Though Shantae has become a mainstay in recent years, it wasn’t too long ago that this franchise was scarcely more than a niche curiosity. The original Shantae was an indie game in a time before indie games were in vogue, and its release at the very end of the Game Boy Color’s lifespan didn’t do it any favors in garnering a fanbase. It would be nearly a decade before Shantae would be given another lease of life on the DSiWare service in Shantae: Risky’s Revenge, which has now been ported forward to the Switch as a Director’s Cut. Ten years on, Risky’s Revenge is certainly beginning to show its age—especially compared to the later entries which are also available on the Switch—but it’s still a remarkably well-built experience that captures the series’ unique identity well.
The story picks up with the annual Relic Hunter Expo, in which Shantae’s Uncle Mimic inadvertently unearths an old magical lamp onstage before the attendees. Shortly thereafter, Risky Boots arrives on the scene aboard her living pirate ship and spirits the lamp away, while dropping some cryptic hints of her nefarious plans for it. Thus kicks off a tense race against time in which Shantae must find and obtain the three magic seals hidden across Sequin Land which can unlock the lamp’s power, and she must do this before Risky can get them and enact her eponymous revenge.
As has become the norm for this series, the plot is hardly the focus, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s to be ignored either. Though the larger beats of the story are about as rote as they can possibly get, it’s the personalities of the characters and the amusing interactions they have with each other that instills the world with so much charisma. For example, your ‘key’ to enter the first dungeon is not an actual key, but a tasty meal prepared for the dungeon’s final boss, who lets you in because he’s hungry. After he scarfs it down, he decides to stiff Shantae on the ‘bill’ (the first of the seals she’s looking for) before running away to his chamber. It’s frequent moments like these which remind you that the plot seldom takes itself too seriously, but this sort of goofy levity is what gives the world and its characters their alluring edge.
Risky’s Revenge plays out like a typical Metroidvania, with you having a big, gated 2D map to explore which is dotted with upgrades, collectibles, and a handful of dungeons to navigate. Completing dungeons and other objectives will see Shantae receiving boosts to her health and attacks, along with a handful of animal transformations which grant her access to new areas. The monkey form, for example, gives her a stronger jump and lets her climb walls, while the mermaid allows for greater underwater movement.
Upgrades are doled out reasonably quickly, with you having the option to buy basically all but the animal transformations at a shop in town. Given the relative ease of dealing with enemies, however, the additional boons offered up by the shop can often feel a bit like overkill, stripping a great deal of difficulty from combat which isn’t all that challenging to begin with. Still, it’s tough to be disappointed with the variety of playstyles present in Risky’s Revenge, and WayForward did a good job of expanding on the gameplay it had established with the first Shantae.
Compared to that debut release, the level design has also received quite an upgrade, although this proves to be a double-edged sword. The world is more intricate than before and features plenty of curiosities to reward completionists, but its additional size is handicapped a bit by a weird map that doesn’t do much to help you with remembering points of interest for later. Worse yet, there isn’t a map at all when you go into any of the dungeons, which can lead to some moments of frustration if, say, you’re missing a key to a door and have no means of knowing where it could be or where you haven’t checked yet. It’s never too difficult to find the right way again, but such issues tend to take some of the enjoyment out of exploration.
For the most part, Risky’s Revenge is the game you remember from the DSi all those years back, but the Director’s Cut brings with it some welcome improvements to give this version that extra bit of value. For one thing, the fast travel system has received a much-needed fix, which makes it far easier to zip from one end of Sequin Land to the next with minimal hassle. There’s also a new ‘Magic Mode’ which acts as a sort of New Game Plus wherein Shantae has enhanced magical abilities, but takes more damage. Neither of these new additions are exactly game changers, but they do add some meaningful content to help round out some of the rougher edges of the original experience.
In terms of presentation, Risky’s Revenge is exactly the game you remember it being on DSi, which can be both a good and bad thing: good in that the sprite work and environmental design is legitimately excellent and rife with detail; bad in that it doesn’t scale well to modern HD displays. The default display with borders is fine, but it blows the image up so you can see every pixel in all its low-res glory. Stretching the image or displaying in the original resolution are both additional options, but neither proves to be worthwhile for extended play. The display issue couldn’t really be sidestepped without totally remaking the game’s visuals, so it’s tough to fault the developers for going down the route that they have, but just be aware that Risky’s Revenge is rather obviously a game made for a handheld in 2010.
