Shadows: Awakening

Well, 3hrs in and I can already see why this game has a lot of mixed reviews. Firstly, the pace is excruciatingly slow and the novelty of swapping between both spirit & real worlds has worn off. Secondly, there's issues with attacks being delayed, inputs not registering at all or attacks flat out missing their target despite standing practically on top of enemies. The wonky hit registration also applies to breakable objects and anything else you can interact with for potential loot. And lastly, the inventory system is not well designed. The icons to compare loot and toggle other options are just too small, the gear affixes are not explained at all, there are many pieces of armor/accessories that can be used by both Devourer and Puppet that provide absolutely zero benefits which makes sorting through drops a little longer than it needs to be since some bonuses apply only to Spirit world enemies but still get rolled on gear that real world characters can use. The affixes that don't/can't directly benefit either character shouldn't be rolled onto gear they can equip. Aside from those issues the game looks pretty good overall. The armor, weapons, characters, skills, etc.. all look good. The voice acting quality is done well too. The overall concept of having a Demon posess multiple humans and swap between them is pretty cool, I just can't believe that it has become so tedious after only 3hrs of play. Shadows Awakening definitely has its fair share of negatives beyond what bothered me (read the other reviews), but I prefer not to downvote a game unless it's really, really bad, so for that reason, I'm recommending it because despite the obvious jank and some irritating design choices, it shouldn't be outright avoided.

Shadows: Awakening is a very unexpected product, in a way. As a Diablo-clone made by a small studio, you might expect something like Grim Dawn; tons of lore and mechanical depth and equipment and build variety, in a game that, production-wise, is fairly cheap. This is generally how it goes. Instead, you get largely the opposite; the game is quite beautiful and detailed with a ton of quality voice acting (including The Doctor himself, Tom-freaking-Baker). However, it is also fairly basic as an actual game. As I said, the game looks and sounds great. Of course it's not Red Dead Redemption 2 or anything, but for the genre, it's very detailed and vibrant, with a ton of smooth animation. The music is decent, the voice acting is great, the overall presentation is certainly better than what I expected. The game does have the occasional puzzle that, while never complex, does at least break up the "walk through hallways and kill things" gameplay loop of the sub-genre. The story is interesting, for a while. It also runs fairly well, except for surprisingly long loading times between areas. The negatives, however, come in for the core of the game. I'm still recommending the game, it's not trash even in this area, but it's surprising basic. The first thing to understand, and this is quite unique, is that it's a Diablo-clone with a party...sort of. You have up to 4 characters to play as, swapping between them in real-time as you fight and explore. Cool. However, the result is that each character is fairly restricted; they each get 8 skills and fall into basic categories--tough warriors who engage in melee combat, archers, 2 melee fighters who focus more on speed and critical attacks, and several mages (oh, and then our main character, "the demon," who is a jack of all trades). Many skills are very strange, and feel like they were meant for a game that actually was a party-based game, doing things like weakening all enemies in an area for 10 seconds or something, which is fairly difficult to capitalize on with just one character, and really isn't superior to just using another damage-dealing skill instead. Probably half the skills in the game have questionable usefulness, yet skills are the main thing differentiating, say, one warrior from another. You get 3 warriors minimum, up to 6 possible with the DLC, yet they all feel only modestly different, and there is very little room for experimentation with them on a repeat playthrough. The only real choice is to simply use different characters, but even then, the simple system doesn't really enable many differences in how the game "feels." Let's look at everything besides skills. Stats just raise the damage you deal, your health, and your mana, more or less. Simple. Talents are various boosts you can unlock, but most of them are just doing things like raising stats again, or directly raising damage done, or giving you defense against specific enemies or elements. All very samey. Gear? Gear is mostly just raising the attack/defense stat, and then if you're lucky, getting an extra boost here or there. However, these boosts are far too minimal; 5% ice resistance on your armor and 5% fire resistance on your helm is barely noticeable and hardly counts as real min/maxing. You will occasionally get something neat like reflect damage, causing attacks to bounce back against opponents, but even this tends to be in fairly modest amounts--you can't reasonably build a character around this as a base. All of these extras are just that, extras. Gear is also surprisingly sparse; it may not seem like it compared to other genres, but in a Diablo-clone, you expect to be wading through it. Yet there were long stretches where I had characters wearing white "common" gear for hours, because nothing better would drop OR show up in one of the game's few shops, which is almost unheard of. Interestingly, accessories like rings and necklaces, which in most games are where the most unique boosts are found, are almost entirely the most boring here; even at the end of the game, most of them just raised ONE thing for me, like 5 