Sometimes, I imagine a world in which Mega Man did not exist. The butterfly effect through time would dramatically change the course of all which we have known– I would never be here today, Ghosts n’ Goblins would be Capcom’s main platformer franchise, and maybe only then would game design not be so fucking clinical today.

Shovel Knight (now considered “Shovel of Hope” by the collection) is maybe the single work that most embodies this approach to game design I do not appreciate. From the beginning, Shovel Knight as a concept was pitched as a retro throwback. The game is wearing the “Mega Man–Ducktales–Castlevania” influence on its sleeve proudly, which is admirable. But for as much as the game prides itself over being an NES throwback, I wish it were like those games in less superficial ways. Shovel of Hope feels like the sanded off edges of everything that made those NES games special in the first place presented back to me on a silver platter.

If you look at any individual room in Shovel Knight, you’ll be able to visually see what the game is attempting to teach you every step of the way. This room shows you, with no tutorial, that you can press down to pogo. This one shows you that the pogo can bounce off enemies and get you to new heights. Damn near every single one in the game does this– it’s hard not to give it some credit for how Clever this game is. It's a game filled entirely with the “introduce enemy/mechanic safely -> use enemy/mechanic in a dangerous environment -> combine it with a previously introduced mechanic, if you’re feeling spicy” that every mediocre game design YouTuber will tell you is Traditionally Good Design. Mario 1-1 does it!

And sure, I will not push back on that that hard. It’s generally good practice to do those things. But there is more to level design than this! Despite often being Clever, Shovel Knight is boring. Level gimmicks come and go without any bearing on how you approach the platforming. They don’t get any time to evolve. (Sound familiar?) It makes every level in the game feel like the same shit, over and over. This is dramatically worsened by the fact that Shovel of Hope’s extra mechanics to liven up the game beyond “Mega-vania-tales” are all kinda garbage. There are barely any subweapons I like in this game– most of them feel like the developers didn’t stop to think if the game actually needed something like it. Shovel Knight is not built around shooting a single, weak projectile forward or plopping down a gear to ride on. It’s built, meticulously, around using the shovel. Most attempts in trying to actually use your arsenal feel like unnatural forced “creativity” that isn’t fun or effective. Not every subweapon is like this— but ironically, many of the effective ones have a problem in the opposite direction. I hate the Phase Locket. The fact that there is a “it’s okay :) you don’t have to engage with the levels :)” item that the game encourages you to abuse is an utter failure of game design. Like, why even have enemies in the game at all at that point? I guess giving the Phase Locket weaknesses and requiring any intelligence to effectively use it would be too hard to combine with the two shovel mechanics. But the Phase Locket isn’t in Shovel Knight to be a real part of the game. It’s there so that people “don’t have to engage with that NES bullshit” if they don’t want to.

“NES game with modern sensibilities” is a term that this game popularized that I have come to realize is a red flag. The truth is that NES game sensibilities were not stupid– many of them were designed like that on purpose. When developers claim this, it always speaks to me as “we do not fully understand the design of the things we love” and Shovel Knight is this to a T. The most immediate and noticeable “modern sensibility” is the death system, since it is explicitly inspired by Dark Souls. You drop some of your gold upon death and must pick it up from the last checkpoint. This seems fine on paper, but one look at the economy in this game shows that this whole system is meaningless. You get money out the ass in Shovel Knight, nothing that you can spend your money on is expensive, and the actual consequence for death is a negligible portion of your current savings. The idea that permanently destroying checkpoints gives you money as a risk-reward tradeoff is Clever, but it does not amount to anything. You receive a pretty paltry reward for actually breaking a checkpoint– not a single time will anyone playing this game have the internal decision of “do I need the money from the checkpoint?” The killer, though, is that this Shovel of Hope is designed like a Mega Man game. Making levels that play exactly like the series that resets your progress if you fail too many times and removing that inherent element of tension is stupid! I get that Shovel Knight is supposed to be more approachable than those “dated old NES games,” but there are better ways to do that than kneecapping the design of the games it was inspired by. You can’t make a good NES game if you don’t recognize their value beyond the surface level.

Even in presentation, Shovel Knight is a mostly unremarkable game, if solid. The art direction is kinda weak, (especially compared to some truly outstanding 3rd generation games) and the color choices can even be a bit awkward. Surpassing the NES’s palette limits occasionally makes the game look a bit garish, ironically enough. Narratively, the game is very “blah.” Most of the characters you’re supposed to care about in Shovel Knight are extremely flat. But hey, you play those dream sequences a couple times and then it’s REAL at the end! It’s CLEVER!!!

