Summary
Whilst your arsenal isn’t particularly huge inShady Knight, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. Creativity with combos and kills is a big part of the game and keeping its weapon list tight and small prevents you from being overwhelmed with choice in a fight.
The weapons you do have at your disposal vary in strength, usefulness and versatility in your fights. But you can’t exactly judge that at a glance if it’s your first run through the game. With how fast death comes, knowing what to grab and what to ditch in a pinch can definitely make a difference. So to give you an easier time, here’s every weapon in Shady Knight ranked.
6Sword
By far the least useful of your small arsenal of weapons in Shady Knight. The sword is a fast andstabby little fiendwith a very useful ground slash, but its short length means you need to get close. With death just two quick hits away, having to close the gap constantly puts you at a lot of risk.
It also can’t dig into surfaces as well as the Lance does which makes Weapon Dashing to it a little fiddly. So it doesn’t have a lot of versatility, but at least it does work well as a throwing dagger. Or for a flurry of fast combos to crank up that style meter fast, but overall it leaves you with a lot of openings. In general, if you have to choose between a sword and something else, don’t pick the sword. Just throw it instead.
5Grapple Dagger
Even though it’s technically a form of transportation, the Grapple Dagger has a lot of uses outside of just being asharp edged grappling hook. For starters, it turns you into Nero from Devil May Cry as you zip around doing air combos, or yank Knights toward you for a big finisher.
Plus, it works on physics objects. So you can pull barrels, chairs and other big heavy items toward yourself to turn it into a weapon. Or, pull it into the path of a charging or leaping enemy to make them trip and faceplant the ground for a quick backstab follow up.
Some enemies can block the grapple, and it does have a cooldown. But the cooldown is super fast, and as soon as you get a Possessed Knight airborne with a slide, they become vulnerable to the grapple.
So it’s not really got a lot of downsides once you realize that workaround for grapple blocks. An ideal weapon for getting into or out of a fight, the Dagger is pretty great.
4Physics Objects
Now you may be wondering why the Physics Objects are so far down on our list. That’s because they’re surprisingly very strong in a fight. Every arena has a pile of barrels, explosive urns and chairs liberally placed around and it only takes a few seconds to grab one and toss it.
In other games this would normally cause a small modicum of damage. But in Shady Knight a crafty chair toss can not only one-shot the smaller Possessed Knights, it also sends them sailing off into the abyss. Plus, if they happen to have a shield active, a barrel will blow it apart and open the Knight up to a follow-up kick or a grapple for further combo punishment.
3Lance
The longest weapon you’ll pick up in Shady Knight is the Lance. Its pretty powerful and when combined with a crouch slide it can turn you into a blender. But its long swing animation and the snapping between two different heavy attacks mid-air can cause a few teething problems.
For example, a normal attack is a wind up and slash. A charged attack is a big stab, but if you go airborne whilst holding the charge it takes a few seconds to swap from the stab to a pinning slam. By the time the changeover finishes, you’re often back on the ground again.
However, it does excel when combined with Weapon Dash and hit-and-run attacks. It’s got a big, long hitbox and goes very far when thrown. So it can cause a lot of chaos after you toss it. Plus, when it hits a wall it pins itself in place, allowing you to Weapon Dash up to it to get some breathing room.
Out of the big three the Lance is more impactful than a Sword, better at close range than a bow, but its slow speed gets in the way. It also doesn’t have as much utility as the Bow.
2Leg
Another item that’s technically a weapon, your kicks are used primarily to stun Possessed Knights on your ascent up the various towers. They don’t have a cooldown, which means you can spam them constantly. Plus, they can be charged up to let out a meatier whack.
But what makes your leg so useful, more than the other weapons, is that you can break the game with it. Kicks against enemies give you air, kicking off walls gives you air. With the right kick at the right spot, you never need to touch the ground. Plus, you can get into spots you’re not supposed to pretty easily once you get the timing down.
Finally, the other benefit to the leg is that it can be set on fire. Whilst this is a little finicky to pull off, if you connect your flaming foot with a shielded enemy it breaks their ward. On normal Knights it will either instant kill them or pop a burning debuff that will kill them off slowly.
Your leg can also not be parried out of your hands like the other weapons. It’s attached after all.
1Bow
By far the best weapon in the entire game by a wide margin, once you get your hands on a bow in Shady Knight you’ll have a hard time putting it back down again. They are ridiculously useful and it genuinely becomes difficult to resist picking one up when they drop during a fight.
For starters, their ordinary mode of fire is weak, but it’s very fast. Its perfect for juggling Knights in the air or edge guardian them off parapets to ensure they fall into the oblivion below. The other mode of fire is your standard long-hold power shot.
However, if you do it whilst in the air from jumping or kicking off a surface, it becomes much more useful and borderline overpowered.
For example,slow motion archer modekicks in for a few seconds as you hover in the air. Then when your shot is loose it will go in an air-splitting straight line at whatever you fire at. If that target happens to be a Knight, they will instantly die. Or, if they have a shield up it will shatter it.
You can chain this slow-mo shot very easily and very quickly with rapid jumping around. So you can absolutely melt some tough sections by just grabbing a bow and going all John Woo for a moment. Add on top the ability to set your arrows on fire faster than the other weapons and you can see why the bow is placed where it is in our list.
