Shantae and the Seven Sirens Reviews
Shantae and the Seven Sirens successfully dances back onto consoles with a gorgeous performance marred by being a bit too light on story for its own good.
Shantae and the Seven Sirens is a game that is formally enjoyable, but fails to stand out like the chapters that preceded it. The game runs smoothly and apart from a few too many loads, the pace is always strong. However, the general automation of the gamplay and the flattening of the challenge confine the latest creation of the WayForward in the circle of the unsuspecting.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Ready for a return to Scuttle town? Too bad, because we're somewhere else now. Shantae and the Seven Sirens provides a swift combo of tradition and experimentation to create a game that invigorates as much as it detaches, which we will discuss with our Switch review of the game.
Shantae and the Seven Sirens is a delight.
A highly entertaining Metroidvania-styled platformer with fantastically witty writing and amusing dialogue.
I had a lot of fun playing through Shantae’s latest journey. But I knew I was going to enjoy this, because I did 4 years before. Again, this is what terrifies me, Shantae is coming back again and again with the same basic concept, and I know this girl, I know this STUDIO has so much more potential.
Shantae and the Seven Sirens is an acceptable entry in a series that is known for consistency. However, as the genre continues to evolve, it feels like the simple pleasures of the franchise are becoming less enjoyable. Whenever the titular heroine returns, hopefully she has some new tricks to unleash.
Fans of the series may feel a sense of déjà vu when playing through the extremely short Shantae and the Seven Sirens. But it's still a game worth your time, even if it doesn't meet the high bar set by the rest of the series.
A competent Metroidvania but although Shantae and her friends are as charming as ever the franchise is beginning to seem aimless and overly repetitive.
Shantae and the Seven Sirens is a compact, attractive, and agreeable adventure, but its muddled design lacks variety, innovation, and vital story engagement. As such, Seven Sirens feels like a sequel on auto-pilot, one that doesn't seize the opportunities offered by its exciting world and lively new cast, ultimately resulting in an entry that's good enough, but had the capacity to be truly magical.
Shantae And The Seven Sirens brings some very nice additions to the franchise like cutscenes, voice acting, and more. But it comes at a cost because they expanded a bit too much, and the game suffers as a result.
Children might enjoy this thanks to the easy-to-pick-up-and-play responsive controls. The humor might not connect with them and the imagery might imprint some fetishes in their heads early on, but this is a decent entry level Metroidvania. Adults who might be curious stand a good chance at being extremely bored.
"Dancing with spirits."
Review in Finnish | Read full review
None of this is to say Shantae and the Seven Sirens is a bad game. In fact, it's a decent game for the younger audience, newcomers, and anyone that isn't expecting Shantae to evolve. Strictly from the perspective of someone that has played many games in the series and is eager for something different, though, this disappoints on many fronts. Uninspiring and rarely ever surprising, with little to make the player feel like they've earned anything, what is left is a generic Shantae game that is like any other before it, crying out for change and originality.
It retreads the same ground of the prior games' fetch-quest-driven, backtracking-filled action-adventuring.
It took me a bit under eight hours to finish the game. Though an hour of that was wandering around as I assumed I couldn’t go somewhere I was meant to. I wish it was longer purely because I’d rather play more with my new abilities than start the game over. I will have to as I can’t get 100% on my first save file because late in the game a section gets locked off permanently. That and the intermittent voice acting are the only complaints I have about this game. An option to mark things on the map would have been nice but the world is small enough it’s not hard to remember things. It’s terribly hard to resist the siren call of this game. It’s been hard to finish this review because whenever I go to check something I just keep playing it. I had a really fun time with this game and I give it:
Seven Sirens may not be the best of the Shantae games, but the characters it introduces, the forms it plays with, the story it tells, and the world it crafts boasts exciting possibilities for the future. WayForward have once again done what they do best and given us a brilliant side-scrolling platformer to remember, whether you’re a Shantae veteran or you’re just hearing about the Half-Genie Heroine for the first time.
The lessons learned from previous entries make Shantae and the Seven Sirens an easy recommendation for fans of the series and Metroidvania enthusiasts alike.