Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution review for Nintendo Switch

System: Switch
Release date: August 19, 2025
Developer: WayForward
Publisher: WayForward

After twenty years of trying, WayForward’s loveable half-genie hero’s lost adventure has finally made its way to consoles in Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution. Originally in development almost immediately after the completion and release of the original Shantae on Game Boy Color, Risky Revolution was intended to be the second entry in the series, but due to mitigating circumstances, the GBA-developed title was put on indefinite hiatus. A lot of ideas and concepts from this game were reused in future additions to the series, like Risky’s Revenge and Half-Genie Hero, but series creator Matt Bozen always maintained his hope and desire to see it make its way to release. Now in 2025, we finally get to see what we had missed out on decades ago.

Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution takes place chronologically after the events of the original adventure, where the titular protagonist has to once again stand up against her arch-enemy Risky Boots, who has her sights set on taking over Sequin Land as its queen by means of destroying the world from within. With the help of her friends, some quirky acquaintances and her Uncle Mimic, Shantae travels around the land to help the towns and people affected by Risky’s trickery, learning new abilities along the way in her efforts to stop the ambitious pirate queen. The plot of the game is straightforward, but the personality and characters provide more than enough fun flavor to keep players engaged with the dialogue. Even outside of plot-relevant conversations, simply speaking with different townsfolk you encounter as you travel is worth your time. From frozen maidens, video game collecting werewolves and really cool bug moms, you never know who you’ll come across or what they might say.

In terms of gameplay, a lot of Shantae’s traditional abilities from other titles are retained here. The genie’s main method of attack still comes from her whipping her hair forward like a Belmont from Castlevania, and as-like the first title and a few others, through the method of interpretive dance, she can transform herself into various different animals and mythical creatures. These abilities mostly allow her to progress in her exploration of stages that she visits, but also can be used to solve puzzles and assist with traversal in dungeons. Shantae’s Monkey, Elephant, and Spider transformations return from the original entry, while other abilities that were reused in later ones make their chronological first appearance here as they were initially titled to first appear in Risky Revolution. Each transformation grants Shantae a useful ability and the charming sprite work on show for the different forms Shantae possesses are all great to watch in motion.

There are two central methods to powering Shantae up so she can fight Risky and her minions; through the in-game currency earned from defeating enemies and destroying pots, which can be traded with Shantae’s new zombie friend Rotty Tops for useful items and elemental abilities like fireballs and electric clouds. She can also power up her hair-whipping here so she deals more damage and reaches further. Rotty can be found in Scuttle Town, but she also appears in all major dungeons so you will never be without an opportunity to cash in for some healing items or a power-up. The other method of improving Shantae’s stats is through dungeon puzzle-solving; some rooms and side-quests given by NPCs can net you a Heart Holder; akin to Heart Containers from Zelda, which grant Shantae another heart onto her health meter. These dungeons also house power-up abilities for your transformations, and all across Sequin Land, fifty Secret Squids can be found. Something is said to happen if all of them can be found.

Gameplay follows a set loop of helping out one of Uncle’s friends, visiting a new town to put things back to normal, in order to gain a new map to the next location Shantae needs to go in order to restore order. One of the defining unique gimmicks to Risky Revolution’s platforming comes from the changing backgrounds. In certain instances, Shantae can hop between the foreground and background of a level, and she may have to manipulate the stage creatively to solve a puzzle or complete a goal. This gets progressively trickier as the game goes on, and makes for some very fun challenging design. Having said that, the difficulty of the game rises naturally over the course of its seven-eight hour campaign. If you set out to find all collectibles, it could tack another few hours onto your campaign runtime. 

This new console version of Risky Revolution contains some neat bells and whistles. First of all, there’s the base Story Mode which features some cleaned up pixel-art and gorgeous HD artwork of Shantae and her buddies. These get shown off during chapter title cards and some story moments as the plot carries on. There’s also a Classic Mode option, with the visuals and sprite work all created to show how the game would have originally released on GBA. However, save files are not carried over between Story and Classic mode – they are entirely separate so you can’t decide to switch to classic in the middle of a story campaign, you start over fresh on a new save. Worth noting also is that this game features no autosave; I thought this would be an issue that would bug me, but thankfully, the method for saving is very good. To save, Shantae must speak with the Save Guy. I thought at first this meant I could only save at his home in Scuttle Town but luckily he gets around, and Shantae runs into him all the time. Whenever she visits a new land, inside every dungeon and before every major boss fight. There was never a point where I felt I lost progress because of how often Save Guy pops up.

As is the case with her other notable titles Shantae and the Seven Sirens and Advance Wars 1 2: Re-Boot Camp, Maddie Lim hits it out of the park with the game’s soundtrack. A lot of catchy melodies, crunching sound design, and bouncy BGMs keep the adventure motoring along and I found myself humming several themes after I finished playing. Shantae is relatively quiet this go around, perhaps to keep in theming with its place as a GBA title, as she only has some battle grunts this time around, but the charm was still flowing through her animations and the world around her, much like the original game and Risky’s Revenge. One brand new mode for the series is a four-player battle mode. With this and all the other options available to the player, there’s plenty to keep you coming back to Sequin Land.

Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution is a brilliant, creative, and entertaining platforming adventure with oodles of personality and bundles of charm. Once I had finished the game, I sat down and thought about what areas I felt it was lacking in or where it could improve and nothing came to mind. It feels perfect for the time it was originally intended to release, and it feels perfect now twenty years later. There’s only one adjective to possibly describe a game that good: timeless.

Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution copy provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.