Geekscape Games Reviews: ‘Styx: Master of Shadows’
Video games that incorporate stealth as the core mechanic usually fall into one of two camps. Either you will fail for alerting someone immediately or the option to fight off enemies with ease makes stealth out of place. A few games can find the right balance between the two extremes. Styx: Master of Shadows tends to teeter in finding its balance but never falls over.
The story in Styx: Master of Shadows won’t get many invested to learn too much past the intro. Styx wakes up with no memory other than he needs to steal the heart of the World Tree, which is the source of the magical goo, Amber. Since the World Tree is deep within the Tower of Akenash, you’ll have to traverse your way through the tower to achieve your goal. With the story a little shallow, Styx himself was my focus of interest. I fell in love with the little goblin as a character. The personality alongside the voice acting pushed me towards the next cutscene. I enjoyed the take-no-shit attitude Styx carried himself with while being able to show a little compassion. Some of the crass language was fitting for a goblin. A couple of times I felt the writers leaned a little heavy on the crassness which soured the wonderful character they built up in Styx.
When I wasn’t enamored with learning more about Styx, I was putting his assassin and thief skills to the test. Sand balls for extinguishing torches, throwing daggers, health, amber, and acid vials. Sure seems like all the tools are here for striking fear from the shadows. You can upgrade Styx’s abilities with five sets of skill trees that each include four upgrades. The more objectives you complete in each mission, the more points you will have to spend on skills. I went for upgrading the stealth, equipment, and combat trees first due to some of the issues when leaving the safety of the shadows. Creating clones with amber is a unique feature that I rarely used outside of when it was mandatory. Switching between your clone and back felt clunky and unintuitive. It would have been better if instead of taking direct control over your clones, you could issue orders to them.
Styx: Master of Shadows gives you the opportunity to escape or fight back when cornered. The problem with fighting back is the combat is horrendous. Attacking is nothing more than tapping a button to parry the blow before killing the attacker. The fact that Styx ends up locked in combat and cannot run away only makes me dislike the combat more. When many foes are targeting you at once, you might as well load your last save. While playing the rhythm game when parrying one attack, the others will throw daggers until you die. Dying may seem terrible with unforgiving checkpoints, but you can make your own checkpoints by saving at any time. This negates having to sit through pot shots from guards you cannot dodge.
Sticking to the shadows or high above all the action would be smart to avoid the messy combat in Styx: Master of Shadows. Unfortunately, there are issues when it comes to traversal throughout the game. You can never be sure if the ledge within range is a place Styx can grapple or not. Many deaths involved falling to my doom or landing in the middle of a group of guards. All because a ledge I jumped for was not something my stubby fingers could grab. Even with the surfaces you can grip tight, Styx will come down with a case of the butterfingers as you watch his face hit the floor. This didn’t happen all too often, but it was enough to stress me out every time I made a jump from high above to reach the safety of a ledge. A little more distinction on what surfaces you can interact with would have saved countless deaths and lots of stress.
When not running into issues with butterfingers or poor combat, the huge scope of the areas in Styx: Master of Shadows made me giddy. With the many tools at Styx’s disposal finite until all four parts of each mission were complete, my inner strategist lit up. Knowing when and where to use them is vital to your survival. Using invisibility to pass a guard might seem worth it at first. As time goes on, you might find it more useful to save it for escaping. These limitations lead to me discovering that the environment itself was the best tool in Styx’s arsenal. Chairs, vases, brooms, and buckets make for perfect diversions when exploring the many paths in the tower.
Being little in stature helps by offering up places that are not sought after when looking for a safe hiding spot. Tables, vases, and small crawl spaces are viable options for safety among the usual closets and chests to hide in. Although these monster closets are perfect for Styx to pounce his enemies, peeking to see when the coast is clear is the only option.
Styx: Master of Shadows does a fantastic job making Styx interesting enough to endure glaring issues. Poor combat, buggy traversal, and a shallow story might be too much to spend more than 17 hours to see the end. I was proud that I walked in Styx’s shadow and was worth the suffering if only to hang with the goblin a little while longer.
