Headscratchers / Shantae

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In general

Is Risky a human?

• While there are probably a lot of bizarre-looking types of people in Sequin Land, Risky almost looks human enough for it to seem innocuous, but she has pale purple skin. Half-Genie Hero has her state that she has sensitive skin, which seems to be written off as a joke. She once served under the Pirate Master, who's specifically identified as not being human, and her slight resemblance to Nega-Shantae briefly made me suspect that she was a genie or half-genie he corrupted and turned to his side... but she doesn't have pointed ears, or any magic powers that we know of. Is she supposed to be an ordinary human with really pale skin, then? And if so, what made the Pirate Master recruit her when the rest of his army seemed to consist of corrupted Tinkerbats?
  • Her pale purple skin points towards some serious meddling in dark magic, but other than that, she's presumably human.
  • Originally Risky was meant to be a pirate ghost (or zombie, or some kind of undead being...). Even after being made human the color scheme stuck.

What exactly are the barons?

• The question's in the title, I guess. Risky's Revenge described them as bandits who pass themselves off as artifact collectors, but this seems to have been to justify each of them having a Plot Coupon in that game, since none of them seem particularly like they make a living out of thievery. Then Pirate's Curse introduced a fourth one and Seven Sirens introduced a fifth, and the only things any of the games seem to agree on about them are that Ammo Baron and possibly Armor Baron are military leaders and Techno Baron is a Mad Scientist inventor-type. Hypno Baron has been portrayed inconsistently between the two games he's appeared in, and Squid Baron has been relegated to being a recurring fourth-wall-breaker and filler boss who's mostly just there for comedy...I'm aware that detailed world-building isn't one of this series' highest priorities, but I'm just wondering if there's any consistency regarding these guys or if they're just whatever each new game wants/needs them to be.
  • They honestly just exist to be a tier of bad guy between 'regular monsters' and 'Risky Boots'.

Shantae

Purpose of the Twinkle Stone

• So Risky needs the four magical stones to superpower her steam engine. She also gives an explanation for what she plans to do with each stone. The Dribble Stone supplies it with unlimited water. The Golem Stone can "handle the power of the other stones". The Simmer Stone gives unlimited heat to produce steam. The Twinkle Stone provides... unlimited light? Risky never actually explains what use this stone is at all to her steam engine, or what it even does. As it stands, it seems like the other three stones, or even just the Dribble and Simmer stone are really all the steam engine needs. Has there ever been any explanation of what the Twinkle Stone's function, or is it just something that's never been expanded on?
  • Seeing as the Twinkle Stone is apparently ice-element, my best guess is that Risky needed it to control the extreme heat given off by the Simmer Stone. She may need a high temperature in order to boil the water into steam, but if it gets too hot, she would risk it melting the machine down from the inside.
  • As confirmed by the manual for the VC version, which describes the Twinkle Stone as being good for cooling down heavy machinery.

Purpose of the Golem Stone

• Related to the above question about the Twinkle Stone, what purpose did the Golem Stone serve in Risky's plan? The other three had a direct role in powering or maintaining the steam engine, but all Risky and the manual say about the Golem Stone is that it's the only material sturdy enough to contain the power of the other stones...Was she going to forge the stone into the chamber for the new steam engine? If it's small enough for Shantae to carry around, it seems unlikely there'd be enough there for something like that, though.
  • I assumed that it was meant to be the coal for the steam engine.
  • Or maybe she planned on reverse-engineering whatever material the stone was made out of, or just forging different metals together until she came up with something close enough to work. Obviously this would be a lot easier if she had the stone itself to use as a reference, hence why she would've wanted it.

Genies from the first game

• Seven Sirens tells us that Shantae's magic dances are her special genie power. If they're unique to her and her mother, then, how did the four labyrinth genies from the first game know to teach her transformation dances when she rescued them? If it were any other half-genie, it sounds like the dances would've been useless.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness.
  • I always thought that belly dancing was how all genies used their powers and they just taught her the dance and guessed she could put it to use.
  • Since Shantae is supposedly just a shorter (and more annoying) version of her mother, could be that the four genies all recognized her as looking like that one genie who could transform into animals and the like, and so guessed that Shantae could make use of the same power.

Risky's Revenge

Destroy them!

• Why didn't Shantae destroy the Magic Seals once she found them? She threatens to do it once when Risky shows up and demands them, but never seems to consider going through with it again.
  • My guess would be that she's unable to do so, although I'm not sure if it's stated in-game. Shantae probably just grabbed the Idiot Ball.

