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Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

Posts 1,761 to 1,780 of 3,137

BruceCM

Not entirely sure just what counts as bosses, @Ralizah .... But most of even the random monsters & so on are significantly trickier! I suppose similar 'complaints' to those you had for the main game's secondary quests do apply to them in B&W, too but inasmuch as there's quite a few new monsters it helps a lot
While the final boss of that is definitely difficult! The area as a whole is quite different from the rest of the game, too, in many little ways that really add up

SW-4357-9287-0699
Steam: Bruce_CM

Ralizah

@BruceCM That does sound fun.

I LOVE the vibrant, colorful screenshots I've seen of the DLC. The game as a whole is just flat out gorgeous in spite of its dank environments, so I feel like Toussaint is going to especially pop.

It's good to hear that the normal monsters pose more of a threat, too.

I feel like it's going to be a great thing to pull out of my back pocket when the inevitable game lull hits and I find myself reminiscing back to TW3 (my write-up might have been harsh, but I really did enjoy my time with the game).

Currently Playing: Advance Wars 1 + 2: Re- Boot Camp (NS)

BruceCM

Heh, I got that impression, @Ralizah .... I ended up not bothering with quite a few of the Witcher Contracts & other secondary quests that didn't look interesting I liked having the potions & oils, etc, which were very helpful in some boss fights & I think a lot would have complained if you'd really NEEDED those, so it's a tricky balance
I do particularly like being able to transfer saves, too! Then, the music & characterization are really what people loved most about the game, anyway. It's certainly a lot more open world than 2, let alone 1 but I find there's very few games that manage the open world part very well

SW-4357-9287-0699
Steam: Bruce_CM

Tyranexx

GRIS (Switch)

I finished this one in 2 sessions a couple of weekends ago and am just now getting around to a (brief) write-up for a short game. XD It's definitely a nice, bite-sized game to sink a few hours into, though it isn't perfect.

Positives

  • To be blunt, this game is absolutely gorgeous! Until I understood what was going on, I didn't think much of the aesthetics in the beginning until you start restoring colors. This game is the equivalent of watching art come to life on a canvas.
  • The musical score is definitely a treat to the ears and helps set the tones of certain situations in the game. It's also on Spotify, so I might be grabbing it for my listening pleasure before long....
  • While simplistic in a sense, the plot of the game is told via the musical cues and visuals. Definitely a lot of melancholy, empowerment, and even hope to be found here.
  • Other characters in the game, though they're few, are impactful in their own unique ways.
  • While much of the game is sort of laid back, there are definitely a couple of tense, pulse-pounding moments.

Neutral

  • The game is what can be described as a light Metroidvania. The upgrades are nice, but they're few and not numerous at all.
  • There are some puzzle-solving elements. Some are pretty unique and fun, but most border on almost being too simple.

Negatives/Nitpicks

  • The game is pretty short - around three hours - and may not justify its fairly high price point ($16.99) for some. I waited until it was on sale before grabbing it.

GRIS is an aesthetically pleasing game that appeals the eyes and ears. It isn't a challenging game by any means and is on the short side, but it very much is worth experiencing. It tells the story of a young girl dealing with sorrow and loss, a story that is up to the player's interpretation. I can easily recommend this game, though it may be best to wait for a sale if price vs. mileage is an issue.

Currently playing: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (Switch)

"Love your neighbor as yourself." Mark 12:31

JoeDiddley

I beat Xenoblade Chronicles DE this week and it was every bit as good as people say.

People complain about how FFXV gets more linear towards the end, but I like how it’s so open to begin with but then increasingly gets more focussed.

I really enjoyed the battle system, and the side quests negated the need for any grinding.

