Plague of Shadows is awful.

[The Filet-O-Fish®]

I get what they were going for with this control scheme. Really, I do. But Plague Knight just feels hard to control for the sake of being hard to control. When I die, it never feels like I'm the one who did something wrong. It's always some part of the level that obviously was not designed with Plague Knight in mind, so it acts as a "fun goalie" to stop you from taking any sort of risk with his abilities, without MAPPING the entire stage layout beforehand. There are plenty of situations that would normally be perfectly manageable with SK, but are an absolute nightmare to deal with as PK.

It doesn't feel good to master this character. I just feel like I'm constantly fighting against a control scheme that has no reason to be as unwieldy as it is, and that one slip-up will throw me into a pit. That's not fun. That's just anxiety-inducing.

[Desticler]

Yeah. For a very long time I didn't even bother to finish his campaign, I just found it this unfun. In my opinion, that's the second worst thing you can say about a game, with the worst one being "it's boring".

[Mido]

honestly i thought plague of shadows was the easiest campaign so far. You can always use the second jump after using your bomb burst to stop the momentum and avoid falling into pits, aditionally throwing bombs will make Plague Knight to stay in the air for a bit longer.

[HeraldOfOpera]

Originally posted by Jokes:

honestly i thought plague of shadows was the easiest campaign so far. You can always use the second jump after using your bomb burst to stop the momentum and avoid falling into pits, aditionally throwing bombs will make Plague Knight to stay in the air for a bit longer.

Not to mention the Float Burst, and the simple fact that you can kill enemies with total impunity because unlike the other characters your mobility doesn't rely on them. Once you start getting a decent selection of bomb parts it becomes more like a puzzle game: of my zillion different attack options, which one will kill this enemy from a position of complete safety?

[The Filet-O-Fish®]

Originally posted by Jokes:

You can always use the second jump after using your bomb burst to stop the momentum and avoid falling into pits

Everyone uses this as a defense. But here's the big problem: that only works if you're not holding forward at the time, which instinctively, you're going to be doing while jumping forward since platformers have taught you to hold forward when jumping to maximize your distance. If you are holding forward, the double jump carries your momentum, more often than not sending you plummeting to your doom. The Bomb Burst has the same distance every time, but this isn't intuitive, nor is it fair to ask me to forget something that's been burned into my brain since childhood.

In order to do something so basic as correct your jump in midair, you need to hold forward, bomb burst, stop holding forward, then jump when over safe land. You additionally have little to no control over your bomb burst because of this, meaning every time you use it, you need to make an educated guess how far you'll go. That's a lot to ask for in an action platformer where you need to make decisions in a split second. You also have to remember not to double jump until AFTER you bomb burst, which again goes against your instincts half the time where you want to double jump by default just to avoid hazards.

[Macario]

Plague of shadows has always been my least favorite, I don't know, you play King Knigth, Specter Knigth, and Shovel Knigth, and each one of them feels very fluid, responsive, and how all levels exploit their mechanics in creative ways, the disadvantage of PK is that it has no levels for it, and honestly it is not very fun to play with it, enemies that would normally be a piece of cake, it gives you a stress attack when they are very close to you and your bombs fail, not to mention that many bomb upgrades are useless, or too expensive, really ♥♥♥♥ those green coins, possibly they are the only collectibles of the 4 campaigns that I have never managed to get all.

[Nethiar]

That's how I felt playing as Specter Knight. The wall run and wall jump were finnicky to control and it seemed to do whichever one it felt like. The angled dash was pretty awkward too, you had to get so close to whatever you were dashing through while getting flung through the air. Way too often the angle would change the instant I pushed the button because my position switched by a pixel and I'd fly straight into a pit.

I loved Plague of Shadows though, all the combinations of bombs you could use was a lot of fun to experiment with. I never had trouble controlling him though, he always seemed more than capable of getting through the stages.

[Stavbearer]

I will now list the uses(in my opinion) of all the things

[Stavbearer]

CASINGS
bounce case:standerd damage
lob casing:for enemies directly above you
float case: for enemies behind a wall(note that it popping resets the fuse)
orbit casing: beetle deterent?
drop casing: enemies directly below you
whirl casing: for enemies right in fron of you but at a distance

[Stavbearer]

POWDERS
black powder: vannila powder
tracer powder: for enemies around a corner
Cascade powder: knight be gone
component: for use with sentry fuse for GIGA MINES
Cluster powder: aerial knight be gone
Sparkler: i don't remember what this is good for

[Stavbearer]

FUSES
standard: the name says it all
long: better in most circumstances than standard
Quick: when you need a short fuse for trick shots
sentry: mines
remote: mines but worse (mostly)
impact: saturation of the battlefield

[Stavbearer]

Bursts
standard: will be replace with a FANCIER burst almost immedietly
float burst: the platforming burst
bullet burst: the burst that can attack over pits!
frost burst: useless?
spin burst: the new standard because it helps you stop being knocked about

[Stavbearer]

Slime cloak gets an honerable mention for being uncontrolable mobility

[CupCupBaconBox]

Originally posted by Stavbearer:

Slime cloak gets an honerable mention for being uncontrolable mobility

your a little stinky captain :)

[Timerlane]

Originally posted by Stavbearer:

POWDERS
Sparkler: i don't remember what this is good for

Absolutely shredding grounded enemies, when combined with the impact fuse.

[Finii]

Originally posted by DD:

Originally posted by Jokes:

You can always use the second jump after using your bomb burst to stop the momentum and avoid falling into pits

Everyone uses this as a defense. But here's the big problem: that only works if you're not holding forward at the time, which instinctively, you're going to be doing while jumping forward since platformers have taught you to hold forward when jumping to maximize your distance. If you are holding forward, the double jump carries your momentum, more often than not sending you plummeting to your doom. The Bomb Burst has the same distance every time, but this isn't intuitive, nor is it fair to ask me to forget something that's been burned into my brain since childhood.

In order to do something so basic as correct your jump in midair, you need to hold forward, bomb burst, stop holding forward, then jump when over safe land. You additionally have little to no control over your bomb burst because of this, meaning every time you use it, you need to make an educated guess how far you'll go. That's a lot to ask for in an action platformer where you need to make decisions in a split second. You also have to remember not to double jump until AFTER you bomb burst, which again goes against your instincts half the time where you want to double jump by default just to avoid hazards.

It isn't that hard to stop holding forward. At this point you are the problem, not the game.