Game needs a "normal" difficulty mode.

[Chocos Ramabotti]

Because so far the only difficulty choosable is insultingly easy. I'm midway in the game, still with 3 hearts, with countless of consumeables that drop randomly and could heal you fully. At the same time I obtained the best damage and speed updgrades in the game just after the 2nd dungeon.
Bosses go down in approximately 2 cycles, while there attacks are highly predicatable and do very less damage.

I know the game is charming and it has a cute style and is is very retro, but if you expect at least some kind of difficulty you will be disappointed. Would I demand too much just at least to expect a difficulty on par with Pirate's Curse? Half Genie Hero was also pretty lenient and you could get OP very quickly, but even in this game enemies at least do damage and consumeables need to be bought, it also isn't so easy to get the max amount of currency within the first 2 hours in the game.

It's looks to me liked they dumbed the game down as much as possible, just to please the smartphone audience which the game was originally intended for, who probably had never played at plattformer in their life. That's ok, but at least give us the opportunity to play the game with a reasonable amount of challenge. I really don't expect much, but for such an gameplay heavy game and an metroidvania it's an insult. I restrict myself as much as I can, but it reaches a level where it downright becomes complicated and I have to turn off almost every reward the game grants me. This is not a good sign for a metroidvania where rewards are meant to be an motivation boost. It shouldn't be the job of the player to adjust their game to the lowest possible standard. I habe already 999 rupys again and I don't even know where to spend them. Squids, what are they, why should I squish them to death when i'm perfectly fine with my 3 hearts and my gazillion consumeables I never eat? Even with all these healing items, bosses have mob phases where hearts, sorry but not sorry this game is in terms of gameplay a joke.

I can understand if you have fun nontheless since the game is charming and I don't want to talk it down for you, but such heavy difficulty design flaws shouldn't be ignored either.

[Texus]

I haven't played it yet, but also slightly dislike the fact that it sounds as if it would be more than easy.
I never thought it was that difficult, but the series had at least one or two games, that felt a bit more difficult one way or anther.
That I heard something like "this was supposed to be a handy game before", made it slightly weird too.

Otherwise I'm just unsure if I wait for a sale because of the difficulty or if I buy it one of these days already.

After reading some of the last comments, i feel like waiting for a sale.

[iriyap]

4 bosses in and I already have 10 hearts and bought everything from the shops, including 9x of each potion, and I still have 999 gems. The game keeps giving me thousands of gems (for what?). Traded 10 nuggets with the Tree Town Chief and he gave me a card that provides a shop discount (seriously?). At this point I just facetank everything and don't even need healing items. The refreshing dance restores 2 hearts and it takes 1 second and a pittance of mana (which regens almost immediately anyway). And you can also just spam shock or quake dance to quickly kill everything on screen.

It's a fun game, but did they even bother balancing it.

[Chocos Ramabotti]

Meanwhile I already played thorugh the game (usually I take my time, but there are games I just want to get over with.)
I played through this game enitrely with just 3 hearts and no healing, except for situations where the game forces me to use the healing dance.

Except for the the last boss who really has a lot of health the whole game is easily possible to clear with just 3 hearts and no healing. You get more than enough heart pick-ups and enemies do never more than 1,5 hearts damage at maximum. And this is without armor upgrades which are additionally included in the game.

Bosses are a joke anyway, they have simple patterns and explode far too early. The Final Boss on the other hand, even with all damage upgrades goes on and on and on and on, while there is no variety regarding the attacks it took me a few tries but after a short while you know every attack and then it takes F.O.R.E.V.E.R...
Balancing wise it looks like they didn't give a ♥♥♥♥. I can only recommend to wait for a sale, the game controls nice, is charming and doesn't stress you, but that's all positive I have to say about. 25 bucks are way too much. It also isn't so much longer than pirates curse, since the game stretches its time with pointless fetching you usually would explore areas for yourself but the game already forces you through the main quest almost everywhere anyway, there is little to explore and the little bit you can explore and it isn't much worthwhile because the rewards are predictable and you don't need the rewards. Like iriyap stated you're almost constantly walking with 999 rupies not knowing where to spend them. It may be a Metroidvania again, but it's a bad Metroidvania with almost unsufferable loading times between the many biomes who all almost look identical except for the color of the walls and some minor background and foreground details.

