Shantae the half-blood genie started off as a gameboy game I heard good things about, but could never find - until Vizzed showed me how fun it could be! The company behind it has been cranking out Shantae games for a bit, and moved up to consoles. I got this one expecting more magic and mayhem and anime style graphics.


The graphics, funny story and mayhem were there, but something happened as the genie no longer has magic powers.. she spends this game as a er, mostly mortal... she still whips bad guys with her long hair, thats not normal.. but has a slew of pirate-themed items she finds in dungeons. At first I thought I'd miss the magic transformations from the first game, but nah, this is a really good sprite platformer by a team that clearly knows what they are doing.


Graphics: 9

The visuals are lush, exotic Arabian village, creepy dungeons, tropical forests, spooky forests, regular forests -- ok there is a lot of woods in this game. Your character, Shantae and her friends, are all well animated and have a lot of personality to their individual design. Yes, a lot of her friends are cute ladies, but other than some small bits of cheesecake moments, the game is light and innocent.

The is a large variety of locations (islands) to visit, and each with their own enemies - that thankfully are not reproduced everywhere. The only common foe I saw on several islands (but not all) was a little flying imp type- and well they have wings, they might migrate. ha.



Sound: 7

The music honestly, other than liking it, for it does sound like classic game-type music.. didn't really stand out that much to me. Other than the town theme, and Spiderweb island - nothing was really great. But nothing was bad either. Maybe I just didn't remember it well, for there is usually a lot of action on the screen.

There is a lot of sound effects, and its here where I remember a lot of it. Setting sail, the gross tongue monster lol, ham smells... the game has a lot of fun with its ridiculousness.
I almost forgot to mention, there is some light voice acting in this, by our heroine. She doesn't say much, and it doesn't really do much lol.. but its there. I wouldn't say this changes the score in any way.

Addictiveness; 9

I played the heck out of this game until I beat it.. then I played it a bit more hunting for secrets. It also kept in my thoughts enough to make me want to post this review. Its fast paced and the controls are simple enough to get, but the game has challenge too.


Story: 8

While not necessary to know the past games, it features a lot of people Shantae already knows. She has to work with a pirate-queen type of trickster who was apparently her foe recently. Now they form a grudging alliance to defeat a dark-magic using ghost!! There are small but silly little quests that I enjoyed, and the game seems to suggest zombies can be chill and live among humans.


Depth: 7
One surprising thing I did like was the villagers change their dialog pretty much every new island you sail to. There is a lot of villagers too! There is some backtracking here (It is a Metroidvania) but little, other than to try out your new dungeon won accessories to places you couldn't reach before.

Shantae gets a new tool/weapon every new dungeon - I say tool because each has uses besides combat. There is a store full of upgrades and items to use, some small hidden secrets, but not many. There is also a special mode once you beat the game. But when it comes to side-quests, really there are none, what I thought were optional missions were actually part of the plot I found out later as they started coming together. This was a bit disappointing.


Difficulty: 7

The game starts of pretty easy, as long as you can do some small ledge jumps in the beginning, its fairly easy. Once you get to the third island, there is a bit more challenge. Once you get to the 5th island, it gets a lot more challenging. Then the final boss has a whole level that is just full of instant death traps -- its very cheap and annoying to do, I almost quit the game at this point.. then I was able to pass it after some reflection.

I did like the game challenged me though with the battles, and learning how to use my new powers to solve puzzles.


Overall: 8.7

Its a really fun (sometimes frustrating) game and I would play another from the series.