Shantae: Risky's Revenge - Director's Cut

The second Shantae game improves upon the original in many ways. The hit detection and combat are much better, everything (including world exploration and items) is streamlined, and even though many songs are just arrangements of tunes from the first game, they're great. There are a lot of design choices that threw me for a loop; not in a good or bad way, but certainly unexpected, which is kind of cool. My only real gripe was the lack of inn, but potions are cheap.

good, but not good as Pirate's Curse ;) Plot is ok but quite short, less emotions. Shantae looks often angry, less cute

My first foray into the Shantae series of game and I was pleasantly surprised. I expected a somewhat hollow game with nice action and what treated to more engagement and depth than I expected. The story is tongue in cheek and hammy, but the overall aesthetics of the game are nice and the soundtrack is engaging. The game is actually a light metroidvania and there is a fair amount of backtracking and light experimentation to find all the secrets. For a game of that genre, the play time is short (finished it in about 5-6 hours and that was with a lot of backtracking to find most of the secrets) which might be a minus of a plus depending on your time constraints. The action is decent, though not quite as crisp as some of the other games in the genre that I've seen (but still serviceable). Between the spells and the transformations, you do have a nice selection of moves to play with so the game won't get boring though admittedly the opponents, while colorful, are not as engaging as they could be, though the boss fights are fine however (not mind blowing, but still decent). The save system (where you have to find a save point to save) is a bit old school and mildly annoying, tough the game is fairly easy (especially if you max out on potions) so you won't die often and have to backtrack since your last save. Still would have been nice to have been able to stop playing at a moment's notice when something pops up instead of having to let the game run until I can come back to it sometimes. I'll have to give special points to this game for its chasm system. A lot of games I've seen allow you to jump down to the bottom of some chasms and will kill you went you fall in other chasms. This game has that as well, but it will actually indicate clearly which chasms are deadly, so you won't have to jump down to your death like a moron to figure out which chasms are safe. Overall, a short decent game with some flaws, but still well worth your time.

Cartoonish story for a cartoonish game, that said the gameplay is good, controls are smooth and each dungeon has some unique enemies, unfortunately there arer some places where enemies respawn endlessly as soon as you are out of sight, which is annoying, the platforming is not particualrly challenging and bosses are pretty easy, but you can challenge yourself by not carrying potions with you. Overall is pretty middle of the road, but it has the best monkey transformation, look at that adorable happy monkey face.

The truth is... I feel a little disappointed with the game, I mean I liked it but it's very short, even though I bought it on sale it's not worth it, I see the magic mode as pure fan service, it doesn't bring anything new just a skin change, for its day the game is fine, but on PC... with the hundreds of games out there with similar mechanics and at cheaper prices, honestly it's not worth it, that's why I'm going to refund it