Welcome to our review of Shantae and the Seven Sirens (Part 1), out now on Apple Arcade.
Formerly referred to as Shantae 5, Shantae and the Seven Sirens sends the belly-dancing, hair-whipping, half-genie hero to a tropical island where Shantae and her friends encounter other Half-Genie allies, but they soon learn there’s trouble in paradise.
As Shantae gets caught up in the island’s sinister secrets, she’ll use all-new dance abilities and instant-transformation Fusion Magic to explore the nonlinear, interconnected world where she’ll visit multiple towns, overcome treacherous labyrinths, and battle dastardly bosses. The game also features a new collectible card system that grants players the freedom to augment Shantae’s powers to suit their own style of play.
Shantae and the Seven Sirens is currently an Apple Arcade exclusive and it is your typical Shantae game. Based upon the principles of why change a winning team, Shantae does little new but brings more of the same “good old”.
The game brings your typical fights, the to be expected graphics and the usual fun and banter when the NPCs are talking. I am not even being angry at this as Shantae are considered above average games and I am fully agreeing to that stand. The Shantae franchise of games is fun but predictable.
Shantae and the Seven Sirens brings the added bonus of collecting enemy cards, which can in return lend their powers to you. As this entry on Apple Arcade is only Part 1, it is currently impossible to say how hard it becomes to collect these cards, but from what I played so far, I just had little difficulty to find any. Just leave and reenter sections and keep destroying the same enemies over and over, a little grindy at times, but it does hone your skills at the same time.
But sadly enough, this was only part of the game. Everything I played was fun as to be expected but it never really caught me off guard. The only real comment I can make, at one point I felt that the game felt a little like the entire screen was shaking more than I liked.
Fun to play on the go, but even better on my MacBook. All in all, I would need to play the entire game to really know if it keeps being so great.
In conclusion, Shantae and the Seven Sirens is everything you’d expect a Shantae game to be. Sadly this entry was not the complete version of the game so I can not really rate it. Everything I played lived up to my expectations in full, but I just want the whole thing now!
