YMMV / Shantae (2002)

• Anti-Climax Boss: Risky's Tinkerbats have apparently forgotten to install weapons and defenses to her All-Purpose Steam Powered Tinker Tank, leading to a "steam-powered behemoth" that can only damage you if you jump on its treads or stand in front of its two external steam vents.
• Breather Boss: The Wheel Beast. It's damaged by hitting switches on the wall in spider form to drop it into pits. Not only is it very easy to bait the Beast into falling into a pit, wall-crawling keeps you free from damage with no consequence.
• Demonic Spiders: The Nagas are an absolute pain to deal with. They spawn in large groups, have a ton of health, even more so at night, and have odd homing attacks that are very hard to dodge. Thankfully, they are nerfed to the ground in future games.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Fighting the final boss as plain ol' Shantae? A nightmare. However, if you bring a full stock of Pike Balls and Fireballs, and/or use the Spider Venom, you'll be laughing all the way to the end credits.
  • The Oasis Town Gecko minigame in the first game. It's trivial to win over 100 gems in just a few rounds, and that's not even a big return for this game. Since it's a luck-based minigame, there's not even any skill needed to master it. If you have a run of bad luck, just reset and load from the save point located right next to the game stall. Once you reach Oasis Town, the only thing stopping you from having enough money to buy an overwhelming amount of every item while having enough left over for the Fighter's Gear is the patience to spend roughly a half-hour rolling dice.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: As it was released near the very end of the Game Boy Color's lifespan, it fully takes advantage of the system's power to provide surprisingly detailed assets and smooth animations.
• Zero-Effort Boss: The final duel with Risky Boots is normally pretty difficult...if you don't switch to Spider Form and just blast her with venom. Risky has no answer to this and goes down in no time.

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