Why can't they just destroy the magic lamp?

• I mean. Destroying would've been a better solution than splitting it into three magic seals. Or at least sink into the bottom of the ocean.
  • The best answer I could come up with would be that they thought the lamp could be used as some sort of Godzilla Threshold, so to speak. If there were a genie or half-genie who went to the dark side, for example, the lamp could be used to imprison her or take her powers away. Alternatively, maybe they're just incapable of destroying the lamp or the seals. Shantae does threaten to do so, but we've nothing to suggest that she actually could.

Pirate's Curse

Why isn't Shantae a good role model again?

In Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, Shantae meets a swordsman named Bran-Son, who proclaims himself to be a good role model, to which Shantae replies something to the effect of "I'm not, on account of bad temper and my outlandish outfit."

Fair enough on the former point, but Bran-Son's outfit is far more outlandish than Shantae's. Why doesn't he get any role model points docked for wearing what basically amounts to a Speedo and a couple belts?

• Shantae is insecure and is putting herself down.
• Alternatively, it's a knock on the Double Standard for how scantily-dressed men and women are regarded by Moral Guardians.
• Wait... "bad temper"? When has she ever shown that? At least in Pirate's Curse, the only times I recall her getting mad were perfectly reasonable times to do so, and often more akin to irritation. (Though the "outlandish outfit" is definitely a bash at Moral Guardians.)
  • Most of that 'bad temper' shows up in the original GBC title, and she's almost always ready to fight across every game. But, yeah, she's got some confidence issues in Pirate's Curse.
  • More than that, she has confidence issues present in all four games, to some degree.

Cutscene Incompetence

• Why can't Shantae just put the smackdown on the Tan Line Temple guards in Pirate's Curse? I understand completely that she's a generous, all-loving hero at heart, but she's demonstrated the ability to use force when necessary plenty of times before. These guards are essentially holding her against her will for a ridiculous reason and when she has a very important mission to fulfill - she'd be perfectly justified in fending them off in this instance. (I know she says they took her items away, but she still has her hair.)
  • Because then we wouldn't have to play through a mandatory stealth section in a ridiculous outfit.
  • And while that would be a tremendous tragedy to all of us, what's the in-universe reason?
  • Perhaps she's just trying to avoid causing unnecessary trouble. Poor girl only wants a chance to talk this incident over and get her stuff back.
  • There’s also the fact that anything that gets whipped by that hair tends to explode into a collection of bones. So, if she was unwilling to use lethal force on the guards, that would leave sneaking her way around them. Also, it’s been a while since I played Pirate’s Curse but I think I remember being able to whip the guards with your hair, but it didn’t do anything but alert them and get you sent back to your prison ce- er, room? So, maybe their armor’s one of the few things in Sequin Land that can stand up to Shantae's hair and she simply couldn’t use force this time?

Surprise, surprise

• In Pirate's Curse, why was Shantae so surprised when the Ammo Baron tried targeting his weapon at Sequin Land Palace? She'd just eavesdropped on him discussing it with Techno Baron on Frostbite Island. She should've known about it already.
  • It may be more surprise that he actually went through with it and wasn't just blowing hot air. Shantae usually seems to think the best of people, so seeing Ammo Baron actually doing something so dangerous was a surpise

Shortsightedness, or just plain stupidity?

• In Pirate's Curse, Ammo Baron turned Scuttle Town into one heck of an impressive military fortress fortified with a gigantic cannon. Said cannon was also used to flatten the Pirate Master's face in, courtesy of Risky Boots. And yet the first thing Shantae did upon obtaining her powers back was to wish all of the fortifications and weaponry away. Had she left them intact, the pirate invasion at the beginning of Half Genie Hero would have ended with zero collateral damage to Scuttle Town and an instant defeat for Risky Boots; Shantae could just send her and her POOP TOOT straight to Davy Jones' locker with well-aimed cannon fire. This is especially more poignant considering how Risky's invasions always succeed due to Scuttle Town being woefully ill-equipped to defend itself.
  • To be fair, the entire plot of Half-Genie Hero is Shantae helping Mimic build a machine that will help protect Scuttle Town so she doesn't have to as often, so they're clearly looking into alternatives. And Shantae calls Ammo Baron out in Risky's Revenge and Pirate's Curse for caring more about the town's value to him than the people living there. She considers Scuttle Town her home, and Ammo Baron coming in and decking it out in metal plating and dangerous weaponry is basically seen as a defilement, not to mention all the homes and businesses he tore down or renovated in order to do so.
  • And if you're looking for a more practical answer, Shantae scared Ammo Baron and his troops out of Scuttle Town at the end of the game, and they were probably the only ones who knew how to use that blaster gun.

