Seriously, again?! (Tinker Knight's stage rant)

[AVtechNICK]

I really love this game. I love the story and it's characters, I love the gameplay mechanics and overall controls, I really love 8-bit style and it's chiptune music. I would even say I love the game's almost perfect balance between being challenging and fun... if there was no Tinker Knight's stage in it's current state.

I can't recall having any troubles with this level on original campaign (Shovel of Hope) but Plague of Shadows' version of this level almost made me smash my gamepad into pieces. And as you probably guessed history repeated himself once again.

I hope you're all familiar with the "fair challenge" and "unfair challenge" concept. Most of the stages more or less fits to the first definition — you're already know what to do now because game already shows you all traps/enemies/mechanics on this segment, you just need to calculate the further actions and execute them according to your plan. Every failure is on your fault because nobody makes you run into enemies/trap/jump too earty/late and you better be more careful next time.

But Tinker Knight's stage (and more less King Knight's stage) is a blatant example of cheap difficulty in the game. Some parts of this level are okay but when it comes down auto-scrolling/rising segment there's the real pain begins. Okay, in order to make them more "entertaining" you put a lot of various mechanical traps above The Spikes of Instant Death and The Bottomless Pit of Doom that makes your progress more harder. It's actually okay, we're playing platform game after all.

The real problem is an insane amount of enemies/other stuff flying across the screen. Like it wasn't hard enough they tends to fly into you when you're making jump to the next safe platform making you fall to your death. And this is not even about the timing — their fight trajectory is almost random and every time they hit you in most unexpected times. And this is not challenging, this is just frustrating — I die again, I lose all of my gold, this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t drives me insane.

And the worst of all, the second phase of Tinker Knight's fight is also made this way. After numerous attempts I've managed to beat him just by luck, spamming Y button and throwing souls hoping to get him.

Please, just don't make me go through this madness again in King Knight's campaign. I'm begging you.

[Shadowspaz]

The unexpected flying enemies... You mean the flying daggers that move in a clean, readable sin wave, right?

They're basically Medusa Heads. The most notoriously hated enemy from Castlevania. That doesn't mean it's all random or anything, it just means they're a pain in the ass to read. lol

[Shucks]

Weird i always thought tinkers stage was the easiest out of the later stages.

You need to learn some patience, the reason you die is probably because you panic thinking you dont have much time but realistically you do. Also keep my mind plague knight is invulnerable the second he uses his burst so essencially you can jump through missles if you wanted.

If you hate that stage area.... youre going to really hate the specter of torment mini game lol.

[Silly Cat]

yes. I understand the issue of "unfair difficulty"

I almost passed all specter knight achievements and some of them caused me a lot of anger. In my opinion playing as plague knight was like a very easy way to play the game. Of course there were parts that were difficult. But other things were very easy as the bosses playing as plague.

But in my opinion in this new campaign of specter knight the difficulty increased and many things like the difficulty of the bosses was improved so that it would not happen the same as with plague. Only that in some part perhaps they passed a little with the difficulty ... and in others like the minigame of escalation in truth they were passed with the difficulty. at least for me. But one thing I liked was that many things really changed. For example the tinker tower under construction. Start in a different part in lost city. And the remix of lych yard or the explodatorium.

In my opinion the specter campaign is more than. Quick. precision. and patience. Since many times you will not achieve it at first. (Especially in that minigame)
But let's hope they do not make a specter-like difficulty with the next king campaign. (And do not make another hard game for king knight.)

Well thank you for your attention and good luck in your next projects.

[Salem]

If you are talking about the "Medusa head clones", just what? In SoT they only appear in one section of the stage but provided you are fast enough they'll all spawn and remain below you. I don't think I ever hit or got hit by those with Specter Knight. But the LD of that section is really benevolent..

Those enemies are a pain in the ass in the classic stage, especially the section with conveyor belts and pistons (not the autoscroller, though they can be deadly with the ladder, nor their first encounter).
With Plague it is really not a problem as you can just fly past everything with speed and mobility, and even if you somehow get hit you have enough time to bomb burst/use an arcana.
But with Shovel it is horrible and totally random, unless you spam the phase locket. I just can't understand why you said SoH was fair while PoS and SoT weren't, while I feel the exact opposite.

