Shantae: Half-Genie Hero + DLC Review

Supporting a crowdfunded project is risky business. There's no guaranteeing that the project you put money towards will turn out as expected, and that goes especially for crowdfunded games. However, that doesn't mean that crowdfunded games are never good; one of my favorite fighting games, Skullgirls, was crowdfunded. As it so happens, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero was also crowdfunded, gathering enough funding for the full game and two DLC modes. The question is, is any of it good? Well, I'm inclined to say that it isn't - which is a shame, because I wanted to like the game.

While the only other Shantae game I've ever played was Risky's Revenge, I really enjoyed that, so I came into Half-Genie Hero expecting to enjoy it as well. I mean no ill will towards WayForward Technologies when I say that I found the game to be rather sloppily designed. Of course, I don't mean visually. If you've seen the game, you'd know it has a solid art style that mixes bouncily animated 2D vector spites with fully rendered 3D environments. No, the game's weakest aspects are all in its mechanical designs.

Shantae's abilities, while plentiful, can be pretty underwhelming. Let's start with the biggest offender: Fireball. Fireball is a terrible spell; it does less damage than Shantae's melee attack (before even upgrading her melee damage) despite being limited my Magic consumption, and its rate of fire - no pun intended - is not fast enough to make up for it. The second version doesn't improve on its damage, and only slightly improves the rate of fire. The third version is reasonably powerful, but its range is shorter, and you have to buy two cruddy spells to have it available. Frankly, I think the Fire spells are a waist of resources; certainly not worth the Gems spent to obtain any of them.

The rest of Shantae's spells aren't nearly as lame, but they can be situational. Storm Puff was probably my most used spell, which summons a little cloud that deals damage to targets below it. Though, it's not very effective on mobile targets, and the second version of it doesn't have any noticeable advantages over the level one version. I rarely used Bubble, though, that speaks more about me as a player than the spell itself. Bubble will make Shantae immune to projectiles while active. Its upgrade, Mirror, reflects some projectiles, while the last version makes Shantae completely invincible (have a guess at what that spell is called). Pike Ball summons a spike ball that spins around Shantae, which can be helpful for getting in more damage against foes within melee range. Its damage is low, so its effectiveness relies on its upgrades, which basically increase how quickly that damage is dealt by adding more orbiting objects.

In my playthrough, I purchased two of the Fire spells, two of the Storm Puff spells, two Bubble spells, and one Pike Ball spell, on top of the defense upgrade, the Magic consumption reduction, one melee attack speed upgrade, three melee damage upgrades, two levels of item attract, two optional Dances, and the dodge move. Evidently, the game was over before I could get around to buying any level three spells, since I also wanted the non-spell items like the defense upgrade. If the point is that the player should focus on only the spells that they want, how are they supposed to know which ones to focus on before buying them? How is the player supposed to know that Fire always sucks, or that Super Mega Puff is great? How would the player know that they won't afford everything by the end of the game without grinding?

Along with spells, Shantae can acquire Transformations that she can use to open up new paths through levels. I like this idea - it's something I enjoyed about Risky's Revenge - but the concept was sloppily executed this time around. Rather than have a handful of forms that each have several uses, Shantae gets eight that have only a couple of uses each. Sure, Transformation in past games had only a couple of abilities each, but Half-Genie Hero has them spaced apart so far that they don't get much use. I felt like by the time I had acquire the Harpy and Spider forms, the game was already almost done. What really bugs me about how Transformations are handled is that there are two Transformations for underwater and two for flying, and you can't transform underwater or in midair, so you have to backtrack and try the other form if you choose wrong.

What also irks me about these Transformations is that each form only gets one upgrade, and for most of them, that upgrade is the ability to attack (three of which don't even open new paths). This makes the decision to have two Transformations for both underwater and airborne travel even more weird; they could've just combined both of the water and air forms and gone with quality over quantity. Instead of having the classic Mermaid form and a separate Crab form, the Crab form could've been a pair of upgrades for the Mermaid form that serve the same purposes that the Crab would've on its own.

Unfortunately, the level design doesn't quite make up for these underwhelming Transformations; I found it was very hit and miss. I had fun through the first two levels, but the third level killed that fun, and it never fully recovered from there. Level segments ranged from simply okay, to somewhat fun, to dreadful. Risky's Hideout, for example, started off kind of fun, utilizing several Transformation abilities one after the other, but it didn't take long to divulge into an unfun Harpy (which controls like butts, by the way) segment involving moving walls of instant-death spikes. After a so-so boss fight sequence, the level became an auto-scroller where falling (which was easy) would cause the player to restart the whole auto-scrolling segment. Oddly, this auto-scroller was the part the developers decided to end the game on. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

In general, the level design would frequently break the player's pace by forcing them to stop and wait for a platform to appear or for an obstacle to move aside. Thus, rather than platforming being a test of skill, it winds up being a test of patience. The punishment for failing these segments was all too often instant death, pushing the player back to the last checkpoint they crossed. Enemy placement also left something to be desired, as often levels simply had projectile-spamming ranger characters standing in front of an otherwise simple jump. Since Fireball sucks and Shantae needs to be in melee range to attack otherwise, these enemies were hardly any different from an other obstacle that the player would have to stop and wait for.

