Styx: Master of Shadows Reviews

Great game, Stealth based, requires a lot of patience and skill. The whole Styx franchise is amazing

7/10 The stealth gameplay is very fun, but cheeky enemy placement and poor level design killed this game for me. I was stuck in the prison with no obvious way to progress and without enough resources to do anything. I'm in the middle on recommendation but leaning towards not recommending it. If you give it a try just know that the game has no problem wasting your time by soft locking you and requiring that you start the game all over.

its not a bad game for what it is. its a bad game for what it tried to do and failed. granted its old, but it tried to be a open world stealth game where you could choose your path to your obj. except its not. the map is incredibly linear and make no effort to reward you for exploring it nor gives you the tools to stealthily explore it.

An old game with an interesting story and protagonist that is marred by its janky combat mechanics and it's poorly-crafted stealth system. Fun for those with nostalgia or curiosity for stealth-combat games, but something that is better off passed over by most others.

very fun and exiting game another very good detailed assassin type game

Styx has some cool ideas, but it's held back by its clunky mechanics and outdated visuals (compared to another games from 2014). The stealth gameplay can be fun at times, and the world-building has potential, but the controls feel a bit stiff and the game can get frustrating.

[h1] I have 100% completed in this game 3 times now on Xbox One, PS5, & Steam. [/h1] if that doesn't show how much i recommend it, i don't know what will. this is my favorite game of all time. This masterpiece is a Prequel to Of Orcs And Men & Predecessor to Styx: Shards of Darkness & The Upcoming Styx: Blades of Greed [list] Pros: [*] Unique art style [*] Immersive atmosphere [*] Intriguing level design that rewards exploration [*] Fantastic addition to the stealth genre [*] Distinctive mechanics (Cloning, Amber Vision, Invisibility) [*] Very well priced & often on sale. [/list] [list] Cons: [*] minor bugs/glitches [*] clunky movement & combat (wall climbing & parrying) [*] outdated by its successors [*] outdated graphics [/list] ---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☐ Good ☑ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Meh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☑ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☐ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☐ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☑ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☐ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☐ Easy ☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☑ Only if u care about achievements ☑ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☐ Good ☑ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☑ Short ☐ Average ☐ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☐ Never heard of ☑ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☑ 9 ☐ 10

I had a good bit of fun with this game! Especially on sale for $2, this game offers a solid stealth experience that does a lot right. That said, it has some issues, so keep your expectations tempered. What Styx does best is take the best aspects of other stealth games and incorporate it into one game. You've got hiding bodies in cabinets like Hitman, controlling speed and turning out lights like in Splinter Cell, movement from Assassin's Creed and Batman Arkham games, etc. While all those games do their respective aspects better, Styx knows what works and uses it to its advantage. When it works, it's incredibly fun to sneak around in the shadows and stab people. On top of that, Styx offers a really fun and unique world to explore, with some good lore and world-building to boot. That said, there are issues here. Enemies are just plain dumb half the time. They'll completely miss a dead body not 5 feet away if it's "in shadow", and it was almost comical how much they were oblivious to. That said, they'd all come running if a dead body clipped through the floor and made a sound when you killed them, which happened frequently but inconsistently. This made getting through levels somewhat of an unintentional challenge, as I wasn't always sure what would and wouldn't get me caught. Some enemies are more frustrating than others, and by the end I found the difficulty got a little unfair at times. Speaking of, the back half of the game just reuses the same levels from the first half of the game, just with harder enemies. It made finishing the game a bit of a chore since nothing was new at that point. Also, Styx seemed to take inspiration from the worst aspects of Deadpool in terms of dialogue and wit. At best it was lame, but more often than not his crude nature just rubbed me the wrong way. Not a deal breaker, but definitely annoying. That all said, this is a good time for $2, but there's enough issues here for me not to recommend buying it at full price. Fans of the stealth genre will likely have a good time with this though so I'd say check it out.

