For the Shogun!

 Shadow tactics blades of the shogun review

Of course, in any game it’s nice to meet an unordinary plot and its pitch, however in  shadow tactics blades of the shogun tactics  the  plot performs a single function, from which it does not get away: it justifies your travels and tasks.

 

For example,shadow tactics blades of the shogun ps4 has marked the return of the gameplay to the Commandos, that of the strategy declined towards the puzzle / stealth game partly born in the ’80s with Airborne Ranger, then coded by Syndicate and made famous by the aforementioned trilogy of the late Pyro Studios.

In reality something similar had come out even in recent years. It is worthwhile for all Satellite Reign, considered the spiritual heir of Bullfrog’s dossier, despite the many touches of modernity. The title of the unknown Mimimi Productions, that already had delighted us with the good

with high quality gameplay.

SOME PROBLEMS

The Last Tinker: City of Colors, does however something different: it follows the style of the genre, disinterested in any form of mediation with the modern videogame.

 

This is a radical choice, but functional these days: why compromise when it is clear that the average user will not watch your work even smear? In short: to which disfavor those who will buy the game to try to satisfy those who do not buy it?

THERE WERE A NINJA, A SAMURAI AND …

The answers to the questions asked at the end of the previous paragraph are found in the refined mechanics of Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, explained in the first of the thirteen maps that make up the campaign of the game.

For the Shogun!

Incredibly we are faced with a tutorial that does not absorb the player, but that was built with an excellent pedagogical logic:the map is divided into micro areas, each of which introduces a new mechanic to be used to overcome it. Of course, there are very short scrolls to read, but you act immediately and directly, without any higher entity blocks the game every three seconds to explain what to do.

What is more important than history is the diversity and functionality of the characters. Types are traditional. The conditional “strongman” in Shadow Tactics is the samurai Mugen, able to lay several opponents in one fell swoop.

 

The Sniper is an old Takuma with an anachronistic rifle and a hand-tanuki, the equivalent of the Commandos 2: Men of Courage and the Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive). Girl Aiko – like a spy, only she has to hide in disguise in the strictly defined places.

 

“Minesweeper” is a juvenile gaskeeper Yuki, who turns by her name to her murderous trap and whistle, which inevitably attracts the attention of enemies. Finally, the most ninja ninja Hayato: he is somewhat out of genre roles, because he is quite secretive, knows how to take off on a cat hook, throw shuriken – a ninja, in short.

 

In  shadow tactics ps4 there is no inventory or at least cells for items: each hero uses only his own skills, some of which consume supplies (bullets, for example). Even our bodies are dragged in different ways by the soldiers: Hayako drags them on their backs like JC Denton, Mugen takes a carcass under his arm (and takes two at once), and Takuma does not carry anyone – age and health do not allow .

 

In the first level of blades of the shogun we also get to know three of the five characters we will control for the rest of the adventure: Hayato, a well-versed ninja in the arts of stealth; Mugen, a samurai capable of eliminating anyone with a single stroke of his sword; and Takuma.

 

 

A skilled sniper who can kill even from tens of meters away. The two missing characters, the orphan Yuki, who specializes in placing traps, and Aiko, the master of disguises, are introduced in the following missions, cleverly focused on them,

 

Moreover,  shadow tactics blades of the shogun requires just to learn how to read a situation and decide how to act to overcome it, evaluating the resources available. Failing means losing (just the death of a character to fail) or complicating life enormously because of the reinforcements called by our opponents.

We reviewed Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, the true heir to the Commandos series

 Shadow tactics blades of the shogun gameplay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz6sE8SDgio

SOME EXAMPLES

But let’s take a direct example of gameplay: there are two guards in front of a door, with a third guard doing the rounds. How to act? We use Mugen to eliminate the two immobile guards, distracting the third with a stone thrown by Hayato, then grabbing the bodies to throw them into the nearby bushes, so as to hide what we did; or are we waiting for them to all be in the same area and let Mugen act with his special technique that allows him to eliminate entire groups of enemies in a flash?

For the Shogun!

Note that in the first case, the surviving guard would be aware of the absence of his two colleagues and would begin to search the area for traces. Remarkable, right? How many stealth games predict a similar reaction of artificial intelligence? Another example of a possible situation that can be solved in several ways: is there a guard around a load: do we kill it by dropping a rock on its head or, after studying its course, we place a trap of Yuki? Observation, reflection and action.

 

Everything would not work if the interface of the game had not been studied flawlessly(of the defects of the camera we speak in a separate paragraph), so as to manage the characters alone or in a group without problems. In the second case it is very convenient to use the so-called Shadow mode, which allows you to give orders making them then run in due time in sync.

Despite the negligible territory for the experiments, Shadow Tactics pleases both the diversity of landscapes, and the structure of the levels.

Sprinkled with snow, the city is replaced by a temple high in the mountains, and the one is a magnificent manor house among quiet ponds. For Commandos-like games this is an iron rule: the level must be elegantly drawn and competently built.

 

This is not your place of wreck in XCOM: Enemy Within , where you at best take half an hour. Cards in stealth tactics can not be faded warehouses with boxes, otherwise for one and a half or two, or even all three hours the player will go mad. Or just give up the passage.

No wonder I talked about the passage of many hours. Shadow Tactics carries in itself all the same property inherent in the games of such a warehouse.

 

A handful of heroes against dozens of scoundrels – here and the delicate balance of XCOM seems like a granite monolith! The balance scales are so sensitive here that even a butterfly will overturn them and roll into the basement with a roar.