How did Risky know Shantae's mother?

• At the end of Pirate's Curse, Risky tells Shantae that she just like her mother, only shorter and more annoying...While I understand she probably knew her mother from the struggle between the Genies and the Pirate Master, how did she know which of the genies was Shantae's mother specifically, especially since the Pirate Master himself didn't know?
  • Risky seems to imply a more personal involvement with Shantae's mother. While the Pirate Master may have regarded her as 'just another genie', she may have been a regular foe of Risky's, much like Shantae is now.
  • Going by what the fifth game tells us, Risky also would’ve been able to tell based on which of the genies used transformation dances like Shantae does. The Pirate Master never got to see Shantae transform, so it makes sense why he wouldn’t have made a connection since he never knew she had that power.

Tinkerbat loyalty

• Whose side were the Tinkerbats on during the events of Pirate's Curse? We see that some of them had yet to be corrupted into Cacklebats - the ones who leave Shantae a map at the end of each dungeon - but were they trying to help her and Risky stop the Pirate Master, or helping the Pirate Master get his revenge on Risky for her betrayal?
  • I think they're trying to help Risky out - possibly in their final moments as 'her' Tinkerbats. Since it's Shantae who shows up, though, they end up just dropping their maps and running away. You can't really blame them given what usually happens when they cross Shantae's path...

Training and Shantae's moveset

• Why doesn't Shantae know any new moves at the beginning of Pirate's Curse? Bolo ended off Risky's Revenge by promising to teach her some human moves after she lost her magic, and he says during the Ammo Baron's attack that "training's over," but Shantae doesn't seem to have developed anything beyond her normal moveset - in fact, she actually downgraded a bit, since you're forced to buy the backdash move (a base ability in the previous game) from the shop, in addition to new moves like the upperkick and backflip. Wouldn't it make more sense for her to have known these from the start?
  • Well, this is Bolo we're talking about...
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation?
  • It's said in the second game that Shantae skimping on dance practice is the reason for her not being able to use any of her transformations from the original game. Likewise, maybe she was just too lazy (or despondent over losing her magic) to bother practicing the techniques Bolo taught her, in conjunction with his potential ineptitude as a teacher.

Risky knows her enemies. She just doesn't plan accordingly.

• Risky seemed to have been planning on the Pirate Master trading her life for the dark magic Shantae collected, since when asked, she says she knew Shantae would use the opposite of common Sense and hand it over. However...
  • If Risky had intended to use this gambit, why did she tell Shantae to collect and destroy the dark magic if anything happened to her? Shantae had expressed the willingness to destroy artifacts to keep them out of Risky's hands in the last two games. For all Risky knew, Shantae could've actually followed through on the order she'd been given.
  • Why did she bank her victory on Shantae choosing to save her life over preserving the dark magic when the two of them have been bitter enemies since the first game? Shantae may've gone along with a Hostage for MacGuffin ploy before, but that was when her uncle was the one at stake. That's a lot heavier than someone who's tried to murder you on two separate occasions, even if the two of them did briefly become quasi-friends.

Bolo's act of heroism

• If you speak to Bolo after finishing the Frostbite Island dungeon, he asks if Shantae noticed the act of heroism he performed earlier. Shantae assumes he's referring to how he sabotaged the targeting module for the Ammo Baron's weapon, but Bolo plainly doesn't know what she's talking about, proving that that act of heroism was an accident. But what was the act of heroism he was actually referring to, then?

Why is this here?

• Inside the Cackle Tower in Pirate's Curse, Shantae comes across a machine she says looks like it's from her uncle's workshop. What's odd is that the game never explains how it got into the dungeon from there, especially since it has three other parts that are hidden away in separate rooms that are needed to power it. Did the corrupted Tinkerbats steal it and put it there?
  • I'm pretty sure she's saying it looks like it's from her Uncle's workshop on account of it being a strange machine, not that it's literally something that belongs to him. Considering that it's intricately tied to the dungeon's overall puzzle, it likely belonged to the previous occupant.

Half-Genie Hero

Regarding the endgame...

