Shadwen Reviews

A great "Styx like". Worth trying ! If you liked Styx you will like it. If you like it, then try Styx (Master of Shadows preferably).

A fun stealth game with a unique and well executed idea.

Very solid stealth game. Fairly hard if you don't got strategies for the guards. After finishing the whole game it turns into a psychopath simulator. Had a lot of fun. i got the platinum in like 12hrs

It is good to see stealth type games still being made such as Styx Master Of Shadows and this one. It's not perfect by any means, there are some issues with the AI, but even the great Thief Gold had that so this is a welcome addition. It has some re-playability, you can play levels sparing all guards by using distraction methods or do the complete opposite while using traps or dropping from height takedowns. All in all a nice fun game. Everything seems to be in order.

"Stealth" and "linear" are two words you usually never want to see in the same sentence. But Shadwen is still quite fun to play once you get used to the tools you have - and the various environmental hazards you can manipulate - to help you dispatch of some of those guards. The AI of the guards is ropey, to say the least. Their field of vision is quite small, and don't seem to notice when you backstab others even when you're right behind them, suggesting limited hearing as well. The girl (Lily) you need to escort from hideout to hideout can often get away with quite literally walking under a guard's nose. But then you feel this is necessary, for the game to prevent the enemies from spotting Lily, as there's nothing worse or more annoying than an escort quest where your charge blunders in and gets killed themselves. Maybe it's a wise choice for the game to verge on the lenient side. The level design is visually repetitive (although quite polished) and is indeed very linear, but you can use your grappling hook to pull stuff around and create diversions, or even (and this was my favourite bit) pulling a keg of gunpowder onto a campfire and causing the resulting explosion to kill two nearby guards. The wide variety of ways you can kill enemies, often involving a combination of two items, almost veers Shadwen into immersive sim territory, but not quite, because of the linearity and the fact that it doesn't really feel like a lived-in world: the guards make too many mistakes and repeat too many conversations to be convincing as real people. Plus, there's virtually no in-game lore to dig into, and the story is as minimal as they come, so there is that sticking point to contend with. Because of this, it's only a moderate recommendation from me, but you can enjoy Shadwen as long as you don't go in expecting a Thief-like or a Splinter Cell-like. It's more akin to Styx, I'd say. Be aware also that there is no non-lethal takedown: it's kill or evade only, and taking the distraction route instead can be tedious and time-consuming.