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Shantae and the Seven Sirens (Apple Arcade, now out on PC/NSW/PS4/ONE)


Meta77

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I mean as some said for a INDIE studio the fact they were to get this animated by Trigger is big news. Even more so most shantae fans on twitter are loving it. Had they tried getting backers to animated something longer i doubt would have done well this late. Had they been a AAA studio then yes I would want a near 2 minute opening.

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1 hour ago, StaticMania said:

What animation is there looks good, so...

Apart from that clip of Shantae running through the town. She's animated and the rest of the scene is static. It looks pretty bad there. But that's really the only instance.

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All i know is she better be in smash. That damn window teasing all us shantae fans on twitter rofl

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3 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

All i know is she better be in smash. That damn window teasing all us shantae fans on twitter rofl

I think it's either a coincidence, or the devs acknowledging the fact that she's a spirit. There's still nothing disproving the theory that Spirits are decomfirmed from being DLC.

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I quite like the intro.  The low budget admittedly sort of adds a bit of 90's anime charm to it, but I mean yeah, ideally i do wish it could be better.  But for what it is, it's quite nice and very impressive for an non-crowdfunded indie title.

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The only part of the intro that bothers me is the weird scrolling slideshow of her waking up and looking out her window etc.  It went by too fast for me to parse what was even happening until I'd watched a couple of extra times.  Embracing the slideshow and using flashes to cut between each panel would've made it a lot clearer, the fact that it scrolls from moment to moment just messes up my ability to interpret the scene for some reason.  It's definitely a shame that it's only 30 seconds long, but still, a cool thing to have.

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23 hours ago, Meta77 said:

All i know is she better be in smash. That damn window teasing all us shantae fans on twitter rofl

Her window always looked like that.

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No Smash teasing here, no matter how much you can hope for it to be one, as it’s a completely unintentional tease.

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Sir i will ask you to let me dream. Even if its a false dream. I will dream. her window has always had more a cross look to it still

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On 7/7/2019 at 1:20 AM, Blue Blood said:

You're both wrong.

 

Welldamn that's going to upset some switch owners

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I think the bigger shock would be the thought of the X Box One actually having an exclusive game in this day and age.

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So, I've been on a bit of a Shantae series binge leading up to 5's release, since this is the first time I've ever played and finished the games, bar a abandoned halfway run of Pirate's Curse. With that said - I just now finished a 100% speedrun of Half-Genie Hero, which concludes the run, bar Pirate Queen's Curse and Friends to the End. That said, while I'll leave my thoughts on the games I finished 100% to a later post, I did want to basically give a rundown of what I personally want for Shantae 5. 

-Total rehaul of transformations is easily my biggest want. Pirate's Curse had the right idea with Risky's gear, allowing you to use it as extensions of Shantae's moveset at any point and without any pause is easily it's strongest aspect. The game starts out as your pretty standard affair and gets really wild as you keep getting more and more gear, where by the end-point of the game, you have this wonderfully kinetic and always flowing platformer that heavily rewards using the gear to keep your momentum going, much like a Sonic game. Words do not describe how much fun it was using all of the gear on a speedrun Pirate Mode playthrough because of how well everything flowed together.

If we can't get Risky's gear back, what I would love is if transformations were revamped so that Shantae could instantly transform into them at the press of a button and keep flow going. For example, if you could press X mid-air to transform into Harpie form, get an additional triple jump from using the form, and then use something like Monkey Bullet with another button command to keep your speed going horizontally, or something like that. 

I might be missing the point of the transformations, I understand, but honestly, I find that many people vastly prefer how Pirate's Curse handled expanding Shantae's abilities and I absolutely agree. It gets really tedious to have to keep landing to swap out transformations when PC made it so much easier, and fun to mix and match abilities.

-Keep all of Half-Genie Hero's user-friendly features - easily the biggest positive HGH has over PC IMO. I loved so many of the things added to make life easier. The Warp Dance makes it so much easier to backtrack, the save pop-up for going between every area, just general stuff like that. It took the user-friendly aspect of Pirate's Curse that I loved where it laid out every item in a given island, and made it easy to know if you're missing something. That said - 

-Please go back to Pirate Curse's collectables. I don't care if it's heart squids, or heart holders, or whatever, but just make it a simple and concise 2-3 collectables overall instead of the total bloated mess that was Half-Genie Hero's collectables.

