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.
