It's fascinating how Yacht Club was able to take the same set of basic components and craft yet another unique experience that stands on its own, for the 4th time. While a step down from Spectre in most departments, this expansion is still supremely fun and engaging. The short levels allow for an easier accumulation of wealth, and though the majority of them are a tad too easy, this incentivizes an optimized and exploratory playtstyle to get all the treasure they have to offer. The plot is in a tricky spot of taking easily the least interesting character of the original campaign and trying to give him a personality and some complexity to match. King Knight is not going to go down in history as some miracle writing-wise, but in the context of Shovel Knight, the depth he is given is sufficient to carry the narrative portion of the game all the way to the end. Of course, the platforming is not all, as King of Cards introduces a minigame, a deckbuilding cardgame at that. Joustus is… kinda hit or miss. The concept and structure is fun enough, but the way each house keeps adding 12 new card types everytime you blink makes it spiral out of control after a little while. Towards the end I was mostly winning on contributing to the chaos until 2 spots remained, or by cheating. Regardless, Joustus is a decent distraction from the main game, and this fourth campaign remains a pleasant, if slighty uneventful, continuation of the saga, which now has two different sets of alternative paths.

Reviewed on Feb 23, 2023


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