-Keep the art-style of HGH and keep improving it. I love the pixel-art of Pirate's Curse, but Half-Genie Hero's presentation is far and wide the best of the whole series, and frankly a standard I would be putting on 2D games from now on. It is absolutely fantastic.

-Goes without saying - a killer soundtrack. Pirate's Curse OST was already rocking, and then Half-Genie Hero just bumped up to eleven, it may just be one of my most favourite game OSTs of all time. Please keep the trend going for Shantae 5.

That's about it for what I want at least, based off having played Risky's Revenge, Pirate's Curse, and HGH.

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1 hour ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

-Total rehaul of transformations is easily my biggest want. Pirate's Curse had the right idea with Risky's gear, allowing you to use it as extensions of Shantae's moveset at any point and without any pause is easily it's strongest aspect. The game starts out as your pretty standard affair and gets really wild as you keep getting more and more gear, where by the end-point of the game, you have this wonderfully kinetic and always flowing platformer that heavily rewards using the gear to keep your momentum going, much like a Sonic game. Words do not describe how much fun it was using all of the gear on a speedrun Pirate Mode playthrough because of how well everything flowed together.

If we can't get Risky's gear back, what I would love is if transformations were revamped so that Shantae could instantly transform into them at the press of a button and keep flow going. For example, if you could press X mid-air to transform into Harpie form, get an additional triple jump from using the form, and then use something like Monkey Bullet with another button command to keep your speed going horizontally, or something like that. 

I might be missing the point of the transformations, I understand, but honestly, I find that many people vastly prefer how Pirate's Curse handled expanding Shantae's abilities and I absolutely agree. It gets really tedious to have to keep landing to swap out transformations when PC made it so much easier, and fun to mix and match abilities.

It's an honestly fascinating problem that WayForward developed a deliberate thematically one-off gameplay gimmick for Pirate's Curse, but they made it too well and it accidentally plays better than the main series.  I don't think they can possibly make "Shantae is a pirate now" the premise of the whole series without betraying what came before, but it's going to be very interesting to see what they can take forward.  For example, if the dances become instantaneous, are they really still dances?

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12 hours ago, FFWF said:

It's an honestly fascinating problem that WayForward developed a deliberate thematically one-off gameplay gimmick for Pirate's Curse, but they made it too well and it accidentally plays better than the main series.  I don't think they can possibly make "Shantae is a pirate now" the premise of the whole series without betraying what came before, but it's going to be very interesting to see what they can take forward.  For example, if the dances become instantaneous, are they really still dances?

Being fair, I'd argue that dances have become less and less important as time goes on. You went from being able to do it on command in Risky's Revenge to not having dances at all in Pirate's Curse, to having only one dance in Half-Genie Hero, and said dance has an upgrade to speed it up to get to your forms quicker, so honestly, I wouldn't mind. The original Shantae featured dancing due to the belly-dancing minigame for gems, if what I've seen of the game is right, then it was reduced more and more with every game.

So honestly, if it comes to losing the dances fully for the sake of a better gameplay experience, I'm all in.

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Dances lost their purpose after the first game, since in that one you had to manually input Shantae's moves in order to transform. I can tolerate the dances in the first two games fine since there were so few of them. Pirate's Curse is a definite improvement, but HGH's problem is that there are just too many transformations so it's a hassle even if you don't unfavorably compare it to PC.

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Just put the dancing in as a minigame or use it for some other purpose, like simple key puzzles (like ocarina songs in Zelda or something).  Something cleverer than that as a proper tertiary mechanic would be cool but I'd settle for the former.

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Dancing is such a pivotal part of Shantae's character, but it's a scrappy mechanic right now. They could definitely add some very basic attack combos that weave together hair-whipping and dancing. Functionally no different from what already exists (unless they wanted to deepen the combat gameplay), but different animations to add character.

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I don't really mind too much the break in flow that the dancing causes when the games are Metroidvanias that encourage taking your time and exploring.  In that case, I think the transformations being relatively slow is a good way to encourage you to think your options through.  So I kind of like how HGH handled it.

But... the problem is HGH is a much more linear game with a lot more frantic moments than, say, Risky's Revenge.  So the slow paced transformations don't mesh well with the actual game.

