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[Pejo]

About the game​

Shantae is back in an adventure 20 years in the making! The nefarious pirate Risky Boots has a "groundbreaking" new plan that will leave Sequin Land spinning — by rotating the continent, she can move any town right to the coast for easy plundering! As Shantae, turn the tectonic tables on Risky by taking control of the land itself: shift, twist, navigate, and explore by swapping between mix-and-match multilayered levels! Hair-whip and belly-dance your way through scrambled lands, misplaced towns, monster-filled crypts, and daunting labyrinths. Six creature transformations, fierce boss battles, and a 4-player versus mode await!

Key Features:

• Discover the lost chapter of the Shantae saga, fully restored and released after 20 years!
• Fight and explore using your hair-whipping ability, magic items, and belly-dance transformations (including monkey, elephant, crab, and more)!
• Spin and shift Front Yard and Back Yard playfields to create new routes and solve puzzles!
• Visit towns, battle through labyrinths, purchase upgrades, find collectables, and meet with friends like Rottytops, Sky, and Bolo!
• For the first time ever in a Shantae game, four players can compete in Battle Mode! (Controllers required.)

Release Date:

August 19, 2025

Platforms:

Switch(2)
Playstation
Xbox
Steam
Game Boy Advance

Screenshots:

Deluxe Edition Available:
(It's just costumes)

Reviews:

TBA​

 

[KiteGr]

Who knew that I'll be buying a GBA game in 2025...

 

[Pejo]

Just put a few hours into it, I really like it! I thought the overlay art would be kinda tacky with the older pixel aesthetic, but it just kinda works and gives you some flavor images for the story and dialogue. The game itself is fantastic so far. Amazing what creative devs can do with 4 buttons and 16 bit limitations.

I just beat the 1st and 2nd bosses (well 2nd was probably a miniboss) and have 2 dance forms now, Monkey and Crab. Exploration feels good, but I do miss the map from later games. It's tough remembering where everything is when you have to backtrack to things after you get new abilities.

It feels nice to have puzzles that aren't just going through the motions and gameplay that demands a little more from the player. Not that the game is hard or anything, but it's an enjoyable difficulty where it keeps you interested.

I have the game downloading on my Deck right now, I'll try it out there tomorrow to see how that goes. Super happy with it overall so far though. Great game.

 

[vodka-bull]

I know LRG ran out of Vita cartridges, but they could just release it on the digital store, right?

 

[El Muerto]

I just started playing the series for the first time a few days ago. Started with Risky's Revenge Directors Cut and i'm having fun with it. Perfect for the steam deck.

 

[sigmaZ]

 

[Pejo]

So I've put probably 6-7 hours total into the game, 3 on my gaming PC and the rest on the Steam Deck. It plays really well and looks great on Deck. I almost never prefer games on a handheld these days, but this one I kinda might. The pixel art just looks better on a smaller screen.

Anyways, still really enjoying the puzzles, but the second major boss wasn't as creative as the first. Some of the jokes are actually landing for me too - rare for a video game. I had a chuckle when the kids at the museum ended up getting switched to a giant half naked statue lady. Their comments were pretty funny.

 

[Magic Carpet]

TIL a GBA game requires Direct X 12 to run.

 

[Skeptical]

I think Shantae is my modern day Mega Man. Mega Man on the NES was so samey between games that by all rights I should be annoyed and disgusted by the lack of innovation, but the games are just fun enough that it doesn't matter. Same with Shantae. I should be refusing to buy this game out of principle. I should be demanding they do something new to make it worth my time. But jumping around in this absurd world and whipping hair is just too much fun. So on the whole, I'm enjoying it and wanting to play it non-stop. I don't feel it's necessarily top notch Shantae, but even below average Shantae is still good. So I guess this is the Mega Man 6 of the series.

Some specific thoughts:

• This background shifting mechanic is very disorienting. It doesn't help that I typically can't dedicate my time to completing an entire area at once, so I get disoriented coming back to it and trying to remember if I've been in the caves or not. I know this is still a GBA game, but I wish something could have been done to visually distinguish basic caves from each other. I found myself going in the same ones over and over and not certain if I got them all (definitely missed a certain transformation cave for a long time). The fact that the levels loop around doesn't help either.
• There's a lot of fetch questing. I realize that is a staple of the series and I typically don't mind it. But if I have to take Sky's taxi to a place just for 10 seconds, I wish the taxi animations would be a lot shorter.
• This is probably a Switch-specific issue, but they mapped the A button to be an alternate magic button, but as usual it's also the confirmation button (or at least an option for confirmation). So I'm accidentally using magic almost every time I end a text box. Not a huge issue, not even enough for me to investigate if I can change it, but it irks me nonetheless.
• The return of Zelda-style dungeons feels good. I know Seven Sirens essentially worked them into the Metroidvania map as best they could, but the feel of having them completely separate is better I think. It's very unique among Metroidvanias (Ori and the Blind Forest is the only other one that comes to mind) and as such I like having it as a distinct feature. After being nonexistent in Half Genie and downplayed in Seven Sirens, it's good to be back.
• Is it just me or does it seem kind of short?

Definitely not topping Pirate's Curse for me. Maybe not even Risky's Revenge. But I'll still take it.

 

[dave_d]

Just curious is there much of a difference between the version? My tendency would be to just get it for the Switch 2, I'd expect it to be largely the same on Steam and PS5 but I'm curious since I haven't heard anyone say one way or another.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

A fun little game, as per usual with Shantae. It can't have the production values of HGH or Pirate's Curse, of course, but it looks very good for a GBA game.

It's amazing how this series went through the war against good-looking game characters virtually unnoticed. There's some generous fan service everywhere you turn - even the non-exactly-human girls can make one feel… funny. And the amount of innuendo is off the charts. My jaw dropped at that dialogue in the throne room.
They really nailed the humour in this one. That baby ball skit made me laugh out loud And I really didn't expect that finale for Lava Town.

The dungeons don't really require a map. They're pretty contained, and their design is leagues ahead than Risky's Revenge's, where every dungeon was very bland and confusing.
Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the main gimmick of the game. The shifting dual-layer areas are super confusing. Especially the second one, with no less than six switches to find. The maps looping on themselves also makes it quite hard to remember which caves you already entered. It's fine for a simple game like this, but it's not exactly fun.

The moment-to-moment gameplay is always good, but I didn't really care for Shantae's odd jumping physics, or the presence of some mobs that require an insane amount of hits to fall. The transformation controls are overly sensitive, too - I can't count the number of times I wanted to absorb drops and transformed into something at the slightest touch on the Dpad. And magic is still an afterthought, rarely being effective enough as to make fights really quicker.

It took me slightly more than 5 hours to finish the game at 91%. I can easily imagine speedrunners going bananas with this game.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Hmm, there's something I don't get here.

I beat the game again. Found all the squids, bought every item, traded with all 3 wolves… and yet my score is 98%? What could I be missing here?