Shantae and the Pirate's Curse

I've been waiting for Pirate's Curse to release elsewhere besides Steam, and my patience was well rewarded! If wishes were real, this one's been granted. Even better that Pirate's Curse runs smooth as squid oil on my laptop; it's very light and easy on resources. This is (currently) the best release in the series. Fast, fluid combat and movement that Metroid should take a page from, a thrilling Arabian Discohouse soundtrack by none other than Jake Kaufman, generous helpings of fourth-wall humor, professionally painted scenery, smooth, lively animations, and more dungeons than you can swing your scimitar at! Shantae: Pirate's Curse is bursting with personality and secrets worth finding. Rrr you savvy enough with swash-buckling to save Sequin Land? Pros -Several dungeons, as well as quite a few mini-dungeons. If you ever complained about Risky's Revenge being short on dungeons and environments, prepare to be amazed! -Colorful, gorgeous, professional artwork, illustrations, and animations will keep your eyes feasting on the presentation, and the game play will keep you coming back for more. -Speed-runner friendly! -The soundtrack is even more jammin' than the past games. Jake took everything that made the first Shantae and RR awesome, and made it 999x more awesome. Powerful remixes of iconic themes are heavenly to the dedicated Shantae fan. -Light and easy on your PC's resources! (Despite needing a fair bit of RAM.) It might even run on your toaster. Cons -Joystick compatibility is sorely limited, and the key bindings aren't very intuitive compared to Shantae games on consoles. As long as you have an Xbox 360 controller, you're in for some smooth sailing despite that, but if you use any old USB controller like me, getting Pirate's Curse to detect it is hit or miss, Just use JoyToKey if all else fails. All in all, this is a great port of Pirate's Curse! Thanks WayForward, for re-releasing a faithful PC conversion and an instant classic for the big screen!

Returning to the formula of the original and improving on the short-lived Risky's Revenge, this is the best you can ask for in the series. Between cool and strong visuals (art and sprites alike), catchy and lovable music, and the metroidvania style gameplay that remains just as strong, and a powerful cast and story with some humor (and cringe), and a sizeable adventure, you have a strong game here. The game is challenging at the start, something Risky's Revenge missed and the original did well. You can't easily skim through enemies, you have to be careful around them as they will actually attempt to overwhelm you and corner you. Even more so due to the fact that jumping on the enemies will occasionally knock your protagonist onto the ground and disable her temporarily much like in fighter games. The dungeons are much more and expanded than before, with more puzzles and more to do and search, and that's with the challenge factor added in. The game is less frustrating on some manners: each important area is broken into 'islands', and those islands have an indicator on what you're missing of the items that you need to collect (Heart Squids and Dark Magic). Gone is the relentless walking through a lot of areas to enter just one area, and instead you get to that one area immediately. The story is the deepest and most packed of the series, going for elements from the original and expanding on Risky's Revenge, fleshing out the cast and their backstories. That's a thing you'll have to see for yourself. The music is the best in this game. Fast, upbeat and catchy, you're going with many a favorite track, both new and fresh remixes of great tracks from the original. Basically, if you loved the original more than Risky's Revenge, this is a love letter to the original. If you are new to the series, it is suggested to start with the original then Risky's Revenge and then this. Only nitpick? The interface is inefficient. But that shouldn't distract you from this great game!

More polished than previous game. Pixel art is more detailed. Art is great. Story is still simple but more detailed than the before. (SPOILERS) The dance mechanic is no longer present in the game but it plot friendly since Shantae lost it in the end of the last game. Instead we have item system which you collect through out the game. It doesn't make game as unique as the dances but it makes game faster. Thou I think it would played better on a game conroler than on keyboard.

This game makes me a bit sad. The sprite artwork and the soundtrack is really damn good! On top of that, the story has a lot of funny moments that made me laugh out loud. It's childish, but risque and stupid enough to be amusing for an adult anyway. Sadly, all of this good stuff is wasted on a quite mediocre platformer. The problem isn't even the basic mechanics, as the controls and various special moves work quite well. The problem is how trivial and bland the level design is. Basically, most of the hazardous areas you'll be traversing aren't much of a challenge. I suck very badly at platformers, but I still found most parts of this game to be a boring cakewalk. Enemies are kinda pointless, as they deal very little damage and you can easily use any of your many healing items from the safety of your pause menu at any time, so if you die to regular enemies, it'll be just because you forgot to heal. Bosses? Pause, heal and use potions that increase your attack damage -> spam attack -> repeat until you win. Even if you only halfways manage to figure out their attack patterns, the bosses are easy. The layouts of the various areas aren't very interesting either. Sometimes, there might be an interesting use of moving platforms or spikes, but mostly, things feel thrown into the levels with a shovel. It's just not very good level design. There's also some weirdly inconsistent handling of difficulty. One moment, you're falling into pits and losing only 1/4 of a heart (of which you can have many), the next moment, spikes will instantly murder you upon touch. This results in a few moments late in the game being roughly 1000 times harder than anything that's come before, which feels very wrong. Challenge at last! But I'd have preferred a curve that made more sense. You gotta build up to those "I'm a game designer and I hate you" moments! And then there's the boring backtracking where I mostly just use the hat to float over enemies to save time. Disappointing game :/