I would say for 10,00 bucks you can try. If you haven't played one of the other Shantae games, play them first, this one is the weakest in my opinion. Sure apple arcade is supposed to be a quality label, but at the same time the games are developed for a different target group. It wouldn't surprise me if WayForward thought of the usual smartphone player as a brainless soobering baboon who would quit their ♥♥♥ if they die in their games. At least I could live better with that explanation when they did that on purpose, because the overall game is so incompetent balanced.

I wouldn't give much about the positive reviews so far, this game is in a honey moon phase, people crave for a new Shantae game, they want it to be good and they will become more apologetic for all its flaws. The same you could've observe on Half Genie Hero, meanwhile it's considered the weakest game in the series.
Game journalists on the other hand... don't let me start with it. Don't trust them, they are hypocrites who play games just as a job, they have absolutetely no idea how a good Shantae game has to be like. When they can play through the game on autopilot it eases their job tremendously, so these games are more likely to get high ratings. They are willing to correct their scores if it look like a hype has been started. Look at IGN for example they simply changed their low opinion on Wonderful 101 for the rerelease because they didn't wanna look like they have no clue, back in the day they ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the game, now it's suddenly on of the best because it' has spoken around between players over time that's its the most ambitious platinum games game with the most complex combat system... so simply don't give a ♥♥♥♥ about game journalists they only ruin the gaming landscape with their rating culture.

The most fair thing WayForward at this stage could do is offering a demo so that every player can get a good impression of the game beforehand. I know their is Steam refund but other plattforms don't have that luxury. I would've never bought the game if I knew how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up it actually is WayForward lost my trust and next time I will look very closely before I just throw my money at them.

[Vogel100]

I think the final dungeon in Pirate's Curse was a really fun challenge, it's annoying how game makers listen to people who just can't play platform games. I could do it without health upgrades and still didn't think it was that hard, there was even an achievement for completing the game without using heart squids and it wasn't that rare. Health upgrades have never been necessary in Shantae tbh (except maybe the first game, I haven't played that one so I don't know). Pirate's Curse is already easy for me, so if someone's having trouble beating any Shantae game, I dunno what to tell them.

As far as this game goes, I've only finished the first dungeon so I can't say how easy it is. If it is as easy as HGH, that will definitely bore me too. It getting positive reviews for being new makes sense, there was a small period of time where I thought HGH was my favorite too, but thinking back I quickly realized I actually didn't like it that much and had a lot more fun with RR and PC.

[HighLanderPony]

Thx

[AlchemyHeart]

They may go the way of Half Genie Hero and release DLC that adds difficulty options.

[Tsuanli]

This is a pity. I was almost fully committed to buying this but I guess I have to wait for them to implement difficulty slider..

[Melodia]

Originally posted by EmeraldEmblem:

They may go the way of Half Genie Hero and release DLC that adds difficulty options.

If you beat the game you get effectively hard mode. If you played Risky's Revenge where you can unlock 'Magic Mode' it's the same here -- enemies hit harder, but your have more magic.

[Chocos Ramabotti]

Originally posted by Melodia:

Originally posted by EmeraldEmblem:

They may go the way of Half Genie Hero and release DLC that adds difficulty options.

If you beat the game you get effectively hard mode. If you played Risky's Revenge where you can unlock 'Magic Mode' it's the same here -- enemies hit harder, but your have more magic.

It doesn't change any of the underlying problems at hand, especially since you already have a lot of magic to heal yourself, besides the amount of consumables is more than enough already so in new game+ you only get more healing capabilites.
The game doesn't need an hard mode, it needs an normal mode first. There are way too many problem that just a few stat changes wouldn't fix the game. First of all they need to get rid of all conusmables, then currency has to become more precious, items much more expensive the use of items should be restricted to an reasonable amount, healing dance should not heal you at all or it should consume way more magic. Cards like magic automatically refelling should be only available towards the end of the game. Enemies need to do more damage. I can go on and on and on with the list.

[Cheese]

I dunno, Seven Sirens is insultingly easy, but I cannot agree with saying it's worse in this regard than Half-Genie Hero.
I haven't played HGH since a bit after it released, but I remember finding it easier than SS, even before it gave me invincibility magic + infinite magic.

Plus, HGH was a linear platformer. Challenge is basically the only form of engagement that genre can offer.
SS benefits by being a metroidvania again, where an amount of focus on exploration at least gives you something to engage with despite the game being far too easy.

[ZelosZalis]

I've never found any Shantae particularly hard to be honest, but I love the series because of its characters and colorful world. I also find plenty of engagement via exploration and speed running, the games are fun to speed run regardless of how difficult enemies are and challenge shouldn't be a direct connection to how much the game is worth.