strength or 10 armor against "beast-type" enemies. I would say there should be a full order of magnitude more unique items in the game than there are at present. Speaking of characters, there is a very odd and disappointing distribution in them. You will recruit quite a few but several of them are optional or semi-optional (as in, you are forced to take SOMEONE but you do get a choice as to which one). and they are basically completely silent and do nothing but fight. Yet, the choices are odd; if you do not choose to start with a mage, then there is not a single speaking mage to recruit in the entire game, ALL the other ones are just kinda there. If you don't choose the archer, then there is only one "hunter" you MIGHT recruit who speaks. But we get several fighters. Each of your three starting characters does have unique dialogue and slight variations in quests, but it's fairly minimal as well, and they get surprisingly quiet as the game goes on and other recruitable characters sort of take center stage. In short, I wish the game had fewer actual characters, but then made them more unique, with more build variety, more ways to use them. As it is, you get alot of very repetitive recruits. And that's the biggest problem with the game; it's repetitive. This is somewhat expected with Diablo-clones but this one really drags over time. As story segments get more and more spread out, with larger and larger areas to explore and kill everything in, using the same characters and same attacks, it becomes a bore. Perhaps I could have spiced it up for myself by switching characters around more often, but even that can be hard with the limited equipment, and the differences aren't THAT pronounced. I liked the story and characters early on, but alot of stuff doesn't really get explained or it's dragged out for a LOOONG time, and by the end of the game, I was rushing to just finish the dang thing. The game is simply too long for what it offers; there is not enough story, or interesting side-quests, or fun dialogue, or unique gear, or varied builds, to fill all that time. There is a great basis here, something I would still recommend fans of the genre play and enjoy for what it does well, but it is 100% clear that the artists and level designers were given more time and budget to go wild, while the guys writing lore, dialogue, making mechanics, crafting each piece of gear, were rushed. Heck, some gear even has a description that just says "Description of long sword" or whatever--they literally didn't finish all of the flavor dialogue, and grammatical errors are still somewhat common. I really like the presentation, I like the idea of swapping between multiple characters on the fly, the lore is the start of something interesting, but this is definitely a product that floundered in delivery. It's worth playing once, but it certainly is no Grim Dawn, much less a Diablo 2.

I find this game somewhat difficult to review, and really wish there was a ‘meh’ thumbs sideways option on steam once again. Part of this is caused by my own biases and issues with the genre, and to be honest I don’t want to hold that against the game. Since I use these reviews as a sort of diary of the games I have played, and to inform my own framework for tastes and future games I will go into these issues however. I shall therefore break it down into 3 areas, how the game generally is in isolation, how it functions as a sequel to Kult Heretic Kingdoms, and then my own issues with the game and the genre it sits in. Shadows Awakening is a game I’d come across via a click4gameplay video on obscure and forgotten RPGs, on both the first game in the series, Kult, and on Shadows Awakening, which functions as a remake of the follow up Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms and the sequel/second half of that game. I really enjoyed the dark fantasy story of Kult and had been looking forward to playing the sequel, so grabbed it in the recent summer sale. In isolation, this is a fine enough game, and while I am not an expert or a real fan of the genre, if you are an isometric action RPG fan who has never played a Heretic Kingdoms game before, then this is a decent purchase, particularly on sale. You’ve got 30 hours plus of action RPG content just on main story and some side stuff, over 40 hours if you want to do all the side content, and to be honest probably 100 hours past if you want to use the different puppets/characters in the game. The game seems pretty competent as an action RPG and plays well enough, with an interesting mechanic that while you only control one character at a time, you can have 4 ‘puppets’ including the demon that is the main character, and can seamlessly switch to any of them on the fly. If you switch to the demon you also go into the shadow world, again seamlessly, another realm with different enemies, loot and hidden paths in the world. The story is pretty interesting, at least to begin, with lots of lore. Many of the characters are decently developed and well voiced acted. The actual character writing I thought was quite good. Towards the end of the game it does go rather downhill and turns into generic save the world slop, or if you want the ‘true’ ending, convoluted nonsense that doesn’t really give good explanations to certain characters motivations, which drove some of the mystery. Graphically it’s pretty nice, with lots of variety and a decent amount of detail in the world despite being isometric. This keeps things a bit varied. Quest design is mostly go places and kill things or find something, but the variety and detail keeps it somewhat interesting, and there’s plenty of characters to interact with and flesh out the world. The game ran very well for me, though that’s not surprising considering it’s from 2018. Overall on this level then, it’s a pretty competent and somewhat