3.5/5 ★ – Andrew_Hullabaloo's review of Shantae: Risky's Revenge - Director's Cut.

Short and sweet. I gotta say upfront that I really enjoy this series, so I might be somewhat blinded by that enjoyment. But I'm still gonna try to be more critical. Risky's Revenge (Director's Cut) is a direct sequel to the charming but flawed Shantae for the Gameboy Color, so I'll start with what this game improves upon from it's predecessor. .Enemies are nowhere near as tanky as they used to be. You could get by the enemies of this game pretty okay with no damage upgrades, while in the first game it often times felt necessary to grind gems to buy all the upgrades and special attacks. .Special attacks are gone. Not a huge loss, honestly. They could be finicky and difficult to use. I can't tell you how many times that aerial spin dive kick move didn't land, and how many times I careened straight into a bottomless pit or spikes. .The world is more condensed now, with a map for easier navigation. In the first game, the world was a lot bigger, and took more time to get to the different towns and dungeons. There was a fest travel system, sure, but it was bullshit. In this game, you find the two linked statues (just by progressing the game. They have their own screens and are never hidden) and bam, fast travel points. .Items are linked to a magic bar now, instead of buying them in quantities to use. Once you buy a pikeball, you have a pikeball. It will have upgraded versions to buy at higher prices instead of just more pikeballs. Because of this system, there aren't as many items to buy, but you'll be using them far more often. . The dancing system is also condensed. In the first game, you'd perform various dances to transform into many different creatures, from monkeys and elephants to spiders and harpeys. But for each transformation, you'd have to go into a dance mode and put in increasingly lengthy button combos. Each. time. In this game, you just hold the dedicated dance button as Shantae cycles between each of the three dance moves every second and a half. Because of how the system is reworked, there's only three dances, and three transformations: monkey, elephant, and mermaid. Still a major time save, but disappointing there's so fewer transformations. So yeah, the game makes a lot of improvements over the first game. That said, it's still got it's problems: .The game is really short. That's not inherently a big issue, but because of it's shorter length and lack of dungeons (the second dungeon is literally a time trial enemy gauntlet), the game feels more like a 1.5 than a full blown sequel. .The dance system is still cumbersome. While it's much easier and quicker to use, you still have to take some time to go through the dances to get the transformation you need. and since transforming into different creatures is such an integral part of the gameplay, having to stop to cycle through dances every few minutes still gets a little tedious. .Backtracking. The game is short and so is it's world, but because of the smaller scale of the world, you'll have to be backtracking to several areas frequently. If I remember right, there are at least two story instances where you have to backtrack through several previous areas, and in order to unlock new areas, you'll have to retread the area you just went through. So while this game is a vast improvement from the first game, it's still got some issues. However, it's still a wonderful little 2D Metroidvania platformer that isn't all that expensive. If this genre of game seems up your alley, I'd recommend it, which I have a more difficult time doing for the first game.