Shantae, Shantae, Shantae! Let's talk at length about this determined lady and her games, then! In 2002, well into the first year of the Game Boy Advance wowing hearts and minds with amazing portable graphics and sounds and whatnot, an unassuming game was released for that system's predecessor. Shantae on the Game Boy Color had some enhancements if played on a GBA, but by and large it was a Game Boy Color game released after that system's time in the limelight. As such, it was mostly overlooked in favor of the new hotness, but those that went for it were in for a treat of exploratory platforming in a colorful world. Those that didn't and saw the merits of the game too late were stuck for a while; the original Shantae cart is now shockingly expensive, but luckily available digitally if one wants to go back and play it. Shantae lay low for a while as her muses, Wayforward Technologies, tinkered and fiddled with other interesting games. Then, in 2010, a new game! Shantae Risky's Revenge hit DSiWare, and four years after that would see a third game, Shantae and the Pirate's Curse. All of these, though, were published by bigger names; Capcom for the GBC original, and Limited Run Games for the latter two. Wayforward wished to put out a Shantae game of their own accord, and took to Kickstarter in late 2013. The project was a success and three years later, we have a fourth Shantae game: Shantae Half-Genie Hero. I am here to tell you that it is fantastic, and absolutely worth your time and cash.
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| What a sassy slimy friend. |
Our plot involves the titular half-genie, Shantae, official guardian of Scuttle Town in a magical realm known as Sequin Land. Her uncle, the inventor Mimic, wishes to invent a machine that will help defend Scuttle Town from further attacks and give Shantae a bit of a break. His blueprints are swiped by Shantae's nemesis, the pirate queen Risky Boots. After beating her down in the opening levels and getting the blueprints back, Shantae alternates between travelling around Sequin Land in search of parts for Mimic's Dynamo machine, and solving any calamities that might happen to pop up in Scuttle Town. There's a moderate amount of chatter in between stages and before boss battles and whatnot, but it can be mashed through or skipped entirely. This is a helpful feature for replays of the game, and it's welcome! The plot itself is servicable, but Wayforward has made a name for themselves by making experiences that reflect older "retro" game experiences. Half-Genie Hero is no exception, but the style it chooses to emulate is admirable, to say the least. The original Shantae's exploratory platformer style had you moving across one huge interconnected world with towns and dungeons along the way, not unlike Konami's Castlevania 2 on the NES. It was a bold decision, considering how often that game is looked down upon. Half-Genie Hero takes a page from a different source; the nearest analogue would be Capcom's own Demon's Crest on the Super Nintendo. Half-Genie Hero has six stages, but these stages are large and sprawling. Each stage has two or three areas, and each of those areas has hidden items to collect that will permanently upgrade Shantae's powers and mobility. Collect a particular powerup, and you'll suddenly be able to access new areas in previous stages. Though there are only a handful, to get 100% completion you'll be combing through them a lot in search of new abilities. Helpfully, the stage selection shows you everything that you've already found in each level; you'll know when you've uncovered every hidden secret.
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| I love Spider-Shantae's little ribbon so much. :3 |
Mobility, you say? How does that work? Shantae, being half-genie, has access to magic powers. Namely, she can transform into animal forms, each with its own special movement options. The monkey form can climb on walls, the crab and mermaid forms can dive underwater, the mouse form can slip into tiny passageways, and so on. You gain new forms by either completing stages and defeating bosses, or by finding them in previously cleared levels with your new skillsets. Speaking of Shantae's skillsets, she has several attack options available to her to deal with her foes. Her main form of attack is whipping her purple ponytail at enemies, and it's an effective method! It is a bit slow at the beginning of the game, but both fallen enemies and jars in the stages contain gems. Said gems are the currency of Shantae, and the helpful shopkeep in Scuttle Town has upgrades for the damage and speed of your hair attack. He also sells magic spells, another valid form of attack! Each spell has three levels, and you unlock the next level of spell in the shop once you buy the previous. The fireball spell upgrades to a flamethrower, the spark cloud upgrades to lightning, the iron ball upgrades to a spinning shield of scimitars, and so on. These can be handy, but they're not essential to beating the game; you just need to buy every shop item in order to get 100% completion. A serpentine snake lady can be found in certain stages as well, and she can teach you new and interesting dances. Again, they're required for 100% completion, but they have their uses. A great dance power is the Warp Dance; it skips you past sections of a stage and is a time saver if you need to search only the latter half of an area for a new powerup.
