Shadows: Awakening

I have this game on Steam and finished it awhile back. This is not a sequel. The first half of the game was release a few years back and than came the second half. As promised by the Devs. So don't listen to the reviews where they say it's a Diablo clone and than tell you how much it's not like Diablo. Duh!!! The only gripe I had with this game, is the same one the first half had. It is a slow pace. But than the focus of the game is on the story and characters. For me that is something that is a lost art and missing in some newer games. If you are looking for something original, in both play style and story, you'll like this game.

I got this game on a whim, and i was not disappointed, Its a mix of my 2 favourite games from long ago to not so long ago. This game blends a Diablo like experience with that of Soul Reaver, You have to traverse both worlds constantly "switching between the shadow and game world" and that makes this a very interesting game to play. It is a little on the short side with around 23hrs to play through it, BUT you have 3 caracters to play with and allthough its the same setting they have different story lines unique to each one. I do not regret getting this game at all, its fun and if you dont explore in both realms you will end up clueless as to solving puzzles. Overall its a fun bit of nostalgic gaming.

I was gifted this game before I realized it was part of the Heretic Kingdoms lore - years ago I enjoyed playing Kult, for its minor flaws, so I was really looking forward to this. I have to admit the game looks gorgeous, but beyond that... - The puzzles and challenges are extremely repetitive - There are big chunks of Walking Simulator segments - There's little incentive to explore the various Puppets capabilities (at least on default story mode) - Scaling goes equally poorly for silver (when you need it at the start of the game, you don't have it - by the time you have it you have very little need for it anymore) and combat (not a single challenge from chapter 3 onward, or so) - There's at least some incentive to replay and choose other quest paths, but the amount of repetition far outweighs the urge to play it again - Neither the dialogue (which is admittedly voiced well enough) nor the written lore had much appeal - And the Quest Tune plays Every. Time. You. Switch. Areas. In the end, I finished it purely as an act of OCD completionism, as I had long run out of interest in what the game had to offer. This could have been so, so much better.

To start: ◘ The game is rather slow. There are teleports from time to time, but there is a lot of walking and backtracking, many puzzles. ◘ If you are looking for the familiar arpg loop of "farm->portal to base->farm" - you won't find it here. ◘ There is a lot of focus on the story, a lot of dialogue, everything voice-acted, a lot of lore pieces all around, but I didn't pay much attention to it. ◘ I never played any other game in this universe, so it's a bit too much for me at this time, but I can't really give an opinion. The big things for me: ◘ The core idea of the combat system is great, the execution is a bit unpolished, and the difficulty/customization is not enough to satisfy veteran players. ◘ You are basically collecting characters (souls), have 4 active at any time, swap out 2 of them, and then you switch between them in combat in real time. ◘ Each soul has its own abilites, its own equipment, its own passive skills. ◘ Dialogue options influence which characters you have access to. ◘ Your main character appears in an alternate shadow realm, which is the second layer of the map. ◘In the shadow realm you can find different pathways, enemies. Sometimes you will have to engage enemies in both realms to defeat them. ◘ (The game requires quite a lot of switching between the shadow realm and the normal world, I imagine it can be annoying for some people) ◘ The potential is really there, there are some really satifsying combos/sequences, but it's sometimes a bit slugish, a bit too delayed, the targeting is a bit too loose. ◘ The numbers of enemies is relatively small, you won't be encountering waves of enemies. Also, I played with a controller and I didn't enjoy navigating the interfaces very much. Overall it was a good time. The graphics are very pretty, I really like the player character models and equipment designs. This is a game I would have probably loved as a kid.

I'd rather manage a group of characters instead of cycling between them. It makes for more of an annoyance than enjoyable gameplay. Character progression also feels limited compared to similar games. Looks great, but makes my laptop run super hot, so maybe some optimization issues.