obscure action RPG from a small and pretty unknown team. Because of this I decided to give it a thumbs up. As we move onto the other areas, there are issues, however. These may be things that most prospective buyers do not care about, however, I do. As a sequel to Kult, it’s rubbish. It seems like they wanted to reboot the universe, but sort of chickened out halfway through. What you have then is a game in which the events and lore from Kult are very helpful in fleshing out the world of the Heretic Kingdoms, as well as having one of the endings of Kult, the breaking of the Godslayer sword, be canon and part of the lore as to why more demons have entered the world, and which uses many of the same characters and locations from Kult, but barely acknowledges the main character of Kult, Alita, changes the art style drastically, and pretty much ignores the themes of Kult. I really enjoyed Kult in no small part due to the dark fantasy style of art in the game. The Frank Frazetta style art really drew me in and immersed me in the world, such as the central city of Corwenth, Kyallisar. Now for some reason, Corwenth and Kyallisar have an east Asian art style, as do the characters from there. There’s some lore about the city being sacked and rebuilt, but there’s no real explanation as why 20 years after the previous game, there’s a complete cultural change. This isn’t even clear initially as the first half of the game is in locations that are not in Kult, but annoyingly becomes very clear in the second half. It did spoil things for me, I really enjoyed the atmosphere in the first game and looked forward to seeing places like Kyallisar in better graphics, so it was disappointing to find it had nothing in common, other than ‘city on top of mounting peaks.’ The art style is overall a lot more stylised, and fine in isolation, but doesn’t have the same charm as Kult’s art. More crucially, the game almost goes out of it’s way to ignore Alita, the main character from Kult. Seeing as how this game is set only 20 years later, and the canon ending of Kult is her becoming the High Inquisitor, you would have thought she would have merited some more impact on the world. Games like Dragon Age at least attempted to explain where the Warden player character had gone in subsequent playthroughs. Here there’s not even a reference to her being killed by the villains, who she surely would have tried to stop if she was around, or a reference to her leaving for whatever reason, she just gets a few fairly obscure references in lore books, sometimes not by name. This suddenly changes when she gets referenced a fair bit more at the end of the game, but again there’s nothing definitive. The themes of Kult are also gone, the discussion of whether religion has a place, and the grim brutality of having an inquisition to stamp it out, who just actually exist mostly as a facade for mages to gain more power are really paid only lip service at best, with no focus on it. They aren’t ret-conned, there’s occasional references but no focus or development, again until they get mentioned a bit more towards the end of the game. This again harms the atmosphere. While yes technically the game world is a grim place full of demons, it lacks the thematic atmosphere that Kult piled on. The Inquisition and the mages behind it, the Penta Nera, are reduced to cartoon baddies who use demons to amass more power, with no discussion of ideology or deeper meaning as the first game had. As stated it’s like the developers wanted to reboot the series but couldn’t commit, leading to a weird situation where the events and themes of Kult are not ret-conned and are very occasionally acknowledged, while mostly ignored while the game decides to do it’s own style. This leads me on to my final area of review, which is my own issues with the game, which in itself feeds into the game being a poor sequel to Kult. Kult was also described as an isometric action RPG, yet in a lot of ways I was able to treat it as a little CRPG, just one where you controlled a single character. Yes the combat as action RPG style, but much of the focus was on character interaction, rather than combat. As noted in my review for Kult, I was able to cheese my way through the combat in that game and focus on the story and lore, which I loved. It’s really not possible to do that in Shadows Awakening, the game, while having lots of character interactions, has a much stronger focus on combat, with long stretches where there is little to no character interaction. This is an issue for me, because I’m not really a fan of isometric action RPGs on reflection. It just feels like disconnected clicking, lacking the feeling of direct control that a 3rd or 1st person game has, or the feeling of tactics that a turn based, party based or strategy style game has. That’s just personal preference, and I know there is more to these types of games, the fact that I switched to easy doesn’t help, but I was just getting bored even at higher difficulties. It wouldn’t be so muc

Вот это ничего себе! Вот это я понимаю Hack and Slash! Много лет не видел такой игры в жанре, чтобы зацепила прям за первые же пару минут. Сыграл всего полчаса пока, но просто в восторге, потому что уже показали всё: челендж, билды, эксплоринг, секреты, пазлы. Немного непривычное управление, но это дело времени. Тот редчайший случай, когда в игре настолько идеально подобраны углы камеры, что ей не нужен ни зум, ни ротация. Палитра так же идеальна и вообще картина восьмилетней давности выглядит куда приятнее, чётче и лучше, чем современная инди-паpаша в жанре. Чувствую, что придётся сразу и все дополнения купить :) Короче говоря, Shadows: Awakening - внезапное доказательство того, что никакой игровой импотенции не существует даже после 45-ти лет. Существует лишь творческая импотенция недоразработчиков в паре с ИИ.