Thats just the one common thread this whole topic I saw being repeated over and over and its really false, easy games can be fun, difficult games can be fun. I play a rather steady mix of both, and neither is worth less than the other because of its difficulty.

[TemmieNeko]

Originally posted by ZelosZalis:

I've never found any Shantae particularly hard to be honest, but I love the series because of its characters and colorful world. I also find plenty of engagement via exploration and speed running, the games are fun to speed run regardless of how difficult enemies are and challenge shouldn't be a direct connection to how much the game is worth.

Thats just the one common thread this whole topic I saw being repeated over and over and its really false, easy games can be fun, difficult games can be fun. I play a rather steady mix of both, and neither is worth less than the other because of its difficulty.

it's like they still think Wayforward is the hatchiling of Capcom still.
I said this to my friend the other day as well, the games have never been hard. MAybe hard to 100%, but that's one of those " things ".
It's still good, I think it's a step up from HGH, the coin transformations are really cool, imo. It can add a lot of variety to platforming when you have on the fly transofrmations, so perhaps they can release something for an add-on that gives us challenges or new modes with more restrictive movesets, etc.
Or just release a modding kit so the community can do it for me, that would be AOK in my book,
as for anyone wanting mtroidshante with the good challenge, check out the new monsterboy game. It's male shantae, you even change monster forms ala ring menu, no dancing though.

[Chocos Ramabotti]

Originally posted by ZelosZalis:

I've never found any Shantae particularly hard to be honest, but I love the series because of its characters and colorful world. I also find plenty of engagement via exploration and speed running, the games are fun to speed run regardless of how difficult enemies are and challenge shouldn't be a direct connection to how much the game is worth.

Thats just the one common thread this whole topic I saw being repeated over and over and its really false, easy games can be fun, difficult games can be fun. I play a rather steady mix of both, and neither is worth less than the other because of its difficulty.

It's not about if these games are hard or not hard. Half-Genie Hero was already a mess, but this game goes even a step further.
It's about if this is good designed if the systems work as they were intended and implemented and they truly do not, since all it features doesn't work work together, that's what I mean by "flawed by design"
When I can just skip the arena battle by spamming magic with tons of mana then that arena fights don't work. If I actually can just skip plattforms which I have to whiplash first to land on them, with a newt dash, then the plattforming doesn't work. If I atuomatically gain over 50 healing items to heal myself full, the item system doesn't make much sense, life doesn't much sense any more. Their is always a time and a situation where these system are good or even needed, Shantae uses these systems wrong.
You can have an easy game I totally come in terms with, but this game isn't even easy anymore it's trivial since you are practically invincible with all the healing.

Kirby is a good example for an easy game. Shantae and the Seven Sirens isn't even an easy game, it's made easy artificially by unnecessary systems that don't fit in the game and that Kirby just doesn't have.

[ZelosZalis]

Originally posted by Chocos Ramabotti:

Kirby is a good example for an easy game. Shantae and the Seven Sirens isn't even an easy game, it's made easy artificially by unnecessary systems that don't fit in the game and that Kirby just doesn't have.

Well since I don't expect the game to change from what it is now, the only thing we can do is purposely limit ourselves, not dip into the healing by choice and make it harder that way. I mean I'll admit not using tools that are given to you is an odd thing to do, but it would fix your issue, while leaving the stuff there for that were struggling with the games enough to make the comments about the series difficulty all the way back in the first place.

[Chocos Ramabotti]

Originally posted by ZelosZalis:

Originally posted by Chocos Ramabotti:

Kirby is a good example for an easy game. Shantae and the Seven Sirens isn't even an easy game, it's made easy artificially by unnecessary systems that don't fit in the game and that Kirby just doesn't have.

Well since I don't expect the game to change from what it is now, the only thing we can do is purposely limit ourselves, not dip into the healing by choice and make it harder that way. I mean I'll admit not using tools that are given to you is an odd thing to do, but it would fix your issue, while leaving the stuff there for that were struggling with the games enough to make the comments about the series difficulty all the way back in the first place.

Yeah I already did, you can see on my achievments I played though the game with 3 hearts and no healing. The thing is it doesn't change the problem at hand (the problem didn't exist for me anymore too much, but they still exist in the game, I would rate it like this, since I felt forced to play in a special way) and makes the exploring aspect way more unsatisfying.
I'm done with the game, i'm not interested to play it further. But I think it's important to discuss about it and recognize it as a flaw. Otherwise nothing will change for the next installments.