As you may have gleaned from the review thus far, perhaps the greatest issue that Risky’s Revenge faces is that it hasn’t aged gracefully compared to its peers. It’s not that the core experience here has changed at all or grown worse, but the latter entries in the series—which are also available on Switch—further refined and improved upon most of the ideas that appeared here, which set the bar that much higher. Going back to this earlier release is still enjoyable, then, but the simpler and more rough-cut nature of the overall experience makes it more difficult to recommend over its brethren. The cheaper price certainly helps to offset this perceived imbalance in quality, but just be aware before taking the plunge that there are better Shantae games which you could also buy for your Switch.
Conclusion
Shantae: Risky’s Revenge – Director’s Cut still holds up reasonably well, offering up a mid-length Metroidvania experience with plenty of charming dialogue, secrets to uncover, and enemies to furiously whip with long purple hair. That being said, it’s also beginning to show its age, with a weird map system and more simplistic gameplay keeping it somewhat held back in the past. It's still an easy recommendation if you’re a fan of Shantae or are looking for a cheap entry into the franchise, but we’d also recommend that you first look into one of the other entries on Switch to see which is most right for you.
Comments 35
These negatives are completely stupid and uneeded. If it was supposed to be a remake or remaster I could understand.
I’m about halfway through the original on 3DS and really enjoying it so I’ll probably pick this up. Waiting to see if @Ralizah has any thoughts about this version over the original DSi version too!
@Hellburner918
The original game's map system was flawed and later releases did address it somewhat by improving how the warp points work, but yes it remains a valid complaint about the game.
I originally played this on mobile. Probably my least favorite out of the Shantae games I've played, but it's still a great game.
I bought this on DSi and I never really enjoyed it.
As a sequel to the great GBC game, it felt like a very barebones design. :x
This is much better then the horrendous 1/2 Genie garbage and pretty bad Seven Sirens! Pirate's Curse is still the best though.
that font looks terrible
@RupeeClock I can see the map issue, but I was talking about the graphics problem. It makes no sense to me.
I played this on my iPad, I got it there when Wayforward made it free to advertise the 1/2 Genie Hero kickstarter. That version lets you use the magic suit without having to play the game twice so that's nice.
@RupeeClock how did the map/warp system work on the original version? I never got that far there.
1/2 Genie Hero and Seven Sirens are great games and I agree with pirates curse being the best.
@Eel In the original, the warp squids were set up in a pair system where you had to find both squids to use either and you could only travel from one squid in a pair to the other. The DX version makes it so you can use any squid to travel to any squid.
@nessisonett Backtracking is easier in this version, but I still prefer the original version. The best way to play it on a semi-modern device is on a N3DSXL in 1:1 pixel ratio mode, since the display image is roughly identical to the way it would look on a DSi.
The HD character portraits in this version look OK, but the game as a whole, blown up on an HDTV... well, it's VERY pixel-y. I imagine the same is probably true of the game when it's played undocked as well.
I'll probably buy this Switch version, though, if only because it'll be nice to have all of the Shantae games available on one device.
@SwitchVogel oh so it was one-way-only back then. Yeah that sounds bad.
I'm surprised neither the review nor the comments mention that this isn't coming straight from the DSi, but from de Director's Cut itself, that was launched 5 years ago and was available, among other systems, for Wii U. Weird ommission.
That's where I played it last Summer, and I gotta say I enjoyed it, but not that much. I fell in love with the first entry some time ago in the 3DS Virtual Console, but this second part felt too similar. I get, though, that the reason is I was playing a DSi game just upscaled for Wii U and with the fast travel system tweaked -which, by the way, doesn't fix the mentioned strange map system anyway-, and because of that I was a little disappointed. Looking forward to play Pirate's Curse on 3DS, and then I'll get to play Half-Genie Hero, the most divisive entry, because believe it or not, many people really enjoyed it too, so it doesn't only have haters.
Music is superb, here in Director's Cut, and the new Mermaid transformation is great.
Half-Genie Hero only gets hate because people wanted it to be a Metroidvania and it wasn't. If you can accept it as an action platformer with some light exploration elements, it's one of the best in the series. WayForward really has done a good job of iterating on the Shantae formula with each new game; I can't wait to see what they do when 6 inevitably rolls around.
@SwitchVogel I'm sure I'm going to enjoy Half-Genie Hero. But I want a confirmation of Seven Sirens getting a physical release available on normal stores as soon as possible, because at this point only digital or limited-run-y doesn't make sense with this series.
Pirates Curse is the best...especially the 3ds version because of the 3d effect.