Review for character and story players: Score: 8.0 Overview: I originally bought this game not realizing it was the same developer as Viking: Wolves of Midgard, and when I realized it was, and after such a polarizing experience prior to abandoning Vikings, I fully expected this game to fail to meet my expectations and be a quick removal from my active game list. I have to say though, this game is an upgrade in every conceivable way, and the comparison is so drastic, if I didn't know the same developer name was attached, I would never have known. If you felt Vikings was a huge turnoff, like I did, don't do yourself a disservice by dismissing this game, as the quality comparison is an unprecedented improvement over their first title, and a rare thing to experience as even with iteration over a decade of games, I've never really had a developer improve as much as this developer has - there is really no comparison regarding Vikings as this game is on an entirely different level. Characters and Story: The characters are honestly very compelling for an ARPG, and arguable very well written even compared to more narrative drive RPGs in my opinion, and they really drive attachment and appreciation for the effort put into the narrative and world as you move through each chapter. I will say it starts sort of slow and seems to meander, but the story is driving toward a climax that I anticipate will be worth the investment: I'm only in Chapter 4 at the moment. Regarding the characters, you start with the devourer and a primary puppet, each with different abilities and personalities, as well as backstories, personal questlines, and very different interactions with the main story and characters. Kalig was my primary puppet, and I really enjoyed his personality and banter with the devourer and other story based puppets and NPCs over the course of the story. The dialogue is fully voiced, and excellently done in my opinion, and really draws you in as direct dialogue and interaction is commonplace and really helps keep the journey interesting and fun. It gets even better when you get the next story puppet Zaar, as the chemistry of multiple characters increases the bantering and personal relationships to one another, and improves yet again when you get Carissa as she directly ties into the main narrative - I won't reveal any of the specific story wise, but the story really picks up once she joins. I also noted that the addition of either Darius or Falon adds an additional story based puppet, and each of the mutually exclusive hidden puppets here have voiced dialogue with the story, other characters, and more importantly, have direct history with Carissa and your primary puppet, depending on whom you choose for pairing - Jasker for example has a personal relationship with Falon, which I did not experience, but makes me think about replaying to experience as I have a feeling it is stronger than the other puppet combinations. I will note, however, that several puppets are purely for gameplay and have no dialogue or personality based on my experience, but they are still interesting from a gameplay perspective. I would wager that a NG+ with a different primary puppet will create a very different experience, based on my current playthrough, which I say with confidence as Kalig has many interactions that are not just broad strokes with an insert x character type of dialogue, though I cannot confirm this without playing through again. Experience (Gameplay, World Design, & Systems): The gameplay is also very fun. The devourer and your main puppet are always part of your party, but you can swap in any other two puppets, each with their own abilities and playstyle, and what I really like is that the gear you find is a combination of puppet exclusive or class based, but maintains a unique look for each puppet equipping it most of the time. I will say I wish there was a bit more on the loot side, through drops and through shops, as enemies do not respawn and once you buy the inventory at a vendor it never restocks, but overall the gear design and frequent visual changes kept the pacing interesting and fun, allowing you to feel like you were becoming stronger over the course of the game while the gear aligns with that perception. This was a huge upgrade over Vikings. Recommendations to Maximize your Experience: 1. Outfitting our characters: gear level is important for armor and weapons, but for accessories the abilities are much more important, but the accessories level really doesn't matter except for essence tier they come with innately. My recommendation is to stack up the accessories with your best essence, rather than the weapons and armor, as they can be used nearly the entire game without being out phased until you get access to the next higher tier of essences. There are three total tiers from what I can tell, which means accessories can last for chapters without needing replacement if you build them up well. Keep in mind, once attached, they are permanently used up and cannot be recovered. 2. Maximizing your story/character experience: I'll admit this would require you to accept mild spoilers, but I think it is worth it, as I wish I would have done this myself. Prior to your playthrough, do research on the puppets and their personal history, relative to the story based puppet mutually exclusive options, so you can optimally pair them with your main puppet to get the best experience. Jasker & Falon seem the strongest combination from what I've read, but Darius is also a good option mainly to pair with the mandatory character Carissa, but he may be better paired with the starting mage than Kalig as I am doing in my playthrough. There isn't a lot of info online to guide you here, but it is worth considering as I'm pretty confident it changes the experience. 3. Many of the gameplay puzzles can be a bit of a pain, and are not always clearly telegraphed. If you see something unusual, braziers with only some torches lit, holes in the ground, boulders and pressure plates, and so on, don't assume the game will guide you to a solution or that it will telegraph this is an optional hidden puzzle, and either try to figure it out then and there, or look up guides if needed. Youtube has most solutions if you get stumped, and while the wiki is fairly minimal, it does include area maps which also often have puzzle solutions on them. Some of the puzzles and hidden quests are challenging and very poorly telegraphed, some are also missable, so make sure to pay attention as you play! Final Words: Overall, this is a really fun game, and totally worth a playthrough if you like ARPGs. The characters are much more nuanced and enjoyable that you might expect for an ARPG, the world design and biomes are brilliantly designed and gorgeous, enemies are varied and interesting visually, and the puppets and gear really help make for an interesting experience that continues to reward exploration I think the phrase "hidden gem" or "underrated" is used a bit too often by gamers, but in this case I would say this is honestly a pretty superb game that doesn't get nearly as much attention as it deserves, likely due to the unimpressive fist outing of Vikings tarnishing people's expectations for the developer. Honestly, it's hard to believe this title is from the same developer at all! Which makes me even more disappointed to know their most recent game is a gameplay focused roguelike, rather than another compelling character and narrative focused RPG. Here's to hoping they revisit the world of Shadows again in the future!

