Shantae and the Seven Sirens

*Spoilers* The new art is great. New music is good. Everything else is half-a*sed. A few things like Eel Shantae for example look like concept art for something she could turn into to swim like the mermaid in the other game. Nope. Just a picture. Seemed like they either couldn't be bothered this time around or some suit told them they had to make a game fast. I hope its the latter. Heres to hoping the next game is better.

I got bored of waiting on the disastrous European PS4 release delays, and decided to buy this version instead because I love the Shantae games. Big mistake. I wish I hadn't. First thing to note are the system requirements: 8 GiB of RAM (!!), and DX11. Say what? Does this game look state-of-the-art to you? No me neither: looks like a port of a basic 2D Mobile title (in fact, since it doesn't use 3D backgrounds anymore, it ought to actually be less demanding than the previous title, Shantae Half-Genie Hero). Well... Nope. Guess again. This game runs like absolute trash. The animated cut-scenes glitch out as though failing to decompress properly, the in-game animations all jitter each time that a new character appears on screen, and there is noticeable lag on button inputs. And then there's the load times... how about 30-45 seconds every single time that you step into a new area. In a Metroidvania! (which is all about exploration). Just shocking that the developers have seemingly never heard of level streaming, in 2020. Maybe you can put up with theses things. I mean, maybe you can just watch the scrambled cut-scenes on Youtube instead. Maybe you can learn to compensate for the lag, and get used to every characters animation spasms. But should you have to? When they want £25 for this disaster? Wait for a patch, or buy on console (which it was clearly designed for). But I do not recommend this version.