Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution Review – A Lost GBA Game That Feels Lost

Let’s be honest: the idea of unearthing a canceled game from decades past is incredibly cool. There’s a magic to it. When WayForward and Limited Run Games announced they were finally finishing and releasing Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution, a lost chapter for the Game Boy Advance, I was genuinely excited. As a fan of the series’ charming, quirky beginnings, I was ready to dive back into Sequin Land.

After spending several hours with it, however, I’m left with a sinking feeling. This isn’t a lost treasure. It’s more like finding an old time capsule only to discover it’s full of things you’d already forgotten for a reason.

A Story That’s All Punchlines, No Punch

The plot slots in between the original Game Boy Color game and Risky’s Revenge. The villainous Risky Boots is up to her old tricks, but this time her scheme involves literally rearranging the map of Sequin Land by swapping towns around. It’s a fun, cartoonish premise.

The problem is the execution. The narrative leans hard into its Saturday morning cartoon vibe, with every character seemingly in a race to deliver as many one-liners as possible before the scene ends. While some jokes land with a classic Shantae charm, too many rely on tired meta-humor or awkward gross-out gags that fall completely flat. The series has always walked a line between lighthearted fun and more suggestive themes, but here it feels less like a clever balancing act and more like a desperate plea for a laugh. It made it really hard for me to actually care about what was happening.

Gameplay: A Confusing Tour of Sameness

The core loop will be familiar to fans: you explore interconnected areas, find new animal transformations (which are still a highlight), and unlock dungeons. The new gimmick is the ability to manipulate the foreground and background in certain zones using Risky’s own machines. It sounds neat on paper.

In practice, it’s a navigational nightmare. These areas loop around on themselves with no distinct landmarks and—crucially—no map. I spent most of my time wandering in circles, pushing against every wall, and using transformations randomly until something finally clicked. It felt less like exploration and more like tedious trial-and-error. Finding a new transformation should be exciting; instead, it just meant I had to trudge back through the same confusing zones to find the one spot I could now use it.

The dungeons are a slight improvement but suffer from the same lack of guidance. The level design is utterly unmemorable. I finished the game and couldn’t tell you a single standout room or puzzle. The one exception is the final dungeon, which finally gives you some basic floor numbers. It’s a small mercy that only highlights how lost you were before.

A Control Scheme That Fights You

This might be my biggest frustration. For a game running on a modern system but aping a GBA style, the controls are bafflingly inconsistent.

The button mapping feels completely haphazard. Why do ZL, L, and A all perform the same “use item” function, yet constantly conflict with each other? I can’t count how many times I finished a dialogue box by pressing A, only to immediately waste a health item because the game registered another press. The menus are even worse. There’s no standard for “confirm” or “cancel.” Sometimes it’s B to confirm, sometimes it’s A. Rottytops’ shop uses B to confirm and Y to cancel, for some inexplicable reason. It’s a basic usability failure that any amount of playtesting should have caught.

The Verdict: A Novelty, Not a Triumph

Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution has a great novelty factor. The pixel art is genuinely gorgeous, and it’s cool to see a “what if” game become real. There are bright spots—the transformations are fun to use, and some puzzles are clever.

But these moments are drowned out by bland, confusing level design, a story that tries too hard, and control issues that actively hinder the experience. It feels less like a rediscovered classic and more like a rough draft that needed several more passes. For die-hard Shantae completists only.

Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution

• Platforms: Nintendo Switch (Reviewed), PC

• Rating: Alright

The Good:

• Gorgeous, authentic GBA-style pixel art.

• Animal transformations remain a fun and core part of gameplay.

• A few clever puzzles provide momentary enjoyment.

The Bad:

• Confusing, maze-like areas with no map make exploration a chore.

• Incredibly inconsistent and frustrating button mapping.

• Forgettable level and dungeon design.

• Humor often misses the mark, undermining the story. IMAGE SOURCE- wayforward.com