Shadwen

We need a second game of this. I miss it.

This game gets better the more you learn about it because it does a really poor job at explaining the mechnics to the player, and doesn't really require you to interact with them at all. It's a good stealth game that does not realise its full potential in my opinion. [b]Crafting[/b] When I first saw the crafting system I was actually a bit annoyed. It seems like every game nowadays needs a crafting system, but after playing through the game I think that it is actually pretty nicely executed here. First off: All your crafted items are restocked when the level changes. I did not realize this until my second playthrough, because I saw no reason to use them, especially because they are so expensive to make. But when restocked they make the encounters a bit more fun. This isn't explained, or maybe I just didn't see the text. You can also undo crafting and get the materials back, which is cool. It also makes finding new blueprints exciting. You constantly find materials, but you don't know what to do with them, then you find a blueprint and get excited to find the missing materials. It also wouldn't have made sense for those items to be simply found in the levels. [b]Grappling Hook[/b] The grappling hook is one of the main mechanics of the game, and it is fun to use, but it is also really clunky. The grappling hooks mechanics also have a lot more depth than you first realize. The rope physically interacts with the environment. You can wrap it around objects, or use a physics object as a counterweight for yourself. Unfortunately there is absolutely no reason to intereact with this. The guards also don't care when your strangle them. Ingame you will mostly just drag objects or swing, and the swinging always looks jank. There is also no way to drag objects from a standstill. If you drag on the rope while standing still either nothing happens or you will shoot to the object and fly across the ground in your swinging animation. I had one really cool interaction with a chest. In my pacifist playthrough there way a chest between two guards, above it I could attach my grappling hook. I attached the hook and moved all the way up the rope, when the guards looked away I quickly extended the rope, snatched the contents of the chest and moved back up. You really felt like Batman sometimes. [b]World Interaction[/b] The world has interactable objects like cranes, chandeliers, and bridges. You can move and rotate them and cut the ropes of some objects to make them fall, some objects are specifically set up for this purpose, but I didn't realize you were even able to do this until very late. [b]Movement[/b] The movement has a lot more depth than actually needed. You can climb along ledges, around corners, run up and along walls. There is no reason to use any of this the way the levels are designed. [b]Lily[/b] The main mechanic of the game is Lily. You have to make way for her to move through the levels without being seen, which is a really cool idea, and it mostly works. The problem is however, that Lily has mathematically perfect movement, while the guards are completely dumb bots that simply move to the nearest spot that made sound. You can do every level by simply causing chaos and having luck, there is no need to be stealhy, and because the enemies never aggro no matter how much noise make, or how many boxes you fling around, you can just sit on top of some structure and play with the guards like with a cat and a laserpointer. That is actually a pretty accurate description because your rope actually makes noise and the guards will immediately look at it. Lily also can never be caught, sometimes her AI does not know what to do and Lily just stands there while the guards move around her. It's really dumb. [hr][/hr] The game is best when you go with the killer route. At the end of the game you are just an unstoppable menace and it's really fun to run through the levels and leave a pile of corpses behind. This is also where you can interact with most of the mechanics. Attach an explosive onto a box and fling it onto some enemies, place a little distraction roller on the ground and a mine on top and drive it into a bunch of guards, use all the environmental hazards the game has. Honestly this game would have made a really fun speedrunning game. A playback feature would have been so cool. This is also the only stealth game I know of which has a rewind feature, which I now realise is such a game changer. You can just trial and error your way through and be more creative without risking having to redo the whole level. All in all: Good game, get it on a discount.