Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

this game is kinda fun. you can play it even only use touch pad and keyboard. just chill and play this game. no need to rush to finish it. you can save the game anytime and anywhere so you still have game process even you want to stop the game in the middle of chapter.

Squatting in a bush flinging my throwing star at some minion guard and the young apprentice chick next to me asks 'Ooh a shuriken ! can I have one'

I promptly tell her no.

If you like the game play of old school games like Commandos you're going to dig this as it has similar puzzle stealth mechanics, you utilise different characters and their unique skills to get the job done.It's all done with a certain cheeky charm .

Aah so!

Great dialogues and character creation even though there are only several cutscenes. All characters are very symphatetic. Game is pretty hard, especially early on when you dont know how to use skills, hide, sneak, jump, bait. But it can be beaten even without killing any soldiers. Saving is very important beacuse using simultanous actions with SHIFT can somtimes go rly bad if we mess up timing. In this game you can perform actions with all characters together if you want to and learning this will be crucial in later missions.

An exceptional game that blends tactical stealth, strategic gameplay, and an engaging narrative set in feudal Japan.

The first thing that stands out in Shadow Tactics is its incredible attention to detail. The environments are beautifully designed, from lush forests to intricate Japanese villages, and they really draw you into the world. The art style is vibrant, and the animations are smooth, making each mission feel immersive and cinematic.
The game offers a fantastic blend of stealth and strategy. You control a group of unique characters, each with their own set of skills and abilities.Every character feels distinct, and learning how to use their skills in combination is both fun and rewarding.
It encourages patience, planning, and tactical decision-making. Missions require you to think multiple steps ahead, and failure is often a learning experience, giving you the motivation to try different approaches until you find the perfect solution.
The story itself is gripping. It’s packed with intrigue, betrayal, and memorable characters, and I found myself invested in the fate of the protagonists. The voice acting and soundtrack further elevate the experience, bringing the world to life in a way that is truly captivating. (PLAY WITH JAPANESE, it's amazing)

Overall, I believe this game is a standout title in the tactical stealth genre. It's challenging yet fair, visually stunning, and offers a rewarding and immersive experience. If you enjoy strategy games that test your intellect and offer a deep, satisfying gameplay loop, this game is absolutely worth your time.

Commandos, Desperados, and Shadow Tactics, are the best of the genre, in my opinion. The graphics are sharper in Desperados, and there are some improvements to the game, but Shadow Tactics is gorgeous, has more atmosphere, and better character stories. In my opinion, anyway. The dialog is often amusing, often cute, and significantly more engaging than the dialog in Desperados III.

If you have any interest in this sort of game, Shadow Tactics may currently be the best option, unless you like cowboys, in which case Desperados III may be more to your liking.

The new Commandos will have to be really good to rival either of them.

8/10

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun is a really solid stealth game with a fair amount of tactical/strategy elements, and I really enjoyed playing it for a few weeks on my Steam Deck. Where most stealth games use more of a first-person or a third-person view and concentrate on a single character or maybe a pair of characters, Shadow Tactics takes a larger isometric view of the map and uses squads of 2-5 characters with varying special abilties. I really enjoyed that this large-scale vision allows you plan an approach towards your mission goals, especially in conjunction with its planning/execution system. Shadow Tactics allows you to plan and set up moves to be executed at the same time, so that a character who is in disguise and talking to a pair of guards can stab one guard while a second character sneaks up and stabs the other guard, while a third character throws a shuriken at the guard on a rooftop who might see the other two getting ganked. This really enables a lot of skillful tactical planning and execution, presenting you with both difficult challenges to figure out how to approach, and a reasonably wide variety of skills to try to resolve those challenges.

The game's story wasn't anything special, but I did enjoy the presentation, especially the animated scenes between each mission. There was one particular scene when the entire squad is reunited that I thought was particularly impactful, aided by how the scene physically unfolds. I would've been interested to see some gameplay mechanics that maybe tied into how you decided to accomplish each mission, perhaps making your decisions a bit more impactful in subsequent missions. Absent any such impacts, I just played the whole game as a full-on murder machine, making sure none of my foes lived through any mission. There was one particular vignette that occurred during the mission at an invaded village that I went far out of my way to try to prevent from happening, and I was pretty disappointed that the game didn't support my heroic intervention. Adding some minor elements like this could've really helped elevate the game, to add "small stories" to the game's larger narrative.

Shadow Tactics was a fairly difficult game, even on "Normal" difficulty mode, which did make it a little grind-y at times. Overall though, I think its a really good addition to both the stealth and the tactical strategy genres. The core gameplay loop of watching, planning, and trying to pull off your plan works really well, especially because the game generally makes it very easy to try again (at least on Normal difficulty) if something goes wrong. I've always enjoyed the watch/plan/execute cycle in other stealth/assassination games, but the squad-based strategy element really elevated the gameplay here. If you enjoy either of the stealth or strategy genres, I think you'll find Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun to be worth your while, especially if you're playing on the Steam Deck.

Desperados/Commandos style stealth tactics game set in Sengoku Jidai Japan

High quality game, I had a lot of fun.

Difficult and creative puzzle made me enjoy every second of it! Highly recommend playing this if you like stealth, planning and a challenge! Reminded me of "Commands" but with better mechanics!

Best successor of Commandos stealth game. If you like Commandos stealth game, you'll be obsessed with this.

Very enjoyable, Remind me of Commandos!

Great game with questionable difficulty progression. Too bad the studio closed as they burnt themselves out :/

If you think save-scumming is fun, this game will be perfect for you.

Hello, little review!

I've played this game before, and like before I had to rebind the controls (and still am in the process of getting something I can use), but the game is just as fun as I remember it being.

