Shantae and the Seven Sirens: PLEASE Start With This One
Shantae and the Seven Sirens is out, and if you’ve sorta-kinda seen the genie girl and her cavalcade of friends, but haven’t taken the dive into playing it yourself yet?
Good news! In terms of both gameplay and story, this is the right place to start this series!
Yeah, I know, this probably isn’t a question you thought you’d have to ask. There aren’t a ton of video game series where you have to ask if you can “start” with the latest entry, because they’re usually designed as standalone entries.
A continuous storyline through multiple entries is a big investment, not just for the developer, but for the PLAYER. When a big new game comes out, no developer wants to say, “make sure you play all four of the previous games before buying the new one!”
Because yeah, nobody is going to do that. That’s too much buy-in for a new player. It’s like trying to get someone into your favorite TV show by telling them it doesn’t get really good until Season 4.
Shantae as a series isn’t as bad in this regard as, say, Yakuza, where each new game’s story plays out like you just took the previous one off the pause screen and you’re expected to perfectly remember every character and every event.
So while the games themselves stand on their own, the events of each Shantae game DO have a consistent story thread. Characters develop and grow their relationships with one another, locations are recurring and change based on the events of each game, previous games’ plot points are referenced repeatedly, and the entire PREMISE of Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse is about dealing with the aftermath of Risky’s Revenge.
The good news about that is it creates a satisfying overall story thread for long-time players. The bad news is that if you jumped in at Half-Genie Hero, you might be lost on a lot of what people are talking about, or why the girl the the bird hates the zombie girl so much.
Luckily, Seven Sirens sidesteps most of those issues for new players by setting the game in a completely new location with a completely new premise and a bunch of new characters. For a long-time player, NOT starting the game in a burning Scuttle Town is weirdly sort of jarring at first, but the new digs feel familiar soon enough.
But story and plotline aren’t the only reason I’m calling this the best place to start the Shantae series. Seven Sirens does probably the best job in the series so far of melding together all the best elements of previous games.
It has strong nonlinear exploration gameplay and an interconnected map, like the first two games.
It has accessible movement mechanics that allow for complex and fun platforming, as well as much of the writing charm of Pirate’s Curse (talk to all the NPCs in this game, their dialogue is GOLD).
And the game feels updated, both artistically and in terms of quality-of-life, like Half-Genie Hero.
I wouldn’t say Seven Sirens does anything incredibly novel, and it’s probably fair to call this “just another Shantae game,” rather than anything revolutionary.
But “just another Shantae game,” given the series’ pedigree, is actually pretty high praise. And I’d argue it’s the best game in the series to date, by cobbling together the best elements of the series so far and making them work together coherently.
Most notably, Seven Sirens solves what has unfortunately been one of the series’ biggest flaws: Shantae’s dancing.
Dancing has been a core aspect of Shantae’s character from the start. She does a magical dance, she turns into some sort of animal, and that animal has a platforming ability she wouldn’t otherwise have, like climbing walls or swimming underwater.
That’s her whole thing. Mario jumps, Sonic goes fast, Shantae dances and whips her hair. And that’s great! The problem with that in previous games is that when Shantae is dancing, gameplay more-or-less grinds to a halt. You’re just trying to get to the next screen, and you have to stop and do a dance before you start moving again.
The problem is essentially that Shantae doesn’t have all of her powers simultaneously. You need to climb over a wall? You dance, transform into the climbing animal, climb up. Then you need to swim? Transform back into human form, dance again, transform into the swimming animal, now you can swim. It’s all very flow-breaking.
So to fix this, Seven Sirens implements “Fusion Coins,” which are basically gameplay mcguffins for “now you can transform instantly without dancing,” in effect giving her instant access to all of her powers.
So instead of waiting for a transformation sequence to use a double jump or a wall climb, you just hit a button and she poofs into a newt, or an octopus, or some kind of… weird drill mollusk?
Granted, Seven Sirens is not the first game in the series to put Shantae’s abilities on a button instead of behind a dance. Pirate’s Curse does this as well, but her abilities are specific tangible items, not animal transformations.
It seems like a small thing, but having Shantae actually use her magic, rather than tangible items like a hat or a sword? It just feels way more on-brand for the whole experience. It feels more like Shantae. And it achieves that feeling while maintaining a smooth, uninterrupted gameplay arc.
And the best part of all this is that they’ve smoothed out this aspect of gameplay without removing Shantae’s dancing from the game. They’ve just relegated her dances to larger environmental effects that you won’t need to use as often, like revealing hidden items or platforms, or expending magic to deal some damage to all enemies on screen.
This way, Shantae’s dancing breaks are generally saved for times when you’re doing something slower-paced like solving a puzzle or searching for something — not when you are actively moving from place to place.
In addition to new dances and powers, Seven Sirens introduces collectible monster cards to the formula. These are random drops from each enemy in the game. After collecting enough of them, you can equip them to offer you a minor buff to a given stat.
These can be anything from increasing damage on one of your sub-weapons, to improving movement speed in a transformed state, to passively regenerating your magic meter. Shantae can equip three of these abilities at a time, and they can be swapped in and out at any time without penalty.
None of the monster card effects have major game-changing effects, but it is a nice way to let players tweak the game a bit towards their preferences. It also adds a not-too-tedious collection aspect to the game, especially to get the boss cards, which require you to collect gold nuggets from around the island.
If there is a major flaw with the game, it’s that it feels very easy — or at the very least, not incredibly punishing. I found myself having nothing to spend money on by the end of the game, and was topped out on healing items.
I took 10 hearts into the final boss fight, but had about 500 more hearts’ worth of healing at the ready. After a while I just sort of stopped caring about taking damage, even against the final boss.
The New Game+ mode solves this a bit, by giving you an alternate costume that has Shantae taking more damage from attacks, but also gives her a bigger magic pool to work with.
I do wonder if that wouldn’t work better as an adjustable difficulty setting from the outset, but to be fair, the “unlockable costume” run is also a Shantae tradition, so I get it.
Minor flaws aside, Seven Sirens is a good time. Not overly complex or difficult, but smooth, fun, and charming. Most importantly, if you’ve ever had an interest in trying out a Shantae game, this is the one to go for. It’s not flawless, but it’s the MOST flawless of any of the five.
By taking the best aspects of the previous four games, Seven Sirens becomes a definitive Shantae experience where, basically, if you don’t like this one, you won’t like any of the others, either.
But honestly? You’ll probably like it.