Before going after Risky, as usual, for their final confrontation Shantae must find clues about Risky which happens to be in possession of the Sequin Land Barons (Ammo, Squid, Hypno and Techno). However she nonchalantly aids them, some who caused massive trouble through the game, gather resources so they can act again. Shantae of all people should know better than help people like them, so why she STILL helped them?

• She's kind and helpful to a fault. Recall that her nature as an All-Loving Hero is a plot point in Pirate's Curse, and how quick she is to help out Rottytops (who's fresh off of betraying her in Risky's Revenge) and Risky herself.
• That and because three of the four Barons give her good reason to.
  • Techno Baron's been sentenced to a billion hours of community service building a mermaid reserve. However, he's stubbornly refusing to carry it out, his excuse being that the Data Chip containing his financial information is still in the Mermaid Factory.
  • Hypno Baron is getting back into his old macabre ways. If not given the Sunken Souls he demands, he outright states that he'll take the souls of the people of Scuttle Town to torment in their place.
  • In the previous game, Ammo Baron was able to press assault charges against Shantae for stopping him from destroying Scuttle Town, nearly rendering her unable to do anything when a much greater threat arose. Giving him Scrap Metal to help him repair his warship would smooth things over with him so he's not as inclined to sue Shantae again while Risky Boots is in the final stages of her Evil Plan.
    • Actually, it wasn't the Ammo Baron who sued her, but the Sequin Land Palace over attacking the Ammo Baron, since he was legally the rightful owner of Scuttle Town at that point. So he wouldn't have any right to sue her once the town deed went back to Mayor Scuttlebutt.
    • There's also the fact that Ammo Baron does not hold such grudges and is actually on fairly good terms with Shantae at a personal level. Remember that he was civil to her in Shantae and the Pirate's Curse even after she wrecked his tank, and was pleased to welcome the half-genie into his army when she turned over the targeting module to him. He also offered Shantae her old guardian genie job at the end of Pirate's Curse, which is something he would not have done if he hated Shantae's guts. So there's really little reason for Shantae to be nasty to Ammo Baron.
  • Squid Baron is actually friendly to Shantae when he's not on the clock, so Shantae doesn't need much justification for helping him.
  • I figured it was at least partially due to previous events giving her a bit of perspective - Risky has just corrupted Shantae and turned her into an evil version of herself, as well as revealed her intention to do the same to the entire Genie Realm. In light of that, lending a hand to help out the barons, who at at worst apathetic toward Shantae as long as she stays out of their way, would seem quite mild in comparison to the end of the world. (That, and none of them were planning anything terribly evil as a direct consequence of Shantae helping them - Techno Baron was performing community service and just wanted his financial data chip, Ammo Baron just wanted scrap metal to build something, Hypno Baron actually threatens to do something vaguely evil if Shantae doesn't bring him the sunken souls, and all Squid Baron wants is a poster. At least they're not up to anything Shantae can't put a stop to once she deals with Risky.)

Rottytops' loyalty?

• In the Friends to the End expansion, Rottytops, Sky and Bolo confess that they did not expect to survive Nega-Shantae's maze, but kept the faith that even if one of them were to fail, the other had an attribute that would ensure eventual success. Bolo mentions that he placed his faith in Rottytops as a loyal friend who would never quit on Shantae. That would be fine and all, if not for the fact that Rottytops holds the dubious honour of being the ONLY character in the series who actually BETRAYED Shantae...
  • I haven't played Pirate's Curse, so I'm going to assume her only betrayal was the one in Risky's Revenge. In which case, Rottytops wasn't alone in that betrayal - she had her brothers, too, and it's not made clear who did more of the dirty work. And they only did it because Risky promised them all a lifetime supply of coffee, which is pretty much the Wolfsbane potion for these guys, so it wasn't like she chose to betray Shantae just because she was evil all along or secretly agreed with Risky's agenda or anything...She even visibly felt regretful afterward, unlike Adner and Poe. (Alternatively, her betrayal is exactly what Bolo was referring to. She betrayed Shantae once, was regretful of it, and now he trusts that she'll do everything she can to not let her down again.)
  • After playing Pirate's Curse, I feel it's also possible Shantae told Bolo about her encounter with Rottytops's human self in the Village of Lost Souls, wherein Rotty acknowledges how she feels she keeps messing things up for Shantae and wishes she could be a better friend to her. So he would know that she'd never stop trying to help her, even if she didn't always succeed.
  • It's meant to show some character development on Bolo's part. He spends the entirety of their quest arguing with Rotty specifically because he thinks she's disloyal and selfish, due to her past misdeeds. By the end of it, though, he recognizes how devoted and loyal Rotty really is to Shantae, just like how Rotty learns to recognize Sky as smart and responsible instead of Ms. Bossypants, and Sky learns to recognize Bolo as determined and unyielding instead of a scatterbrained ditz.
  • In addition, after playing the first game, I'd hesitate to call what Rotty did in Risky's Revenge a full-on betrayal, seeing as she and Shantae weren't really friends yet. If anything, she was more like an informant — getting Shantae into the Cackle Mound and telling her about where to find the barons — but not someone who thought she owed her any actual loyalty until she realized how much Shantae's company really meant to her.

