Few are the game franchises that have such interesting pasts like Shantae. Wayforward Technologies began the development of the first Shantae game almost twenty years ago in 1997, which was only released in late 2002 for the Game Boy Color, which didn’t sell that much due to the Game Boy Advance being already out on the market. Although the game didn’t exactly fulfill the expectations of its publisher, Capcom, that was not the case for the gamers that played it.
The game was very well received by critics, and although it didn’t sell much, it was enough to originate a small and enthusiastic fan community, which allowed Shantae to reach the status of “cult classic”. Seeing the community interest, Wayforward Technologies decided to create a sequel of the adventures of Shantae, but, unfortunately, the project, entitled Shantae: Risky’s Revolution and developed to be released on Game Boy Advance, never saw daylight due to the lack of interest from the publishing company to release it.
Wayforward Technologies still tried to release another sequel, Shantae: Risky Waters, this time for Nintendo DS, which never left the initial stages of development for the same reason as the one before it. It would take Wayforward Technologies eight years to finally bring a new Shantae game to the fans, this one called Shantae: Risky’s Revenge, that was released on the DSiWare service for Nintendo DSi in 2010. Originally, the game was announced to be a three part episodic game, but once again, fortune wasn’t with Wayforward Technologies and they ended up canceling the remaining two games and Shantae: Risky’s Revenge ended up being released as a standalone sequel.
In 2014, Wayforward Technologies released the third game of the Shantae franchise, called Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse, which was originally released on Nintendo 3DS, and later on was ported and released on Wii U and Windows. Now, for the first time ever, Shantae’s adventure will leave the “exclusivity” of the portable consoles to make its way onto Xbox One with gorgeous HD portraits. For those that really give a damn about it, it will also have 1080p graphics, although the game is presented in retro 16-bit graphics, but more about that a bit later.
For those who don’t know the Shantae franchise, it takes place on the Arabic themed world of Sequin Land, where the game’s protagonist, Shantae, is charged to protect the city of Scuttle Town as the Guardian Genie. Although Shantae is only a half-genie, she has magic powers that allow her to transform into different creatures and also use her hair as a whip weapon. The Shantae franchise is known to be a 2D platformer game with big scenarios filled with secrets where Shantae has to use her different powers in order to explore new parts of them. To help Shantae stand out in the enormous world of platformers, Wayforward Technologies added a bunch of charismatic NPCs, such as the pirate Risky Boots, the bird creator Sky, among others, that interact with the main character, Shantae, through some funny and light dialogue scenes.
Being the third game of the franchise, Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse uses the same concepts present in its “ancestors”, modifying and enhancing some of the gameplay elements. The first ones to notice are the sprites that, mixed with the 3D effect, become even more impressive. From one tip to the other, Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse gives you the sensation of playing a game from the late 16-bit era of SNES, but with enough quality to make it stand out among others. The animations are extremely fluid and from the colorful and detailed scenarios to the characters portraits during the dialogues, you can see that Wayforward Technologies has put quite an effort on the visuals. Once again, Jake Kaufman has given life to the world of Sequin Land with an amazing soundtrack.
The story in Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse follows the ending of the previous title, Shantae: Risky’s Revenge, where Shantae lost her half-genie powers and became human, which forced her to continue to defend the city of Scuttle Town without any of her powers, besides her whipping hair. Protecting the city of Scuttle Town isn’t an easy task, especially with the constant mistakes of its Mayor, who this time has sold the city to an almost insane military. And to make Shantae’s task even harder, the evil Pirate Master, who was imprisoned by the Genies, threatens to return. The only way that Shantae can stop his return is to ally with her rival Risky Boots and seek the islands where the pirate’s magic power is concentrated in order to diminish it and avoid his return. In the middle of all this, Risky’s Tinkerbats crew has been affected by a mysterious Dark Magic that turns them into Cacklebats, making them even more dangerous. With this, your objective isn’t only traveling through the various islands in order to diminish the Pirate Master’s power, but you will also have to hunt down the Cacklebats.
The overall plot ends up not doing much besides pushing the story forward since in every island you will come across a small story that will guide you in its environment. Both the main plot and the island’s shorter segments have a certain amount of dialogue segments that seem to be the right amount in order for the player to both understand the story as well as get some fun out of them since they tend to have a humoristic aspect. This third title without any doubt gives a lot more personality to the characters than the previous ones, giving even good development to Risky Boots and her story as a villain.
Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse is obviously a game that is more concerned about the gameplay than anything else, which gives an incredible feeling of progression better than the previous titles. Without her magic powers, Shantae must now rely on the various weapons, six in total, that she will find scattered across each temple in order to progress through the story. This weapon-based gameplay may feel a bit different from the transformations one but it is definitely well made. Each item will slowly change the way that you use to cross the various levels, and the best part is that they can be integrated with each other to be used continuously, and the mobility and speed of your character will never diminish.
If in the previous games you would have a tiny delay due to the animated transformation process to access a new area, in Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse, the usage of the items to reach those new areas ends up being almost instant. The interface menus have also been subject to enhancements as accessing items and the map are now easier than before. The map itself has been updated and now is more useful than in Shantae: Risky’s Revenge, making it an indispensable tool during the game, especially when you are looking for the new areas to find the Cacklebats or any other secret. The difficulty of the game has also been improved. Although it still has sections filled with enemies, the player now has more advantages in those situations, one of them being the fact that most enemies will leave an item than can be used to regenerate health, which diminishes the amount of deaths and makes the adventure more agile. The game runs well on both Xbox One and PlayStation 4, showcasing responsive, simple controls, appealing retro graphics and high-definition character illustrations, and zero frame rate drops during our time playing it.
In some parts, the game has become a bit too easy. For instance, some levels are the easiest in the series with some of them being a bit too linear and with too few secrets to be found. Given the amount of levels and islands present in the game, in the end Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse ends up having more good levels than the ones before it, but sometimes it might feel a bit easier. Luckily, the bosses that you will encounter, which besides being huge, are also hard enough, giving you a good experience while fighting them.
In the end, the main problem of Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse is the same as the ones before it, its game duration. The game can be beaten in about ten hours if you go after every secret in the game. The gameplay quality is there and the content of the game isn’t exactly small. You have the 20 Cacklebats to find and defeat, plus 32 Heart Squids that can be used to give more health, but, however, the game still tends to be a bit short.
Summary
Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse is an exciting and charismatic adventure. It has attitude, vivacity and has an above average quality at all levels. It’s hard to find flaws in a game that is associated with a genre with such strong bases and that meets all the requirements in an exemplary manner. Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse is definitely worth being picked up by everyone, and as a fan of Shantae, I must say that playing Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse on Xbox One has been great. I can’t wait for the release of the upcoming chapter in the series, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero.
João is a games journalist, Senior Editor at XDA Developers. They contributed 156 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: previously reported for Neowin before joining XDA Developers in 2021, where he leads coverage of Windows, Microsoft, and hardware.