This was the first of the Shantae games I had played way back in early-mid 2018, when I had been randomly compelled to try out the series and became her number one advocate for a Smash Bros. inclusion, which... :(... but oh well. I think this is easily the one everyone should start with, as it's not as frustrating as the first game, yet nowhere near the polish and style of the later entries. It's a valuable playthrough if you're hoping to get into the series yourself, but I wouldn't blame anyone for skipping it to play Pirate's Curse instead.

Admittedly, Risky's Revenge is not quite as good as I had remembered as a kid. Dungeons are all pretty bland in design, sluggish to traverse, and the world outside of those dungeons can be rather barren. Shantae herself doesn't control the best either, her hair attacks always carry the long windup and cooldown whether she's fully upgraded or not. It's not terrible, especially for being only her second (...third?) outing, but it's not easy to come back to after playing the rest of her series. I couldn't help but think about how much more I'd be enjoying Pirate's Curse or Half-Genie Hero throughout my playthrough.

i'll also admit that i tried to play the first game before this and gave up after a short while, so hey, Risky's Revenge is definitely a fine improvement.

Sights & Sounds
- I really liked the detailed 16-bit-ish pixel art styling of the characters and backgrounds. The set dressing really is top-notch, full of vibrant colors and small touches to make the environments feel distinct and varied. Same goes for the characters; I liked how well the features of the character portraits were captured by the sprites
- Speaking of the sprites, I suspect the uneconomical use of anime cleavage explains the popularity of the franchise at least in part. I usually roll my eyes when a game tries to pander to my Y chromosome that hard, but hey, there's no accounting for taste
- One part of the presentation that I was especially impressed by was the music. I don't really know how to describe it other than "90's video game-y". Different pieces here and there reminded me of the music in Super Mario RPG and Tomba

Story & Vibes
- You play as Shantae, the tit-ular half-genie protagonist and protector of Scuttle Town. Things are going well until the pirate Risky Boots swoops in to kidnap your uncle after he gathers the town to show off an artifact from one of his recent expeditions. Shantae has to travel in search of three seals needed to unlock the hidden power of the artifact before Risky Boots can carry out her nefarious plan
- It's a fairly generic video game plotline; just a mish-mash of "collect the macguffins to save the world" and "save the princess" tropes. Clearly, people aren't playing it for the plot
- Vibe-wise, it's playful and fairly silly. Even the dramatic beats come off more as a Sunday morning cartoon than anything actually serious

Playability & Replayability
- But brushing the presentation and and plot a-sideboob, how is the platforming? Fine and mostly competent. I didn't feel like the actual platforming bits offered much challenge
- I did kind of like the depth-flipping mechanic to add another dimension to the world, but it could have been utilized better for puzzle purposes
- The "metroidvania" tag sometimes gets applied to this game, but its not very generous or creative with those elements. During the course of her adventure, Shantae unlocks three animal transformation spells that are necessary for progression. Unfortunately, these don't see much creative use in platforming (just accessing places you couldn't otherwise) and have only limited utility in combat
- Speaking of combat, it's not very exciting. Most enemies can be overcome by whipping them with your hair, so you'll barely notice the spells available in Scuttle Town's shop. The only one I used regularly in the course of the game was the fireball, and it was mostly for activating distant platforms
- There is some annoying enemy design. The section with the mermaid enemies is technically pretty easy; if you go slow, you probably won't ever get hit. But the number of enemies and the range of their attacks means it's way more efficient to just use your i-frames and chug a potion when you reach the end of the screen
- In spite of that litany of complaints, I did enjoy the boss fights. They were a little on the easy side, but I liked the variation of the challenges offered, and the one reused boss fight didn't feel cheap and made sense in context
- I don't think I'll play this one again or retread it for achievements. I hear the gameplay gets better in the sequels, so I'll probably just move on to those

Overall Impressions & Performance
- I never played the GBA prequel to this game, but I don't think this one has really enticed me to see what an even more feature-barren Shantae game would play like
- It ran fine on the Steam Deck, but the text boxes are huge and the font is ugly. Not sure if it would look more proportional on a better resolution

Final Verdict
- 5.5/10. There are more efficient ways to see cleavage on your computer

Despite (or maybe thanks to) the smaller scale, I find this to be a considerable improvement over the original game.

Game is more straightforward in many ways, the warp system no longer requires finding lots of collectibles, dancing transformations are simplified and there's only 3 actual dungeons to go through. What makes this an improvement for me is that it simply feels more focused, I was rarely lost but still found myself exploring as opposed to lost and hoping not to explore areas that will kill me accidentally.

The game is overall easier, but I prefer that over frustratingly hard. Not that Shantae GBC is a super hard game, but its shortcomings from all the padding with long backtracking, increasingly mazey dungeons and tanky enemies being gone makes this one way easier to swallow.

Asides from all of that it doesn't do much different to being a simple platformer with some of metroid, and that was exactly what I expected. It's easy to tell that this game had a rocky development, so it's good that it functions as it should.

One aspect of Metroidvanias that I feel most people don't talk about is the boss fights. In these types of games, bosses are very techinical in a dodge into attack kind of way. Shantae is an interesting case because some bosses (like the squid barron) follow this rule. You have to learn what they do and counter, however other bosses (like the hypno barron) adopt a far less interesting stand there and hit the attack button while occasionally moving around strategy. Also, I'm 74% certain that they just forgot to put a boss in here. They set up the Ammo Barron for a boss fight the best out of all the barrons and then you just... don't fight him.

It's really hard to recommend this on any merit besides Shantae being the cutey 3.14. Aside from the aspect that the game is constantly making her jiggle and bounce, it's kinda easy to get attached to the fact that she is clearly the closest thing to being a normal functioning person in a cartoon world.

The Game? It's there. It's a serviceable explore'em up but it's too zig-zaggy in it's world and has no moments were everything clicks and you get a handle for playing it. It's kinda just all over too quickly. I wouldn't recommend this unless you are really trying to experience the evolution of the franchise and nothing else

4/5 - Very Good

I'm surprised at how much I enjoyed it, this game aged better than I expected!

The positives:

Great controls and tight feel

Excellent level design with a ton of variety and creativty

Simple but engaging and decently challenging combat

A map that benefits from it's small size by being highly memorable

Enjoyable exploration and lots of cool upgrades and extra moves and skills

Some of the next pixel art I've ever seen, absolutely beautiful game

Highly catchy music

A decently enjoyable story

The negatives:

Warp system can feel superfluous, still requiring too much backtracking at times. The lack of a warp point in Scuttle Town is baffling.

Map doesn't show your location inside rooms or even the entry point you came in from making it easy to forget where you even are

Needed a guide a few too many times, although some felt like my fault

Overall came out really liking the game, It's probably one of the best DS games I've played, very impressive for DSiWare.