Quick Review: Shantae: Half-Genie Hero

She’s back, and ready to defend Scuttle Town again!

If we're starting with the downtown on fire... We're in for
something good.

WayForward’s Shantae series has quite a few games; I covered another one, Risky's Revenge, long ago. The entry covered today, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, was released on December 20th, 2016 after a successful Kickstarter campaign. However, in place of a Metroidvania-style, interconnected world, we have a game split into stages. Most of them contain secrets inaccessible until Shantae collects the right abilities and forms to turn into (through her belly dancing, of course). You can return later to find those and expand your arsenal.

Factories? Mermaids? Crocodiles? Better investigate this.
I'm supposed to be looking for maidens, not mermaids!

After another attack from Risky Boots and her pirate crew on Scuttle Town, Shantae’s elderly inventor uncle begins making a machine, using old blueprints, that will protect the town in her place. However, she'll need to find the items he needs. And solve problems across the land, while she’s at it. Maidens are disappearing in the next town over? Everyone in Scuttle Town loses their memories and another half-genie looks like the culprit? Stopping a heist at the grand flying carpet race? Other than her uncle’s machine, what could tie these things together? Maybe the occasional dream Shantae has been having of the genie world, which speaks to her…

We're gonna need a bigger boat. ...Okay, that joke
is probably in poor taste to talk about a giant mermaid.

Wham! Need power to push large blocks? Become elephant.
Stay cute either way.

With the jewels you collect, you can buy additional upgrades for Shantae, such as magic spells to use (with the C key), or improvements to the attack power and speed of her hair whip. Over the course of this adventure, she regains her classic forms – the wall-climbing monkey, the ramming elephant, the swimming mermaid, and so on. Some forms have a secondary ability must be unlocked by finding it. As an example, the mermaid form starts out defenseless against underwater threats, but Shantae later learns to shoot bubbles to attack.

Uh oh, gotta escape the giant worm (which is dead when we
return, so yep, can't "finish" this area in one go).

Splitting the game into stages, each with lots of secrets, does help in some capacity. However, it means you’ll be revisiting eqch stage many, many times to find new abilities that were previously impossible to get. You do gain access to teleportation tools to quickly leave a stage once you got what you wanted, or to warp directly to the next area if you know exactly what you're looking for and where it's located.

Past the main mode, you can play the game again with various twists: A Hero Mode with all transformations unlocked from the start, a Hardcore Mode, and a Jammies Mode with Shantae in her pajamas and fighting with her pillow (yup). The store page includes DLCs for two additional quests, one playing Risky Boots’ side of the story, another playing as Shantae’s friends, and three “costumes” that come with their own arcade-like gameplay!

In Jammies Mode (implied to be one big dream), her pillow
atrtacxk is somehow stronger than her regular hair whip.
Also, this mode turns the game into a genuine platformer.

Some of these quests feel like a point'n'click. You obtain the
candy from the dotor, which you see after getting sick, which
happens after finding five relics for an archaeologist in the
desert tower, and finding said relics requires the ability to
ground-pound with the elephant form. ...Phew!

WayForward knows how to craft a good Metroidvania – as proven repeatedly by this very franchise. But if you bought Shantae: Half-Genie Hero hoping for one, you might be disappointed that it's split into stages rather than being a continuous world, even if the spirit remains and the game is still very good. As pointed above, this change does lead to some degree of repetitiveness, though there's a few workarounds. As usual, this is paired by a great soundtrack, a beautiful hand-drawn art style (seriously, the game looks awesome), and inventive stages and bosses with always something new to discover. It’s worth checking out for fans of the genre or of the series. Good time all around.

Shantae: Half-Genie Hero is available on Steam for 19.99$ USD. Or, alternately, you can get the Ultimate edition released two years later, in May 2018, which includes all the bonus material.