Shovel Knight isn’t a game worthy of my respect. If you’re going to do something wholly unoriginal and do it bad, you’re as good as dirt to me. I’m glad Yacht Club eventually learned to do better than this.

After being extremely let down by MegaMari, I figured trying Rosenkreuzstilette couldn’t hurt. 2007 Anime Girl Mega Man is a pretty awesome aesthetic: I’d love if one of these games were good! …It’s too bad RKS is not much better than its spiritual predecessor.

There’s not much to say about the base mechanics: it’s Mega Man. These games live and die by their level design. And as usual, this game has bad level design. Many stages in this game are short, easy and worthless. It’s like a whole game full of Guts Mans— and that level still has more substance than half the levels in this game.

When Rosenkreuzstilette does decide to have level design, it has a pretty unique problem: it takes whole screens from other Mega Man games. A MM1 screen here, a MM3 screen there, and an absolutely shameless amount of Mega Man 2 rehashing. This extends to more than just the level design. The weapon set? It’s MM2. The bosses? Nearly every single one in BOTH castles (yes, this game does that) is shit from some other Mega Man game. I don’t mind references here and there, but RKS has a serious problem with the amount of content it steals from other things. Many of the things it reuses aren’t even good! This game has Toad Man in it! Ripping off that many things does nothing but make the level design less cohesive and gives RKS a lack of identity the game desperately needs mechanically.

It sucks, because when this game does its own thing (or at the very least, adapts ideas instead of wholesale plagiarizing them) it can be pretty good! I enjoy a few boss fights in this quite a bit: Luste and especially Zorne come to mind as highlights, and Schewer’s stage is a genuinely funny troll level. Even less original things are deeply appreciated: weapon quickswitching makes Mega Man feel 200% better. Why is there not more of that? It’s incredibly frustrating to see so little personality out of a game that ironically has tons of it in other areas.

As I mentioned at the start, the aesthetic is great. If you like that 2000s anime look you’ll enjoy the art as I do, and the (stock, by the way) music genuinely goes hard. Listen to Luste’s stage theme. Even the kind of terrible story is cute: one of the characters says the protagonist’s outlook is “sophistry” and I love that shit, it’s fun. I even enjoy the reference screens (flirting and not harassment) when you game over.

Unfortunately, Rosenkreuzstilette commits the worst sin of simply being a boring game.
…and it’s still more fun to play than Mega Man 2 itself. :)

If I see one more person call the UFO system "unfair" then I will personally come to your house and force you to 1CC this game. It is now clear to me that ZUN made Touhou 13 piss easy out of spite alone.

Anyway, Touhou 12's pretty good. It's much more ambitious than its Second Windows Era predecessors with... mixed results. Touhou 10 and 11 are better games overall, but 12 hits pretty hard when it isn't pulling its punches.

Obviously, I like the UFO system. In terms of "gimmicks," they are probably the best system mechanics ZUN has ever made up to this point. Their implementation into the game encourages a lot of fundamental shoot 'em up skills: taking control of the middle of the screen, offensive bombing, smart stage routing, that kind of stuff. All of which is great! The "unfairness" complaint becomes very silly when you spend enough time in TH12 to understand that UFO's are basically entirely deterministic. Everything about their spawn conditions is static. The major difference between each run is you, the player, and when you shoot the UFO fairies down. Plus, TH12 is actually very generous with its resources, too. You can screw up quite a few UFO match-3s before things start to become problematic. It's not a perfect system--- I think it makes scoreplay too linear, and those same blue UFOs that give you points being useless for survival feel incongruent with the rest of the system. But if I--a colorblind dude--can enjoy the gimmick, then it's probably pretty chill.

The actual spellcards are where I find TH12 to be weak, though. There's some pretty cool stuff in this game. Unzan and his hitbox are awesome and I'm particularly fond of the calm and calculated way Shou's fight functions as if you're really fighting a (Buddhist) tiger. But otherwise this game's kinda boring with it, IDK. I don't have much to say about most of the other fights: they're solid but not special. This is especially damning for Byakuren who the game sets up as a bigger deal than she feels like she is, unfortunately.

The presentation in TH12 is similarly simple, but I think the game leverages it way better. The first half of the game spent in Gensoyko's skies gives the world good texture, (ala Touhou 10) and the descent into Makai is genuinely hype. I locked in immediately when I heard Fires of Hokkai play for the first time. It's easy to see why people thought this would lead into more PC-98 content returning. To treat this area from it with so much respect and then to do nothing with it would be such a tease...

Like I started with, Touhou 12's pretty good. Not my favorite game in the series-- I'm not even sure if it holds a candle to 11, honestly. But it's a fun time, and clearly shows how ZUN has improved since the early 2000s.