Shantae goes on vacation to rest but doesn’t give her too much time to relax. Her friends are kidnapped by a mysterious evil that is hidden in the depths, so our task becomes to find them and reveal the secrets that are hidden under the sea.
Fans of the very entertaining adventures of Shantae have a new date with their friendly protagonist in Shantae Shantae and the Seven Sirens, the fifth episode of a franchise that has managed to establish a great reputation among fans of the metroidvania. With their pluses and minuses, Way Forward video games have always been great ways to claim retro, platforms and classic exploration, but with a modern touch. Game by game, the saga has managed to collect the best of other franchises to deliver experiences that are devoured. This episode is no exception. For about eight hours and a couple more if you want to do it all, once you take command you won’t stop until you reach the end, and it is very possible that later you will return to the title to finish seeing the whole map and collect the collectibles that you need to obtain. However, that doesn’t mean Shantae and the Seven Sirens is perfect or outstanding.
The game has several problems. It lacks freshness with respect to past games, it does not have well-managed ways back: they are long and are repeated over and over again. Although the battles against their final bosses work very well, the battles against the trash can also end up repeating a lot. Shantae and the seven sirens is a metroidvania, and is hopelessly reminiscent of other games better than him like Hollow Knight for his idea of top-down exploration, for example. This is not a problem because all ideas come from others, however, it is much more the fact that it is difficult for them to contribute original concepts to their referents.
History is not a big deal either and it slows down the rhythm more than contributing something. It bothers to stop to listen to it because when the game takes a run it is very funny, and sometimes it does not let you. Her graphic style is colorful, but she needs to take a step forward with respect to her previous installments, especially when it comes to animating her monsters and their backgrounds. But don’t let these problems make your analysis bitter. Whether you liked the previous installments or if you want to enjoy an agile, fresh, very pleasant adventure with a well-managed difficulty curve, give it a try.
Combat, Powers, and Exploration
As in all Shantae, history is a mere excuse for us to immerse ourselves in a new adventure in which to find things, receive new powers, open new doors and advance. With Shantae and the seven sirens the same thing happens. They invite Shantae and four other half-geniuses to an island to act like stars, but suddenly they are kidnapped. That begins our mission: to find them and discover in passing what happens in this new location.
Shantae and the Seven Sirens has new characters and also others from previous chapters, which serves to give coherence to this installment within the series. You also allow yourself a couple of moments to delve into your heritage and talk about the problems that half-geniuses have in your world. All this information is distributed in the towns we are encountering and when we come across important characters in the plot, but the important thing about these encounters is what we are obtaining in order to continue advancing: the transformations they give us.
Shantae and the Seven Sirens is a metroidvania in a classic sense: we advance through a wide map with areas that we cannot access until we find the right skill, power or object. Shantae’s metamorphoses return, this time arriving through fusion stones and coins. With them we will be able to obtain the capacities of other geniuses and be more effective exploring and fighting. We also have powers that are activated by dancing, without having to access any separate menu and that allow us to interact in new ways with the environment.
Added to this is the possibility of slightly increasing some of our abilities by collecting cards. If we repeatedly kill the same enemies we will get cards with their names. Once enough is collected, we can equip and improve it. This gives Shantae and the Seven Sirens a role-playing little point that lightens the feeling of boredom of having to go through the same places so many times. When you reach the end of the adventure, collecting the missing cards will be the main incentive to return to the game.
Growing up with Shantae
With this base, Shantae and the Seven Sirens takes us from one place to another on their map, but their way of forcing us to change zones or return to others is the least inspired of the game. The title ends up needing to have a town with people to tell us where to go. We don’t always naturally understand where we need to go. Sometimes doors are opened for their own sake or closed because they feel like the plot, but without worrying that the exploration is fluid or a joyous and fresh discovery.
This makes the first trip to a new area fun, but not so much the rest that we give for your map to find out where we have to go next or to return. When we die, the game does not give you an incentive to go back through the section that you have not saved you want, and collecting cards or getting more hearts for our marker does not motivate everything it should. Long load times between important areas don’t help either. Luckily, Shantae and the Seven Sirens adds a prize at the end of each journey: a superbly designed little dungeon that combines puzzles, jumps and hidden objects.
Here the game works very well: when you forget to be a metroidvania and it becomes a fun platform with secrets to locate. Especially since these dungeons end in a final enemy that is a pleasure to eliminate. In summary, Shantae and the Seven Sirens is a very fun game but one that does not know how to exploit in its favor, in 2020, the well-worn structure of the metroidvania. When you forget about it, it becomes more linear and challenges us with a series of well-measured jump and combat phases, the game is great. The problem is that this irregularity, added to its technical deficiencies, reduces the final product.
Shantae and the Seven Sirens is a fun but patchy video game. It is a lot of fun when we get to its labyrinthine dungeons with jumps, secrets and great final bosses, but it becomes repetitive, monotonous and heavy when it comes to touring the metroidvania structure of its central world. Fortunately, its duration well measured and the sympathy of its protagonists makes the overall experience very enjoyable.
- Good dungeons to jump and find treasures
- Its difficulty defies without frustrating. Very well measured
- Card collecting hooks and get new powers
- Many of his final bosses have very original ideas
- A poorly planned way back; the game becomes repetitive
- It falls into too many topics of the metroidvania
- Enemy animations need more work
- Duration:7-10 hours
- Players:1
The requirements of Shantae and the Seven Sirens in its PC version have finally been revealed. Below we leave you the minimum requirements of the Way Forward video game to play it on PC:
Minimum requirements:
- Operating system:Windows 10 Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- Processor:4th generation core-i processor or higher
- Memory:8 GB of RAM
- Graphics:AMD Radeon (TM) R7 250 or higher
- DirectX:Version 11
