Shantae and the Pirates Curse: with Metroid and Castlevania gone Shantae is the game your looking for.

Note: The video I made was of my own gameplay using a capture device. The images are all images taken from the video and photoshop to add text and other effects to them.

Well today I am going to be reviewing Shantae and the Pirates Curse. Now I already reviewed Risky Revenge which is a charming, but flawed game. The port wasn’t that hot on the PC, and the game was also short, but it had more than enough charm for me to not only enjoy it but to give it a big recommendation. Now let’s move on to the sequel Shantae and the Pirates Curse this one I am reviewing on the Wii U, although as of now it’s pretty much on every platform.

Shantae was able to beat Risky and stop her revenge last time but it came at a price, Shantae lost all of her genie powers and is now a normal human being, with the exception of her hair. Also last time the mayor of Scuttle Town sold the town to the ammo baron who wants to turn it into a base. Shantae stops him, but that gets her in trouble with the government and the powers that be want to take her hair. However Shantae finds out she has more to worry about when she falls for another one of Risky’s traps (put up seriously who doesn’t know whether or not they have a bath tub in there house or not?). It seems though that Risky needs her help more than anything a dark magic is going around Sequin Land and turning all of her Tinkerbat crew into monstrous crackle bats, stole her pirating items, and is trying to bring the dreaded pirate master back from the grave and the only one who can help her stop this from happening is Shantae.

Overall the story is pretty charming with a lot of humor, and again you don’t have character’s that look like this, without a little sexual humor. Oh and for those who thing Wayforward used all of their 1980’s cartoon jokes in Double Dragon Neon check out this character, best parody of the Filmation version of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe I have ever seen and there are a lot of little moments that are generally funny. Overall the story isn’t overly complicated but when it’s there it’s charming and humorous. And yes there are still a few mildly perverted jokes when it comes to the female casts like this area where they all get capture and force to wear bathing suits.

The gameplay in this game ditches the open world of the first two for more of a stage select screen with some open world aspects to it. The closes I could really compare the change would be Castlevania Order of Ecclesia. After you get on Risky ship you get to select a stage in each area is a little bit more linear then before but there are still puzzles to solve to find where the dungeon is hidden in that area. You will also have to backtrack to previous areas to talk to people in that area, or to find items that you will need to access new areas so while the maps are a little more linear to say the game is still nonlinear is an understatement.

The dungeons themselves are a lot bigger but the puzzles for the most part are more fun. One of the things I like is now that Shantae is now a human being she’s no longer able to transform, so you get pirate items instead and these are a lot more fun and various then your animal transformation from the last game. With the gun you can shoot things. There’s boots that let you dash, and the final one the canon is incredibly fun and rewarding to master. All the items have their uses both inside and outside of the dungeons you find them in. Add in some really fun boss fights and the game is almost perfect.

Almost.

Yeah the game does two things that really piss me off. First the final level of this game really ups the difficulty in some ways that are just really harsh. While the overall game is pretty easy with potions and even auto potions readily available and food drops constantly. But the final area takes a lot of precision, I like most parts of old school gaming, but it amping itself up to the insane here isn’t what I consider fun.

2^nd thing that ticks me off is the game pulls a Super Princess Peach on you and in order to get the real ending and fight the real last boss you have to find the cackle bats that are hidden in each area and destroy them and suck there power up with a magic lamp. Otherwise you just kind of get half the ending. I kind of hate this I can understand a little extra for 100% but when you force me to hunt down McGuffins like this in order to see the real ending it feels like filler that added another hour to the game.

Still the game is a little bit longer then the last one with me topping out a little over 9 hours on my first run through.

Alright the last Shantae port I had to criticize that the games graphics were a bit blocky and were obviously made for a lot lower resolution then my computer monitor. With the Pirates Curse yeah still has a little bit of the same problems, seeing how this was originally plan for the 3DS. That said there usually not to blocky and the true charm of the sprites still shines through. Add in you have some gorgeous backgrounds of each area and the game looks fantastic with just a hint of old school SNES which is what they were aiming for.

Some really great music in this game that sounds again a bit Arabian. There’s a few more voice samples coming from Shantae but overall the story is told through text true to its old school roots.

I give Shantae and the Pirates Curse 4.5 out of 5. This game is perfect had being old school, in many ways it feels like it should go down on a list of classic SNES games because that is what it is aiming for. The sprites and the art work are fantastic, the gameplay for the most part is top notch (&**9ing cacklebats), and there’s just a lot of charm. For about 20 dollars this game is definitely worth a pick up.