The Pirate Master was once the scourge of Sequin Land, and it took the collective might of all the genies to bring him down. At the end of that game, though, Shantae was stripped of her genie magic, and while many metroidvanias would simply use that as an excuse for her to build up the same ability-set from scratch in the sequel, Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse instead gives her a brand new set of Pirate-themed weapons to unlock. 2010’s Shantae: Risky’s Revenge stuck close to the original game’s formula by giving players a big, open map to explore and three magical transformation dances to facilitate getting around it. So long as a sequel is a metroidvania game with a quirky sense of humor and (weirdly sultry) sprite animations of unrivaled quality, WayForward can do pretty much whatever they want with it.
As a twelve year old series it feels like there’s a legacy future games need to uphold, but with only two games under its (ornate, mostly decorative) belt, the possibilities are effectively endless. Shantae sits in a weird place in the platforming genre. Now WayForward has brought their superb swashbuckling adventure to Wii U, and it’s every bit as excellent at home as it is on the go. Few platformers are so intensely challenging and eminently charming, and it might well feature the best world layout in the entire Metroidvania genre. Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse is one of the finest games released on 3DS this year, and an easy contender for my personal top 10.