General

Thanks for the games. Here's a link to this week's stream... - - - - - N-Europe Saturday Smash! (16/11/2024) - - - - -

Shantae and the Seven Sirens is the latest game in the Shantae series. It's a Metroid style platformer developed by WayForward and released on all modern platforms in 2019. Shantae (Half-human, half-genie), her uncle, and two of her best friends have been invited to Paradise Island for an all expenses paid vacation. Shantae soon discovers that five other half-genies have also been invited. The small print turns out to be that Shantae and the 5 other half-genies take part in Paradise Island's brand new "Half-genie festival". They agree, but during the festival, every half-genie except Shantae mysteriously disappears. Suspecting foul play, Shantae explores the ruins underneath the island to try and find them using her powers... Yeah, that. Thank you. Like most of the Shantae games, this one consists of a big interconnected area where most of it is inaccessible until you unlock more abilities for Shantae to use. I'm sure all of you have played a Metroid game, you get how it works. Shantae distinguishes itself by also having Zelda style dungeons. Granted, it's closer to Zelda 2 because of the side scrolling nature of the game. Seven Sirens specifically takes notes from Castlevania with the monster card system. Whenever you kill an enemy, there's a chance they'll drop a card of themselves. There's 50 of these cards, and you can activate three of them at a time to give Shantae some kind of passive ability. None of them are required to finish the game, but they add an extra layer of customisation. Even if a certain one that replenishes magic over time is way too good. One thing to note about this is that in 2021, a pretty sizable update was added to this game that included 4 extra difficulty modes. Alongside the 2019 Legacy Mode, there's Beginner Mode, which makes Shantae invincible and crazy strong. Definitive Mode rebalances enemies to be harder, makes boss patterns faster, but adds extra dialogue, and quality of life features to make 100% completion far more reasonable. Full Deck Mode gives you all 50 monster cards from the start, and Rule Breaker Mode removes the three card activation limit, and lets you have every one you find active all at once. Rule Breaker Mode sounds like a lot of fun, but this was my first time playing this game, so I went with Definitive Mode. I'm glad I did, the extra map features were very much appreciated, especially the one that hints at what dance you might need in each room. Considering that there's a lot of invisible goodies with not much in the way of hints to help signpost them, I can't imagine trying to find everything in this game with the original release (Legacy Mode). Hmmm. The Screen Clearing Blast is my favourite character. Honestly, I don't know why it took me 5 years to play this. I like all the Shantae games, and this one is no different. I'd put it right in the middle of the 5 games in terms of quality. It's great. But Risky's Revenge and especially Pirate's Curse outdo it.

Yay, I came second.

No need, really, considering the other way Kaclang managed to get me killed.

Seems about right, pretty impressive. You narrowly avoided that metal slash death.