Styx: Shards of Darkness

There have been a lot of improvements from the first game. Movement is a lot more fluid. The skill trees are more diverse and feel like they have a greater impact. You get even more gadgets to play around with, and the updated graphics look great. But the enemy AI is a definite downgrade from the first game. It's easy to avoid guards with minimal effort. The AI will glitch frequently with enemies either becoming non-responsive, getting caught on environmental objects, or not triggering the alerts correctly. Which is a shame because the game gives you so many tools and routes to circumvent the guards, but it rarely feels necessary. If it wasn't for this issue with the AI this would definitely be a five star game. I enjoy this universe and I'm hoping for a third title where the AI mechanics are really polished. Because this is one of the best pure stealth series that has not had an alternative fighting routes.

Same voice actor, upscaled graphics...lousy writing. I don't remember Styx being such a snarky pop-culture savvy character. It cheapens the world of the story rather than enhancing a 'gritty' feel, which may be what they were going for? It doesn't help that your goblin thief moves like he's on ice. Some things he flat out will not do just because of the position he's in. Drop? Nope. He's not in exactly the right place. Attack? Nope. You can't just use your dagger whenever you feel like! That's crazy talk. It looks nice and the same flavor is here but I found it buried in slippery controls and really cringey writing.

I found Shards of Darkness to be much worse than its predecessor Master of Shadows. For one thing, Shards of Darkness is a very poorly optimized console port with severe frame rate issues. I am using an RTX 2080 with an i9 processor and I experienced numerous frame rate issues no matter what graphical setting in 4k resolution, which I can run all my other games in just fine. Cutscenes in this game drop down into the 30s and there is one section prior to starting mission 3 (Diplomacy) where you must speak with a character on an airship and the frame rate dropped down into the 30s like a severe memory leak and stayed there until the mission actually begins. Second of all, there is no true easy difficulty in this game like there was in Master of Shadows. I found the gameplay this time around to be much more difficult with a massive number of hyper alert enemies all throwing blades and slashing swords. Even on the easiest difficulty, you are immediately taken down if spotted. Muffled kills in this game are also much louder than they were in Master of Shadows. The graphics are also very muddy in this game with what seem like crushed blacks to the point where it's difficult to see the enemies. I also preferred the medieval setting of the first game compared to the piratey/elven treehouse theme of Shards. I also did not find the crafting element useful or enjoyable and I did not like the fact that many doors required lockpicks that I could never find or craft. Overall, I much prefer Master of Shadows any day over Shards of Darkness.

Assuming you've played Master of Shadows: + although Cyanide repeated the biggest letdown of the prequel (reusing maps which are already aimed to replay for challenges) its far less a problem here, since the levels are way less linear, bigger, uses the vertical dimensions way better, and you can always choose between at least 3 routes between A and B. There were a few boring ones with little possibilities, but I'm simply in love withthe City of hunters for example - unlike in MoS, there is no map at all. This is not always a problem, but I've played 4 times on Sanctuary and still couldn't draw up the overlay despite walking through every nook of it. + Stealth is way more rewarding. In the prequel I took the no kill challenges as a drag, but here the enemies are way harder to eliminate, and you have a lot more options to avoid them. +the controls are the same, but they've fortunately fixed the dropping mechanics: you don't automatically grab the ledge, you need to hold a trigger to it. A simple change but it was all the platforming aspect needed. + I love the new enemies and items/objects. Crafting added an extra purpose of combing trough the levels, but this is only a cheap trick to add gametime/objectives in all games like this. Here it at least makes a little sense though, since it would be strange to find Styx-specific bolts and such on the levels. Also loved that you can acquire some new daggers/armor. - The clones are way less useful than in the prequel, without upgrades they are basically just decoys, and once you can upgrade them you have little use of them. They came in handy to lure enemies into traps, fighting the first boss, pulling triggers so I don't have to backtrack, but I really miss the option to hide them in closets as a trap. And they can't distract/bomb armored opponents which are everywhere on the later levels. + Amber vision is now free + The AI was improved a little (still feels like artificial most of the time, but better)

The sequel to Master of Shadows, Shards of Darkness improves basically everything from the previous game both graphically and mechanically speaking. The world looks great, Styx looks great, the people you're stabbing to death looks great. The devs clearly tried to improve the shortcomings of the previous game, some better than others. For example the boss fights are fun, much more that Master of Shadows' boss fight, but the game does not allow quicksave during alerts, so unless you take some specific perks you have to repeat the whole thing if you die. They also tried a little to hard with the funny writing, with Styx being FULL of pop culture references and 4th wall breaking jokes, which honestly just takes time away from the actual things Styx has to say about the world, which are great, He's a really entertaining character. One of the biggest shame is the ending: while it's not bad, it's very sudden and make the whole thing feel incomplete. I remember getting there and thinking "Wait, that can't be it! What about this and that?". It kinda feels like an ending of a 2nd act rather than the whole thing, and I hope I eventually get to play a continuation of this story. That being said, the game is very enjoyable and I definitely recommend it. It's an awesome experience for fans of stealth games and goblins. I hope Cyanide and Focus Home Interactive take this franchise for another spin and continue this story that just begs for a continuation and a satisfying ending.