Shantae

Yay Shantae! Shantae is great! right ? like, wait, for reals, is it great? is it good even? I mean, there are some terrible stuff in some of them and well...

you see, this is a weird topic, because I have all three Shantae games (fuck off, half genie hero) and I really love them, they are some really charming and interesting platformers, but at the same time there's a lot of dumb stuff and shortcomings, and they do keep the games from greatness, and conflict with makes the games special at the same time

Shantae can transform in different animals, this is the main exploration device because she's basically link from zelda 2 if not more useless, these animals are nice and mix well with the arabic tones but they totally break with the "metroidvania exploration" flow, you have to stop, do sexxxxy dance, and then you can overcome your obstacles

Let's also mention that the aspect ratio cripples the first game a lot and the second game is over so fast it feels almost like a demo thet let you play way(forward) more that it originally intended.

But then comes the third game, oh boy this game is beautiful, the music is the best from Virt ever (and I just love this man, damn), the graphics are like the second but a bit better and the flow is just great and and...., Shantae can't transform.

They ditched her most curious ability, and gave her generic metroidvania progression elements, like more jumps, shooting, dashing, its great and all, but its nothing special, but all this made the game better, the levels are now segmented in different islands but you can explore them freely so its less confusing, the game is longer than ever, the locales and moments are more, well, memorable, and the visual charm is intact and pumped up a notch, its still amazing.

what does this mean to the series as a whole though? were the dances and transformations useless? was it worth it to sell part of her character for gameplay?

the fact is that the Shantae games are good (Pirate's curse being the best one), but they're pretty much the top of that developer, I feel like Wayforward isn't as great as they may have make you believe. Talent was there obviously, some guys from there made shovel knight and its better than anything Wayforward has ever done.

Another game I've played form WF for example, is Alien Infestation for the ds, and its very similar to Shantae, its a 'good' flawed platformer, but even when Alien is a cool franchise it doesn't elevate the game to something it isn't like the charisma from Shantae does, so I'm relucant on how good can The Mummy Demastered truly be, but I'll see eventually I guess.

Maybe one day Shantae will receive the truly great game she deserves, in the meantime we can just watch her dance.

Gotcha Force

This one here is pretty sad, because its an amazing game hold back by its shortcomings 

This is one of many robot games, some have them big, like Armored Core or Zone of the Enders, some have then small like Medabots or Little Battlers eXperience, some are piloted, some are not, but all of them have in common that you usually have a nice deal of customization.

Gotcha force does something really different, you cant modify your "Borgs" at all, but you can collect them, there's like 200 of them, many are clones but there's a very big diversity of cool designs AND movesets, not all of them play the same, there's a plethora of different borg fighting styles, and damn do they play good, the game is extremely satisfying, the movements and attacks feel incredible and its just a blast to play

By that alone I could say that by sheer gameplay this game could be a solid 10/10, but from here on it only gets worse and worse.

This game takes a lot from pokemon, mostly the "gotta catch em all" mentality, but in practice, it does none of the best parts, there's no exploration or real rpg elements, the plot is terribly dull (even for a kiddie plot), and in the end, all you do is battle, and even when the combat and controls are that tight, it gets old fast with nothing else to look for in between, the music gets REALLY repetitive too, the voice acting is god awful and you can't turn it off.

So the story mode is a no-no, so lets have a blast playing multiplayer with friends, right ? too bad you have to play the story to get new Borgs to use (and getting them mostly at random), just great.

It could have been a masterpiece, and its one of the most important games of one of the many geniuses at Capcom, Atsuhi Tomita, and even when it has many problems, its well worth a play, just leave it when it starts to get tedious, don't let the bad parts ruin an extremely fun game.

(If you manage to find it because boy this game is rare and it has one heck of a cult following)