1/2 Genie Hero was ok, and Seven Sirens looks like it does nothing different. Wayforward should create a HD pixel art style for the next game.
Half-Genie Hero's writing and character interactions were worse than Pirate's Curse because of the way it soft rebooted the series. The linear action-platformer approach led to worse level design, but it still tried to incorporate backtracking, which doesn't work well with the style of level design employed here.
The only real redeeming value to HGH is that some of its DLC expansion content is legitimately pretty decent.
The WiiU eShop release got a 9/10? Why would it go down by two whole scores in that time period? Seems harsh.
Anyway, played it on 3DS and it is banging.
Loved Half Genie Hero as well.
I pretty much love all Shantae games, but I don't see myself replaying this one. Nice to see it get a new lease on life though.
@LEGEND_MARIOID Since then, two additional Shantae games released and both of them raised the bar for this series when they came out. As I said in the conclusion, it's still worth picking up, but relative to the other games, it's not as good as it once was.
Meh. I played it on Wii U (never played the DSi Ware version) and though it wasn't bad, it's definitely a far cry from the first game and even Half-Genie Hero. The content is just way too small in terms of quests, level and story length and design, bosses, etc. I felt like this was an episodic series that never managed to further develop beyond this game.
I’m a simple man. I see shantae, I click.
Maybe ill pick it up down the road
"Low res graphics can look awkward on Switch" ? Really?!
Have you never played a Virtual Console game? Or for that matter, virtually every indie game in the past 10 years?
@SwitchVogel Oh I see. 7/10 is still a good score but I thought going 2 whole numbers down was a little excessive. Anyway, good review and thanks for the reply. I think Pirate's Curse still remains my favourite to this day out of the 5 Shantae games (5 games, isn't it?)
@LEGEND_MARIOID Yeah it's at 5. Hopefully 6 soon tho! For me it's between pirate's curse and seven sirens, they're about equal in my eyes.
@Moroboshi876 Play-Asia have the Seven Sirens game in an Asia release (with English of course) but not sure if that goes to your definition of normal stores since you have shipping and potential import fees.
Might be worth checking out some sellers that usually get them and sell domestically like some do on eBay.
Unfortunately don't see a normal release until some way into the future.
@BeautyandtheBeer Well, that's close, but a fully normal release would have been just to announce a date for the West. They did release Half-Genie and with a special edition. I don't ask for that much. Just a regular boxed Switch game.
But being on Play Asia hope is not lost. Other games ended up making the leap.
I think "Risky's Revenge" is still overall a better game than "Half-Genie Hero." Not that the latter game isn't also good, but switching to stage-based level design for it was a pretty lousy idea.
@SwitchVogel Well, the issue with "Half-Genie Hero" is that they switched to stages while still keeping the other Metroidvania elements (such as revisiting places to unlock new paths and abilities) intact. The two genres don't mesh as well together than if they had just made it another Metroidvania or completely switched over to making it a pure action-platformer. It's still a good game, just not as good as any of the others save for the archaic original game.
@BulbasaurusRex I'd definitely agree that it was kinda awkward, but I personally never found it to be too different from the other games. I still 100% it and really enjoyed the backtracking just as much as the ones with an interconnected map. I mean, when you really get down to it, jumping between isolated stages wasn't all that different than fast travelling to different areas of a map.
My main complaint with HGH was that it felt like an incomplete game at launch; the base game just felt like it wasn't as fleshed out as the others in the series. This was later fixed somewhat with all the DLC additions, but those didn't seamlessly gel with the core game and it felt kinda patchwork as a result. Seven Sirens was absolutely fantastic tho, I really hope they make a follow up with that same energy.
@SwitchVogel Not really, since you have to start the stage from the beginning each time and play through the areas in order to get to the right spots to access or collect new things, and then afterwards you have to complete the stage again (including some tough boss fights) in order to save your progress. Backtracking on a standard interconnected Metroidvania map with warp travel points is much easier and simpler.
@StephenYap3 That's because is was an episodic game, but WayForward changed their minds at the last mintue.
"Not too long or short"
Dude... what do you consider to be a short game. It may have taken the reviewer longer, which is fair enough, but I beat this game (with 100% completion, including backtracking into the final dungeon and having to go through the battle tower 3 times) in around four hours.
If you're looking to pick this game up, please wait until it goes on sale. I know WayForward usually has a Halloween sale every year, so it should be coming soon (hopefully, they've been pandering to Apple lately, so we'll see how it goes).
@Hellburner918 is this game worth getting on Switch? Risky's Revenge? For a newcomer?
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