Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

If you liked games like Commandos but found it not really challenging, you should buy Shadows Tactics: Blade of the Shogun. This game simply has everything that Commandos was lacking. I loved every tiny little detail, balance of the characters, lore and really difficult missions. Best game this year so far.

I have played all commandos series and love it! This is fantastic. Easy 5 stars on me.

If you loved the first Commandos, and you felt like nothing ever came close, get this one! This is how a stealth-strategy-game should be. I really hope there will be more missions at some point.

I played the demo and enjoyed it, eventually purchasing the game to get the chance to play more than the first two missions. In this game, stealth is the most important mechanic; every design decision supports it well. You can massacre everyone if you want... but you will need an escape plan if you raise the alarms, because you can only tank a few shots before a character dies. Savescumming is also essential. Although the controls are great, there will be times that they don't register properly, you misjudge distances, who's watching an area, time an assassination incorrectly, or accidentally hide in the one bush the AI chooses to search after finding a body nearby. The devs understood this, and provided the ability to load from a few of your recent quicksaves, quickly loading the last one or writing new ones at the press of a button. A special input mode allows you to queue actions for each of your characters if you ever encounter a timing-critical puzzle. On Normal difficulty, good coordination means you won't need such tight precision. Each character has a unique combination of skills. There's a wide variety of them and one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game is discovering how they combine . Finding two guards watching eachother's back difficult? Easy!... if you have Aiko turn one of them around and Mugen use his AoE. The vision and cover mechanics deserve praise for being both fun and challenging, and the level design deserves praise for being open-ended and interesting. In addition to your skills, each level has unique ways to dispatch enemies, get between areas, and distract the guards. Bonus objectives give a challenging way to replay each level. There's so much good design to praise in this game that it's easy to overlook the story and characters. Every level's objectives play into the story, every character is different, and a fairly compelling story unfolds. It's no Hamlet, but the storytelling is competent; nothing sloppy to criticize.

This is a stealth game, more similar to the old school Tenchu games than a tactics game. I'm not saying it's bad, but it's title is a misnomer. The graphics are solid, the stealth play is good, but for PC, the controls are terrible. This game is more designed for a console, and you will get a much better experience playing it with a controller than a keyboard, which is HIGHLY disappointing. Camera movement is flakey also. I didn't really see an option to make it center back on my character, but maybe I missed it. I don't believe it's worth $40, but if you can get it on a half off deal, it's a solid buy.