![]() Instead, Pirate’s Curse spans five different islands, each with its own theme, hazards, enemies, and unique labyrinth housing a boss and a pirate tool. Thanks to Risky’s pirate ship, the game isn’t contained to the areas surrounding Scuttle Town, as was the case with Shantae and Risky’s Revenge. The other major difference in Pirate’s Curse also stems from the benefits of Shantae’s newfound alliance with Risky Boots. As the game goes on, exploration puzzles become more complex, and by the end of the game you’ll be chaining all five tools together in a way that you could never dream of doing with belly-dances. You can use Risky’s Boots to gain enough momentum to reach a distant platform that needs to be activated with the scimitar, before landing and using the pistol to activate an otherwise unaccessible switch. This means that you can, for example, use cannonballs to launch yourself to a great height and then glide with the pirate hat, reaching a platform that wouldn’t be accessible by either tool on its own. Each skill is available by simple button press, and with them all having unique commands, you always have access to whatever moves you’ve learned. Late-game dungeons would utilise different forms at different times, but the need to stop and shapeshift limited options for combining these different abilities – something that isn’t an issue in Pirate’s Curse. In earlier games, Shantae was always limited to the abilities of a single form at any time. A pirate hat doubles as a parachute, letting Shantae glide over great distances a sword can be used for a downward-travelling attack that can break rocks with a cannon, Shantae can double, triple, and even quadruple jump. Instead, an uneasy alliance with her arch-nemesis, Risky Boots, sees Shantae collecting pieces of pirate gear that give her new abilities. The end of Shantae: Risky’s Revenge saw Shantae lose her genie powers, and so she no longer has her belly-dances in Pirate’s Curse. Pirate’s Curse takes a very different – and much better, I’d say – approach. The monkey form, for example, would let her jump much higher and cling to walls, while the elephant form could use its heft to break certain rocks and walls. ![]() In each game, you’d learn new dances through progress, giving Shantae new abilities and expanding her range of tools for exploration. With Shantae being a genie, the first two games had plenty of emphasis on genie powers – specifically, Shantae’s ability to shapeshift by performing magical belly-dances. Far more than a simple sequel, it expands on the series’ foundations in some drastic ways – while still remaining true to what makes Shantae special. Now Pirate’s Curse has also found its way to PS4 (as well as Xbox One), and I’ve been able to revisit it with a fresh perspective. Since then, I’ve had the chance to play Shantae: Risky’s Revenge on both Steam and PlayStation 4, as well as a reasonable chunk of the original Shantae on 3DS Virtual Console. As much as I loved the game back then, I couldn’t really appreciate just how much it carried the series forward. I was somewhat familiar with the franchise just through general exposure and my fondness of some other WayForward games I’d played, but I didn’t have any first-hand experience. With its original 3DS release back in 2014 (well, early 2015 for New Zealand), S hantae and the Pirate’s Curse was the first Shantae game I’d played.
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