Switch: SW-2923-8106-2126
Steam ID: joediddley
https://myanimelist.net/profile/JoeDiddley

Cynas

Just beat Persona 5 Royal. This was my second time playing through the game, since I played Persona 5 when it originally came out a few years ago, but I enjoyed it a lot so I thought I'd give the remaster a try. It is a little strange that a remaster was released on the same console, I get that the new content is integrated into the whole story, but it could've still been a large update that required you to replay the game or do New Game +. But I've bought some of Poekmon's "remastered" versions before, like Crystal and Ultra Moon, so I guess this isn't much different.

I think the new content added was great. They improved the monotony of Mementos, the new character portraits makes the characters' personalities shine more, and the new Palace/chapter is my favorite out of the bunch. I also really enjoyed the Thieves' Den, mainly due to Tycoon. I used to play that game all the time with friends, and they made it surprisingly fun to play solo in this game. It incorporates the iconic style of Persona 5 and playing with your teammates makes it feel like you're playing with real people. They add so much personality to the game, I couldn't help but smile at a lot of their voice lines.

I will say, the new content makes Persona 5 much longer, so be warned since it was already a long game to begin with. I spend about 100 hours on my playthrough of Persona 5, and about 140 hours in Persona 5 Royal (although to be honest I probably spent ~7 hours playing Tycoon). In addition to the extra Palace, which is the majority of the new content, there are also some new events throughout the main game. You also have more free time, so I was actually able to max out every confidant on my first playthrough of Royal, which I wasn't even close to in the original. If you were turned off by the amount of text in the original version, then this game probably won't be your cup of tea since there's a ton of extra text.

Cynas

Switch Friend Code: SW-5466-6715-6498

MsJubilee

Just recently finished Watch Dogs 1. I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. I finished this game twice(XB1&WIIU) but, I never paid actual attention to anything on what was going on. Just did missions, go to the waypoints, and call it a day. So going back to this game after a couple of years has opened my eyes. Watch Dogs is a mixed bag, and I'll tell you why.

Here's the good, I always try to start with the good. The OST, I always forget to talk about OST in Ubisoft games(it's always been their specialty ), Ubisoft has ever made superb soundtracks for there games. And this is no different; Watch Dogs 1 has a fantastic soundtrack! The tracks go so well with this game. Listening to them made me question myself, "how did I miss this?". If it weren't for the fact Ubisoft hid some tracks from the officially released OST, I would've bought it in a heartbeat. The hidden tracks are on youtube if you want to take a listen.

Chicago itself looks phenomenal. Walking around, reading text messages, listening to people's problems, and conversations are very immersive. My favorite one is a guy sleeping with a sister while sleeping with the other sister and dumping them both. It always gets a kick out of me. All these things bring this world to life, and it's simply beautiful. Talking about the game world, I can talk about the side activities and missions. The events are okay(drinking, chess, ball in a cup, poker, and more). Phone minigames are tedious and not fun at all; the side missions like, for example, fixer contracts, Criminal Convoys, and gang hideouts. They get old fast, I did them to get EXP, but I wasn't enjoying myself at all, felt like a chore. The investigations are the highlights. Those are the missing persons, privacy invasions(where you look into the lives of people for a couple of seconds), weapons trades, and burner phones. There's two I left out the QR codes and human trafficking. But, those are so boring I wouldn't bother. I would recommend spending time with the privacy invasions. The majority are hilarious like the plumber about to lay down some pipe with some chick while doing puns(the best), and some are just heartbreaking. You want to help, but sadly the game doesn't let you.

Here's the bad and it's a lot. So buckle up buckaroos. The gameplay of Watch Dogs 1 is mediocre; if you played a third-person shooter, you played this one, except this game has a twist, hacking. Which is also average, all you can do is distract, unlock doors, tag enemies, look through cameras, and explode phones( and more). To top it all off, AI is dumb as bricks they'll stand or crouch in the same spot for the majority of a fight. Add the fact that you can tag them, and slow downtime, the AI has no chance. While we're talking about gameplay, I want to mention the gunplay real quick. It's piss weak, the guns feel like peashooters, no weight to them at all like Nerf guns but without the fun.