Presentation-wise, Shantae is an audiovisual treat. The sprites of the old Shantae games have given way to lovely HD art of the characters, and it looks splendid. Shantae herself has plenty of animations, and all of her animal transformation forms are adorable. Heck, all of the characters and NPCs in this game are adorable; the art style is very bright and upbeat and cute. The enemies themselves are bright and colorful, and bosses are huge and well-animated. Background elements are done in a "2.5D" style, and the actual platforms and whatnot are rendered objects. It's a style that Wayforward has worked with before, and they know their way around it. To accompany how lush and lovely the game itself looks, the soundtrack by Wayforward's Jake Kaufman is a peppy and upbeat collection of tunes. These things have incredible hooks and they'll get into your head as you play. Perfect for a game where you revisit stages over and over again, because you get to hear the good music over and over again. Everything so far pairs together to form a lovely mix of old-style action platforming with enough exploration to keep you coming back for more... but are there downsides?
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| I think this game has some hidden subtext, y'all. |
Well, not many. There are one or two issues to be raised, and one is far more minor a black mark than the other. Let's get that minor quibble out of the way first; the power progression and exploration aspect of the game somewhat peaks at the back half. Grabbing heart holders to increase your life is good, and the hidden gallery keys to unlock concept art and fan submissions are a welcome addition. Even many of the powers are useful in the stages! There are a few that just feel like you didn't really "get" anything new or useful, though. An attack for the mouse form! Great! You'll never use the mouse form for anything except squeezing through narrow passages, though, and when there are centipedes in the passages that you would like to bite rather than dodge, you can't use it! Similar to this are the Spider Venom attack, and the Bat Sonar. The former is another attack that you have to be messing around to find real use with at the stage of the game in which you get it. The latter is used to light up one area in a level to find another hidden power, and is also one of the only two powerups found in the penultimate level; the other being another heart container. The final level itself contains no goodies whatsoever, only requiring you dig through the other levels to find hidden items that you can trade for key plot items in order to get the good ending. I get what they were going for with giving the animal forms new abilities, but most of them don't mesh well. The exception is giving the harpy form an attack power, as the harpy form allows you to fly around everywhere and is practical to use. Spreading out the items a bit more, or adding new items that gave you powers more likely to see use, would have been preferred.
That's a minor transgression compared to the big flaw; the penultimate boss of the game just plain stinks. The fight before it is a nice one-on-one fight with Risky Boots, and the true final fight is simple in concept but requires you pay attention to multiple elements at once in order to avoid damage. That middle boss, however, is just a slog. It has three "attacks", so to speak, and you're entirely dependent on it using that third attack to deal any damage to it. The problem is that the thing almost never uses that third attack, opting to just spam the other two. They're not hard attacks to avoid, not really, but the issue is one of slowing the game to a crawl. It would be a three minute fight if you could damage it normally, but you'll find the battle dragging on for agonizing minutes as you dodge the same two attacks over and over, wishing and hoping and praying for the godforsaken thing to open up its weak points and let you get this over with. The boss of the desert area is similar to this, but at least that boss follows a strict pattern of attacks that will always end with your opportunity to strike back. Here, you have no such luck and just have to wait it out, feeling every second drag on and on as you avoid those easy to dodge attacks. It's especially disappointing that this comes right at the climax of the game, when you're the most excited from the amazing adventure that's come before. Still, perhaps Wayforward will patch this out in the future. As it stands, it's an unfortunate design decision that just leads to tedium.
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| I won. =) |
That's Shantae Half-Genie Hero! For its asking price of $16 USD, you're getting a main campaign that can be cleared 100% in around five or six hours. That's a bit short, but you do unlock the "Hero Mode" upon clearing that. It's a sort of New Game Plus mode where you have access to most of your transformations from the get-go. Flying through it right after clearing the main story feels great, as you already remember where all of the powerups are and can just go wild in collecting most of them on your first visit to each stage. Hero Mode can be cleared in about half the time, and there's also a planned Risky Boots mode. The price is a bit up there, but you are getting a platforming game with significant replay value and variety. I would say it's worth it, given how good the overall package is. Not only does it look and sound fantastic, but the exploratory platforming style it chooses to emulate is a fresh one that hasn't been done to death by other exploratory platform games out there, so it has that going for it as well. Its flaws are unfortunate, but its massive strengths outweigh those flaws and make it more than worthwhile. If you're into the whole "retro" platforming scene, or love exploratory platformers, it's a game that you shouldn't pass up.
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