Styx: Shards of Darkness The Game - Review

Released today 14/04/17, made by French Cyanide and distributed by Focus Home Interactive, in an era after Metal Gear Solid V and with a stealth mechanic of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, comes Styx: Shards of Darkness for Playstation 4, PC and Xbox One.
The game is a sequel to Styx: Master of Shadows. This time, Styx tries to infiltrate the Dark Elves town, Körangar, in order to find out why the Dark Elves have allied themselves with the Dwarves.

Few things have changed since its predecessor, so there is no need to have played it to understand the story. Amber is still a source of energy. Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Orcs vie for power while Goblins are treated like plague.

For casual fans of stealth games, Styx: Shards of Darkness seems like a good move, however, it's not just the story that has not changed, the gameplay remains quite similar to Master of Shadows.

Styx: Shards of Darkness has a good presentation. In the first minutes, Cyanide demonstrates having invested in the graphic quality of the game, however with the passing of the game, we noticed that there was only this improvement in the game.

The combat system remains similar and with the same AI simple: wait for the enemy to attack, counterattack his strike and kill him. This works well if you are facing one or two enemies, otherwise it is recommended to run away from the last checkpoint. If it has not been seen by the enemy, the player can perform silent executions, but as time passes, enemies appear that can not be killed that way. At first the player is not able to perform aerial executions, which can be solved if you get an upgrade, something that does not seem logical, since it is a common skill between stealth games and a "big thief" as Styx should already have In your arsenal.

Among the difficulty levels presented to you at the beginning of the game, one of the options allows you to choose which alerts automatically result in Game Over. This added to the enemies with immunity to the sneaky executions and the dwarves (that smell of Styx), are the factors that increase the difficulty of the game.

Keeping hidden is not difficult, but at certain moments the mechanics of the game itself cause a limitation, for example, trying to interact with the environment and not getting an expected response made the task of hiding a bit more arduous. However, the game gives you a few different alternatives to pass through enemies, which greatly facilitate progress in history. For stealth fans this can be disheartening, since rarely is the most obvious and easy route taken, however for more casual gamers looking for a stealth game, Styx can be a good alternative.

The game has a rather acidic sense of humor, something that combines both the story theme and the main character. Several times throughout history, especially when you die, Styx breaks the fourth barrier and speaks directly to the player, always trying to be funny, sometimes offensive, which becomes tiring after a certain time.

The high points of the game is that we have a decent amount of upgrades for the Styx. With them, he gains new stealth and combat techniques, learns to create new items and enhances natural abilities. In addition there is plenty of vertical exploration, maps are full of items to be collected and objects with which the player can interact.

SOURCE: WWW.GAMEPAD.COM.BR