The story. It's inconsistent, you'll move from one place to another so quickly that'll you'll barely have time to react, and there's a handful of villains that the game throws in there while not letting them grow. Iraq, Damian, Default, and Lucky Quinn. All interesting and if one act were dedicated solely to one of them each, they would've been memorable or decent. But, the game doesn't do that, it juggles between them(except Default, he's in 3 missions and poof! Gone), And that's the problem with the story, it tries to connect so many storylines while juggling villains, and it struggles even to complete one. So you're left in the dust with a confused look on your face.

Characters. The game has a cast of them; none of them have a decent time in the spotlight(except Jordie, he's fantastic, I felt like all the writing time went to him) or any growth. Why? The game want's to keep moving, no stopping for anything. It's disappointing. I wanted to care for the cast like Clara the Christy Mack inspired character( Christy Mack is a porn star, I guess that's why I wanted to like her.). Now Aiden Pearce, on the other hand, he's meh, he has no personality, the guy doesn't even smile or even laugh. He was a jerk. I know what the writers were trying to go for a, and it was a Batman ish character. But failed, the writer or writers was unable to realize Batman has a personality he has a heart. And to back him up is well-written dialogue and stories. Read any Batman comics, and you'll know it's true. Aiden doesn't have any of that; he's just I'm a tough, macho man who doesn't talk or smile, which is annoying and will not make anyone care for his struggles or him. Generic white guy 99.

The last two things I wanted to talk about is the customization and interacting with the world. There's no customization; you can't improve your guns, or change the color of them, the same thing goes for vehicles, hell you can't even pick the color you want when you order one. You can change the look of Aiden, but you'll get the same(hat and jacket) result. Lastly. Interacting with the world is nonexistent; this full of life gameworld, and you can't do anything with it. It's like getting a new car, but you can't touch it. Only look at it and walk around it.

To end this, Watch Dogs 1 is a huge disappointment; it could've been great. Hell, it could've been fantastic. But, it isn't, it's mediocre at best. Can I recommend this? Not really, the soundtrack and world can only carry so much. Eventually, the back will break, and the negatives will rear its ugly head.

Edited on by MsJubilee

The Harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.

I'm currently playing Assassin's Creed: Revelations & Watch Dogs 2

Switch Friend Code: SW-5827-3728-4676 | 3DS Friend Code: 3738-0822-0742

Tyranexx

Limbo (Switch)

Short game, short write-up. I picked this up in the sale that ran earlier this month along with its spiritual successor, Inside. This was an interesting puzzle-platformer with an amazingly creepy atmosphere that foreshadows what would come after it.

Positives

  • The game's atmosphere is well-executed. The main character of Limbo is a white-eyed, dark-silhouetted boy navigating the traps, perils, and puzzles of the murky purgatory he finds himself in. The whole game is a mix of varying hues of black, white, and all the gray in between.
  • Many puzzles are clever and have interesting/tricky solutions. I had to look up a couple of solutions due to a combo of the late hour or multiple failures. XD These were all later in the game. Your character will die grisly deaths. Repeatedly.
  • There is some replay value by trying to hunt down glowing "eggs" in various environments. These are often out of the way and/or don't seem to be easily accessible.
  • The game runs excellently in both handheld and docked mode.

Neutral

  • The sound direction is decent on the whole and supports the atmosphere well, but none of the bits really stand out to me either.
  • Checkpoints, while nice, also ensure that if you continue failing, you're stuck in a grisly loop of death over and over again until you finally succeed. Some of the platforming and execution has to be pretty precise at times.
  • I'd argue a few sections require almost too much platforming precision - there was more than one case where I knew what needed to happen but couldn't quite get the timing right.

Negatives/Nitpicks

  • $9.99 isn't a bad price at all for a game, but the running time for this one is only about three hours. I highly suggest waiting for a sale like yours truly if you equate price to mileage.

