Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun Review - My Game of the Year!

It is impossible to forget games like Commandos for those who played them. I was lucky to be a part of what I consider to be the golden age of gaming as a child and Commandos, however difficult it was, played a big part in that. I could never beat the series back then so I let myself grow as a gamer, and gain more experience before I decided to tackle them again. During my university years about 6-7 years ago I finally gathered up enough courage to try them again and this time finish them for good, which I did.

Sadly this genre has been dead for quite a long time. What Commandos, Desperados and Robin Hood did, no other game could accomplish or even try to. Until now! Shadow Tactics managed to sweep me off my feet and bring me back to those moments. It is a top quality entry to a once-dead genre which brings along new features while maintaining the extremely nostalgic feel of the aforementioned titles.

Shadow Tactics is a tactical real time strategy game with a strong emphasis on stealth, developed by Mimimi Productions and published by Daedalic Entertainment. It takes place in feudal Japan and lets you take control of five characters with totally different backgrounds but sharing the common objective of uncovering the conspiracy against the Shogun. 

Over the course of the game we will control five characters with different abilities to overcome the challenges the game throws at us. Let's first take a look at the type of enemies we will face so the detailed look at character abilities will make more sense.

Guard: A typical guard with light armour. They can be distracted, lured, killed or knocked out in one hit by all characters.

Straw Hat: These guards can not be lured and distraction abilities only catch their attention for a brief second. They can be killed or knocked out in one hit by all characters.

Samurai: A heavily armoured enemy type that can't be lured with character abilities but can be lured by leaving footsteps in snowy missions. Only Mugen can one shot these enemies with both his rifle and melee attack or Takuma can use his bomb. Any other character needs to stun the samurai first with their rifles and then finish the kill or knock out with their melee abilities.

Hayato using a rock to distract enemies

Now let's take a look at the characters and what they can do to outwit these enemies.

Hayato can throw a rock to distract an enemy and utilise his shuriken to kill non-Samurai enemies from a distance. After killing an enemy with the shuriken, Hayato must run to that enemy to retrieve his shruiken back to reuse it. Hayato's melee kill ability can be switched to a non-lethal punch.

Mugen is a heavily armoured samurai who can take down a group of non-Samurai enemies with a single ability and he is also the only character who can kill other samurai in melee combat. He can throw a bottle of sake to lure guards. Any guard who sees the sake bottle will be fixated on it, limiting their field of vision, which will allow you to easily maneuver around it to kill him immediately or wait until he reaches the bottle for some nice tactical ambushes. This bottle must be retrieved again in order to reuse. If a guard collects the bottle and you fail to kill him, this bottle will not be available until he is killed. Mugen can carry boulders that are available in certain missions which can be used to throw at enemies to kill them including samurai. This is considered an accidental kill so enemies will not raise an alarm or start a search. Mugen's melee kill ability (not group kill) can be switched to a non-lethal punch.

Enemies will follow your footsteps in snowy missions

Yuki, who totally happens to be my favourite character, can arm a trap and use a flute to lure guards to carefully prepared ambushes or her traps. Once her trap is used, she must go to its location to retrieve it same as Hayato with his shruiken and Mugen with his sake bottle. Yuki's melee kill ability can be switched to a non-lethal punch.

Aiko can throw dust at enemies to blind them, significantly decreasing the extent of their field of vision, she can also disguise herself to blend in with the enemy. Only a samurai can see through the disguise, other types of enemies can be distracted with the disguised Aiko by chatting them up while the rest of your group sneaks in. Aiko's melee kill ability can be switched to a non-lethal punch.

Takuma is the sniper who can take out non-Samurai enemies in one hit from a distance. He has limited ammo but some ammo can be found in missions. He also has an adorable Tanuki (Japanese raccoon dog) companion called Kuma that can make noise to attract the attention of guards and lure them to ambushes or distract them. Takuma also has a powerful grenade ability that can kill every enemy, including samurai, within its effect range. However his grenade ability can only be used twice per mission. One grenade is lethal while the other one stuns the enemies. Takuma doesn't have a melee ability.