Destroying the Genie Realm

• In Half-Genie Hero, how could the entire genie realm have been destroyed, just by Shantae destroying the Tinkerbrain? All the Tinkerbrain did was corrupt its magic.
  • Rule of Drama. In seriousness, though, it's likely some sort of chain reaction. Dark Magic seems more volatile than Light Magic, so destroying the Tinkerbrain completely rather than going in with the Magical Polarizer to change it back has disastrous consequences.

Dynamo blueprints

• If Mimic designed the original blueprints for the Dynamo, how come he never realized that Risky sabotaged them?
  • He was probably so relieved to get "his" blueprint back that he didn't bother checking it over. Or the change Risky made was just small enough that it could be dismissed as a minor skip in his memory if he spotted the difference at all. Shantae does mention that he can be scatterbrained...

What happened to the Tinkertub?

• Why has Risky resorted to using the Tinkerslug for her attack on Main Street? The Tinkertub seemed fine at the end of the last game...Was Shantae such a lousy pirate that she ran it aground several times when she was on her own, to the point where it was inoperable once Risky got it back?
  • Risky's constantly upgrading her boats. In the first game, she's got a normal pirate ship. By Risky's Revenge, she's got the Steam Powered Oceanic Tinkertub, and only falls back on the S.P.O.T. Mk II because Shantae destroys the first one. It's not out of the ordinary that she'd choose to upgrade further to a living ship that more or less doesn't have to rely on the wind to sail.

Why does Holly Lingerbean have long ears?

• The only other character with long ears is Shantae, which is mentioned in Seven Sirens as being thanks to her genie heritage...but Holly tells you before you fight Wilbur that she's not half-genie, so why does she have them?
  • Best guess is that her appearance as a memory is malleable to at least some degree, which allowed her to shape her ears that way so that she could pass for a half-genie. Seven Sirens confirms that there weren't any half-genies before Shantae's generation, so her having been one before she became a memory seems to be out of the question.

Visiting the Genie Realm

• Shantae tells Mimic of how she got pulled into the Genie Realm while fighting the Dynamo, and that she'd always dreamed of being able to go there...but hadn't she already gone to the Genie Realm at the end of the first game? Why is she acting like this is the first time she's been there and seen it?
  • Out of universe, HGH is meant to be a bit of a soft reboot, less reliant on past games and events for the benefit of everyone who's playing a Shantae game for the first time. In-universe, maybe she just means she wishes to be there for more than a few minutes?
  • Her visit in the first game would be more comparable to standing in the doorway between the two worlds, and her eyes were closed for most of the scene, if not all, and the only genies she talked to were the ones she met from the four labyrinths. Half-Genie Hero was the first time she made a proper foray into the Genie Realm, where she could see it and walk around and speak to the genies there, even if still in a limited capacity.

How did she know?

• During Pirate Queen's Quest, Shantae tells Risky before their final confrontation that her friends were the ones who helped her shake off the Dynamo's corruption, but since this is supposed to be Risky retelling the story to make herself look better, she had to have known that detail to include it in her retelling. But how did she, when Shantae didn't actually say anything about it during their encounter in the actual game?
  • Given how smart Risky is, she likely figured out on her own. Already at the beginning of Pirate Queen's Quest, she was confident Shantae was going to return.

Seven Sirens

Risky's plan?

