Platforms: PC (reviewed), PS4, Xbox One
Developer: Cyanide Studio
Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
MSRP: $39.99
Introduction:
Styx: Shards of Darkness is the follow up to 2014’s Styx: Master of Shadows, an under-the-radar stealth/infiltration game starring a mouthy green goblin named Styx. Although its reach was relatively small, it managed to do well enough over time that developer Cyanide Studio was willing to invest in a sequel. Shards of Darkness is by and large an improvement mainly thanks to the move to Unreal Engine 4.
That said, much like the original game, Shards of Darkness is both incredibly focused yet limited in the scope of what it does well. The game tries to change things up to keep its solid stealth mechanics fresh, but by and large, this is where Shards of Darkness ends up tripping over its own feet. If anything, it would have been a much better experience had it just stuck to its Infiltration and Exploration game loop.
As always, here’s a breakdown of what you need to know about Styx: Shards of Darkness.
Exploring the game environment for alternate routes is the highlight of the Styx experience.
Direct combat in Styx: Shards of Darkness is highly discouraged. The little green goblin is not necessarily helpless, but he can quickly become overwhelmed when faced with more than one alerted adversary. As such, it’s best to avoid conflict at all costs, and managing to do so is when I found Styx: Shards of Darkness to be at its best. Navigating around the game’s diverse environment is helped by the plethora of ways you can distract the heavily armed sentries.
Styx has access to different magical abilities, the core ability of which is his ability to clone himself. Clones can serve as distractions and/or sacrifices to divert enemies away from their paths, creating an opening for Styx. If there’s a switch that seems impossible to get to, sacrificing a clone to get to it, is usually the way to go. Eventually, you unlock the ability to throw a cocoon that can spawn a clone in a distant location for added strategy.
Many of the game’s objective locations will have some alternate route that saves Styx from having to walk right in the front door, and it’s in finding these that I found Shards of Darkness to excel. Styx can traverse environments Prince of Persia style by grabbing conveniently placed ledges, which will usually lead to some small hidden opening out of the way of prying eyes.
As satisfying as sneaking around unseen is, getting caught and breaking the line of sight definitely isn’t.
The easiest way to describe what it’s like to be caught in Styx: Shards of Darkness is this; you might as well pause and load a previous save from before the moment you set off the alarm, because nine times out of ten, you are just going to die anyway. Enemy placement has a lot to do with this, as many environments will have you sneaking around five to six sentries at once, and getting into a combat situation with more than one of them is certain death.
Running away doesn’t seem to do much either as enemy projectiles become borderline god-like and will whittle your health down before you can even hope to find a way out. It just feels like Cyanide Studios didn’t invest much time in polishing this part of the game, which makes sense given that this is a Stealth/Infiltration game, and the key components have the right amount of polish. That said, if you aren’t 100% perfect at sticking to the Shadows, the game can break down on you in a hurry.
Stealth gameplay isn’t all that’s here. But in some cases, you’ll wish it was.
A game trying to change things up in order to keep things fresh is certainly nothing new. But in some cases with Styx: Shards of Darkness, I just ended up wishing that Stealth was all this game was about. Not to spoil anything, but there is a particularly frustrating boss encounter in which Styx has to race around the environment, to interact with key points while dodging some widespread enemy attacks that can kill you in seconds. It doesn’t help that some of the attacks were able to penetrate the geometry, so in some cases, hiding ended up being a fruitless affair.
You can’t even use your clones effectively in this encounter since they can die even quicker than you and the pace of the attacks is too frequent to avoid taking damage. It would have been cool if the clones were a key component to solving the boss encounter which would have explained all of the numerous deaths I encountered. But, unfortunately, this was not the case as all I really did was power through it by making a beeline for each point and healing whenever it was possible.
Verdict:
If you’re in the market for a pure Stealth game, particularly one that doesn’t retail for full price ($39.99), Styx: Shards of Darkness certainly does its best to appeal to this demographic as an under-the-radar type game. The game excels at its focus, and improves on its established formula, but struggles in its secondary offerings. Suffice it to say; if you can overlook its flaws, there’s a lot of fun to be had with Styx: Shards of Darkness. You will also get a pretty nice amount of value regarding game time, as most playthroughs should last you above the 20-hour mark, at least on the first run. This is dramatically reduced once you have an idea about how to get through each level, and your death count plummets.
Ultimately, Styx: Shards of Darkness should please fans of the original, but its improvements are closer to marginal rather than revolutionary.
