The game is fundamentally a mix between a Real Time Strategy and a Hack & Slash game, directing two characters at the same time by telling them what enemy to target and with what skill. Styx is a goblin who has seen way to much stuff not to be an old cynical sack of swear words, pretty fragile in open combat bu with a lot of debuff skills and the ability to stealth kill enemies who are unaware of him. Arkail is an idealistic orc warrior with a past of anger that lead him to become a berzerker warrior isolated from everyone. His attacks are much stronger, but they can also be parried or stopped, and if his Rage Bar is filled he'll become uncontrollable until he calms himself down. The result is a pretty good game that requires to combine the abilities of the two characters to pass enemies that neither would probably be able to handle on their own. The game is not perfect: it is buggy at times, there writing is weak at times (with a pretty forced and weird handling of a *very* sensitive matter midway into the game), and I can see the gameplay becoming tedious on higher difficulties. Overall though, it's a really enjoyable game, especially if you're a fan of orcs and goblins non simply being "the bad guys" for once. I do hope to eventually see a sequel to it, perhaps seeing how Arkail and his friends handle the future struggles of the orcish people.
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.
I really appreciated my time with this game. While flawed the game can be very enjoyable for fans of stealth games and the average goblin experience of Sneak > Stab > Run > Repeat. It's nice to see the character of Styx get around, see more of the world and overhear various conversations about the setting expanding the foundation that Of Orcs and Men had put down. While the story is very simple and many aspects of the game may be either dated or flawed, definitely check it out.
