Styx: Shards of Darkness

best stealth game ever

ok

dont know what to do

Absolutely cringeworthy 4th-wall-breaking main character dialogue writing referencing Disney/Dreamworks childhood movie characters is what made me bounce off the start to this game. The default audio is jacked up to 100 blowing out your eardrums when firing the game up for the first time - which isn't too unusual a sin for a game, but it's paired with the sin of multiple unskippable logo-movies before you can get to the main menu. The character animations in the cinematic sequence are awkward and not matched up to the audio, and there's glaring visual issues like low-res textures that stick out like a sore thumb. The ledge-grabbing is unecessarily clunky, the jumping is weirdly floaty. I just don't understand how this is an acceptable platforming or stealth game. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time & its sequels did the 3rd person platformer eons ago and much better, and there's any number of stealth games that show how it's done. Not worth a pickup.

The reason for my review is the shamful decision someone made to make a boss fight, that would be quite difficult, reset you to TWO load screens and a 'click on a quest marker' before the fight EACH time. Rather than SIMPLY ADDING AN AUTO-SAVE at the beginning of the scene. Sorry but, no thanks.