Shadows: Awakening

The concept of switching from the human realm to shadow realms remains alluring and a delight to play. However, this game is downvoted due to an over-reliance on repetitive puzzles that seemingly show want for better imagination. Hey! The rolling rock puzzle worked well (once!), so let's do it again and Again and AGAIN! Some may enjoy the split-second timing of trying to flip a switch in the right sequence and at exactly the right time. This proved too frustrating to me and rapidly decreased my enjoyment and led me to stop playing altogether. Suspecting that the other Shadows games rely on puzzles, I've taken them off my wish list. Will I play this game again? Sure, when I feel a little need to restore my frustrations.

This is a fairly innovative game, or at least I haven't seen quite this twist on the ARPG play style done this way before. The premise is that you are a soul-stealer, who can eventually control up to three alternate forms (with additional ones banked for choosing loadouts). Each can choose and level up four active skills. The complexity stacks between four forms, but is manageable and you can play games with juggling cooldowns and resources and whatnot, and some enemies exist only in the "shadow world" and must be interacted with your "true" form, or the opposite. It's a somewhat fresh take. They also rebuilt the engine they had been using for the same game when it was titled Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms. The new engine is a lot smoother, and the company upgraded previous owners to the rework free of charge. Granted, they are selling a lot of DLC, but the base game has enough as it is. Considering that it took years to rework and they upgraded the original to a more expensive one for free, it's worth taking a look at DLCs, since they probably need the income. It can get somewhat grindy, generic, and fetch-questy. The plot and dialog were also video gamey and uninspired. I got halfway through the game on the old engine and wasn't impressed with those points, and an early play of the rework is much the same. But the gameplay is interesting enough and the reworked engine is fairly smooth and performant on mediocre machines. It's worth playing to see something a bit different in a good way, overall.

The developer gets points for polish. The cut scenes and voice acting, for the most part, are of a very high standard. The world they've crafted is rich in lore, and makes you feel like you're exploring the fantasy equivalent of the old silk road, starting from the arabian desert, continuing through the deep forests of central asia and on to the mountain fortresses of ancient China. It's a refreshing change from the Tolkien-esque and Western-European centric fantasy we're shovel fed. Not saying that's bad, but it is nice for a change. The combat system is unique, which makes it more than your typical ARPG. You have four characters to control with different specialisations and skills. Switching between them is easy and this opens up a lot of tactical play. You can freeze targets with your demon, then debuff their defences with your warrior, damage them with spells for the killing blow - all in a matter of seconds. I recommend playing the game on hard, as I think this is the difficulty the game was intended for... expect to die alot, but it is a more rewarding experience as it requires you to think more tactically about encounters. However the game really starts to really drag. There are a lot of labyrinthine areas to explore, and if you play on hard the game can take awhile. I still have 3 acts to go and am approaching the 30 hour mark - but I've esentially lost interest in the game. I realised I had to put it down when it started to feel more like a job, and it can get very frustrating with the amount of backtracking you have to do. I think the developers tried to pad out gameplay as much as possible - e.g. one area has you go all the way to the top of a level, just to go all the way back to the bottom to be told to go back to the top. I've docked two stars for this. It would have been so much better as a tighter, more focussed experience, but I feel the developers tried to pad things out too much with (some) cheap puzzles and pointless backtracking.

First and foremost.... This game can be very frustrating to progress the story. Think carefully if you really want to feel a lot of irritation, cos if you will play it you will be irritated. That is not optional. This game is, in general, a very good game. It is very enjoyable game and the story lines are, in my opinion, very immersive. The secrets and puzzles are also very good, although not as challenging as it could be. The fight is alright but there is one point that can make it frustrating at times.... And here the good points turns to bad. What makes fights in this game frustrating... and turns this game impossible to complete, or makes impossible to go thru even first obstacle/puzzle is the movement scripting, character path finding. The method used in this game is for the character to go were you click. Everything would be perfect if the script would work as it is supposed to do.... but it is not working. Do not know who made movement programming for this game, by he have not done a good job. He did a good job for a regular dungeon crawler, while this game with those kind of puzzles need pinpoint accuracy movement and the shortest, unobstructed path for progressing the story. This game DO NOT HAVE IT. You can spend 1 minute for the first obstacle, if you are lucky, or you can try and try and try... and like me you can spend nearly an hour (!!) to unlock one door to progress with a story. This is infuriating. The character go were I want it to go, only to bump into something that script define as obstacle and make the character TURN AROUND and loose precious time that you need to make progress possible. For the game to be fully enjoyable, either the movement script should be completely remade, or the rolling stones puzzle should. At the price it is sold on GOG, if it is not retailed, it is absolutely not worth your health. Buy something that have movement adequate to the needs of puzzles included in it.

Should you get this game? Maybe it's a good game. It has a decent story and interesting characters. The puzzles are good and sometimes hard and sometimes it's a timing issue. I'm almost at the end and I still like it. I only have one issue (see below). The biggest flaw in this game is the backtracking. Even the puppets comment on this (I'm not sure whether this is some misplaced joked by the developers because given the amount of backtracking it isn't remotely funny). If you can live with some (and sometimes alot) of backtracking and you want to play an interesting action RPG, then you should probably give this game a try. As for the dlc, you should probably only get the chromaton one. The puppet is actually good. Don't waste your money on the necrophage one. The puppet is really underwhelming.