Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

I'll start with the bad: the controls of this game are made by a sadist for the sole purpose to torture the player. They are clearly unsuitable for realtime action, yet timing becomes somewhat critical in later missions. You'll quickload a gazillion times, mostly due to input errors. Some examples: You get spotted, because your characters stop moving after issuing a movement order to a spot that is obscured by some unpassable terrain in the foreground (the game maliciously assumes you wanted to go there instead). Or your character gets spotted because he randomly leaves crounching stance after performing an action for no apparent reason. Or you get spotted by a guard from downtown, that wasn't even visible in your camera angle. Or the game didn't register you switching the active character tricking you in issuing orders for the wrong guy. Sometimes it's just the poor routefinding that turns your carefully orchestrated multi man ambush into an akward scene of ninja slapstick. Well, if you're stoic enough to make it trough, you'll get rewarded with a surprisingly good narrative mainly carried by outright amazing voice actors. The game even encourages you to play the missions a second time for achivements and speed runs but you have to be really masochistic to do so.

It's an amazing game! If you liked Commando, you'll probably love Shadow Tactics! Wonderful graphic, simple, yet effective gameplay, cool characters and so on. In my opinion, you can really feel that the developers tried to make an old-school game by gamers for gamers. No fancy-pancy visuals or DLC or other rubbish. They just stuck to the basics and do everything right! I paid full price because I *want* to support developers who think and act like this. Thank you very much!

Hope you like quick saving, you're going to need it. In Shadow Tactics you command up to 5 characters on their quest to stop a conspiracy against the Shogun. The overall gameplay looks like this: Observe the situation. Make a plan. Try to execute that plan. Fail horribly. Reload. Try again. The game can offer quite a challenge. I failed a lot, either due to bad plans or bad execution. When observing guard patterns it is often hard to see the entire picture and often quicker attempting things with trial and error. When enemies raise an alert it's almost over. Not only will all enemies in the vicinity start searching for your characters, but additional enemies will spawn. And these new enemies will remain after the alert phase. So even if you survive the alert, most of the times you will find yourself in a worse position then before. Getting a plan to finally work is extremely rewarding, especially when your guys sync up their actions and execute them elegantly. It's all about such moments. That and taking revenge against an enemy that was especially set on crushing your hopes and dreams. The mission design is varied and interesting. Each mission has some unique premise or gimmick which alters the way the mission can be approached drastically. The difficulty curve increases steadily throughout these missions. The story is serviceable, but nothing remarkable. I liked the main cast, but the plot is a bit cliched. It's definitely something you play for the gameplay. Overall I enjoyed my time with the game and would recommend it to anyone that enjoys stealth games.

This is a wonderful game, I absolutely loved the Commandos series of games and this really takes you back. Carefully planning out routes and tactics, followed by the execution of them is extremely satisfying. The maps are gorgeous, the art & design is clean and functional, the characters are well written and acted, really the only complaint I have about the game is that the load times are a bit long. The initial load can take anywhere from 1-3 minutes on a SSD drive, once you're in the map though it's very quick so quick loads are painless. Really that's a minor complaint and I was purposefully being nitpicky. If you're a big fan of games that require you to think, this is the game for you, there's no real need for quick reflexes but there is certainly a learning curve. The first couple of missions will take you an hour or so each, especially if you don't just try to kill everyone and rush through them, but later missions are really meant for multiple sittings, the maps are huge and each one will take you well over 2-3 hours, again depending on your play style and tactics.

Got it for free on a promo event and likely would have never bought it, but now that I have completed all missions I very much look forward to a paid copy of the spinoff Aikos Choice. You know, it's Commandos in a Japanese setting, graphics and system requirements are fine, controls are sometimes fiddly (but the quickload function is working well), and emptying the maps is great fun. I rarely sneak by an enemy, but I understand that going the stealth route is also an enjoyable puzzle for some people. Audio is excellent and Kuma is the cutest thing ever. Look at him, the animation is beyond fantastic, it's cuteness overload. One star deduction for gameplay annoyances for achievement hunters. Goals are not shown until the first map completion unless satisfied by specific actions, e.g. killing four guards with a grenade. But for things to avoid, e.g. moving on loud surfaces, the "can no longer fulfil" icon simply isn't there and can cost you an entire second run of several hours. Sure, one can still look that up beforehand, but in my run of mission 11 where water is to be avoided and instead a bridge needs to be cleared, I lost that achievement to a bug after killing the first four guards, literally a hundred meters away from any body of water. And I only saw that after completion when reviewing the oldest savegame. That's frustrating for no good reason at all, and not even fixable by a longer chain of quicksaves kept (three sometimes isn't enough). Plus, some achievements are mutually exclusive, which can be avoided with a regular savegame if known beforehand. That's basically all I can complain about, the rest is dope. The game is absolutely fun for 30 to 50 hours of gameplay with a reasonable rise in difficulty level. If you liked Commandos back then, you absolutely should play Shadow Tactics as well.