Styx: Shards of Darkness

Nice game a friend gifted it to me gonna clean up the last achievments now that iv'e beaten it!

По сравнению с первой частью просто ужасно. Паркур стал чуть лучше, но он всё ещё ужасно кривой и теперь его в несколько раз больше - в результате он бесит просто неимоверно. Из персонажа сделали комик-релиф которому иронично насрать на всё вокруг, но когда сюжету надо он за одну сцену начинает доверять всем друзьям и ненавидеть всех врагов (даже если они до этого общались секунд 10). Комик из него кстати такой себе, но это субъективно - может кому-нибудь подобные шутки и заходят. Вариативности в прохождении буквально 0. Ближе к концу игры добавили сраных рыцарей по 30 штук на миссию, пройти через убийства теперь просто невозможно (в первой части тоже не всех можно было убить, но тут буквально половина врагов бессмертная). В половине миссий ещё и нельзя чтобы тебя заметили. Я в целом и так проходил на тень, но тут складывается ситуация что к цели есть ровно 2 дороги - на одной стоят 10 врагов и смотрят друг на друга, а если видят тебя то сразу конец игры) Из-за этого даже если на знак тени вам наплевать, игра все равно превращается в коридор с буквально одним возможным маршрутом (по крайней мере в некоторых сюжетных местах). "Короче если первая игра это твердая 9/10, то тут максимум 7" - думал я до босс-файта в начале 9 главы. Однако начало этого самого босс-файта оказалось таким невообразимым куском кала, что я физически не могу заставить себя поставить игре положительный отзыв. Я минут 15 потратил на просмотр двойного экрана загрузки из-за того что разрабы не удосужились сделать сейв в начале миссии (а не в конце прошлой). И пока я смотрел на эти экраны я вспоминал все остальные баги и косяки: всех врагов у которых ломался маршрут, все разы когда персонаж не цеплялся и разбивался на ровном месте, отвратительную механику отмычек и ресурсов в целом, ужасные перегруженные полупустые локации, клоунские шутки, бесполезные расходники, идиотскую концовку и много чего ещё. 6 из 10 максимум и это обидно. В целом конечно играбельно, но если бы игру потестировали на пару месяцев дольше и допилили хотя бы самые очевидные косяки, было бы намного лучше. Могу рекомендовать только как продолжение первой части - банально чтобы ознакомиться со всей серией.

I wanted to wait until I had finished the game before writing my review but I cannot put into words how much I hate these 4th wall breaks. During the TUTORIAL you get IRL references like Toy Story and Tarzan and after every death Styx talks to you which really ruins my immersion into the game. This is my review for NOW! - Full one comes later

this game is bad fanfic, the soundtrack and gameplay carry how abysmal the story is. Little green deadpool spoof here is equatable to a character from a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ AO3 fanfic, not anything from Of Orcs and Men. Its a stain on the legacy of Of Orcs and Men and Master of Shadows. I would refund it if steam would let me.