4/10 It's a very mediocre stealth game, but it tried its best and it deserves some recognition for that. I feel like this one had alot of potential, but it became apparent very quickly after picking it up that it missed several crucial marks when it comes to designing good stealth gameplay: The first and most consistently annoying one is how the lighting system works, and especially with how poorly it is communicated to the player. The key to good stealth games is consistent detection mechanics that are clearly communicated to the player, such as knowing when an area is bright enough to be spotted in, or dark enough to hide in. The oldest stealth game, the Thief series, first implemented this mechanic with the light gem, a single jewel always visible at the bottom of the screen that got progressively brighter and darker as you moved from lighter to more shadowy areas. Styx tries to do this as well by re-flavoring it as a tattoo on his arm, which is only visible while looking at the character from ONE angle of his body. Meaning that you have to constantly keep repositioning the camera just so you can see if the tattoo is glowing to know if you're visible. They could have easily fixed this by painting his entire character model all over with tattoos that glow, but no. It's such a simple fix that would mend such a careless mistake. Light detection systems are THE MOST IMPORTANT mechanic in ANY stealth game; one that the player utilizes literally every five seconds while playing, and here it's been reduced to a "bells-and-whistles" type thing. This is the biggest flaw with the tattoo, but it's not the only one. The second problem with the tattoo is more of an issue with general level design: every map has areas of inconsistent lighting that make it impossible to tell whether or not you will be hidden. Sometimes I will step into a bright area right under a lamp and I'll be totally invisible, other times I'll be in an area that appears to be pitch darkness and enemies can see me plain as day. It's not a bug in a handful of areas either, its common enough that I can literally never tell whether or not a shadow will hide me... in a stealth game. Did I mention that there is no sliding-scale between being completely invisible and being a Christmas-tree? When it comes to enemy sight and lighting, there is no "corner-of-your-eye" brief momentary sightings; there is just "I can't see anything" and "ha! There you are!" This inherent lack of subtly is bad in any stealth game, but it's just ANNOYING in one where you literally cannot tell which shadows will and won't actually hide you. A more minor but still annoying issue is that sometimes while descending from a parkour jump or jumping onto a ledge the game fails to auto-lock you onto the target like it's supposed to, so you'd better hope you aim it just right or else you're gonna fall and take alot of damage. Styx is small, so even relatively short heights hurt him alot, which I could find more immersive if it weren't for the fact that the majority of fall damage you take is just a gamble on whether or not the climbing mechanic will work properly. For a game about feeling like a nimble infiltrator, it makes you feel... limited. Still, the game had alot of effort put into it, and it shows. You can tell the devs were really passionate about making it good, just a little inexperienced. The sound design in particular is very good and they implemented the mechanics of your footstep sounds across different surfaces (like carpet, stone, wood, and metal) very well. The climbing and infiltration mechanics are fun (barring the terrible lighting system) and you really do feel like a sneaky little goblin by crawling along ledges, parkour up walls, and ducking into little holes and crawlspaces that bigger creatures couldn't normally fit in. The combat system is simple and its easy to get overpowered, but I feel like that's better in a stealth game. You're not meant to be a warrior, you're not supposed to rush into combat and kill 20 guys. You're an infiltrator, a thief, a ninja, an assassin. You're meant to be a sneaky and nimble little trickster, not a mighty Dragonborn; this game nails that feeling really well. The characters and world are also interesting. Styx is rude, crude, and scrappy, which normally I'm not a fan of but his character makes sense for the world and fits well into it. This is one of those settings where EVERYONE is a jerk, but still has to get along and form mutual alliances (which they frequently betray each other in, Styx for example pickpockets one of his own friends shortly after he helps him) it really makes you feel immersed in a world of "no one's a good guy, and you're no exception; keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." and the writers are very good in making you feel the suspense of this reality. Styx feels like the kind of person who's constantly worried that everyone is gonna betray him, probably because they will, and so he feels compelled to betray them first. It's interesting and makes the crudeness of his character feel earned. Overall I'm extremely disappointed to see how this game turned out. It pains me to give it such a low rating. It really feels like it had a lot of potential. I've heard the second game is a lot better and fixes a lot of these problems I've mentioned, and I might decide to give it a try one day but for now I've been unimpressed with this series so I'll give it a pass but if you wanna try any game I'd say start with the second. 4/10

A game with brilliant ideas which are unfortunately not so properly realized and an unexpectedly great psychological story which at first look kinda stereotipical and not so intriguing - until you complete the mission number five. This makes the plot twist very unexpected and astonishing, but at the same time a lot of people were drawn off because of this, unable to find anything worth their attention at the beginning of the game. Fortunately, I wasn't among those people and thus I enjoyed the plot at full. The protagonist and the antagonist both are very well written characters with understandable motivation. If you started to play this game and find it boring, I recommend you to endure just until the end of the fifth mission - it'll be worth it, I assure you.