[Gravitas]

Bah I feel the Spectre Knight campaign is just full of unfair stages. It feels more like "play this section exactly how the devs intended or die" than a fun game where mistakes are possible to recover from. But I'm just ranting after nearly breaking my controller in frustration.

[Steve Harvey Oswald]

Honestly Tinker Knight is the exact opposite of how he was in Plague Knight.

In Plague Knight, the stage was harder than a rock being put in a "make harder" machine but the boss fight with Tinker Knight was insanely easy.

In Spectre Knight, the stage is insanely easy, but the boss fight with Tinker Knight just felt obnoxious.

I feel like the entirety of the campaign would be easier if Spectre Knight didn't try to show off his ninja skills every time you touch a wall and instead had to press a button to climb them.

[KingUrameshi]

Never had a problem with tinker knight. Hated mole knights stage as plague knight.

[NPC_CO8ALT]

Honestly the only boss I have an issue with is Polar Knight. IMHO, NO boss in games like this (besides MAYBE the final one) should have a spammable move that has the potential to instakill. Making the floor 70-80% spikes is just fake difficulty and makes the boss look lazily designed. Instead of more damanging moves or a change in attack pattern, they just said, "screw it, make him spawn spikes on the floor until the player hits one". Terrible. Even more so with Spectre Knight's campaign.

[Mumblez]

Originally posted by KingUrameshi:

Never had a problem with tinker knight. Hated mole knights stage as plague knight.

Mole knight was stupid easy as spectre knight. I got the untouchable achievment on him without trying, using the skeleton sniper and liberal dive bomb attacks.

[CheeseBoar]

I didn't have any issues with Tinker Knight's stage; I 100%ed it using my phone as a controller while on a flight home over the weekend. :-P King Knight's stage, however, really tested my patience, especially since I break every checkpoint.

[Twillin]

Everyone has their own opinions...i mostly agree with the OP though. To me it just felt that entire stage was so very long and kept stacking challenges id expect to see nearing the end of the game. I did it mind you but holy cow was i broken after all that then the bosses 2nd phase just hurt (thank gosh at that point you dont lose money for dieing)

I recognize though that certain stages get easier as we get more and more abilities. So for some of you, you might have already gotten health and skills vs another person who possibly went there first. I came back to tinker a bit further in and it was a bit easier. (Big fan of the save yourself from death hole armor for that one)

[Old Opera House Man]

If you hate that part of Tinker Knight's stage wait till you try the tower climb minigame for Spectre Knight.

[HoneyDrake]

Originally posted by KingUrameshi:

Never had a problem with tinker knight. Hated mole knights stage as plague knight.

electric bombs = instant win, especially after getting the "exploding at contact" upgrade, too. it's like 1,5~2 heart dmg per bomb with plague knight

[HoneyDrake]

Originally posted by Twillin:

Everyone has their own opinions...i mostly agree with the OP though. To me it just felt that entire stage was so very long and kept stacking challenges id expect to see nearing the end of the game. I did it mind you but holy cow was i broken after all that then the bosses 2nd phase just hurt (thank gosh at that point you dont lose money for dieing)

I recognize though that certain stages get easier as we get more and more abilities. So for some of you, you might have already gotten health and skills vs another person who possibly went there first. I came back to tinker a bit further in and it was a bit easier. (Big fan of the save yourself from death hole armor for that one)

just imagine players doing multiply runs at the same time, sub 1:30, no stat upgrades, no deaths, destroy all savepoints, etc...

[Shadowspaz]

Originally posted by Dancingstein:

Originally posted by Twillin:

Everyone has their own opinions...i mostly agree with the OP though. To me it just felt that entire stage was so very long and kept stacking challenges id expect to see nearing the end of the game. I did it mind you but holy cow was i broken after all that then the bosses 2nd phase just hurt (thank gosh at that point you dont lose money for dieing)

I recognize though that certain stages get easier as we get more and more abilities. So for some of you, you might have already gotten health and skills vs another person who possibly went there first. I came back to tinker a bit further in and it was a bit easier. (Big fan of the save yourself from death hole armor for that one)

just imagine players doing multiply runs at the same time, sub 1:30, no stat upgrades, no deaths, destroy all savepoints, etc...

That's what I'm going for. I'm questioning if sub 1:30 is even possible with no curios.