A perfect way to cap off Shovel Knight Treasure Trove. I'm amazed at how Yacht Club Games managed to reimagine these levels so well across four separate campaigns, with four unique control schemes. King Knight, like Plague Knight, takes a while to get used to, but handles like a DREAM once you get it down.

The way they expanded on his character is particularly impressive. He's such a nothingburger in the original campaign, serving only as the first simple boss to beat. Through his own adventure, he becomes surprisingly compelling, perhaps being the most fleshed-out character in Treasure Trove. That final cutscene was impressively powerful after the journey he went through, the decisions he made, and the knowledge we have of what happens next.

[EDIT: Returning to this review after a month of mulling it over to say that this is 100% my favorite ending to any video game. I can't stop thinking about it.]

Lastly, Joustus. I hated Joustus at first, but the more I stuck with it, the more I loved it, and by the end of the game, I was legitimately sad there were no more Joustus matches. What I thought would be a lame diversion of a card game turned out to be one of my favorite aspects of Treasure Trove.

Yacht Club delivered everything they promised in their Kickstarter. That alone is impressive. But even more impressive is that the quality never dipped. Every bit of Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove is treasure indeed, and King of Cards was a worthy ending to the greatest retro pixel art game ever created.

What we have here on a technical level far surpasses the other games in the series, and the characters and mysteries are more engaging and impressive than ever before, but the real star of the show is how this game ties everything together with real thematic resonance.

V3 looks at the flaws of mysteries, the form of the genre itself, and attempts to amend them. The characters in the first Danganronpa are just characters, both literally and figuratively. In V3, they’re people, and the enhanced inhumanity of each of their deaths only emphasizes the senseless cruelty of the genre. And what’s more: like the plethora of deconstructive mysteries it's derived from (Zaregoto), it knows it isn’t just a silly little game, but something with impact on the real world. And it's only fitting that with Danganronpa's looming status as a corporate blockbuster series it decides to take the opportunity to criticize itself.

Mysteries have developed over time to include elements beyond hard-boiled detectives, cases, culprits, and evidence. Nowadays, many people indulge in the genre for the characters and their emotions. We want to know not how someone died, but what they were feeling before doing so. But V3 boldly questions this shift, asking: what is the endgame here? A repeating cycle where we meet new characters, anticipate their demise, gain some sick satisfaction, and move on to the next? Yes, of course, DR fans often fall victim to this unhealthy idealization, especially sad considering the themes of Danganronpa 2 seem to have been lost on them, but V3 is simultaneously speaking in a broader sense on the genre, and by extension, actually doesn’t believe its own fans are beyond help.

It’s saying: mysteries must continue to evolve, or they will be doomed to stagnation.

The last trial is figuratively Kodaka’s struggle to love the genre while reconciling it with reality: how there is a sadistic pleasure aspect to Danganronpa, and that's bad for art. So, by V3 challenging itself to be relevant to reality and not just a silly little game, it embraces redemption, asks us to look inside ourselves, look past the nihilistic lapse between hope and despair, and realize we are all people with lives worth living, lest we too die a meaningless death.

It’s a culmination of not just Danganronpa, but the evolution of both traditional and subversive mysteries up to the current day. A challenge to other writers to break the endless cycle and do something new - something creative. Move beyond the binary of hope and despair: that's where true freedom lies.