• Okay, so Risky's plan in Seven Sirens was to give the Empress Siren the life force of 5 half-genies while leaving Shantae around in case the Empress Siren stabbed her in the back. There is just one problem with this. There are only 5 half-genies. If Rotty hadn't disguised herself as a half-genie, then Shantae would have been taken. Did Risky somehow know that Rotty was going to do that, or was it just pure luck that Rotty turned up?
  • Presumably, Risky was ready to turn over the half-genies for real. That, or she was planning on making sure some useless extra ended up on stage at the time of the kidnapping, in order to leave Shantae free to explore the island. Rotty just happened to slip perfectly into that role, saving Risky some trouble.
  • Risky was in charge of the show. She had ample opportunity to toss another dud into the mix if Rotty hadn't come along. Heck, we even see another female zombie hanging around...
  • Even if Shantae had been captured, Risky would probably be capable of finding some way to get her friends to rescue her without arousing the Empress's suspicions. She already passed Shantae off as a dud of a half-genie, so the security around her cage could conceivably be expected to be pretty lax.
  • Plus, we don't know that the Empress would've wanted Shantae even if Rotty hadn't showed up. If she were that interested in someone Risky told her was a dud and not worth the trouble, why wouldn't she have had her captured along with the other five in the actual game?

Where does Harmony live/protect?

• Does Harmony live on the island or did she travel like Shantae and seemingly Plink did? There are only three towns on the island and one was a dud for Risky's plan. Zapple guards Armor Town while Vera guards Tree Town. However, the ghost of seemingly Harmony's mother is found in the depths of the sunken city. So where is she from? And if she is from the island, how could she not guess that something wrong was happening if she was able to tell Fillin wasn't a real genie from a glance?
  • When Harmony's talking about the Genie Scrapbook, she says, "I'd hoped that by coming to this island and taking part in the performance, I'd finally be able to share (the book) with other Half-Genies", so presumably, she's not living on the island. It wouldn't surprise me if she'd originally lived there, but the rest of her family moved her away after her mother's sacrifice to stop the Sirens - or if they left at her insistence, for that matter.

Risky keeping the airship

• Risky has such faith in Shantae's abilities that she decided to use her as a trump card against the Empress Siren, which sort of implies that Risky thinks Shantae is stronger than her. If that's the case, how did Risky expect she would be able to keep the Siren Airship once the Empress was out of the way? If it hadn't been destroyed in the aftermath, I can't see Shantae being OK with letting her keep it.
  • My guess was Risky was going to throw Shantae off the ship or something after she beat the Empress Siren because she would be worn out from the fight before hand.
  • All Risky really had to do was threaten Shantae’s friends using the ship’s cannons to get her to back off. She was just tremendously unlucky that the ship was destroyed once the Empress was defeated.

Defection

• Is there any word on exactly why Lobster Girl decided to help the good guys in Seven Sirens? I don't recall being told how she was treated by the other Sirens... Was she abused by them or something? Did she not think she had any other options? If she wasn't in line with them, why else would she have helped them by kidnapping the girls during the festival? The game doesn't seem to give a lot of dirt on her.
  • You can spot her through portholes multiple times throughout 7S, keeping an eye on Shantae and darting off when she's discovered. Maybe, after watching Shantae take down most of the other Sirens, she decided to throw her lot in with the winning team to not get her butt kicked?
  • It is actually explained after the sirens’ airship takes off. Shantae realizes that Lobster Girl’s magic was used to capture the girls during the festival, but she didn’t know why the girls needed to be taken or why Shantae was left behind. She’s so timid that it’s easy to picture Risky and the other sirens strong-arming her into helping them without giving her the details, and Shantae concludes that she’s done being complicit with their evil acts — which is no doubt why Risky referred to her as a “wretched runaway” earlier in the game, because she chose to desert them and join the good guys.

Zapple not doing her job

• Since Zapple seems to be the guardian of Armor Town, why did she never warn Shantae that Armor Baron was shady? Did she not know? Has he never done something like what he did to her and Sky before? And if she does, what's stopping her from running him out of town?
  • I was under the impression that the Armor Baron was the one in charge of Armor Town, and he seems to do a good enough job hiding his shady intentions behind a friendly facade. Even if Zapple does know about his less savory side, Pirate's Curse shows us why you can't just go attacking a town's legal owner even if you're a Guardian Genie; Shantae tried it with the Ammo Baron and got placed under house arrest by the sultana of Sequin Land.
  • As for why she didn't warn Shantae about him, if she did know, it could be that she was preoccupied with what had happened at the festival and the disappearance of the half-genies and all that jazz. That her boss occasionally engages in mildly unscrupulous behavior (the full extent of which she may or may not be aware of) is more likely not to occur to her with something that much more pressing on her mind.
  • Another possibility is that Armor Baron is a competent administrator and Armor Town is well taken care off under his rule, so even if Zapple is aware of of her boss's occasional unscrupulous behavior she sees no reason to snitch about it to Shantae as his merits have earned her silence. Furthermore, the guardian genies are essentialy acting as ambassadors for their respective towns in this event; does anyone honestly expect an ambassador to trashtalk about their bosses to a stranger?
  • Plink says that Zapple is a bit wary and seems to have trouble opening up to others, another reason why she wouldn’t want to gossip about her boss to a stranger.

