Shovel Knight: King of Cards (PS Vita, 2019)

Rating: 10/10
I’ve done it! I have beaten all of the Shovel Knight games! Oh my was it ever fun. King of Cards is the fourth, and final expansion to Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove, and like the other expansions, I loved it! Yacht Club truly ended the series off with a bang with this one. King of Cards is about King Knight’s journey to defeat the judges of the Joustus card game, in order to be the eponymous King of Cards. A fairly simple premise like the other campaigns, that will soon introduce us to a colorful cast of characters. So much happened throughout the course of the story that I ended up forgetting this was prequel. Because of that, the ending really caught me off guard.

King Knight plays similar to Wario from the Wario Land games. This means that his main attack is bashing into enemies. The levels are fairly short, but that’s mostly because the map is more like Super Mario Bros. 3 (lots of Mario influence in this one, huh?) where there’s different world to venture through. Four in this game, to be exact. The heart of the game lies in Joustus. As a card game fan, this really appealed to me. It’s a basic, yet challenging card game, but I know this might not be of interest to everyone. I guess Yacht Club had this in mind since playing Joustus isn’t even needed in order to progress through the game other than the tutorial part.

Pros:

+ A silly, yet tragic plot
+ More content than the other campaigns
+ Fun new mechanics
+ Joustus cheats

Cons:
- Joustus isn’t for everyone’s fancy, luckily it’s optional


Final Thoughts:
King of Cards is definitely my favorite campaign out of the four. It had so much content to keep me interested. Much like Shovel of Hope, the plot doesn’t really pick up until you near the end of the game. Like I mentioned before: I forgot this was a prequel. I probably had more of a connection with this cast than any of the ones from the previous games. Another bonus I forgot to mention is that you can purchase cheats for Joustus. The gem steal cheat became my trump card. So is Shovel Knight: King of Cards worth playing? ABSOLUTELY!! As of now, this is the best game I played all year, with Monster House and Shin Megami Tensei coming close.

For anyone wondering, my favorite Shovel Knight games are King of Cards -> Specter of Torment -> Shovel of Hope -> Plague of Shadows