Limbo is certainly a good game for its time and is a great foreshadowing of what was to come. It's challenging, atmospheric, and easily recommended for those who don't mind a little melancholy and the imminent threat of a gruesome death should the player not figure out a solution correctly or in time. It's a short game, so it may be best to wait for a sale before picking it up. I also suggest following advice that I found, which is to play this before Inside as the other game allegedly improves on this one in every way.

Currently playing: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (Switch)

"Love your neighbor as yourself." Mark 12:31

NintendoByNature

It's heen a while since I've posted here, but i just finished shantae and the pirates curse. @Ralizah I can see why you hold the series in such high regard. I had a great time with it. Reminds me of a Nintendo game thru and thru. Felt like I was playing a super Nintendo game the entire playthrough. It's funny, quirky, tough, but not soul crushing. Awesome boss battles and cool special items to find in dungeons. It felt like a mix of zelda and metroid, so if you like either of those franchises youll be into this. Solid start to the series for me and I'll check out other entries in the near future.

NintendoByNature

gcunit

MsJubilee wrote:

Just recently finished Watch Dogs 1. I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it...

... Can I recommend this? Not really, the soundtrack and world can only carry so much. Eventually, the back will break, and the negatives will rear its ugly head.

Wtf?

While I won't argue with the faults you mention, every game has faults, and I personally found the game fun enough to recommend to anyone. Only wish Watch_Dogs 2 would come to Switch /stuckrecord

Edited on by gcunit

You guys had me at blood and semen.

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My Nintendo: gcunit | Nintendo Network ID: gcunit

Ralizah

@NintendoByNature Fantastic! Did you get the true ending?

Currently Playing: Advance Wars 1 + 2: Re- Boot Camp (NS)

NintendoByNature

@Ralizah lol no. In typical NBN fashion I just went straight for the big bad and only had 10 black magic. When I got to the gravestone( final island) and pirate master ended up dipping, i was like WTF? Then shantae said I should find all those BM and I was like " oh no.." I was only passively looking for them. I started to get worried I needed all them to even face him but i went back to scuttle town and started looking for them 1 by 1.

Admittedly, I had no idea where he was supposed to be. So I figured I would just look for more BM. I started in that hard as nails gauntlet that was so relentlessly unforgiving in scuttle town haha. Got all the way to the top of the tower and I was saying to myself, there better be like 15 of these cacklebats or I'm gonna flip. And low and behold, there he was! I beat him pretty easily considering I had tons of auto potions and super monster milk. I could kind of tell things would have gone different if i had all 20 BM by the way NPCs were talking..but ive never been a completionist so I wasn't worried about it. And honestly, if I had gotten that far and the game tossed a "now you need to find all 20 or you can't proceed to pirate master," it would have really ruined the experience that i loved to that point.

Edited on by NintendoByNature

NintendoByNature

Ralizah

@NintendoByNature Yeah, I've never been a fan of games blocking you from beating the game until you find X number of things. Metroid Prime did that, and that's the biggest reason I don't consider that game to be one of the best releases on the GameCube.

Realistically, it only changes a few minutes at the very end.

I'm glad you enjoyed the game.

Currently Playing: Advance Wars 1 + 2: Re- Boot Camp (NS)

NintendoByNature

@Ralizah yep me neither. I typically consider it a design flaw when a game tosses that at you.

I never played MP yet but i will eventually. And I'm glad you're telling me that ahead of playing the game though.

NintendoByNature

kkslider5552000

eh, the Metroid Prime 1 isn't a big deal, there's like 2 or 3 that you need to backtrack to get to really, and I think they're all in the same area.

Prime 2, now that's a different story.

Non-binary, demiguy, making LPs, still alive

Megaman Legends 2 Let's Play!:
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MsJubilee

kkslider5552000 wrote:

eh, the Metroid Prime 1 isn't a big deal, there's like 2 or 3 that you need to backtrack to get to really, and I think they're all in the same area.

Prime 2, now that's a different story.

I might be alone here. But I thought the trilogy was okay. I wasn't blow away like most people were.

The Harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.

I'm currently playing Assassin's Creed: Revelations & Watch Dogs 2

Switch Friend Code: SW-5827-3728-4676 | 3DS Friend Code: 3738-0822-0742

Ralizah

@kkslider5552000 Nah. If you don't naturally find the artifacts before the end of the game, you have to backtrack through the entire game looking for twelve or so objects. Granted, a few can be collected as a natural part of the game's progression, but most of them are hidden from the player.

That would be fine for an optional objective, but to make it a requirement to beat the game? Completely destroyed the pacing, and made the last several hours a royal pain (I guess you could just look them up in a walkthrough, but that, in itself, is a testament to bad game design when it makes you think: "maybe I should cheat").

@MsJubilee The Metroid Prime games did a great job of translating the basic gameplay of Metroid into 3D, but the first two have design issues that harm the experience. No idea RE: Metroid Prime 3, as I've yet to play it.

Edited on by Ralizah

Currently Playing: Advance Wars 1 + 2: Re- Boot Camp (NS)

kkslider5552000

Ralizah wrote:

Nah. If you don't naturally find the artifacts before the end of the game, you have to backtrack through the entire game looking for twelve or so objects. Granted, a few can be collected as a natural part of the game's progression, but most of them are hidden from the player.

When you first go to the Artifact Temple (which you can get to when you get the double jump right near your ship), you're able to scan the things to get clues on where the others are (which are easy enough to figure out if you do a quick check on the room names on the map in the area they say they are in). Granted, you need to get some more to get ALL the clues, but you do end up naturally going back to Tallon Overworld a couple of times before the endgame. Like my first time playing the game when it was new there might've been one extra I missed, but otherwise I always only have the Phendrana ones left during playthroughs.

besides, the real worst part of a first time Prime playthrough are the Chozo ghosts :V

Primes 2's much worse in hindsight regardless, because I'm pretty certain you HAVE to wait until near endgame to get the ability to collect either most or ALL the things to unlock the final boss area.

though none of this is half as bad as the triforce quest in wind waker, that part kills the game in hindsight, thank god for the hd remake

Non-binary, demiguy, making LPs, still alive

Megaman Legends 2 Let's Play!:
LeT's PlAy MEGAMAN LEGENDS 2 < Link to LP

Cotillion

Ralizah wrote:

If you don't naturally find the artifacts before the end of the game, you have to backtrack through the entire game looking for twelve or so objects. Granted, a few can be collected as a natural part of the game's progression, but most of them are hidden from the player.

That would be fine for an optional objective, but to make it a requirement to beat the game? Completely destroyed the pacing, and made the last several hours a royal pain (I guess you could just look them up in a walkthrough, but that, in itself, is a testament to bad game design when it makes you think: "maybe I should cheat").

@Ralizah I remember reading an interview with one of the developers at Retro about this in Prime 2. He explained that they had basically finished the game, but were unsatisfied that you get to the point where you have the Light Suit and basically really nothing much to do with it, so they tacked on this awful scavenger hunt to make the player use the suit (by using it to traverse the light shafts to aid in the scavenger hunt). There wasn't really much thought out into it besides making the player use the suit.

Prime 1 wasn't nearly as bad, as you can get most of those naturally, you can get the clues pretty early on, so you can search as you progress the game. May need to backtrack at endgame for a couple, but its not bad enough to harm the experience, IMO. Prime 2's hunt is awful and really does harm the experience of an otherwise pretty solid game. As @kkslider5552000 pointed out, you can't even begin searching for them until pretty well the end. Even without the developer interview, it was pretty clear they just tacked that on as filler and no one gave it much thought.

