Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms Reviews

I had been jumping from game to game looking for something with an interesting story to follow that wasn't long winded as heck. This game is pretty interesting because you get to play as a demon and its 'puppet(s)' When I first started playing I thought it was going to be just the demon and one character...then I found another puppet...I also went to the soul place and saw many soul diases. Best Mechanic (Pre-10/30/2014 Patch): Collecting new puppets. Worst Mechanic (Pre-10/30/2014 Patch): Loot, The RNG hates me...

This game definetly resides in the Diablo 3 genre but is also very unique. So far I have beat this game with the merchant king and now I am working on the enchantress. this is obviously a beta version of the game but is well worth the money upfront. There are some minor improvements to the mechanics of the game but everything else is outstanding especially the graphics and effects especially for a non main stream or popular name like Blizzard. Con's: The mechanical issues I have quams with are as follows: #1. When holding down your left mouse button to walk automatically if your mouse cursor by chance hits a destroyable object (which happens every friggen single time!!) will cause the character to pause and shoot or melee that target......this is a major "no, no" #2. Spontaneous game crashes. Luckily every time the game crashed I had saved my progress at major points of the game before the incent but still cost me many wasted minutes. This is also a major "no no"!!!. #3. Unlike games like diablo 3 when you press your button to attack a target then quickly press the button again to attack a different target in the middle of your attack and executes instantly to attack the other target after hitting the original target. This game has characters that execute 10x slower than the characters in Diablo so when you predetermine your target then change targets in the middle of your execution your character pauses and does not execute the original target then restarts the movement to attack the new target........This is super annoying for D3 players like myself but this setting is much more realistic so if you appreciate the realism vs the unrealistic stuff like D3 then this game is for you. Pro's: #1: The Price of the game is low for this quality of a game. #2. The music & the character voices/material is great. #3. The graphics are very detailed and realistic. #4. The gameplay and story line is very unique in it's genre. #5. This game has great potential.

Wow, great game! I'm only 8 hours in, but I've completed Chapter I, so I think I have a good taste of the game. There's just nothing about this game I can critize. The UI, the character inventory, the crafting, the voice acting, the graphics, the writing, game performance are all just great. I've experienced no bugs or glitches, at all. And, above all, the game is fun. The combat isn't revolutionary, or even evolutionary, but it works and it's fun in the way it's implemented. The difficulty on normal is reasonable. There's a nice strong story, too, which is tied to your character's backstory. This is just the game I've been looking for; all fun and no headaches.

NOTE: I'm still playing this game, and haven't finished the first book yet, I'll probably update this review as soon as I've finished my first playthrough of book 1. Also, I'm trying to keep this as spoiler-free as possible, so some things may be worded quite vaguely. My apologies for that. Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms is one of the most interesting games I've ever played. The gameplay is similar to that of Diablo 3, in that you have the same camera perspective and you basically spam your abilities to kill enemies. However, this game does it with a simple twist, the ability to move between two realms at will. What this simple mechanic does, is that you actually need to think whenever you're fighting against a group of enemies, as some of them are exclusive to one of either realms. I thoroughly enjoyed battling a boss, and using this to my advantage. The story of the game has been pretty good so far, and the characters that you control are quite interesting. The fact that your characters have their very own story adds a huge amount of replayability to the game which is really nice. Despite all the good points though, some players may not enjoy the game that much due to the rather slow progression in stats and power, I haven't had any trouble with enemies on normal mode yet, but you don't feel very powerful either, since you'll die quickly if you stay within the range of your enemies' attacks. Do take note that I play a ranged character, it is possible that melee characters do not suffer from this issue. I personally believe that the slow progression is kind of nice. It really is a great feeling when you finally level up, like you really accomplished something. And usually you do notice a change in power due to the scaling as you invest skill points into skills or passives. Graphics-wise the game is absolutely gorgeous, particle effects in combat are not over the top and flow nicely. The environmental art within the game is great too. Alongside the music and narrative it really immerses yourself within the game. One should most definitely buy this game if they enjoy a good story with a large amount of side-quests and simple, yet mechanically interesting combat. TL;DR If you would enjoy a game with a fair amount of exploration and story. Buy this.