Who are the "Spell monsters"?

• In Seven Sirens, whenever Shantae casts a spell an image of a female monster flashes on the screen (A raven for vision, a worm girl for restoration, a manta ray for electricity, and a Phoenix for earthquake). Is there any hint or implication as to who or what they are? Their apparent benevolence seems at odds with the other hostile monster women endemic to this setting.
  • I've taken it to be that those creatures are actually all Shantae herself — the dances she uses to trigger them are fusions of her transformation magic with that of the other half-genies, so she has to transform into something that can use Plink's seer magic, Vera's refresh magic, Zapple's electricity magic, and Harmony's quake magic. As to what sort of creature each form is supposed to be...My first impression was that they represented what genies look like in this setting, but Harmony's mother as we see her doesn't really resemble the Quake Dance fusion. So maybe they're just nondescript forms Shantae takes that aren't meant to resemble anything in particular.
  • I figured that Shantae was channeling a form that's 'adjacent' to what Full Genies look like, with some of her own flair thrown in. I thought that the discrepancy between the Quake form and Harmony's actual mother could be written off since she's a mostly de-powered ghost when we meet her, and not in her prime.
  • Could be, I guess. Maybe she was even the "fire-spouting hothead" genie mentioned by the Pirate Master in the third game.
  • Since the forms are the result of fusion magic, it could be that they're not meant to represent what a singular genie looks like because they stem from the magic of two of them. The Quake fusion doesn't completely resemble Harmony's mother, for example, because it's also taking inspiration from Shantae's mother, whatever she looks like.

Harmony's powers

• To my recollection, Harmony is the only one of the half-genies who doesn't specify what her powers center around — we just know that one of their functions is causing earthquakes. But is that the only thing she can do? She also shoots off fireworks during the festival performance, though that could be chalked up to the branch of fire magic you can buy at the shop. Even if not that, how would earthquake and fireworks magic tie into each other? Volcanism, perhaps?
  • Her and her mother's powers (the ghost dog) are indeed quake. It seems each Genie line has magic unique to it (Refresh, Quake, Transform etc). Presumably there are some basic powers that genies might have access to in case if they got a non-combative power like Seer or Refresh and that base might just be fire. It could also just be since Harmony is the first half-genie and since Shantae herself doesn't seem to be that creative with her powers (the key to the door thing was an idea she hadn't thought of) it might just be that she had more time to hone her magic. She also had a scrapbook that might have taught her how to harness more magic.

Scrapbook

• If the scrapbook introduced in Seven Sirens had messages for all the half-genies recorded in it, why did their mothers all decide to entrust it only to one of them? According to Harmony, it was only happenstance that she had a chance to meet other half-genies, and there are probably others in the world who didn't come to the festival. Why not make copies of the book and give one to each half-genie's guardian, like Uncle Mimic and Vera's father?
  • Maybe they only had the time to put one together? Besides, steam engines are considered a dangerous technological advancement for the people of Sequin Land, do you really think the genies had a printing press handy?
  • I wasn't thinking they'd necessarily need something like a printing press, since they were all genies. Or maybe they could just write down their messages for their respective daughters and keep them separate from each other. Or, if they're going to let Harmony keep the book, at least give the other half-genies (or their guardians) the heads-up that it exists and how they might find it in the future. Uncle Mimic was implied to have been close to Shantae's mother, yet he didn't seem to know about it since Shantae didn't.

Follow-up questions

• If the entire purpose of the Half-Genie Festival was to bring the girls to the island to have their magic drained, and Risky personally insisted that capturing Shantae wouldn't be worth the effort, wouldn't the Empress Siren be curious to know why Risky invited her in the first place if she knew that?
  • Because even if she supposedly didn't have any magic, she is still a half genie and one being missing would have looked suspicious.
    • If this is implying she had to invite Shantae because there weren't any other half-genies to come in her place, there was one mentioned in the first game who doesn't appear anywhere in this one. And even if it was only Shantae and the other four girls, how would the Empress have known exactly how many there were?

Why was Risky allowed to escape?

