Developer: WayForward
Steam Deck Compatibility?: Verified
Rrp: £23.79 (Gog.com, Steam) and £25.19 (Humble)
I’ve played a decent number of the Shantae series and this is definitely the most well animated of the bunch this far. Of course, we don’t play video games for the animation, what matters is how it plays. Having played this game to completion I have to say it’s a lot of fun, the controls feel good and the enemies can be quite challenging.
Now, when I say I played it to completion I don’t mean that I 100%’d the game. While I enjoyed the game I didn’t feel the need to put in that much effort. What brought my percentage down were the monster cards. These monster cards are a new feature to the series (and likely only will appear in this game). When you defeat a monster sometimes it will drop a monster card of itself. If you gain enough of that monster card it will grant a bonus when equipped (to which you can have three equipped). The thing is I played through the whole game, sometimes even farming monsters and some of them just never ever appeared. As I said earlier, while I enjoyed this game, I wasn’t invested enough to try and get them all.
While the Shantae games I have played have always allowed you to revisit levels there generally was no point in doing so unless you were looking for collectibles that you missed the first time around. In this game though you are asked to return to levels occasionally for quests, though that doesn’t happen very often.
I’d say this is definitely a worthwhile game to get. It’s got a lot of charm and presents a decent challenge. Though I’m still somewhat baffled as to how this series continues to exist, not that I’m complaining!
