Oh, Shantae. the hip wiggling, hair swinging, bikini clad half-genie. She’s the star of one of the better animated 2d metroidvania’s out there, and one of the few with a cute sexy aesthetic to the girls. Like seriously, every girl wears a bikini like thing and maybe pants. Half the enemies even follow the pattern. It makes sense, the games take place on mostly tropical islands where actual clothes would suck, but since every character has idle animations and the girls move a lot it’s very nice to look at.

Shantae is probably not a series most would think of when the topic of ecchi comes up, but hell. I wanted to play it so here it is.

Risky’s Revenge

No gallery, no save. I don’t have much to say about Risky’s that I didn’t mention in Seven Sirens or Pirate’s. This is just a shorter game. I don’t like that you have to buy the fire and shock spells to beat it, and I felt loss plenty of times, which is nothing new for this series. I remember someone used Shantae as an example of how to clearly show players where to go versus Metroid Dread and buy do I not agree with that. The back and forth movement through areas via jump pads was cool, sad that got dropped in later entries. It also feels like half a game, which is an observation I’ve seen enough to not bother elaborating on.

Pirate’s Curse

The second game I played in the series, and the third game in it. Pirate’s Curse starts like a week or two after Risky’s Revenge, with a now human Shantae still trying to protect her town from… basically everything.

Pirate’s Curse is generally considered the best game in the series because Shantae doesn’t have her animal forms or dancing, so there is no stop and go to use your movement powers. Playing it, it definitely flows great and Pirate mode, that lets you start with all the movement stuff, is generally a good time. This is the most likely game to have tech issues though, and I was plagued with the most common two. One is the game running on your refresh rate so generally it plays at 5-10 times the normal speed. I switched computers and the game ran fine. The other issue is it wouldn’t accept either of my controllers, so keyboard. I’m bad at playing 2D platformers with a keyboard so I screwed up a bunch. I’m amazed I managed the speed run stuff for unlocks at all.

The game map is broken up into 6 major islands, each with a dungeon and to get into that dungeon you generally go through a mini dungeon and a fetch quest that involves using your newest tool to find something to give an NPC. The town’s people generally give some clues into where you need to go so finding the item isn’t usually that hard. The collectibles are mostly in plain sight with only a few well hidden ones(I think there are three where you need to speed dash into specific walls with no real hints). I do wish the map had doors on it instead of every room just having white dividing lines. You can’t tell what connects to what based on the map, and if you missed a room there is no hint on the map that there is a door you missed.

Plot is that now human Shantae tries to protect town, legal nonsense gets in the way. At home moping, she takes a bath. Turns out though, Shantae doesn’t own a bath tub and it was a trap! Risky drags bathing Shantae to her uncle’s lab where one of Risky’s crew is held in a glass container. It turns into a monster form and Risky figures out that her old pirate captain might be coming back and… tsundere’s Shantae into joining? I know the two get shipped a lot so its easy to read it that way, and Risky really plays out the whole story in a 4d chess kind of way. Like she knows exactly how Shantae is generally going to act and uses that to guide her through and win.

Lewd-wise, I’m pretty sure all the games are generally the same. The biggest lewd part of this game is the Snake Princess outfits all four major female characters end up in. It’s basically a Star Wars reference, I think, and it is kinda glorious. Really wish any of the wallpapers/end screens were the girls in those. Other then that, same old as the rest of the games. Jiggle in models and all females are generally attractive girls in essentially bikini level clothing.

PC save for Shantae- Pirate’s Curse

All wallpapers/end screens unlocked and two 100% saves to the end game for some achievements I guess.

Gameplay: 8/10 Eroticness: 4/10 Story: 5/10

Completion-What it took

I think you have to beat this game four times minimum. You only qualify for one win screen each time. So beat the game without getting the other three, 100% but slow, beat the game in under two hours, and 100% in under three. It’s pretty easy to make that into 2 separate runs. Nothing else matters for 100% to me.

Half genie Hero + DLC

The last Shantae game I care about, since I’m ignoring 1 and the soon to be released Gameboy title is also not worth playing for ecchi so that 1.5 title is also being ignored. Half-Genie Hero is the follow up to Pirate’s Curse. It’s the game in the series with the most overall content, having 7 different game modes that have small gameplay changes to some major ones.

Honestly I don’t expect another pure Shantae game in the current game landscape. At best, we get Shantae in a snow land and she has to wear a parka or they stick to throwback graphics so you have a hard time ogling her. I just can’t expect any western dev team making a bikini clad women as their star in a game anymore unless they are a porn dev or making gacha stuff.

Story-4

Shantae finds that her uncle is doing some suspicious stuff and the next day Risky attacks. The mayor fires Shantae for not preventing attacks and actually kind of drawing them to the town(which he is correct, half of Risky’s attacks are for Shantae not the town itself), and hires a new genie that doesn’t matter. The actual plot is stopping Risky’s dark energy plan that she starts after she steals the uncle’s tech.

Oh, and Shantae’s Mom is referenced a lot. It made me realize that Shantae and Ratchet have very similar character arcs when it comes to parents. The Genie realm is brought up and should be the goal of a future game. One day maybe a bunch of curvy genie’s will be the focus of one of these games. Maybe.

Gameplay-8

Metroidvania like the other games. Lots of going to old levels to find new items to trigger the next level.

The gameplay score is high for the side modes, the core game isn’t anything great. I got lost a few times since the between new level stuff tends to not make any sense(find a mouse transformation to get to a wizard to get some item to visit a new place!) and the village people aren’t great help when it comes to where you need to go to find stuff.

The actual gameplay is old Shantae but faster. She dances for form changes which does mean a lot of stop and go for platforming but compared to Risky’s Revenge its fast enough that it doesn’t make the mechanic bad. Just kind of a hindrance.