[h1]A lazy copy/paste of the first game with none of the needed fixes in place.[/h1] Styx: Shards of Darkness is the second entry in the Styx series and much like its predecessor it's badly let down by the same problems that compounded the first, and getting through Master of Shadows was bad to begin with. That game only just about got given my recommendation because being able to quick-save remedied the more frustrating elements. Here however, none of that has been fixed and my patience for it ran out very quickly. Once again the platforming and controls are clunky and poor. Styx still handles like a sack of potatoes being thrown around and can't be trusted to make reliable jumps where he finds a ledge or controls smoothly mid-jump. Cyanide then for some reason thought it clever to add in some awful feeling rope swinging sections where making it across is yet another dice-roll as to whether you make it or hit F9 to quick-load. It only gets slightly more bearable as you become used to his limitations. The only quality of life change is that you can now hold a button as you walk off an edge to grab the ledge which mercifully works and was badly needed. One thing however that doesn't and is the games worst feature by far is just how horrible the AI is...again. In the previous game enemies had no peripheral vision but would easily spot you in broad daylight, and this has now been seemingly flipped on its head. I've been no more than 4 metres away from an enemy in front of a firelight looking straight at me and not even their detection meter is being filled. Contrast that with other scenarios where I've been behind a corner in full darkness waiting for them to walk past at their classic weak point of 90 degrees, and they notice me out of nowhere despite being tucked away out of vision making no noise whatsoever. It's once again wildly inconsistent and you can never trust any given scenario working the same way more than once. Soldiers also frequently get stuck on terrain which borks their patrol paths, crash into each other or just freeze in place for no discernable reason. To further compound this problem, the noise detection radii has been given a ridiculous buff. Things such as extinguishing torches which was crucial in keeping hidden is pointless because the sound it makes sets everybody off and they'll likely go investigate and fix it anyway. It's a redundant mechanic now since everyone forgot their glasses and won't react to you a stone's throw away regardless of the lighting conditions. Non-silenced kills will also alarm enemies floors away and from absurd distances. I can understand quiet being the name of the game but why half the map needs to be on high alert from someone being killed one and a half floors away defies how sound travels surely? This is all all easily fixable by just crouch-walking everywhere but it also means you end up taking the exact same approach in every level and it gets tedious incredibly quickly. Coupled with every map's overuse of verticality means you can relatively easily avoid confrontation but become railroaded into the same A to B handling each level. If you are spotted once again there's no penalty for having done so and heading upwards will usually get you out of harms way quickly enough. However much like Master of Shadows this means you can just brute force your way in with no incentive on being subtle and what should be an interesting gameplay loop is very quickly destroyed. It doesn't help that Styx's abilities are just as stifled and uninspired as before. He has a deployable clone again, which I found absolutely no use outside of enemies such as ogres where it's more or less mandatory since crouch-walking past everything else works. Other buffs are to his Amber Vision have no real use unless you want to pick up every craftable item, and the rest is around killing which also isn't needed because either silenced takedowns or running around with an acid dagger does all the heavy lifting for you. Anything else are enemies that can't be killed so are snuck past anyway making that ability tree become and the upgrades a complete waste. There's a whole new crafting section with new items such as shootable bolts (niche, but useful on occasion), traps which I didn't bother looking at since nothing poses any real threat, and consumables such as HP and Amber vials which is helpful, if weirdly gatekept behind this function. It feels pointlessly thrown on top to try and make the game have more depth but just boils down to you wasting time getting consumables for items with strangely high requirements to even to be able to make one of them at a time. As for the story and Styx himself it's painfully obvious this was 2017 because he's all of a sudden gone from an intriguing idea of revenge seeking protagonist coupled with identity crises, to one that's fueled by a drug addiction and an incessant need to cuss, break the fourth wall, or come out with some painfully edgy garbage every other sentence. Even dying rewards you with some cringe-worthy monologuing about "omg I'm dead now but you're gonna go out and get laid without me, thanks a bunch!" Thank Christ it's a feature you can turn off. Other NPCs and their voice acting are just as bad as last time - everyone sounds like they're simply reciting their words from the cue sheet with no context as to what's going on in their scene or with any sense of character or depth. Styx himself is passable at least, were it not for the absolute nonsense he spouts. The story is also as equally uninteresting which seems top be another common complaint and ends on a nonsensical cliffhanger to leave you blue-balled anyway. I got to just under the halfway point, enduring the games first "boss fight", a term I'm using very loosely because the whole section devolves into a rather mundane task of platforming to hit some switches, in a game where the platforming already feels horrible. To make matters worse, even when the boss is dead the developers decided to have the prize littered with exploding bug pods that can't be moved around and will rip apart your health should you be caught by the goobers inside. Better still, you can't even save after the boss has been defeated so if you make the mistake of getting clipped by one you very easily die and get punted all the way back to having to do the boss again because fk you I guess :) It's one very big example in a sea of stupid design decisions. Reading reviews from others who could stomach a full playthrough, apparently the same backtracking in the same maps happens again which is yet another lazy way to pad playing time and it's obvious the developers didn't learn from this problem on top of everything else I've mentioned already. If you enjoyed the first game beyond "it was just ok" then you might find some satisfaction here, but if you aren't in that crowd I wouldn't waste your time nor money on this one. It's boring and unrewarding and does nothing to improve on the foundations of Master of Shadows. Play an actual good stealth game like Metal Gear Solid or Splinter Cell.

died 100s of times. Pefect.

Styx: Shards of Darkness - как украсть всё и не попасть в тюрьму (потому что тебя убьют раньше) Забудьте про благородных ассасинов в белых капюшонах. Здесь вы играете за зелёного гоблина Стикса - ходячее недоразумение, токсичного язву и мастера стелса в одном флаконе. Суть игры проста: вас запирают на огромных уровнях с толпой туповатых стражников, ваша задача - доказать, что эволюция дала сбой именно на них. Вы ползаете по потолкам, создаёте кислотных клонов-двойников (которые взрываются громче тёщиной посуды) и воруете всё, что плохо приколочено. Боевая система? Она есть, но лучше ей не пользоваться - наш герой дохнет от одного сурового взгляда охранника. Главное блюдо здесь - это чёрный юмор самого Стикса. Этот парень комментирует происходящее так едко, что хочется специально попадаться патрулям ради новых диалогов. Уровни спроектированы как швейцарский сыр из возможностей для диверсий. Вердикт: берите, если хотите почувствовать себя самым вредным существом во вселенной. Только не пейте местный «Янтарь» - чревато внезапным появлением лишних копий себя прямо посреди вражеского форта. А кислота в желудке вообще разъедает текстуры реальности. Проверял лично.