Cotillion

Ralizah

Shantae and the Seven Sirens

Platform: Nintendo Switch (also on: PS4, Xbox One, Windows PC, iOS)

Time to completion: 10 hours

Untitled

Shantae and the Seven Sirens is the fifth Shantae game to release in the series since the Game Boy Color original in 2002. As in other games in the series, you play as the titular half-genie Shantae, who, this time, is invited out to the tropical Paradise Island as a guest of honor for a Half-Genie Festival. When her fellow half-genies are kidnapped before festivities can kick off, however, Shantae takes it upon herself to find the missing girls and inadvertently stumbles upon a larger mystery involving the history and nature of the island itself, encountering old rivals and new enemies along the way.

As a brief bit of background: the first three Shantae games connected narratively and formed a trilogy of sorts. The fourth game, Shantae: Half Genie Hero, functioned as both a soft reboot of the narrative as well as a pretty dramatic shift in game design, abandoning the free exploration of previous entries for a mostly linear adventure. This shift in design didn't sit well with a number of fans (including yours truly), so I was happy to see Seven Sirens not only return to a more exploratory form of gameplay, but actually draw primarily from the very first Shantae game as its primary source of inspiration. While the first three games all focus on exploring environments and using transformations or tools to access new areas (heck, even Half-Genie Hero features this, to a limited extent), the series drifted away from the connected world of the GBC original, which featured multiple towns and themed dungeons, over time. The second game, Risky's Revenge, was a smaller-in-scale DSiWare title that didn't feature multiple towns or elaborate dungeons, and the third game, Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, featured a more contained hub world design, where the player would venture out from one town to multiple, elaborate themed islands. Seven Sirens marks a reversal of this trend toward increased linearity, and features a fully inter-connected world map in the style of the original Shantae, along with the return of multiple towns and more elaborate, themed dungeons.

Untitled

The most immediate change from previous Shantae titles is in the setting. This is the first title in the series to not take place at least partially in Sequin Land, and the iconic Scuttle Town is abandoned as well in favor of fully focusing on Paradise Island. This gives the game a chance to focus on crafting an entirely unique new environment, which it mostly does. It was interesting to see an entire Shantae game with a tropical/aquatic theme to it.

In addition, this entry has seen a complete revamp of the animal transformation system that has featured in almost every Shantae game (except for Pirate's Curse, where she temporarily loses her half-genie powers and is forced to rely on pirate gear from her long-time pirate arch-rival, Risky Boots) to date. In previous games, Shantae would have to stop and perform transformation dances to assume different animal forms in order to progress through environments. While fans often tend to love this aspect of the series, many felt like it slowed down the pace of exploration overall and were spoiled by the comparatively lightning fast gameplay of Pirate's Curse, where pirate gear can be instantly used without needing to interrupt the flow of gameplay. WayForward clearly took this feedback to heart and crafted a clever have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too solution to the problem of transformations in this game. Via the use of "fusion coins" that you gain for rescuing and completing a task for each of the other kidnapped half-genies you rescue, you can now initiate animal transformations at will, temporarily, based on the use of context-sensitive button presses. For example, the newt transformation can be instantly achieved by air dashing toward a wall, when you hit the wall, you'll be in your animal form, but when you feet touch the floor, you turn back into half-genie form. While this sacrifices the ability to wander around in your transformed state (which there is usually no real reason to do), it allows this new game to preserve the iconic animal transformations that are part of the series' core identity while also allowing for the more fluid and dynamic gameplay introduced in Pirate's Curse. Shantae still has her dances, but they're reserved for separate magical ability now, such as revealing hidden platforms or filling the screen with electricity.

Untitled

I'd briefly like to mention that I love how, in another aspect that's similar to the original, WF brought back a sort of dancing minigame to earn money.

(this video completely destroys the aspect ratio of the GBC original, but it serves its purpose)

The distinguishing gimmick introduced in Seven Sirens. though, comes in the form of monster cards. When you kill an enemy, there's a random chance that it will drop a collectible card. Depending on the requirements (some cards are usable when you collect only one; others require the player to find several duplicates before they can be used), you'll be able to equip these cards to Shantae and boost one of her stats or abilities. These can vary from increasing climbing speed when transformed, to boosting the power of certain types of magic, to allowing Shantae to auto-smash pots she runs across on her journey. A handful of monster cards are more powerful and are only obtainable by trading items to obtain them. While I liked this extra wrinkle that was added to the gameplay, the game is easy enough that it never mattered too much, and the monster cards don't really drastically change things up enough to make different card load-outs feel like they deeply impacted the gameplay.

