Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

Atmospheric slow tactical game in a japanese historic setting. Enjoyable characters, good voicing, nice graphics, long playtime. Has the correct save-design, i.e save at any time and as often as you like. A little grindy in the later levels. A few minor bugs but nothing serious. Very enjoyable. Works fine on Linux i7 laptop.

Just finished this game and it's terrific! Excellent story, very likable main characters, great gameplay even better than any Commandos games. I highly recommend it to anyone having enough patience to beat it. It's worth it! It really is.

Very much like mixed Desperados 1 and Commandos 2. I played those games as a kid so Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun was perfect for me. I like that this game happens in Japan and art style is great. Nice story and every character has their own abilities like in Desperados.

A top-down strategic stealth game entirely about dodging view cones by cleverly using and combining the skills of your characters. The singular focus of this game on its mechanics make it an absolute joy to play by constantly needing to plan in advance. Every aspect of the gameplay mechanics are very well thought out and every level is carefully crafted to allow for multiple paths and tactics. While the gameplay mechanics itself are very unforgiving (new guards spawn if the enemy is alerted and take different patrol routes) and the levels always seem impossible at the start, the quick-save and -load mechanic make up for it. It allows for experimentation and trial-and-error without overly punishing the player. It even reminds you that you didn't save for a whole minute. Picking apart piece by piece a seemingly impossible level and eventually succeeding is always incredibly satisfying. Since I've completed the game without being detected, I can safely tell you that no level is actually impossible without being detected. The story is pretty bland, but it does introduce really cool interactions between the characters while playing. When executing a move, they typically confirm it by saying something. This dialogue changes depending on the environment you are playing in and what recent events happened which is pretty cool and really makes the characters come alive a lot more. Overal, I absolutely loved this game and would recommend it dearly to anyone that likes stealth games.

Shadow Tactics is one of the best games I have played lately. The gameplay is challenging to very challenging but I never felt like I was put in an impossible situation. The graphics are crisp and pleasing to the eyes. The characters and story are compelling enough that I wanted to see how it ends without dragging on for too long. The setting is already interesting by itself but they even went through the trouble of adding (optional) Japanese voice acting. If I had to name a negative it's that they don't have an OSX version so I cannot play it on my laptop. Compared to Commandos which I played back in the '90s, I think Shadow Tactics is more forgiving. In Commandos only the Green Beret could hide bodies but in this game all but one of the characters can. All characters also have an ability to distract enemies. The character abilities are less situational and more generally useful compared to Commandos. As a result every character pulls their weight more or less equally. Yet they all play very differently and have their own personality to go with it. My favourite character is Yuki with her traps and lure though.