Bat Boy is basically Shovel Knight with a baseball bat instead of the iconic shovel. You got a classic 8-bit platforming gameplay split up between stages, a plethora of abilities, bosses, optional levels and a health/stamina upgrade mechanic. Sounds cool, right?

Unfortunately, unlike Shovel Knight, Bat Boy's weaknesses show up relatively fast. There's not much incentive to use most of your abilities save for a few of them (the invincibility bubble basically makes every boss and platforming challenge trivial), the story's very so-so, uninteresting cast of characters, meta progression is boring and there's almost no side content or meaningful collectibles.

But the most glaring issue to me was how the game underutilizes its main mechanic: batting. Aside from reflecting projectiles thrown by enemies and into switches, that's basically all there is. For a game with such heavy emphasis on baseball, they should definitely have invested more into this concept.

If you love Shovel Knight like me, perhaps you'll come to like Bat Boy as well for its creative level design filled with different gimmicks, classic platforming gameplay and beautiful pixel graphics. But don't go expecting the same level of polish and brilliantism - otherwise you're bound for disappointment.

It isn't a bad game by any means, but it definitely feels a bit unfinished/boring compared to other entries. I've found myself getting a lot more out of Population Growing and New Leaf, it just feels like there's more to do in those games. Crafting is obnoxious and the game simultaneously feels too streamlined and like it's purposely trying to limit you because of that, if that makes any sense. So many systems are made much faster, but they throw in arbitrary roadblocks to make it so they're just more tedious than they used to be.