Bowen Kerins and PAPA Pinball are here to help you survive The Black Knight. This is the Pro edition so you don’t have to worry about an upper playfield. That’s fine, because while playing this game, it constantly tries to make you feel like you are about to die. Anything you hit with the ball will cause it the rocket back to you at speed. Be ready to defend or at least react to ball deflections, misses, even targets that you shoot on purpose. It’s a visceral translation of The Black Knight’s power. That combined with the perception that the ball is always drifting toward an outlane, as if the playfield were shaped like a barrel on its side, means you had better be as efficient as possible with the few remaining shots you have.

Speaking of POWER, you have a Sword you can power up to activate advanced versions of each mode. A mode is one of The Black Knight’s monsters, and you have to defeat them all to reach the final challenge. The POWER when activated will not only score more points for shots that damage a monster, it can help make the mode easier to complete. I suppose the idea is the Power Sword weakens the monster, and you’ll see the Sword’s effects on your enemy with a changed playfield light pattern.

There is a useful YouTube comment on the video (by @MisterVercetti) that details what the Power does against each monster:

• Hell Hand: immediately opens up all four shots on each side instead of having to start at one per side and work your way up.
  • Allows you to reliably alternate between the ramp and the shield for a fast, relatively easy mode completion.
• Magma Beast: prevents lit shots from turning off once made. I highly recommend using Power in this mode; if you’re good at looping the ramp, it becomes a license to print money.
  • Just make sure you haven’t already collected the ramp shot before activating Power, since the shot won’t come back!
• Sandworm: locks the lit shots to the three in the middle.
  • Not generally worth going for, since the shots still turn off once they’re made, meaning you can’t spam the ramp the way you can with Magma Beast or alternate ramp/shield like with Hell Hand.
• Lich Lords and Hydra: Each shot only needs to be made once (you don’t have to freeze, then kill for LL, or cut, then seal with Hydra).
  • Handy, but not vital if you’re just looking to finish the mode.