There's plenty wrong with this game - more than I feel like committing to a review right now. However, despite all the problems, the game itself would be worth a little bit of fun. IF IT WORKED PROPERLY. I have ~30 hours in on this game as of this writing, and I've experienced every kind of bug you can possibly imagine: input bugs, freeze bugs, crash bugs, audio bugs, and much, much more. Just now, the game crashed during a loading screen when I tried to transition between maps. I've pretty much given up at this point, as I'm convinced that development of this title never actaully completed. Maybe it got halfway through beta and then the devs just said, "Fuck it! This looks good enough. Ship it!" This game is essentially a bad Diablo clone, so for your money you're better off playing Diablo 3 or Torchlight.

This game is amazingly well done. Excellent story line thus far, flexibility in how you approach things, and an innovative method of dealing with a "party" type situation without having a party following you. You are able to switch back and forth between playing a soul devourer and his many meat puppets. The game pay reminds me on some levels of the genius of the old game Soulbringer,in that you uncover things and sometimes need to accomplish objectives both on the mortal plane, and on the astral. The environments are stunningly beuatiful, especially when playing using the DirectX 11 drivers. This is an amazingly well-done game. This is not your typical hack and slasher. Some moral grey areas throughout on potential situations. I have not played far enough through with multiple playthroughs to determine how this affects the overarching story or potential endings yet, but I cannot wait to keep on plugging away and explore those sorts of options. A very enjoyable game. Well-done.

This game is another example of why review bombing exists. I purchased this on sale a while back so it's not as bad for me as it will be for others. You see this is titled Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms, not Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms part 1 or chapter 1 or book 1. You think you are purchasing a full game, but despite buying the game I got to a door in chapter 1 only to find "that's it until you buy part 2". In no way is a couple hours and 3 character levels of game worth 40 dollars. The best part is nothing in game or out of game tells you this is designed as intended and the developers and Steam said NOTHING in reponse to posts about it. It wasn't until other helpful people mentioned how they intended to sell the game that they finally chimed in. Do not buy this. This is the most consumer unfriendly development team I've ever seen by virtue of the shadiest practices I've ever seen. Do not support them. Castigate them as much as possible. Bomb their games with negative reviews. These people had thier chance and proved to be abusive of the market and dishonest in business. If I weren't so busy I'd slam them with a lawsuit for this egregious display of fraud. As is I suggest we see them out the door of the games industry so as not to give larger developers any ideas.

I have played this game for four hours at this point and am unsure whether to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down. This may be a product of not playing the game enough but in most games I play, by 4 hours you usually know where the game is going. So this is what I know so far and what I believe people will find useful if they are looking at buying this game. I bought this game because I wanted to try another arpg that marketed itself as being different from the usual model. This game does that. It is story driven and has characters that very much have their own flare and personalities. The voice acting is very good and the dialogue always feels important and interesting. However, I feel that even a story driven game should have fun and interesting combat, or at least cool combat animations. In this game I never found myself saying "Holy (explicative) that was awesome" or "This move is fricking amazing". Instead I found myself mumbling "ok, this a stun/aoe" and "Im not sure why I even picked up this second skill". I tried using both the archer and the barbarian and although the archer seemed a little bit more versatile, the abilities used still seemed lack luster. And maybe this was by design in an effort to make a more grounded game. But in my defense I bought a game where you play as a soul devouring demon who controls/ binds with souls of fallen heroes, and that just sounded a lot more awesome than it turned out to be combat wise. Im choosing to leave out anything dealing with bugs and technical issues because the developers do seem to care whether or not the game runs well and have taken the time to roll out a few updates. For that reason I wont judge the game based on how many times it crashes. But I will say this, when a game comes out of early access, beta, or whatever testing phases it uses and is marketed as a finished game, it should be finished. It shouldn't be released with known crashes or unfinished graphical features (like vsync). With that said the game is under 35 and should get a little slack for technical issues. For me personally it's the combat that kills this game. I plan on finishing the game after the crashes get fixed because I spent money on the game and because it does have a really interesting story line. But if I had known now what it plays like then I woulnt have spent more than $10 on it. So in conclusion, if you dont care too much about combat or gameplay and mostly judge games based on story and concepts, then this is a game you will love. However if you are like me and want a visceral combat experience where you can feel progression at every skill point, then you will be underwhelmed by this game. As a general piece of advice, give this game another month or so to iron out tech issues. This will be a good game for some and a poor game for others, unfortunately for this reviewer it just wasn't up to snuff. The only reason I chose "No" is because I had to choose something and I wouldn't tell my friends that this is a must have. If you need a number this is a 60/100 and thats assuming tech issues get resolved. I hope this review was helpful(:

