Summary
It’s a fast and frantic adventure inShady Knightfrom Alexy ‘captnsight’. You’re thrown in the proverbial deep end with an army of possessed knights in front of you and only your fast reactions to save you. It’s a very fluid flowing game with quite the learning curve.
You’ll regularly be restarting runs for each challenging level and it’s quite the uphill battle at times. Especially if you start getting frustrated as some of the areas can be pretty brutal. To ease you into the melee, we’ve collected some helpful tips that will have you scaling those infernal towers in no time at all.
10Jumping Into The Void Is Better Than Dying
One of things you’ll be doing a lot of in Shady Knight is dying. Whether that’s from an unfortunate whack from a Possessed Knight, or launching yourself off a platform into the abyss below because you went too fast. Thankfully you restart instantly, but did you know one death is more useful than the other?
If you die from the Possessed Knights, a trap, or in melee somehow you restart from the very beginning of the level with everything respawned and ready to go again. However, if you just fall off to your doom, you restart from that specific floor. So if you think you’re about to die or get overwhelmed, take a header off the nearest platform. It’s better than starting from the bottom all over again.
Any enemies killed will stay dead if you fall off and have to restart a floor. They only respawn if you fully begin again.
9Channel Your Inner Nero
By that we mean use your Grapple Dagger often. Your ability to launch into and out of fights, or pull objects and enemies to your position or off edges makes you feel a lot likeNero from Devil May Crywith his grab and constant arial movement. So use it to your advantage.
Your chain dagger is more than just a grappling hook. Timed right you’re able to cause some serious problems for the Possessed Knights with it. Either from filling the air with prop objects or whipping Knights into the floor when they try their leap attacks. Plus, there’s often hidden traps such as falling crates or swinging balls that the grapple knife can activate with a quick tug. It’s super useful and if you’re underusing it you’re only holding yourself back.
8Get Footloose
To springboard off our last tip, if you’re not utelizing your kicking techniques then your playing with a substantial movement disadvantage. Kicking in most games just stuns or knocks back targets, here your little stump legs are much more useful. On top of stunning targets and helping to chain combos, you’re able to also get creative with those kicks.
For example, if there’s two columns you may 180 kick your way up them. Same with slopes and walls, if you hit them fast enough at the right angle, then throw out a kick, you’ll keep up your momentum or go even higher. It takes a bit of practice to get the timing down, but once you do your kick is a huge asset to getting around.
The game does say your foot can also be set on fire to break shields and cause extra damage like the bow. But it’s a little fiddly to pull off and it’s easier to just use weapons intead.
7Don’t Worry About Finesse At First
Shady Knight places a lot of emphasis on parkour, style and going fast. On your first run you’re going to make a lot of mistakes since you’re either being overwhelmed with Knights, or it’s not clear where to go next. Plus, melee can quickly turn into a crouch sliding mess anyway.
In general, just concern yourself with getting through the floors and figuring out a style of movement and combat that fits you. You’re rewarded for your creativity with kills anyway, speed is just an extra bonus for bragging rights. So take your time, figure things out, then come back later with an aim to speedrun it all.
6Practice The Weapon Dash
One of the most interesting features of Shady Knight is the Weapon Dash. Because timed right it can let you basically teleport around a stage like a lethal blur. For example, you can throw your sword and then grab it either again in mid air after it deletes an enemy, or as it ricochets off a surface.
Angled and timed right you can use this to cross gaps, scale walls, or get out of a nasty blob of Knights or AOE attacks. Though that does involve a lot of luck and hoping the physics engine plays in your favor as the distance from the weapon window for when the dash registers activation or not can be a little finicky.
5Get Creative To Earn Big Rewards
When Shady Knights combat was being put together someone must have put a lot of hours into Devil May Cry because combat rates you from D to SSS. And the only way to climb up thatcharacter action styled rankingis to mix up your fighting style. For example, including juggles, ground pounds and so on.
But it’s not just your ranking that improves. Making up your own combos unlocks Skills which are discovered by performing certain actions for kills. Then once they’re unlocked you’ll get a more specific description on what you have to do and a total to hit. There’s a lot of them to unlock and it encourages you to get creative to find out what kind of challenges are lurking in the game.
4There Are Shortcuts If You’re Brave
The majority of levels in Shady Knight can be beaten in under a minute or two if you’re fast enough. But whilst there are main routes, if you’re speedy and smart you can substantially cut that completion down by using some sneaky shortcuts.
These aren’t official shortcuts or paths that lead to hidden areas. Instead we mean try using the grapple, kick and Weapon Dash to sequence break as it’s pretty easy to do on some stages. All you need is the right amount of speed with a good angle and you can get pretty much anywhere on the map.
3The Knights Have No Counter To Backstabs
Attacking the Possessed Knights from the front will only get you so far, after a few hits those guys are going to start blocking everything. However, you’re able to absolutely melt them with one simple trick. Backstabbing.
The Knights are slow to turn, especially after being stunned and you move so much faster than they do. For example, one kick puts them in a stun. So use that then slide past them with a Crouch Slide and attack that vulnerable back. It takes about three to four seconds for the possessed knights to turn all the way around.
2You Don’t Need To Murder Everything
As you’re sprinting through the vertical arenas in Shady Knight you may feel the need to crush every Knight in your path. But you don’t need to do that and often it’s much more detrimental to stop for a fight instead of just parkouring straight to the end
As we touched on already, death from the Knights restarts you all the way at the bottom. With how easy it is to die, you’re often better off just avoiding fights completely and instead using the spawned Knights for either their useful weapons, or as literal stepping stones to hop onto and reach higher spots. Plus, it’s not like they can keep up with you.
1The Bow Is The Best Weapon
There’s only a handful of weapons to wield in Shady Knight, but by far the best isthe Bow. It’s arguably the most versatile weapon in the game. Not only does it keep you at range from the Knights that can kill you in two hits, but its got two fire modes. Three if you set your arrows on fire with a brazier.
For starters there’s the normal rapid fire mode which goes as fast as you may click. Perfect for juggling Possessed Knights by the way. Then there’s the long hold power shot, which increases in strength and puts you in slow mow if you aim whilst jumping or kicking off a surface.Whilst the Sword and Lance are good for melee, the Bow absolutely melts just about everything. Plus, it lets you do some stylish sliding arrow shots.