I don't have a problem with the idea of streamlining the transformations to be smoother in order to have the best of both worlds.  But I do feel that, even though I 100% agree that Pirate's Curse is the best game in the series to the detriment of the other titles, it hasn't made the core gameplay of the series any less engaging for me and that I do see the logic behind the design philosophy.  Just that I don't necessarily agree with the execution as it pertains to the games in question.

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1 hour ago, Tara said:

I don't really mind too much the break in flow that the dancing causes when the games are Metroidvanias that encourage taking your time and exploring.  In that case, I think the transformations being relatively slow is a good way to encourage you to think your options through.

Rarely does it feel like there are any options for the player to think through, though. If you have to climb something, you turn into the monkey. If you have to break something, you turn into the elephant. If you have to go underwater, you turn into the crab, etc. For everything else, you're just plain old Shantae, because the levels were designed around her, and every other form either has no viable attack, poor mobility, or a combination thereof. They could honestly make the dancing itself take half as long as it does in Half-Genie Hero without addressing the core of what's wrong with it as a mechanic, IMO. 

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It takes you literally 2 seconds to dance d transform in hgh. And once you learn what forms where it's a simple speed dance and bam your transformed.  Hardly brakes the pacing and she's a belly dancer. Heck her new intro opens with a belly dance. PC was good but story wise it wont be back most likely unless a unlock fun costume

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1 hour ago, Meta77 said:

It takes you literally 2 seconds to dance d transform in hgh. And once you learn what forms where it's a simple speed dance and bam your transformed.  Hardly brakes the pacing and she's a belly dancer. Heck her new intro opens with a belly dance. PC was good but story wise it wont be back most likely unless a unlock fun costume

It only takes 2 seconds, but when it needs to be used every 5 seconds... It's a page breaker. Part of the issue is the sheer number of transformations and how context specific they all are. 

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When does it require you to do it that many times. I speed run this for fun and the only section back to back is hypnos device and tinkerbat factory requiring three forms at most. Speed dance the forms. I can cycle each form and out in total I know less than 11 secs at the most

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1 hour ago, Meta77 said:

It takes you literally 2 seconds to dance d transform in hgh. And once you learn what forms where it's a simple speed dance and bam your transformed.  Hardly brakes the pacing and she's a belly dancer. Heck her new intro opens with a belly dance. PC was good but story wise it wont be back most likely unless a unlock fun costume

It only takes 2 seconds, but when it needs to be used every 5 seconds... It's a pace breaker. Part of the issue is the sheer number of transformations and how context specific they all are. 

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17 hours ago, Solly said:

Rarely does it feel like there are any options for the player to think through, though. If you have to climb something, you turn into the monkey. If you have to break something, you turn into the elephant. If you have to go underwater, you turn into the crab, etc. For everything else, you're just plain old Shantae, because the levels were designed around her, and every other form either has no viable attack, poor mobility, or a combination thereof. They could honestly make the dancing itself take half as long as it does in Half-Genie Hero without addressing the core of what's wrong with it as a mechanic, IMO. 

That's not necessarily untrue, but I don't think it inherently invalidates what I'm saying.  The transformation time doesn't consistently conflict with the pace of the older games the same way it does HGH.  Though I will admit it's not the most fully realized mechanic, either, and that the level design isn't exactly stellar enough to warrant it.

4 hours ago, Meta77 said:

It takes you literally 2 seconds to dance d transform in hgh. And once you learn what forms where it's a simple speed dance and bam your transformed.  Hardly brakes the pacing and she's a belly dancer. Heck her new intro opens with a belly dance. PC was good but story wise it wont be back most likely unless a unlock fun costume

I don't really agree with this, either, though.  There's a reason why Risky's Revenge and Half-Genie Hero both sell upgrades that speed up the process and make it easier to transform.  Because they know that the default transformation speed kind of sucks.

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14 minutes ago, Tara said:

There's a reason why Risky's Revenge and Half-Genie Hero both sell upgrades that speed up the process and make it easier to transform.

This is not a thing not a lot of games seem to get right.

And it seems that an upgrade like this should either be the default speed or not exist for Shantae.

The point of an upgrade like that is to decrease the risk of using it, not to just make it less tedious.

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