Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

This game is good but it's far from the greatness some try to make it out to be. The voice acting is nice, ambiance, music, sound design and art are very good, story unfortunately gets lost amidst all the retries and reloads of the game, halfway through the missions i forgot what it was about. Mechanics wise i can see what they were trying to achieve but the execution was poor. Enemies move not only their bodies, or if stationary, their heads like clocks, there are blind spots through out the game which should be impossible for detection and yet you get caught anyway. For example enemies can see inside bushes just by accidentally passing inside one. Enemies can also fire at you from long range without ever missing a shot and never reloading, making me question why do we have a health bar anyway. Blending with the environment is virtually impossible most of the time which is ironic for a stealth game. And the most baffling thing to me is that you can't PAUSE the game. In an RTS and no pause? This is a good concept of a game, it just needs to be better developed.

This title remind me of Robin Hood Legend of Sherwood, which was one of my favourtie games in childhood. Shadow Tactics are exactly that games but better in nearly every aspect. Just awsome tactic game, I really needed that <3

I will start by writing that I am a guge Commandos fan. Played the entire series more than once or twice. This game while beign somewhat a clone of the Commandos gameplay manages to innovate just at the right places making the game in par or even better than the Commandos series. The UI is full 3d which lets you rotate the camera to any angle you like unlike the 4 constant angles in Commandos. The characters are almost direct direvitives from the Commandos series except some small adjustments which improve the gameplay imensly. A good example is Mugen (which is equivalent to Green Beret) can perform an attach that kills severl foes at once which allows you to deal with patrols. I will let you discover the other players and skills but rest asured that if you played Commandos you will find yourself on a familiar ground. I found the difficulty going from very easy at the first levels to very hard at the last. Some levels have "tricky" solutions you can perform to avoid the direct path, this is nice but I don't really see a way how one can discover the those solutions without watching some YouTube. My biggest problem is the lack of replayability of the game, or even worse, the way they try to force replayability on you by adding some uninteresting tasks which you can perform doing the same mission again. You can always do the same mission in a different direction, stealth/kills/trickery but after hearing the same dialogs more than once or twice it will not be that appealing. One thing I have to say about the plot (without spoilers) is that it was super predictable and disapointing at the end. They tried to add a twist to the plot but it was so obvious from the begining that I found it hard to connect to the rest of the plot.

It's fairly challenging without frustratingly difficult sections, like Commandos could sometimes throw up. The controls are solid and responsive. The story works well, and the consistently great art style fits the Edo setting. Music and voice acting (English version played) are also top notch. Quick save/load are fast, and you will need them. A big deal was made of save games not being compatible between updates, but this only affects in-mission saves. Your progress is not lost, and you're just told to restart the current mission. In doubt? Try the demo.

What's more to say. Old school mechanics mixed with great atmosphere, beautiful graphics with a major attachment to details, very good soundtrack and characters you really like. Difficulty is perfectly balanced. First missions are easy enough so they won't discourage, and last missions are hardcore but you are already devoured by the story so much you just won't quit until your foe is taken down. I really hope they'll make sequel.