 I remember as a kid playing games like Super Mario World and a link to the past in Donkey Kong Country and even though the age of 3D gaming came while I was still young, I always had a soft spot for the era when 2D gaming had not only reached its peak, but had reached perfection. Games like Donkey Kong Country prove how before this switch into 3D, the art of platforming was at an entirely new level. Then recently after the third dimension had reached a point where it too was basically mastered by game developers, this retro revival movement swept gaming and sought to take everything that was great about all these old games and bring them into the modern age. So back in 2013, when I heard a group of game developers had banded together to create Yacht Club games and make the ultimate 2D action platformer adventure, well, I was excited. What's more is Yacht Club promised free DLC with Shovel Knight's release, a promise that they kept with the release of Plague of Shadows. So did the game live up to its expectations? And what kind of new amazing gameplay did Plague of Shadows contribute? Well by now we all know that Shovel Knight is an amazing time. The game has countless reviews with all positive reception. I loved the game too when it first came out, I was spending weeks playing it and overcoming the great challenges the game threw at me. But when Plague of Shadows was released, it was largely overshadowed by the release of Super Mario Maker in the same week, and because that AAA title was so great and huge, although that's a topic for another video of its own, Plague of Shadows received very little attention as a result. I felt that it was very much ignored by the internet with all the Mario Maker hype going around. However, if you haven't given this free DLC a try already, then go update Shovel Knight and do it. Just do it now. Sure you may think that, oh it's just Shovel Knight all over again, with even the same world map, the same levels, same boss fights. And while this is true, Plague of Shadows is a vastly different experience from Vanilla Shovel Knight, and in my opinion, an even better one. But why? Well let's start at the beginning. Shovel Knight takes notes from a handful of classic NES games, such as Zelda 2, Duck Tales, Mega Man, even Super Mario Bros. 3, and combines everything to make one smooth and awesome experience. You might say Shovel Knight is a modern NES game, but Shovel Knight himself controls like a dream. The jumping is precise, the movement is smooth, everything feels very polished. Each level is unique, and the game takes full advantage of your abilities and moves, and uses the game's mechanics very well. I mean, if Shovel Knight were just a Knight, Knight Knight, then the game would be quite straightforward, but having the shovel, and using it in the many unique ways that you can use it, brings the experience to fruition in a far more charming way. And not just digging to find treasure, although that's important too, but digging to progress in the level, using the shovel to bounce off of Obstacle's Pogo style, and of course using it as a weapon. Throughout the game, you will also visit a couple villages where you can spend time upgrading your armor, shovel, and stats. The amount of times you die does not hit off a life counter, but rather you lose gold, and when you're seeking to get these upgrades yourself, that can be even more serious punishment. On its own, this is great game design, and definitely one of the best games to come out recently. I absolutely adore the player-friendly nature that Shovel Knight is built upon, that somehow works this simplicity without compromising on challenge. But with Plague of Shadows, we are now offered two vastly different experiences. One where you pogo off bubbles and fight for shovelery, and are the great, big noble good guy, and the other where you throw bombs at everything in your path, and play as the diabolical evil scientist villain. The nature of this dichotomy is felt not only with how these characters interact with each other, and other characters, where Shovel Knight will always do everything fairly, even for the greater good, like helping those in need, always purchasing his items, and largely fitting the lawful good archetype, while Plague Knight can blow up his own minions, opts to craft his own weapons and betrays his allies, the order of no quarter. But also this is felt in the very nature of the gameplay. The Shovel Knight's growth plan is a very linear system, where you purchase the next great armor, or the next health upgrade, and gradually become stronger. Plague Knight has the freedom of crafting his own tools to best suit the situation. Let's take the health bar for starters. In the first level, Shovel Knight's health bar will look like this, and if you bought all the meal tickets, you'll gain more health throughout the game until the last level, when it will look like this. But with Plague Knight here in the first level, it could look like this, or it could look like this, meanwhile in the last level, it could look like this, or this. That's pretty different, huh? That's because instead of a gradual increase like Shovel Knight has, Plague Knight has these tonics that temporarily boost your max health, instead of having permanent increases. In this sense, Plague Knight has a lot more freedom in the way that you can control him, and how you can play. Shovel Knight can sport a few optional upgrades, such as changing his armor, and how you choose to use the many relics at your disposal, although Plague Knight's own armor and arcana are functionally equivalent, but Plague Knight's style overall is a much deeper experience. Now Shovel Knight's run is faster, and he suffers less knockback than Plague Knight, so you can already get the feel of the difference between these guys. You get the feeling where Shovel Knight is quite the tough guy. Plague Knight is more about brains over brawn. Shovel Knight's single jump is also much greater than, heck, even Plague Knight's double jump. Instead of a shovel, Plague Knight sports bombs that he can throw down at any given time, and after throwing one down, Plague Knight can charge up what is called a bomb burst. But with this bomb burst mechanic, it essentially acts as this third jump that can propel you much larger distances than Shovel Knight is normally capable of. In fact, the amount of bursts that you can execute are infinite, held back only by your own skill. I personally recommend saving your second jump for after your bursts, though, just to help you stick that landing, as if the burst jump is intentionally made to be somewhat difficult to control. Oh, but wait, there's more. Through the research system, you can buy new bomb bursts to suit your style. So maybe you like the standard one, or you prefer to slow your fall after a burst, or maybe you want to be like Samus and just screw attack through everything. There's plenty of options. Oh, and the bombs themselves? Well, there's tons of customization. In fact, the bombs are just entirely built around the idea of customization. So your bombs are made of three main components, the casing, which dictates how the bomb is thrown, the powder, which changes how it explodes, and the fuse for basically how long it will explode after throwing it. So maybe you like rapid quick little bursts, or maybe you would prefer to lob them up, or you'd prefer to have them act like a barrier to protect you. Overall, there are six of each ingredient you can get, meaning the amount of combinations is quite large. I'm not going to do the math, though. In this sense, you can really see that Yacht Club put a lot of work into making Plague Knight here an adaptable character that's very different than Shovel Knight. With all this stacked up on top of the Arcana, there's basically no situation Plague Knight can't quickly adapt to just by pausing the game and changing what you have equipped. Because of these new assets at your disposal, it makes for an entirely new experience. See, Shovel Knight and Plague Knight play through the same levels, which are largely unchanged. But even so, because of their differences, every problem has to be approached differently. Maybe Shovel Knight can Pogo across here, but Plague Knight has to burst across. Or these guys who you would defeat this way as Shovel Knight, you have to experiment with new ways and new equipment to try and work out how you can get by them as Plague Knight. What I love is that some of the things that came as no challenge at all to Shovel Knight are difficult to get through as Plague Knight because of the changed mechanics, but also vice versa. So even though the levels remain largely unchanged, because of these vastly different tools at your disposal, your experience will be completely different. Instead of just expanding on what we already have, this DLC gives us an entirely new and fresh experience that extends the gameplay of this game by basically doubling it and helps to more fully flesh out the world by giving us a side story that's going on during the main campaign. This is why Plague of Shadows is, by far, some of the best DLC I have ever seen. And I'm going to reiterate that it is free. You should just go and play it. 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