3.5/5 ★ – pinksteady's review of Shantae and the Pirate's Curse.

A fun and challenging platformer with a confusing take on female empowerment So this was the first game in a “game book club” I’m in, where a bunch of us all play the same game and chat about it afterwards. I’m not much of a fan of platformers, as my gaming pals know well, so it was interesting to have to play the game in its entirety. I generally find the types of challenges they offer annoying and unfulfilling, I haven’t seen many interesting stories and characters told through genre, and they are of course graphically not that impressive. That’s just been my experience of them, which I’m sure anyone could point out examples that would challenge my opinion. Anyway, Shantae turned out to be an enjoyable game. I looked forward to playing it - it was light-hearted, the platforming was (mostly) enjoyable and the pace of the game was good. Probably the stand-out aspect to me was the characters themselves. Generally speaking, the main characters were all women, who all had interesting personalities, challenges, ambitions and conflicts. Broadly speaking, cliches were avoided and so it was easy to just go along for the ride with them and experience the story. The only crack in this message of female empowerment is the ridiculous physical appearance of all the female characters. While the male characters in the game vary from hunks to slobby old men, every single woman is young, attractive and has enormous boobs, miniscule outfits, and raunchy postures. I’m not an expert on what is and isn’t a depiction of healthy feminism, but I was frequently confused and slightly put off by this almost grotesquely sexual depiction of them. I couldn’t understand why they were all presented like this, and I’d like to. Was it simply adhering to an existing style due to lack of imagination? Is intentionally meant to shake up our views on sexuality? Someone probably knows, but not me. Oh, did I mention she fights with her hair? Gameplay-wise, there were some platforming elements that were genuinely infuriating. Some areas were just so significantly harder than those the came before and after them, it felt out of place and I wasn’t prepared for. I got through them by the skin of my teeth but it wasn’t satisfying, just annoying. I could have done without those bits! There were some other niggles - the constant re-spawning of enemies in areas you’ve beaten, and having to travel back through those areas to get back to your ship, was a bit tiresome. It would have been nice if I could have naturally earned more coins to buy more upgrades, but not doing so didn’t seem to hold back progress in the game which was good. Oh also it might have the worst ending in a game I’ve ever played! The platforming sections before the final battle were ten times harder than the final battle itself, and when you did beat the baddie, he (spoiler), doesn’t die and just wanders off to presumably appear in a sequel. What? (Update, Ok wtf I just googled it and turns out I got the ‘bad’ ending because I didn’t do something. Grrr) On a good note, I really loved the soundtrack. Its a shame its not on Spotify but I’ve [hunted it down on Bandcamp](https://virt.bandcamp.com/album/shantae-and-the-pirates-curse-ost) at least. The tune from the home island ([Scuttle Town](https://virt.bandcamp.com/track/scuttle-town-2)) is banging! All in all it was an enjoyable game. It didn’t win me over to platformers, and I disliked the objectifying representations of the characters, but the game managed to pack in a fun story and some interesting characters.