[h1]Warning: Stream edition is missing retail gameplay[/h1] I’m not talking about the game being release in two halves. There’s actually locked doors and three quests in part 1 that can only be opened in the retail edition. It’s not available on the steam version, even to earliest of the early adaptors like myself. And there's nothing in the game to tell you this, so expect to waste time backtracking because you don't know which bits you were supposed to come back to with your new shiny, and which bits were never meant for you at all. Chapter 1 is great. There’s a good mixture of combat and plot. Chapters 2 & 3 and the other hand is just combat. The combat’s not bad, but that’s really all there is to Chapters 2 & 3 so if you looking for something other than grind, stay away. I played through to the end, but wished I hadn’t bothered. [b]Pros:[/b] [list] [*]Excellent art design. Each level is both pretty and functional. The ability to switch to a ‘ghost world’ gets twice the millage out of each level without it feeling tired or forced. [*]The ability to switch between characters is quite cool and well implemented. All characters receive XP whether they are in the party or not, so there’s no penalty for trying one out. The characters each have a distinct feel even though they all fall into one of three classes (ranged, magic, melee). [*]Bosses are varied and feel special. [*]In the configuration settings, you can change the ‘highlight loot/interactive area’ key from push-and-hold to toggle-on-and-off. [*]Tom Baker voice over. [/list] [b[Cons:[/b] [list] [*]There are no movement keys. It’s right click to move, left click to attack. This makes most combat stationary and a battle of health bars rather than something dynamic and exciting. There is some ability to kite by switching between ghost and meat characters (and you’ll be doing that a lot in chapter 3). [*]Some of the later levels have you backtracking across multiple levels without fast travel no apparent reason. [*]The game engine does not support multiple CPUs or GPUs (source: dev posting in the comments). My 4 core, GTX 970 SLI config could barely manage 40FPS on max settings. Mob difficulty level is all over the place, typically at the start of a new chapter. [*]Skill are unbalanced. [/list]

This game is beautifully made, voice overs are great, quests, loot, crafting. But what is at the heart of every game like this, combat. Now I will say, combat in itself is just as well done as the rest of the game. However, someone on the dev team needs to understand the importance of mob spawning and placement. For me this is where the game literally falls apart. there is almost no space to manuver in this game as it is, then add the mob spawn logic. Take two steps and mobs spawn in around you in a circle and attack, This is a game where tactics do not exist, its simplhy a matter of stepping forward, getting encircled with spiders, taking boat loads of un dodgeable damange and spamming pots, lots and lots of pots. I find in annoying enough to stop playing even though the rest of the game is literallh a masterpiece. All I can ask is that as you redesign and update your game for the re-release, try to create a more fluid combat dance between the player and the mobs. Dont rely on cheap spawning tactics to create articfically difficulty. There is also an abundency of console type boss fights, tiny little rooms, no where to move, lighting fast bosses that do tons of damage. There is no pacing to these events they are just pot swigging marathons, or as suggested in the loading tips, over level your character and go back to fight bosses. Unfortunantely I will have to give this game a thumbs down. I am the owner of just about every top down Diable style game available on steams, literally dozens and there is somthing magical about a game when they can get mob spawning, combat fighting spaces, mob and player speeds, functional CC down riight. I just dont think this game has that criticall component. What a shame.