and beating the three judges to win the title of King of Cards. As a character King Knight is rather entertaining. He’s a vain entitled man child who lives with his mother, trains his pet rats to be his servants, and belittles nearly everyone he talks to. At the same time, he attracts positive attention from a lot of onlookers who support him through out and see him as a hero. It leads to a lot of funny moments when these supporting characters talk to King Knight like he’s a noble respectable warrior only for King Knight to response by cruelly mocking them. While the previous campaigns also had a lot of humorous moments and characters King of Cards revels in the fact the story’s “hero” is a selfish egomaniac that still manages to gain allies since a lot his actions could be seen as heroic, even though he is only doing it for entirely selfish reasons.
Game play wise King of Cards is split into two distant styles. First are the traditional levels where the goal is to get to the end while collecting money and medals which can be used to buy items, new abilities, and upgrades. King Knight’s main attack is a shoulder bash that sends him charging straight ahead. When the attack connects with something like an enemy or a wall King Knight will shoot up into the air in a twirling jump which can be used to bounce off enemies and destroy dirt blocks. It starts out relatively simple; shoulder bash an enemy then use the twirl to jump over and destroy the blocks behind it and by the end it escalates to lengthy sequences of bashing and twirl jumping in between various platforms. Despite this it is still incredibly manageable thanks to the various upgrades you get allowing the game to be difficult but never to the point of complete frustration.
The second major game play element is the card game Joutus. In these sections you compete against various opponents across a board with three gems. The goal is to push your cards onto the gems and the game ends when the board is full. Whoever gets the most gems wins. There are various things to consider like the arrows on the card, each card’s rarity, abilities, cheat cards etc. It is the kind of thing I’m normally not very interested in but fortunately it is simple to grasp, and you only have to play a few times to continue the main story. That being said I found it rather addictive, mainly because the rewards where primarily more money and medals. It feels like an element you’ll either adore or just rush through once and never think about again.
King of Cards is a worthy send off to the original Shovel Knight. While I didn’t really enjoy Joutus by itself I thought the main levels and the humor of the story did more then enough to carry me to the conclusion. It helped me remember why I loved Shovel Knight and left me hopeful of what the series has in store next.
