Welcome to our second review of the Shantae and the Seven Sirens game, we played it on Apple Arcade first and now we played it on Steam!
Shantae is back in an all-new tropical adventure! In her fifth outing, the Half-Genie hero gains new Fusion Magic abilities to explore a vast sunken city, makes new Half-Genie friends, and battles the Seven Sirens in her biggest, most thrilling quest yet! Featuring multiple towns and more labyrinths than ever before, an awesome aquatic journey full of danger and discovery awaits!
So let us get straight to it, I loved the first gameplay I had with Shantae and the Seven Sirens but my second time around was not so positive. Not because of the game, but because it felt grindy the second time around and despite knowing parts of the plot and still liking the plot… I can not just put my finger on it. Maybe the endless amount of enemies that you need to kill to finally get that very needed card to finally be able to access parts of the game?
Yeah, that is it. It felt very grindy second time around because I clearly knew what to do and where to go for the most part. Sure, I forgot parts, which I consider absolutely normal considering the amount of times I have played different games this year alone. The lockdown in my country had me at home for 2 months and well, I played a lot. I wish I had forgotten more of this great game, because it is a really fun game. A bit more on the difficult side, many among us do underestimate the Shantae series.
They see a cute girl as the main hero, the cartoonish drawing style and just assume this is going to be on the easy side. But that is far from what Shantae is really about. I have always found them to be on the harder side of the spectrum. Not overly hard or impossible, no, their sweet spot is more that 60% if you consider 50 the median. Still very accessible but you often need to stick with it.
This second playthrough felt as such too. I felt like I killed off a few hundred snakes just to get 10 cards, the sheer madness almost made me want to quit. It is so strange that such a great game can feel so awkward a second time around. I have to be honest here, I am flabbergasted because I loved the game first time, but not this time.
On a sidenote, I have a monster laptop and I got to say; this game looked so crisp, I was in love with the graphics. While this is not a photo realistic game and just a “cartoon” style game, it still looked incredibly nice on max settings and I can only imagine this being the best way to play this game. In addition to that, controls were very responsive as well.
In conclusion, no score for this one as I think I would do it injustice. My experience with the game itself on a technical basis was top notch! Very good graphics and the game played very well.
