Pros:
-The new half-genies are hella cute and I seriously hope they return in the future. Maybe have Shantae go on a bit of a world tour and visit some of the towns they protect. I also feel like introducing other half genies served as setup to finally seeing why/how the original genies went away. If they’re feeling ambitious, maybe make a Friends to the End style adventure as a future mode or spinoff with the other Half Genies and their powers... Also, every one of their fusion forms with Shantae are amazingly designed. I want to play a whole game as Valkyrie Shantae, Eel Shantae, Dryad Shantae, or Seer Shantae.
-I love how they meshed Risky’s Revenge’s interconnected world with Pirate’s Curse’s fluid movement focused dungeon design. Might be my favorite world and dungeon integration in the series so far.
-The writing is as funny as ever, it’s Wayforward after all. Too many great moments to list, and Squid Baron absolutely kills it every second he’s on screen.
-The returning enemy designs as well as the new ones are all fun and stylish, again a series staple. But I especially like the inclusion of the enemy cards - not only do we get to see the designs closer up without them trying to attack us, but the slight modifications they offered made for some fun if simple customization. The boss designs in particular are phenomenal, and their fights are more involved than they felt last game. (The Siren designs and the fusion dance power designs are the only spoilers I had going into the game, so I was already looking forward to them).
-While the graphics borrow almost everything from Half Genie Hero, giving Shantae a few new animations was a great touch. Plus, the Talksprites are super expressive in this game and all look great. That one of Shantae sitting in a bit of a slouch to complain about someone being dumb is just so full of character.
-I like the balance struck between fusion transformations being on the fly and the stronger Fusion Dances being tied to the dancing. Maybe going forward they can keep the idea of the fusion dances for their quick platforming movement options, and then flesh out the full transformation dances from before for gameplay segments that would require a full set of moves.
-While Jake Kaufman didn’t compose this time around, the OST has some great tracks. Sunken Shipyard is a JAM.
-The labyrinths are all fun and well designed. I was initially a bit cautious since the first was so linear, but it jumped right into a fun exploring dungeon as soon as the second labyrinth. I hope they can experiment even more with them in the next titles, more branching paths and the like. I also liked having the last one be a time attack instead of a traditional dungeon for a pace changer.
-Bonking your head on the glass underwater tubes is far too fun with it’s silly little noise and I find myself doing it every time I walk through one.
Incredibly minor nitpicks:
-While the difficulty isn’t too high, I don’t have a problem with that. Shantae games to me are best enjoyed as fun games first, and then speed games or challenges with replay modes. What DOES annoy me a bit is the number of save rooms in the first labyrinth - there’s 3 of them in such a small and linear space. Cutting 2 out would actually help the flow of the dungeon in my opinion, making it feel less segmented. It seems to only be an issue with the first labyrinth though, since it’s short and linear. The rest of the dungeons have better layouts and the save rooms are more spread out.
-It’s a bit on the short end, which kinda matches every game since they encourage multiple replays as you get better and faster. But hey, liking a game so much that you want more of it is still a thing!
-I love that they added more voiceover to characters lines, and it gives them even more life... but it’s implementation is a bit confusing in some cases. The best way I can explain it is how an early cutscene with Sky went. Sky had three lines in a row. The first line was spoken, the second line was just text, and then the third line was... spoken again. It almost feels random in its choice when lines will be fully voiced or not.
The actual complaints:
-The transformations are all very fun, and Bonker Tortoise might be one of my new favorites in the franchise. ...But Sea Frog is just terrible. Sorry, it’s an objective downgrade from the control you had before as a Mermaid. It has the same controls as Gastro Drill, but in that transformation it feels fine - partly because the dirt tunnels are already narrow, there’s no instadeath hazards, and as a drill it makes sense to constantly be moving forward. But something about Sea Frog being unable to stop and move freely just feels wrong. The insta-kill undersea mines don’t make Sea Frog challenging, its just a slow chore to time your movement around them. If they made the action button stop the frog instead of just slowing it down it might’ve alleviated some of this annoyance. But as it stands it might be my least favorite transformation in Shantae’s entire repertoire.
-That Hula gem minigame can go chew tinfoil. No control over Shantae, randomly chosen speed after every gem you fire, wonky hit detection that way too often lead to my gems threading the needle between two adjacent masks and missing both of them, and if you mess up you either have to spend more gems to clean up the straggler masks or leave the minigame and reload it.
-I was promised the next Shantae game would be “Squid Baron’s Quest starring Shantae” and this isn’t it, ergo the game is a 0/10. I have been cheated, hoodwinked, AND quite possibly bamboozled.