The side modes are fun though. It’s just race through the same levels but with new gimmicks or movesets. Risky mode is like playing through Half Genie with Pirate’s Curse items. Friends to the End is character switching thing that finally makes Sky, Bolo, and Rotty do something on screen and fills a gap in the games story. Each of the costume ones gives Shantae a new skill or mechanic like the sun burns her in Beach or switching platforms in cop mode. Each mode is only around 1-2 hours long but is a decent time. Just wished they skipped the bosses or at least remove the third boss who you fight the exact same way for the same amount of time each time you fight the damn thing. That damn worm was easily the worst part of the whole game.

Lewdness-4

Usually Shantae is a busty girl in bikini surrounded by other busty girls in about the same level of clothing. She’s never truly used for ecchi but it’s hard to deny the appeal of running around with a skimpy dressed girl who hip wiggles to turn into other forms. And butt wiggles when crouching.

Each mode has 4 win screens, so the game has 28 images. Most modes four images are just Shantae in a single pose with different versions of the themed outfit, like beach mode’s win screen is different swimsuits or Jammy mode is different pajamas. Main mode is different images for each win screen, only the final win with 100% fast is pervy with Shantae in a full two piece biniki relaxing on the beach. Risky is also just showing off in all four of hers, and Friends to the End is four images that progress to push the guy out of the shot of the three playable characters.

There is a feel of Shantae getting skimpier outfits in harder to get wins screens, but the art and poses really don’t make the shots erotic even if some of the outfits would work. Sex appeal wasn’t the goal generally.

Oh, and Risky mode has a hub screen where she is just taking a bath. So she’s naked after every stage. Even get some cleavage there.

Final Thoughts

As a series, I find Shantae to be a beginner style metroidvania. Healing items are easy to get, spells make the combat a joke, and the vibe is almost the direct opposite of most of the well known games in the genre(so many dark and despressing games in the metroidvania/igavania genre. Or gothic style.). I would never recommend Shantae to a veteran ‘Vania player, but would offer it to someone interested in the genre but is a begginner. Or a kid.

Personally the best parts of each game are the speedruns. Which also strip out the personality of the world and writing as cutscenes have the game timer still running so must be skipped.

Save for Shantae Half-Genie Hero Ultimate

Has all win screens unlocked and saves near the end of the games. Save won’t work on base version of the game with dlcs(I think), has to be Ultimate edition.

Gameplay: 8/10 Eroticness: 4/10 Story: 4/10

Completion: Get all wins screens. This means 100% speed runs of each of the seven modes, sometimes 2 whole runs for just fastest time and fast time with all items.

Seven Sirens

So this is my first Shantae game I’ve played. I came away with an overall good impression though there were some issues I had. Mostly with collectibles and the seer magic, the core gameplay was enjoyable. It’s mostly smooth after you fix the slow attacking at the start, and moving transformations to instant movement actions makes the whole game flow better then I’ve heard Half-Genie and the first two flow. Still has stop and go with the dances, but those are really for puzzle solving and getting collectibles only. You don’t do them very much. There’s a few bits where I wish the progression made more sense or fit with the plot more. Definitely had bits that felt extraneous to the goal of the game. The cards felt a bit pointless to. By the time you have a lot of them, the game is over. They don’t help with speed running unless you get really lucky and you can’t view enemy animations or anything. They give small buffs, but I didn’t really find a use for most of the spell ones. Ball and hair were good enough for everything and they only get one card each. The movement stuff was nice and the end boss cards are powerful but that’s it. The rest are meh.

Anyway, story I guess? Shantae as a series has it’s games take place almost immediately after each other, which is a rarity for almost any series. This one is a vacation do to what Shantae did in Half-Genie Hero, but really it’s about an idol concert with half genies. Until that goes haywire and then it’s Shantae finding the other half genies. The titular Sirens are just kinda there. It’s not until all but two of them are left that the game really talks about them at length so for the most part they are just attractive part fish ladies. Or sea plant. Only real issue with the writing I had was that each dungeon has a bit where basically the same dialogue gets said about the new power up and the new dance. I’m not sure if that was intentional joke or not, but was annoying how word for word those bits were.

Of course I have to mention ecchi content, and Shantae as a series really low keys that stuff. You have something like jiggle in all the idle animations, the enemy who spanks her ass at you and who’s clothes explode when she dies, everyone wearing bikinis, and so on. It’s all the lighthearted fun fanservice kinda stuff. Except the human figurine stuff. That was both funny and creepy. Anyway, Shantae is something you play for gameplay and writing, since the writing is very silly at points and it likes to mock itself and the real world. Not really for sexy times. This game in particular has some animated cutscenes which are nice, and a card book which is pointless but does act as an enemy gallery.

As my first entry in the series I can’t really compare it to anything else. Compared to other metroidvania’s I’ve played, it felt short though. And really easy, but for the kinda writing and art this has I think that fits. Anyway, I enjoyed streaming this for the most part. The speed run for the win screen cg’s was also enjoyable. I’m surprised I did as well as I did. I thought it would take more saving strategically and repeating sections, guess they made this one very easy.

Pc Save for Shantae and the Seven Sirens

Has all the win screens unlocked. Save two has the full enemy card book, while save 1 can unlock all the win screens for achievements tied to those.

Gameplay: 7/10 Eroticness: 4/10 Story: 4/10

Completion: What it took-

Completion here was get all the cards on a save, and unlock all the clear screens. For the clear screens, you need a 100% save under I think 3 hours? I ended up qualifying for all 5 on my second run so I guess it wasn’t hard. You also need to do 2 runs at least since the NG+ outfit is needed for one of the clear screens. All cards is just grinding.