Shantae and the Pirate's Curse

90% of the game is just perfect. Fun gameplay, hard but fair, positively adorable characters, solid soundtrack... honestly, the vast vast majority of the game is great. And from a technical perspective it runs on a toaster, pauses automatically when you tab out and uses almost no resources from your PC. HOWEVER it lacks in two aspects: 1. There is no tutorial. You just kinda learn as you go. If you have any platformer experience, great. If you're like me and this is your first, there will be some 10-20 minutes of pain before you get the hang of it. Not a big deal, but worth mentioning. 2. The final act is ridiculously hard. Getting to the boss requires something like 6-8 pixel perfect jumps in a row, and any failure gets you instakilled and back to the start. It is, quite frankly, THE most bullshit phase i have ever seen in any game ever. This alone is the only reason this game isn't getting 5 stars.

This Game introduced me to the Shantae Franchise, its great, i loved the Soundtrack, the gameplay and the world design. My second favorite Shantae game.

Didn't expect this game to be this good. Pros: 1. Platforming tools are pretty fun to play around with. 2. Game does not overstay its welcome (short around 10 hours long). 3. Good music in most parts. 4. Combat is semi-decent. Cons: 1. An easy game overall, so it might be not so challenging for those who seek difficulty. 2. Never gets to a moment where you are truly awed by anything in the game, in other words it is mostly mediocre in most parts. I like platformers, so I was willing to see beyond the cons for this one.

I discovered Shantae series not long ago and now I think this is one of the best platformers out there. Not only its one of the most beautiful and charming games but it also combines so many other formulas from past games that we played on SNES era and others. The story and levels are deep and rich. So many things to discover and unveil in later pats after you get stronger and more skilled with your character abilities. The variety of gameplay design is astonishing good. Fun and challenging boss battles never lets you to sleep. But the game is not trying to be very unfair. Everything is balanced and tweaked out. Music in this game rocked my socks out fom nowhere. There are so many beautiful tracks and there are few of them that I consider they are one of the best tracks I heard in any video game ever. The music is so touching that you want to listen to it over and over again. If you are platformer and metrovania junkie like Im you probably already went to get this game after you read this. In a mean time I will try to jump into other titles of Shantae.

Disclaimer : This game was claimed for free, if you ask how much I would be willing to pay i'd say no more than 10 bucks for what the game offer. Overall a solid experience, not much to say beside that, it's not a game that will change who you are as a player but it's definitively worth your time if you like the classic "2D platformers" genre with a sweetspot for puzzles and some lite backtracking.