I just finished watching my friend stream the game the other night, and I have to agree that Seven Sirens does seem like a nice return to form for Shantae (coming from someone that still really loves Half Genie Hero) Honestly I feel the same way about how the transformations here are the perfect compromise between what Pirate's Curse and every other game did. I'm one of the few people that were kind of bothered that Shantae had to rely on another person's weapons for PC. I know there's a narrative explanation for it, and mechanically they're perfectly fine, but I always thought the transformations were what helped make Shantae really stand out as a franchise and a character. And removing that from her just felt wrong to me. It's like if you had a Metroid game, but Samus' pool of moves were radically different from her usual beams and morph ball and what have you. So I'm really glad she still has the transformations but they function mechanically similar to the Tinker Tools. I think that "perfect compromise" statement also applies to the character portraits. I personally loved the HGH portraits and thought the more cartoony art style really fits Shantae pretty well, but I do acknowledge a lot of people really loved PC's portraits so I felt they took the best elements of both and it worked out well.
The compromise they reached in Seven Sirens is perfect, allowing the fluidity that people liked in Pirate's Curse and maintaining the core aspect of what makes Shantae special. While I personally was never bothered by having to stop for a second to dance to transform, I like how it's handled here. And having her dance to preform stronger, world altering magics is genius. I hope they continue with this formula.
I liked it, I had a lot of problems with 1/2 genie hero and this game addressed pretty much all of them. Defo a contender for my favourite in the series. I have to disagree about the music, yea it fits the tone of the series and there were some fantastic tracks but jake is just a master, on par with toby fox, so he's hard to beat
I might pick up Shantae and the Seven Sirens, I played through Half-Genie hero and thoroughly enjoyed it so I'm definitely interested in playing more Shantae games.
It bothers me a bit that the game is named after the sirens, but because they have no dialogue or personalities and only show up in their respective fights, they feel WAY less significant than they’re supposed to be. Perhaps Shantae and the Five Half-Genies, or Shantae and the Sunken City would’ve been more fitting titles?
Im still playing but yeah, id say this and pirates curse are my top 2 as well. Id say this has a leg up on PC cause the environment is more connected like in the first one. Its probably doubtful given the return to metroidvania level design and interconnectedness, but i hope they can somehow include character dlc again like in HGH. They were very fun and id just love to be Risky, Sky, Bolo (and Rotty if the plot can allow that i havent seen yet) again
I agree with almost every point except the music. I don't know, I just found most of it forgettable. The overabundance of raw square waves, the lack of most of the previous leitmotifs, not enough punch, it just really isn't as good as their previous outings. Am I saying a Shantae soundtrack can't be good without Virt? No, but it certainly looks that way if this game is anything to go by. Also, and I'm sure everyone's already told you this, the monster cards are not required for 100% completion.
