3/5 ★ – corbintm's review of Shantae and the Seven Sirens.

Pretty solid entry and return to roots for the Shantae franchise. I think I’ve played all of the Shantelae games aside from the original one stranded on Game Boy Advance. I really enjoyed the series for their take on the Metroidvania formula, unique combat, and fun tone. I was pretty disappointed with half genie hero because it removed a lot of the Metroidvania elements, streamlined stages, and just didn’t have a whole lot of content. Even the DLC was essentially just reskinned versions of the main game which wasn’t super appealing. This game completely fixes my complaints by getting back to the Metroidvania type of play and really prioritizing what made the series fun. I think some elements are kind of half baked at times (a lot of the returning to areas just involve using a basic power to get something you couldn’t) but I’m excited to see where they go from here. The other gameplay edition is a monster card system that offers specific benefits for killing a certain amount of enemies using random drops for those cards. I didn’t really engage with the system as it was never really explained, and I didn’t feel like it was needed. Similarly, the only reason to get all the collectibles in the game were to get some higher cost cards with better bonuses. With the lack of a way to see collectibles on the map at all, it just wasn’t something where I was going to go back to try to get them. Overall worth a play.