Recent reviews by Salt Baron

Summary:
It's a great DLC, especially if you picked it up for free. The highlight in my opinion is the challenge levels (Death Wish), but 2/3 of the Arctic Cruise levels are pretty good as well. The DLC also adds a wealth of cosmetic items and 6 Time Rifts to play through.

The Good:
- The Snatcher challenge levels live up to the hype the devs built up for them. They are, for the most part, insanely hard, which is why there is an easier mode available after failing a challenge a few times for the price of some pons (the green coin orbs you pick up throughout the game). The easy mode makes it less grueling on completionists while the mode can be turned off whenever you want if you wish to try and beat the challenges at the difficult normal difficulty.
- New outfits, badges, camera filters, and dyes from The Snatcher's challenges make for even more cosmetic variety
- The Snatcher's dialogue gives more insight into the character's mind and varies between sad and funny. Based on their playful douchiness, it's clear why he and Hat Kid are friends
- The Arctic Cruise world has a flavorful and interesting backdrop with the ship
- Six time rifts, including some with new storybooks for more background on the game's characters

The Bad:
- Act 2 of the Arctic Cruise. Even after a rebalance patch, the level, Ship Shape, just isn't fun to complete. Granted, I'm looking at this through the eyes of someone wanting to pick up the achievement for never letting the ship captain get upset, but the randomness of the objective locations can make it difficult to manage the delivery routes time efficiently enough. Still, the rebalancing should make it easier on people who just want to beat the level. This is probably the weakest part of both the base game and the DLC. It's just painful.

The thing about Wayward Souls is that the game is pretty fun, but I cannot currently recommend it due to its flaws. It's a game that I like, but I'll never love. The game gets so much right, including visuals, simple controls, music, its sense of humor, and its unique form of storytelling. The problem is that what little the game gets wrong, it gets wrong particularly badly. So I'll just go down the list:

Pros:
+ Core gameplay is solid
+ There's a variety of different classes to choose from
+ The storytelling is excellent and unique (you can choose to ignore most of the story, or explore the randomly generated floors to get a good understanding of the game's lore)
+ Excellent soundtrack and retro visuals
+ Overall fun boss design, with one exception covered below

Cons:
- Despite the addition of a save statue feature, this is not the most convenient game to pickup and play whenever as there's no ability to save and quit
- The permanent upgrade system is pretty terrible, and a common complaint about this game when it's critiqued. It's a slow grind to unlock upgrades for each class, with gold returns being low even in late game dungeons. This is by far the worst and most prominent problem with the game.
- The final boss of the Labyrinth level is bland design that is also basically an AOE clear gear check, vomiting hordes of creatures at the player constantly while the boss itself does essentially nothing.
- Some attacks are practically (or genuinely, it's hard to tell for certain) unavoidable for certain characters, or require you to spend precious resources to avoid getting hit. The last unlockable character has this problem with some of their bosses.

Honestly, I have fun playing most of the game, even the couple of levels I overall don't enjoy as much. I've gone back and forth in terms of whether or not I believe I can recommend this game to others. In actuality, if Rocketcat just reduced gold costs in order to mitigate the problem of the grind, I could recommend the game to others. But as it is, the few negatives of the game are significant enough to be a "like it, can't love it" kind of situation. Check out the devs' other game "Death Road to Canada" if you want similar humor and challenge without the frustrating features.

There's something to be said for quality platforming games. Shovel Knight is (obviously) a retro-styled platformer that plays like a cross between DuckTales and Mega Man. The bosses are faced in a somewhat linear fashion, which is a departure from the Mega Man series. If you bought this game hoping for a game that played exactly like a Mega Man Zero clone, this isn't the game for you. However, the gameplay is pleasantly challenging (made very easy through items should you choose to use them), the story is well-integrated into the game, and the characters are memorable. At the time of this review's posting, there are currently two separate character campaigns in the game which play very differently across the same stages. There are two more campaigns and a multiplayer battle mode being developed as well. With the solid core gameplay and ongoing developer support, Shovel Knight is a game that everyone should take the chance to try.