Untitled

And, to segue quickly into my biggest complaint about the game, Seven Sirens is too easy. Partially because of the way the game throws food at you constantly when you're killing enemies. In previous games, if you ran out of potions, you'd have to tediously farm enemies for heart drops. In this game, though, you're always stacked with various sort of food that heal a TON of the player's health, which means there's never really reason for the player to die. New Game Plus mode (no idea why it's called this, considering nothing seems to carry over; really, it's just magic mode from previous games) tries to balance this by making Shantae take more damage from enemies, which definitely leads to more deaths early on, but it doesn't really address the underlying balance issue with food drops.

Additionally, the boss encounters in this game, while not mind-numbingly easy, don't really feel particularly threatening, either. Partially because you'll always be stacked with healing items, and partially because there's nothing particularly brutal about them in terms of their patterns and attacks. I will say, though, and this is leading into a broader discussion, I LOVE how bosses are introduced in this game. Seven Sirens, in a series first, makes use of fully-animated video clips throughout the game (akin to ones seen in JRPGs like Persona 4 or Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete), and it does a lot to make the game feel more... premium? A lot of care has gone into the presentation of this game, and that extends to this element as well. Before encountering a boss, you'll be treated, each time, to a short video clip showing off Shantae's first interaction with her enemy. They're both fun to watch and do a great job of building a sense of anticipation for the coming fight.

Untitled

The character models and backdrops in this game all look quite sharp, and, especially in handheld mode, Seven Sirens is a stunning little indie. The game also seems to run at a perfect 60fps all the time. Musically, the game is a bit less impressive, thanks to the departure of the series composer Jake Kaufman for this entry. His work is iconic, and it's really noticeable when that particular brand of Shantae music fans have been used to hearing from game to game is missing. The compositions in Seven Sirens are not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but I can't help but notice the lack of his peppy, middle-eastern inspired tracks, which fit well with a series that had a half-genie as its main character. There were also a number of tracks that were nearly identical from game to game, which helped to give the series its sense of identity. What we get here is... different, although definitely still trying to sound like Shantae music. It's pretty good, actually, but I do hope Kaufman returns for the next entry.

What particularly took getting used to was the new boss theme, which had been the same or extremely similar from the GBC original on.

Compare:

vs.
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Certain pieces also seem to call back to older, more iconic Shantae series themes, such as Armor Town
which rather reminds me of the Burning Town themes from previous games
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The new aural diversity does lead to some interesting new tracks, though. Like this atmospheric piece
-
Overall, I'm fairly happy with this game, and I think it's a big return to form for the series. Honestly, this is what I wanted out of Half-Genie Hero to begin with. With that said, putting aside the difficulty complaints, it's still lacking some of the humor and character interactions from the original trilogy. An unusually large number of new characters are introduced in Seven Sirens, but I felt like the game didn't really do enough with them. A lot of great new designs, but they're almost all fairly incidental when it comes to character interactions or the bigger picture of the plot. The dialogue here is as snarky as ever, of course, but there are definitely fewer laugh out loud moments, and I miss that sense of development plot-wise, however rudimentary it might have been, from game to game. Still, it's absolutely one of the better titles in the series (top three, for sure), and most of my hang-ups come from the perspective of someone who is a long-time fan and is possibly looking at previous games with nostalgia goggles on. This is the best new game WayForward has developed since Pirate's Curse in 2013, and one of the better Metroidvania-style platformers on the Switch overall.

Untitled

Currently Playing: Advance Wars 1 + 2: Re- Boot Camp (NS)

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