A very astute man patrols the walkway, lined with stone and shrubberies, ensuring his fellow colleagues are safe. A battle has emerged at the front gate, and it is a battle life or death for the guards of the fort. The walls are lined with gunmen, firing away at the invading army of the Shogun. On his way back home for the night, the guard feels the cold steel of a katana cut across his neck, and all so suddenly tastes the copper of his own blood as he slinks to the ground and is dragged into the very bushes he kept walking past unknowingly. An assassin was waiting for the perfect moment to strike, as the Shogun would surely rule this land.

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun is a game that mixes two genres that go hand-in-hand: stealth and strategy. If there’s a genre that is most often either a hit or miss, it’s stealth. If the mechanics are off just enough, it ruins the entire game. Likewise, strategy can often be unplayable thanks to the difficulty and/or a lack of actual options. Luckily, this manages to harness the best from both genres, while also having a great story and plenty of replay value.

There’s a lot that goes into the 13 levels you’ll be playing. While each one has a badge for completing it within a certain amount of time, (5 minutes, 15 minutes, etc), chances are you’ll be spending a lot more time than that. The first level took me about 45 minutes, and that’s not including all the reloading I did because I messed something up. The game allows for quick saves by pressing the touch pad, which only takes a few seconds. It keeps your three most recent saves, because we all know that when you save in a game like this, chances are you do so at a terrible time and need to rethink a portion of the game. This will save you so much frustration, and keeps the game fresh as you try different tactics in each level, as loading a quick save is near immediate.

You start off with a ninja, but are soon introduced to a samurai and sniper, all of which you’ll end up controlling. As the game is constantly moving regardless of who you are, you need to ensure the characters are in safe spots when left alone. Crouched in a hidden spot is ideal, unless you’re keen on dying. This is a bit less of an issue if you’re killing everything in your path, but for those that are doing non-lethal playthroughs and only knocking characters out, the guards may come looking for you once they come to, and it doesn’t take them long to do so.

Each of the five characters you gain control of has their own abilities, adding their own flare to each level. These include combat as well as distractions. When you are first introduced to a character, there are fairly obvious places to use them. The levels are designed to teach you their abilities if you are so inclined, although you don’t have to. The game is also sure to inform you of level specific features, such as riding in a wagon to get past guards or using the environment for kills. These will often factor into the badges for each level, and typically have a trophy attached. You’ll find that certain sections of levels are seemingly impossible without a bit of teamwork that you’d find in the likes of Modern Warfare with your AI sniper taking out the left as you kill the right. Luckily, the game offers a shadow mode that lets you set up an action per character, and lets you execute it at the perfect time with the press of the triangle button. This is extremely satisfying.

Speaking of satisfying, that’s the case with the majority of the game. Like any strategy game, it’s a puzzle with multiple ways of solving it, as seen with all the badges. Do you use the environment to make the deaths look like accidents? Do you kill every soul in your path? Do you become a ghost and manage to not hurt anyone? It’s up to you. And regardless of choice, just making it past a few guards always feels like an accomplishment. Whether this is because of all the reloads you do, or simply because you are pleased your plans panned out, it’s a fantastic feeling.

As you move about a level, you will need to move the camera along with you, which you can zoom in and out as well as rotate. Quite honestly, the camera is the worst part of the game. I spent my entire time with it feeling like I do if I play something with the y-axis not inverted (say what you will; inverted is the proper way to play). There’s something very awkward about it, and I never got the hang of it, resulting in my fair share of deaths. As actions are centered on the camera, I ended up in several situations that were rather unpleasant, such as jumping right in front of an enemy instead of on the building right next to him.

The nice thing about the camera is it lets you view enemy patterns all around the level, and you can reset it back to who you’re currently in control of, which is nice as you can easily become lost in the maps. When wandering around, you will undoubtedly walk into an enemy’s vision cone that you overlooked. This will bring up a green cone that fills up with yellow until it reaches you, at which point it’s red and you reload your save. You CAN keep playing – you have life and whatnot – but with how often you save (the game reminds you ever minute and twenty seconds with a spiffy graphic) there’s really no reason not to reload. You are also able to view each enemy’s vision cone (one at a time) by pressing left on the d-pad, which allows you to get to the next bush at just the right time, or draw their attention and kill them just out of sight while their buddy surveys the area.

It’s once you have access to all five characters in a level that things really start to heat up, as you have all the tactical options available. If the previous levels didn’t offer enough replayability with their badges, this is where you’ll spend hours with the game. Perfecting each area with the character combinations is fun in and of itself, and it means you won’t have to play a level the same way more than once. It feels like the game is constantly teaching you without giving an outright tutorial like it does at the very beginning of the game. While there are scrolls that give you details of the game throughout, they are far from intrusive, as well as optional. I didn’t even see it my first time in the snow (real observant of me), but the character’s dialogue made it obvious that the footsteps would be my downfall if I wasn’t careful.

The story itself is pretty decent too. The game offers you English or Japanese voicing, and while it seems a bit weird to play something like this with English, the actors do a fine job. But I recommend it with the Japanese, as it feels much more authentic. I’ve skipped a lot of game narratives recently, because frankly I don’t find them interesting enough or I just don’t have the time. My wife plays games on her PS4 right next to mine, and if I’m not invested enough, I’ll just skip the story to get to “the game.” Younger me can’t believe it, since he lived on JRPGs and their dialogue, and while there are games that are clear exceptions, it’s rare I find something that has heart to it and makes me care. This did a good job of that, with satisfying arcs between the characters, and development I really didn’t expect after my first hour with the game.

If you are a fan of stealth or strategy, I highly recommend Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun. It offers so much content, and presents it better than most games in the genres it covers. The only downfall is the camera, and it is a big one once you spend some time with it, but that’s hardly a reason to not play this. Mimimi Productions has created a gem of a game, and their future looks very bright.

9 out of 10

Pros

• Compelling Narrative
• Extensive Options in Tactics
• So. Many. Badges.

Cons

• Camera

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun was developed by Mimimi Productions and published by Daedalic Entertainment. The game launched on PC December 6th, 2016 for $39.99 and launched on PS4 and X1 August 1st, 2017 for $49.99. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. If you’d like to see more of Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, check out the official site.

 

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