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This one somehow made my hands hurt! Maybe it was my controller, who knows. Shantae: Risky's Revenge is a Metroidvania game that sadly did not include a good map. I say this, not having played many games from that genre and time, so maybe that's typical. But I really wanted a good map. You play as Shante, a genie who uses her hair as her weapon and transforms into different forms by dancing. You are tasked with collecting four magic seals before the bad guy can.
I have to admit here I didn't know this was a sequel when I added it to the list. So maybe the minimal story would have had an impact on me if I had been familiar with the characters and setting. As it is, I didn't really find myself caring about the plot, but I thought the dialog was charming enough. I loved the pixel art in this game, the sprites and their animations were very well done. There was more boob jiggle than I usually would like, but it is what it is. The environments were varied enough, however I didn't get very far into the game. All that said I didn't like the UI at all. It appeared that the assets were taken out of a flash game. I don't know if that's how it looked on it's original system, but it felt out of place to me.
As for the gameplay, I am bad at video games, so take this with that in mind. I got stuck a few times and had to replay certain sections over again more than once. This made my enjoyment of the game flip flop a few times. Another frustration for me was the frequency to which it seemed I had to take damage to clear an obstacle. For example, sometimes you would be presented with an enemy on a small platform bordered by a bottomless pit on both sides. This seemed to be a common thing and I always would take damage trying to pass.
Bottom line, I did like this game, but I was frustrated a lot of the time. I don't think my frustrations were always the fault of the game but sometimes the fault of my lack of skill with platforming.
-Caitlyn
