Gulp…
Okay, well I’m gonna start with tackling the big one. Flandre’s flight. Shovel pretty easily has the skill advantage to overwhelm her, but none of that matters if Shovel can’t actually touch her. Which luckily, he can.
Based her matchup with Mario, it was concluded that enough mobility/acrobatics should do the trick, and if that’s the case then Shovel shouldn’t have too much trouble reaching her, given he’s got a bunch more feats and he’s on a comparable level to Mario.
Though, just to make sure,
Shovel can also punch the ground hard enough to launch large chunks of debris into the sky, and then bounce off of said debris to close the distance. In fact,
it’s something he’d resort to pretty quickly upon realizing he’s dealing with a flying opponent.
And if that isn’t enough, he still has options to get closer to her or bring her closer,
the Shadow Locket allows him to fly a short distance, the
Propeller Dagger allows him to just fly normally and if he gets close enough, he can resort to using the Tow Anchor to reel her in, and given his MASSIVE LS advantage, she’s most definitely going to be reeled in by Shovel. If he’s lucky though, and Flandre doesn’t decide to move away fast enough, he could just fly slightly into the air and pull her to the ground with the Tow Anchor.
Now that that’s over with, I wanna point out the many options Shovel has here.
1: Her Danmaku depending on the stages could give Shovel some trouble. He’ll probably get through phase one quickly, seeing how small the projectiles are and the fact that he’s extremely acrobatic, add that with the fact that he can also reflect/deflect majority of her Danmaku with his shovel, and he shouldn’t have too hard of a time. He’s also fought those who fight with projectiles, obviously not to the extend of Flandre but it shouldn’t completely blindside him. And if he gets in a bad spot, the Shadow Locket would let him phase through it. And if he can’t do that, he can also
dig under the ground and come out in a more favorable position. He also has experience with
catching and reflecting beams, so her lasers shouldn’t cause too much trouble.
2: The bats could take him by surprise, given that he’d most likely try and dodge them at first, then whack them, only to realize that he can’t interact with them. Though beyond that though, these get mitigated by the Shadow Locket. Hell,
he can even attack WHILE intangible, so he could definitely clear up enough of them to where he can properly get out of the way.
3: Her teleportation could be annoying for Shovel, but it isn’t anything that’s either new to him nor he can’t get past. He’s
overwhelmed someone who uses teleportation, even while they were
notorious for spamming it throughout the entire fight. So even if Flandre did decide to heavily rely on it, I doubt Shovel couldn’t eventually overwhelm it.
4:
Her fire manipulation just straight up wouldn’t work, thanks to a ring he has that protects him from
fire, electricity and explosions.
5: Adding to my first point, if her Danmaku becomes too much to handle, Shovel can launch massive chunks of debris into the air and use them as cover,
some of the chunks being bigger than even Shovel Knight himself (you gotta slow it down to see it, considering it all happens EXTREMELY quickly.), so this can also apply to the human sized energy doughnuts.
6: Her invulnerability stage could pose a problem, but with Shovel’s diverse kit and skills, like simply going into the ground, I don’t see why he couldn’t outlast it.
He himself has experience going against “invincibility”. (I know it’s not ACTUAL invincibility but it’s what it’s called and Cuphead had planned to use it in such a manner). Plus, if she decides to drag out the fight, Shovel wins in a stamina battle, so she’d be doing more harm to herself than good.
