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.