Oddly, despite being a level-to-level game, Half-Genie Hero has backtracking in it, which felt unnatural. Rather than feeling like I'm exploring on my own, opening new paths and finding new powers organically, the backtracking ended up feeling like something I'm doing just because that's the way the game was designed. Instead of going out to find an item where it logically might be, the game often makes you find an item, to trade for an item, to trade to get what you initially needed. Sometimes the game even makes you collect several of one item to get the next one in the sequence, which just feels like blatant padding.

What are supposed to be the climaxes of each level, the bosses, also failed to deliver. Most of the bosses, bluntly put, were bad. The first two were alright and the third wasn't completely bad, but the bosses become boring slogs after that - the only exception is the second-to-last boss, who I thought was rather cool. It doesn't help that bosses don't have health bars, so there's no way to keep track of how much progress you've made The Ammo Baron was easily the best example of how bad the bosses can be; he floats in the air, forcing you to jump up and hit him once before having to land and jump again. This makes him take damage painfully slowly, all the while he summons droves upon droves of mooks to act as his shield and to whittle down your own health in a dreadful war of attrition. Sure, you could argue that having the right spell can make a boss fight significantly less torturous, but again, how is the player supposed to know which spells to buy ahead of time for that to matter?

The first DLC mode I played through, Pirate Queen's Quest, is where I started having fun with the game again. In it, you play as the antagonist, Risky Boots, as she gathers the parts for her Dynamo. She starts off rather weak, but once you start gaining new items and gathering Dark Magic to upgrade her equipment, she becomes very fun to play as. Although Pirate Queen's Quest shares the same levels as the main game, they're slightly modified to account for Risky's abilities. Since the levels can be played in any order in Pirate Queen's Quest, they're mostly designed around Risky's default abilities and stats, so they're considerably easier. This is mostly why I say that Risky is more fun to play as, since many levels don't account for her Grappling Hook or gliding ability and thus one can often take advantage of these abilities to progress faster.

I had so much fun as Risky, in fact, that I gladly went for 100% completion for this mode. The sense of progress as you clear levels and collect upgrades is so much stronger in Pirate Queen's Quest than it was in the main game. The only hang-up to Pirate Queen's Quest is that nearly all of the bosses are the exact same ones from the main game which, as I already mentioned, I didn't like. Even with Risky's attacks fully upgraded, boss fights are still slogs to complete.

That's, uh... Quite the Main Menu

Dark Magic

The Ammo Baron

Friends to the End

Same Bosses, New Title Card

The second DLC mode, Friends to the End, was also more enjoyable than the main game, but not quite as much as Pirate Queen's Quest. This mode sees you playing as Shantae's friends Bolo, Rottytops, and Sky, as they venture through Shantae's memories. Friends to the End also reuses the same levels from the main game redesigned around the trio's abilities, but unlike Pirate Queen's Quest, it is completely linear. Again, the levels are more pleasant this time around thanks to the focus on new abilities, but there were still some hiccups in the overall design - particularly in the last level. There are two issues I have with this mode: health and magic drops don't appear frequently enough, and character progress is tied entirely to Gems.

To explain this better, each character levels up their main attack when they collect Gems. Should they take damage, they lose Gems, and if they lose too many Gems, they level back down. This means that there are no permanent upgrades of any sort; no new items, health increases, or permanent damage buffs. Combined with the infrequency of health and magic drops, this creates a big incentive to not get hit. The problem is, the game as a whole wasn't designed in a way where avoiding damage is easy, so the player will often take cheep hits and lose precious health and the Gems that power them up. This is especially so during boss fights which, again, are the exact same fights from the main game.

DLC included, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero gets a 3 out of 5. The game is not terrible, but I had a hard time finding in as enjoyable as I wanted it to be. Something about it felt rushed and incomplete. If you do decide to buy the game, definitely get Pirate Queen's Quest as well; it's the must fun the game has to offer.

(Screenshots were capture in the Switch's Handheld mode and thus may not represent the quality of the game's graphics while Docked.)

Box Art Source - Shantae Wiki: http://shantae.wikia.com/wiki/Shantae:_Half-Genie_Hero