In dem Spiel hat man nicht nur einen Avatar sondern kann zwischen mehreren per Tastendruck wechseln. Anfänglich ein ganz neues Spielkonzept, was Lust auf mehr macht. Obwohl das Spielprinzip als RPG genau mein Game ist, habe ich nach knapp 19h keine Lust mehr. Ich nutze bei den Pro und Kontras nicht die Bezeichnungen aus dem Game um keine Spoiler zu hinterlassen. Positives: + ganz neues Konzept für die Party, statt mehreren gleichzeitig, wählt man zwischen den Mitgliedern per Tastendruck aus und wechselt spontan und (fast) jederzeit hin und her. + Die Spielwelt (Map) ändert sich mit dem Avatar, den man gerade spielt, physische Charaketere vs. Geister (kann schweben). Negatives: - Man kann NICHT rennen und die laufen unfassbar langsam (!) - Die Questmarker stimmen nicht oder fehlen gänzlich. Aktuell bin ich in einer Quest bei der in Sonnensteine brauche. Habe mich nur bis zur untersten Ebene durchgekämpft, und dann geht's nicht mehr weiter. Ich habe nur 3 von 4 Sonnensteinen, aber man kann bereits die Quest starten und in den Dungeon runter. Im Prinzip ist das kein Problem, aber WOOOOO ist der 4. Stein??? Der befindet sich auf einer ganz anderen Karte, nicht im Dungon selbst und es gibt KEIN Hinweis im Questlog dafür. Würde bedeuten, alle anderen vorherigen Karten abzusuchen (und das mit unterschiedlichen Charaketern, weil sich die Map ja ändert!! und manche interagierbare Kisten, Gems etc. mit anderen Charaketeren nicht sichtbar sind. Zusammen mit dem langsamen laufen geht's eindeutig auf die Nerven und nun reichts. - Im Inventar sieht man immer nur EINE Chategorie gleichzeitig, z.B. nur Waffen, nur Rüstung, nur Helme, nur Ringe etc. Nicht jedes Teil (Waffe, Rüstung, Gürtel etc.) sind für jeden Charaketer nutzbar und bei derzeit 8 Charaketeren ist es echt eine elendige Rumklickerei um z.B. andere Charaketere mit besseren Items auszurüsten. - Obwohl ich in Kapitel 4 bin, sind andere Quests aus Kapitel 2/3 offen und man muss auch zwischen den Kapitel hin- und her springen. Aber wozu dann die Kapitel? - Je mehr Charaketere desto mehr wird es zu einer endlosen "rumklickerei" im Inventar. Fazit: Tolles Konzept, aber nicht wirklich bis zu Ende gedacht. Leider fesselt micht das Spiel nicht mehr als 19 Stunden.

Эта игра вообще ни разу не великая. Ни разу не идеальная. И точно понравится не всем. Но одно у неё нельзя отнять: ощущение приключения, олдскульной адвенчуры и ощущения, что разработчики пытались сделать нечто новое. Вот просто сделать так, как чувствовали. Веет вайбами Two Worlds, Venetica или того же Kingdoms of Amalur. Криво, но душевно и с чувством, что ты не просто меняешь нолики на единички, а что-то проживаешь. https://youtu.be/pB4po68igA8