Disappointment!

[Azel]

I played Half-Geni Hero to 100% and enjoyd much more than this.

Seven Siren is nice with the Story but Gameplay, Transformations, Level Design feels kinda low
and cheap.

From High to Low,
a little example, in Half-Geni Hero you had Dances fully animated Cute Mermaid to Dive and explore underwater levels and the ability to kill Enemys, in this Game's Underwater levels there is almost nothing, only what you have is
a cheap Frog Sprite with a lazy animation Loop and constant forward move and the only ability you have with this Frog is slow down the speed nothing else, no Challenge, no Enemys
the Underwater Area's Design itself looks bad.

This Game also missing alot of Content in compare to Half-Geni Hero.

[TARINunit9]

Originally posted by chromyx:

a little example, in Half-Geni Hero you had Dances fully animated Cute Mermaid to Dive and explore underwater levels and the ability to kill Enemys, in this Game's Underwater levels there is almost nothing, only what you have is
a cheap Frog Sprite with a lazy animation Loop and constant forward move and the only ability you have with this Frog is slow down the speed nothing else, no Challenge, no Enemys
the Underwater Area's Design itself looks bad.

I can tell you exactly why this happened: because the hardcore Shantae veterans were complaining that HGH was a step backward after Pirate's Curse. What they really loved about Pirate's Curse was two big things: dungeons, and all of the special moves activating with the press of a button instead of needing to pause the game in the dance menu. (You know how in HGH you would see a body of water, and you have to stop, dance to transform, dive in the water, check which obstacle is underwater, and if you're in the wrong form you have to surface again to dance a second time? They HATED that)

You can see Pirate's Curse's influence all over Seven Sirens: Jet Octo Fusion is copied from the Pirate Cannon Triple Jump, Bonker Tortoise is a mixing of Scimitar Dash and Scimitar Jump, the labyrinths are back instead of the level-based structure from HGH, the bosses are voiceless one-off monsters defeated Zelda-style by your brand new item. All that jazz

[MrDjinn]

I wouldn't describe people who think Pirate's Curse was the highest point for the series as "hardcore Shantae veterans".

I haven't played Pirate's Curse in a while, but although I liked it, it was a lot different from other games and especially from the very first Shantae on Game Boy Color.

I actually believe that Seven Sirens had lower budget and was more rushed than 1/2 Genie Hero and that's the reason game feels cheaper. You can see that also in the new enemies added. Wet Gal is well animated, but all the siren grunts are as simple as the basic crabs. The bosses look fine, but compare the first boss of this game to the giant mermaid from 1/2 Genie Hero and it immediately clicks which game had more love put into it.

I reject the idea that Seven Sirens is the hardcore essence of what a Shantae game should be.

[Locke von Bastiat]

LOL, Nice bait Op. This game is way better then Half-Finished hero.

[Nightmarian]

It looks cheaper because it's a mobile game. That's also why it's ridiculously easy. They took all the considerations of people playing on their phones, especially budget phones, in suboptimal gaming environments (lunch break, bus trip), and had to build the game around that.

This is probably why even the smallest freaking enemies are gigantic and practically radiant in colors (like crabs). The game also has an extreme arcade rush feel rather than a more old-school feel... and was released first on apple arcade.

Now, they have could revamped and adjusted the game to fit better on PC and consoles... which have would cost time and/or money, or they could go CAPITALISM HOOOO and throw whatever they had out and wipe their hands.

Take a wild guess which they did.

You know it's bad when you have reviewers who always whine about not enough games having story/easy mode complaining that the game's too easy. Like, yikes.

[Littlefoot]

Eh, while the game certainly has it’s flaws it’s still the game Half-Genie Hero should’ve been to begin with. Shantae was made to explore interconnected worlds and dungeons, not just go from point A to B in an irrelevant subplot.

[iriyap]

The frog ability was just a reskin of the drill one, it functions in the exact same way just with water instead of sand. I would've preferred the mermaid transformation from Half-Genie Hero or Risky's Revenge or something else with a bit more effort put into it.

[boxythecat]

HGH was awful...the 3D environments looked bad, level design was trash, bosses were mostly bad and forgettable, transformations were redundant and took way too long...how anyone could find it anywhere close to this or the other three games is absurd.

[MrDjinn]

Originally posted by boxythecat:

(in HGH) level design was trash

I remember HGH levels being pretty fun to go through. The design was tight and thought out well, mostly because they had linear segments with secrets and side areas hidden about.

