Shovel Knight

Shovel of Hope: 8.5/10, very solid retro style platformer, can feel unfair/annoying at times and i dislike the subpixels but its fun Plague of Shadows: 6.5/10, similar opinions to Shovel of Hope but it reuses the same level designs and you can absolutely tell they weren't designed for the character you're playing as; still worth your time, but imo the worst mainline game in the series Specter (Spectre? I don't remember which one they use) of Torment: 10/10, easily my favorite of the series; it's rather short but it has the best story and Spectre Knight is the most fun character to play as. Also introduces some great QOL changes relative to the first two (which are carried over in KoC) and has overall better boss design King of Cards: 7.5/10, overall fun; interesting changes to the structure of the series that work in some places and don't in others, card game mechanics are interesting though overall not anything remarkable Showdown: 4/10, I [i] really [/i] wanted to like this one but it just wasn't there; a lot of the characters feel clunky to play, even those I enjoyed in the main campaigns, and menu navigation was horrible. Buttons behaved inconsistently, with confirm and back switching between space, enter, and J. I-frames are way too much, making combos feel unreasonably difficult while simultaneously being inconvenient for the recipient, as you can't pick up gems, the main objective, while you have them. On the topic of gems, they just aren't a great system. It feels way too easy for a game to turn around completely, and sudden death is poorly implemented. Parries also feel incredibly bad, as they completely break the flow of the game for both the user and their opponent. Most items are more annoying than fun, and most of them aren't even interesting references. The story mode is also rather poor; every route has the same intro, and (though skippable) there's no way to fully turn it off. Though I didn't expect a lot of story from a platform fighter spinoff, it was still disappointingly minimal. Almost all of the enemies have unlimited stocks while you have only a few, which feels like an unfair band-aid fix to poor enemy CPU. The boss is just terrible as well. Though the game has a great core concept, it just isn't fun. This is the only one I would consider to not be worth your time. Overall: 7.5/10, very solid collection of games, imo its just barely worth it at full price, but I might go for a bundle or sale I recommend playing them in order of release, (Shovel of Hope -> Plague of Shadows -> Spectre of Torment -> King of Cards -> [strike] Showdown [/strike] ), but all that really matters is that you play SoH before PoS and SoT, and SoT before Showdown (though once again, I wouldn't recommend playing Showdown at all)

Is it safe to wonder if there's just simply too much Shovel Knight content now? Maybe. But the game is a great side-scrolling platformer, so shut up and enjoy it lol. King Knight is not my favorite at all - I didn't vote for him - but the other two were great additions to expand on the gameplay.

shovel knight: treasure trove is really great deal :D the visual style is gorgeous, the gameplay is super fun, and jake kaufman did the ost (that's a compliment). every campaign has its own charm and feels different enough to stay interesting. i didn't even finish shovel of hope and i feel really full of content! ^^ and you're basically getting 5 full games in one package for a really nice price, which is honestly kinda insane lol. absolutely worth it, super recommend it! :)