These characters don't only differ in their abilities but also how they utilise their environments. For example Mugen with his heavy armour and Takuma with his cane can't swim or grapple whereas mobile characters like Hayato, Yuki, Aiko can climb up vines, grapple up/down and swim. Mugen can sprint and carry two bodies at the same time while Hayato walks while carrying a body whereas Aiko and Yuki can remain crouched while carrying bodies to hiding spots. Takuma has trouble carrying himself so he obviously can't carry any bodies :D Takuma's cane also makes a noise while sprinting so in areas where the rest of the characters wouldn't really attract the attention of an enemy when they sprint, Takuma can if the enemy is within the range of the sound of his cane. All characters also have a rifle containing 2-3 ammo depending on mission (yes Takuma has two rifles :D) with the exception of Mugen who has a hand cannon with only 1 ammo which is powerful enough to take out a Samurai in one shot from a safe distance.

At night enemies will have full vision around light sources

Shadow Tactics hardly ever gets repetitive with all the creative playstyles you can use to progress and new challenges that come with each mission. One mission can take place in the morning, allowing guards an extended field of vision, one takes place at night when field of vision is significantly decreased but enemies start carrying torches. During night missions as long as you are next to a light source and within an enemy's field of vision even if you are crouching you will be seen because enemies will have immediate vision next to light sources as long as their field of vision covers it. If you extinguish torches enemies will take notice of it and rekindle it. Some missions take place in snowy weather which makes your characters leave footprints behind when they move. If used carefully, this can be a great way to lure enemies to ambushes or to make room for your group to sneak. Enemies that were non-lethally taken out will wake up after a short period of time and start a search and if you take down a patrol that reports to an enemy, that enemy will take notice of the missing patrol and will start a search which is something even AAA titles fail to do. Yes these enemies eventually forget about it and go back to their original positions after a failed search attempt but it's still awesome that they initiate a search for their friends and they can even look inside the bushes which you might use as a potential hiding spot. 

A semi-elaborate shadow mode example

The game is in real time as I mentioned, so how are we supposed to handle like 4-5 guards at the same time who can all see each other? Through shadow mode of course. Shadow mode lets you queue one action per character to either use them all simultaneously which is quite handy for group kills or activate the queued actions one by one which I generally used to prolong the distraction process of a certain guard. For example you can use a disguised Aiko to distract a group of 3 guards, activate shadow mode to queue up melee kill one of them with Aiko while using 2 other characters to kill the remaining enemies and once the execution of shadow mode is over you end up killing 3 enemies in a matter of seconds. Provided you don't have Mugen of course because Mugen can group kill them with one ability :D

This shadow mode surely has its limitations. My main criticism is that it only allows you to queue one action per character. I would like to be able to also queue an action to carry the bodies to hiding spot as soon as the killing takes place. I feel like some parts of the game would have been much more practical if we could queue at least two actions per character. Shadow mode also does not pause the game or slow down time so all of the planning must be done in real time. 

Each mission has 9 badges which ask you to play/finish the mission a certain way. This definitely boosts the already high replayability and can ask for some rather entertaining or creative tactics for you to utilise in order to be successful. Some of the badges are mutually exclusive so they will require multiple playthrough of the same mission. For example in one mission you will be asked to kill every enemy who carries torches while another badge for the same mission will require you not to kill any enemy that carries torches. There are some pretty interesting badges that will require different tactics like not using any disguises, not using any abilities of a particular character, not even selecting a particular character, not swimming, not using grapple/climbing on vines+stairs, not hiding in bushes, not killing anyone, killing 5 enemies with a single grenade, killing 5 enemies by dropping objects on them, killing 3 enemies with a single boulder, killing only when disguised etc etc. 

"Don't swim" badge in this mission will really complicate things

Apart from these badges all missions share two common badges. Finishing the mission on hardcore, which is the highest difficulty, and finishing the mission under a set timer. I find Hardcore difficulty to be quite fair. On normal difficulty it takes a while for the enemies to detect you, you can even get away with killing an enemy within the furthers field of vision of another enemy if you time it correctly whereas on hardcore difficulty it means instant detection and alarm if they see you kill someone. Otherwise detection usually takes 2-3 seconds on hardcore difficulty so you have very little room for error. Speedrun on the other hand is quite brutal as the timers can be as short as 5 minutes extending up to 25 minutes depending on the mission. 

It initially took me about 30 hours to finish the game and I had to spend about 60 more hours on the achievement to get all badges. Speedrunning this game is easily the most stressful and hardest things I've ever had to do in my gaming life. This is exactly why it felt extremely satisfying to get it done and I consider this completion to be my hardest, best and most satisfying one. A strongly recommended game!