In Seven Sirens you have whippable platforms you never have to whip because they are placed in areas that will be traversable using already unlocked abilities. Almost every water area is pointless thanks to no threats. Probably less than 10% of the time you will have to time your swimming to avoid moving spikes. The metroidvania-like map design is a nice throwback to the old games, but the levels themselves are mostly bland and uninteresting to go through because they are generic. Couple that with horrid load times and the necessity of using the seer dance and searching for secrets becomes a chore. Dungeons flow much better because they were designed to be completed at specific points in the game and expect you to have specific abilities.

I can understand when people prefer this to HGH even though I sure prefer a Shantae game where transformation lets you become and use a form for more than travel. But when someone tells me that HGH had worse level design than Seven Sirens I call bs on that.

And even more bs when you complain about transformations taking long when in Seven Sirens you have to abuse seer dance everywhere if you want to find secrets, a lot of which have no clues about their placement whatsoever. And then you have to use earthquake dance on top of that sometimes, makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

Seven Sirens feels more like Pirate's Curse sequel than a Shantae sequel in general. Only Pirate's Curse was great. This feels rushed. It doesn't help that most assets are ripped straight from HGH.

[Azel]

Originally posted by MrDjinn:

I remember HGH levels being pretty fun to go through. The design was tight and thought out well, mostly because they had linear segments with secrets and side areas hidden about.

In Seven Sirens you have whippable platforms you never have to whip because they are placed in areas that will be traversable using already unlocked abilities. Almost every water area is pointless thanks to no threats. Probably less than 10% of the time you will have to time your swimming to avoid moving spikes. The metroidvania-like map design is a nice throwback to the old games, but the levels themselves are mostly bland and uninteresting to go through because they are generic. Couple that with horrid load times and the necessity of using the seer dance and searching for secrets becomes a chore. Dungeons flow much better because they were designed to be completed at specific points in the game and expect you to have specific abilities.

I can understand when people prefer this to HGH even though I sure prefer a Shantae game where transformation lets you become and use a form for more than travel. But when someone tells me that HGH had worse level design than Seven Sirens I call bs on that.

And even more bs when you complain about transformations taking long when in Seven Sirens you have to abuse seer dance everywhere if you want to find secrets, a lot of which have no clues about their placement whatsoever. And then you have to use earthquake dance on top of that sometimes, makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

Seven Sirens feels more like Pirate's Curse sequel than a Shantae sequel in general. Only Pirate's Curse was great. This feels rushed. It doesn't help that most assets are ripped straight from HGH.

Pirates Curse and HGH, both are great, same Game but different playstyle.
as in PC you had Items and Weapons to use and in HGH you have Magic skills and nice Dance for 16 Tranforms in total, so far i remember.

Seven Siren is just meh..

[Nightmarian]

I still wouldn't compare to this Pirate's Curse though, it's just similar in some ways. I liked Pirate's Curse, and I do like Seven Sirens, but I'd easily call Seven Sirens the worst of all the games right now.

[ʕっ•ᴥ•ʔっ]

I'm starting to think this game was so bland and simplistic because it was solely designed for the Apple Store first and they thought they could port it as a normal game and keep everything the same because they thought it was "good enough."

[MrDjinn]

@WAH
I don't see any reason to purposefully design your game in that way just because it goes on apple store. Suggesting that mobile players don't care about quality makes no sense to me. I do believe that they just didn't have the time and/or budget to flesh the map out. Obviously they wouldn't change the gameplay just for a port to PC.

[Azel]

Originally posted by Nightmarian:

I still wouldn't compare to this Pirate's Curse though, it's just similar in some ways. I liked Pirate's Curse, and I do like Seven Sirens, but I'd easily call Seven Sirens the worst of all the games right now.

i did'nt compared this with Pirates Curse, i see Seven Siren only as cheap Clone Game of HGH
and yes, i rushed through everythink in this Game like there was nothing but Air in each Room and this was boring AF.

[ʕっ•ᴥ•ʔっ]

Originally posted by MrDjinn:

@WAH
I don't see any reason to purposefully design your game in that way just because it goes on apple store. Suggesting that mobile players don't care about quality makes no sense to me. I do believe that they just didn't have the time and/or budget to flesh the map out. Obviously they wouldn't change the gameplay just for a port to PC.

You say that but it's the truth, Mobile games is constantly poorly designed lowest denominator gutter trash to feed people's collection and gambling addictions.

[Pearlple]

Shantae and the Pirate's curse was my first Shantae game, and what I loved about it was the metroidvania gameplay.
Half Genie hero was kinda boring for me, you spend most of the time all around the maps to get and deliver items like if you were playing death stranding