Styx: Master of Shadows is the first game in the Styx franchise, and whilst it is now 5 years old I only completed it at the end of last year, it still holds up pretty well. Though it is prone to a few bugs, it seems to handle better than its sequel, Styx: Shards of Darkness (which I intent to review once I’ve stomached a few more hours of it).
Styx: Master of Shadows is a pure stealth game, you play as Styx the goblin, creeping around a somewhat mysterious sky city-come-monastery known as the Tower of Akenash. You start with a splitting headache not remembering a lot about… well anything, and slowly uncover/remember more about the world and your plan as you go. It’s a pure stealth game in that, whilst there are combat mechanics, if you get in a fight you’re probably screwed. The game makes good use of lighting, sight lines, basic AI, and just a couple of magic powers to make a very in-depth stealth system built on only a few core mechanics.
The game does a really good job of steadily increasing the stakes so that even though the mechanics don’t change the difficulty of the missions still increases, usually by adding a new type of enemy or making your objectives a little more involved. Even when the game repeats the same map location it still feels fresh and interesting as it forces you to explore new parts of it or use a different approach in your problem solving. This is aided by the complexity of the maps, most of the maps (and all of the ones which are revisited several times) have multiple layers and routes through them, usually a few hidden sections, and a variety of objects to interact with; yet this never feels overwhelming as your objectives are always straightforward, it’s just a question of how you achieve them.
The story is surprisingly well crafted for how simple it first appears, and whilst a few of the twists are somewhat predictable I do appreciate when writers don’t make twists unexpected for the sake of being unexpected. Even by the end of the story you still feel it’s just the tip of the iceberg of a fascinating world, and whilst you have achieved one type of closure there’s still a lot of intrigue around the world they have built.
The humour within the game hit a sweet spot for me; whilst not a comedy game, the small jabs Styx would make at different characters, or more importantly the brief “throwaway” lines the patrolling NPCs would exchange made the world feel alive, even if they were repetitive. It gave the vibe of people doing their best to cope with a mundane situation without shoving it in your face. Special shoutout to the bloke repeating “S**t lads… has anyone seen my ladder?” in a vaguely Yorkshire accent whilst staring down a bottomless pit.
My only significant gripe is that when you unlock abilities by completing missions, you can only unlock all of them by 100%ing the game. This includes the 4 accolades you get by completing each mission 1) without killing anyone, 2) without being seen by anyone, 3) under a certain time limit, and 4) collecting all 10 hidden tokens on each stage. Bear in mind each mission is comprised of 3 or 4 stages and you have to comply with these accolades for all stages of a mission to collect it for that mission. This means you typically have to play each mission 2 or 3 times to collect all 4 accolades, which does ruin my immersion a bit personally. Thankfully you don’t need all the abilities to complete the game, technically you don’t need any, but you do miss out on a sense of progression and improvement without them.
The other complaints I would expect to hear would be the slightly weak graphics and repetitive, and sometimes downright stupid, actions of the NPCs. In terms of graphics I can see it leaves a lot to be desired, but I never misunderstood anything due to the quality of the graphics (though I was playing on the highest settings) and unless a game’s graphics are at one extreme of the scale or the other, I rarely feel strongly about the visual presentation of the game. Sometimes it’s a style choice, sometimes it’s a resource choice (processing power or man hours) it doesn’t really matter to me as long as it’s consistent and fits with the game world. As for stupid NPCs, I think the AI here is actually quite good, unlike the Skyrim guard who will exclaim “it must’ve been the wind” a few seconds after they discovered a new arrow in their head, the Styx guards will draw their swords, entering “high alert” mode (where they will spot you more quickly) and tell other guards they come across they have seen “a weird creature” which causes them to also enter high alert mode. Whilst they don’t change their patrol routes they do check hiding spots on their routes, making them harder to deal with without making your mission too much harder. Though I do find it funny when they fail to notice that their mate they see every 30 seconds on their patrol suddenly stops turning up, though that’s a level of AI I haven’t seen in any game yet, and presumably for good reason.
I have just over 40 hours logged in Styx: Master of Shadows, though I have attempted a couple of speed runs (see the ‘complete the mission within the time limit’ accolade), so typical runtime to complete the story is probably 30-40 hours. Full price the game is £25, though since it’s 5 years old it frequently goes on sale for much less than this. If I had bought it at full price I probably would’ve been slightly miffed, but that’s because I rarely buy anything at full price any more – in hindsight I would say £25 is not unfair for a game of this quality.
Overall, Styx: Master of Shadows is a fantastic stealth game which does a great job of giving you enough options and control that no two playthroughs are identical, adding just enough to each mission that the basic mechanics it is founded on successfully carry the game throughout. I would recommend this game to anyone looking for a stealth game where patience is rewarded as much as ingenuity.
- Gameplay – 9/10
- Mechanics – 10/10
- Story – 9/10
- Price – 8/10
- Enjoyment* – 9/10
OVERALL – 9.0/10
*Enjoyment is a personal measure of how much I enjoyed the game, more of a “gut feeling” than the empirical approach I try to take with the other ratings.
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