• In almost every other game, she and Shantae are alone in a collapsing lair or something when she makes her escape, so it's more plausible that she would get away. Here, she was unconscious, fished from the water, and surrounded by several people, among them five half-genies. They could've tied her up and taken her gear away while she was unconscious, but they just stand by and let her get carried away to safety after everything she's done. Why?
  • Because plot reasons.
  • Perhaps because Shantae specifically knows Risky is a known quantity and at least a somewhat decent person deep down. Keeping her active may both ensure Shantae doesn't get lazy or out of practice, and make sure Shantae keeps her job.
    • Considering what happened in Pirate's Curse, this makes a lot of sense. Shantae knows that Risky is evil, more or less, but also pragmatic; if someone is more evil & more dangerous than her, Risky will pull a Batman Gambit and/or manipulate Shantae into defeating them while subtly helping "from the inside", to keep her position as the main villain. It makes some amount of sense that Shantae might be open to letting her go specifically to use her lust for power as a mitigating tool against other potential villains that might try to move in, as a bit of a Batman Gambit of her own.
  • As a less speculative answer, everyone on the scene seemed to think Risky might already be dead. As soon as she starts to come to, she warns them all to get away from her, so they probably didn’t have time to disarm her once they realized she was still alive. Plus, she’s got a bunch of her Tinkerbats in the area who could back her up in a fight, if need be.

Revealing armor

• That filler chapter in Seven Sirens where Armor Baron crafts armor for Shantae and Sky only to paralyze them and sell them to Squid Baron. The girls are embarrassed about how skimpy the armor is and Shantae makes Armor Baron pay her for "selling us as kids toys dressed like that". While they have every right to be angry with him and demand some type of compensation for selling them, how is the armor any different let alone revealing than their normal clothes?
  • Sky and Shantae's normal outfits generally give them pants at the very least, and that armor certainly doesn't. The bigger issues here are their agency and consent, but that's not something an E10+/T-rated game is going to go into, so it's easier for the writers to just point at the outfits as the problem and leave it at that.
  • In Pirate's Curse, Shantae does mention that she thinks her outlandish regular outfit makes her a bad role model. Seeing as this series has that level of self-awareness, maybe it's a jab at how, despite the colorful graphics and goofy scenarios, it's still a bit disingenuous to market these character designs as being appropriate for kids.

Warping

• After rescuing Plink, Vera, and Zapple, each of them warps back to one of the towns on the surface after telling you to search for fusion stones. The last two being able to warp to their hometowns is one thing, but how does Plink know how to warp back to Arena Town when she's not from there, and why don't any of them teach Shantae how to warp on command?
  • Plink's staying in Arena Town for the festival. Even if she doesn't live there, she's probably got a hotel room to stay in like Shantae does. As for the teleportation trick, Shantae just... doesn't think to ask. Plus, there tend to be warp pads nearby which functionally serve the same purpose.

How does Shantae recognize Lobster Girl?

• When Lobster Girl frees Shantae and Sky from the Armor Baron's trap, Shantae claims to have seen her before... At what point in the game was that supposed to have happened? As far as I can recall, her popping in for the rescue is the first time she appears at all, but the game definitely seems to act as though you're supposed to remember her from somewhere previous to that. Did I miss something?
  • You can see her through windows and portholes multiple times throughout the adventure before the rescue. There's even an achievement for not startling her away.

Other girls pitching in

• At one point in the story, Sky suggests that Shantae form some sort of tag-team with the other half-genies. This is framed as being a jerkish and insensitive thing to say for some reason, but she has a point: why don't the other girls do anything to help Shantae, apart from lending her their powers? Vera and Zapple are Guardian Genies of towns on the island, but they all just stand around doing nothing once they're rescued while Shantae runs around doing all the work.
  • While they might be Guardian Genies, they're likely not as combative as Shantae? Shantae's likely the most experienced genie in terms of being a hero, as this is her fifth adventure. Seer and Refresh aren't combat powers, Spark, if it's as uncontrolled as the Dance, that's bad for fighting near anything breakable, and Quake is similar.
    • The impracticality of the Spark and Quake magic isn’t relevant here, since Shantae is able to use both of them, and Zapple even considered doing so just to see where a power port in Sunken City led to early in the game.
  • Also when Shantae rescues them, they are having their power drained by the sirens. Even if they were normally combat ready, they might not be at full strength after their rescue.
    • As soon as you free Vera, she says she’s a little disoriented, but otherwise OK. They certainly don’t seem as though they’re too fatigued to help. Even after giving their magic to Shantae, they still appear to be perfectly fine.

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