I got a refund for this game. The controls for this game are just awful. Example, you use the S key to throw a rock for 1 character. But to throw an object for a different Character, you have to use a different keyboard key.

The camera and how you move it have to use the arrow keys. And hold down a keyboard key. I just could not play this game. What game Post 2010 uses the arrow keys?

My favorite thing about this game is the realism. Especially the semi-auto muskets.

The worst movement, comabt and camera control i've ever seen in a videogame. Thats sucks because games like these are supposed to be comfortable in that sense. Disappointing

rts, fun. if you like commando's and those type of games you will enjoy this. very chill. pretty colors for the Mrs, and not too violent for the kids. ~30 hours if you take your time and eliminate everyone like i did!

One of the greatest sneak games I know. Beautiful graphics, nice characters, big maps. Sometimes those can be a bit tricky and that the badges for each mission are hidden at first might be a bit frustrating, but that doesn't distract from the nice gameplay and fantastic atmosphere.

An amazing game !

Good game just sad they quit making more games likes this

good gaming. missed such games...

super dope gameplay and story!

Review the game, stupid!

first of all, im really super happy they made dev npcs cuz i could kill they like i want after seen how good the game is and how shitty it can be at the same time, fun history and all but combat and movement wise is a really BIG STRONG SHITTY.

Um dos melhores RTS que já joguei. Pra quem gosta do estilo Commandos/Desperados, vai gostar muito desse jogo. O jogo envelheceu muito bem, é um jogo de 2016 mas que esteticamente permanece lindo.

Good game.

This game exceeded my expectations good characters and a good challenge.

Unlike other similar game like Desperados 3, this game feels quite repetitive after very short amount of time. The story and the characters lack depth which made me feel playing this game a chore after first few levels.
In general I always finish all the games that I play, but could not finish this game's last level because it felt unnecessarily difficult and repetitive.

A lot of things could have been improved like explaining back stories of characters in better way, providing more levels that are uniquely suited to specific characters, better dialog and level design.

I would recommend purchasing it only when it is on sale. Desperados 3 and Partisans 1941 were far better in my opinion than this game.

Great Game, fun, have to do multiple runs to get everything. There are issues with obtaining achievements as they sometimes do not register. I had to modify the userData.save file to reset some of them to 'Running' in order to get 100%.
I do not like badges for speedruns, few require really unusual approach (most are available on YT).

Great gameplay, beautiful graphic, and very enjoyable to play. Feel like Assassin's Creed in Japan but better.

Great game. They took Commandos and did it better within a Japanese framework, culture and values. Decent story, great levels, superb combination of skills for characters and decent level of challenge. Must play for strategy gamers and people who like to solve puzzles. The voice acting is top notch. Especially Yuki-chan. She is my favourite character of the lot.

so fun and amusing, definitely recommend it to others

Never thought I would like a game in this genre, here we are 20 hours later I completed the game and I have all the developers other games in my wishlist.

good time.

TL;DR

Pros:

• Nice music
  
• Decent art style
  
• Quick save/load works like a charm
  
• Different characters with different abilities, even though they aren't that unique in their functionality
  
• Multiple solutions for the level instead of the one correct approach
  
• Optional challanges that are actually tough
  
• Level design is partially very good
  
• Synchronization of one action per character is possible (I wish you could chain more actions though)
  

Cons

• Camera angles can be pain in the a**. You have 4 options, 90° rotations each and the map is not particularly well designed around that fact
  
• Rotation of the camera doesn't always work
  
• Certain commands are sometimes imprecise or are discarded completely. Especially frustrating while nearby enemies have a suspicion
  
• Pathfinding of your characters is sometimes very questionable
  
• Partially way more tedious than a tough puzzle - either due to very tight timing windows and hence some repetition or because you almost have to lure the enemies into their death one by one
  
[*] Story is kinda garbage

keren kali la. susahnya dapet, mikirnya dapet juga. mantap kali la
kan maen

Very good stealth game. Holds up almost after 10 years. Just make sure you buy it on sale if you can.

Camera is criminally bad. First message upon signing in is if you had an older save, the new update makes it so it doesn't work and you need to start over? Surprised this is an "overwhelmingly positive" rated game, I'm overwhelmingly sure I won't be playing it.

This game has some replay value to it.
It's fun and kills a good amount of time for each mission.
You'll need patience to plan your moves and wait for the best positions.
And most important of all, you'll need a working F5 & F8 button to spam Quick Saves & Loads.

Patience, timing, some skill and the occasional bit of luck.
This game gets a thumbs up from me.
Camera angle might need a little getting used to but nothing too hard.

If you're not certain about buying, I believe there's a demo version you can try out first.

I can't recommend this game enough. It has great characters, a good art style, good music, and such great in depth tactical gameplay. Rarely in this game if you die, is it the game's fault. It's one of the lesser stealth games that feels as fair as it is brutal. It's really, really good, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is considering playing it!

good game but im too dumb and impatient to beat it

It crashes about 15 times before it starts. And I mean it crashes literally 15 times before it starts. Every time.

Having played the original Commandos in the 90s, Shadow Tactics is a culmination of all the things learned from that game and its successors to make it challengingly fun instead of challengingly frustrating.

A good game where you control a number of characters with unique skills and use stealth and action to complete various missions. The maps are well designed and the game is a lot of fun and requires patience and planning. Not as good as Desperados 3 but the art style is really good, music and sound acting is also great. Greatly recommend this title,

I'm new to this game genre but with all of those challenging stages that require well prepared choices, i'm definitely having fun

this game gets so frustrating for many reasons.

The controls are absolute ASS. On mouse and keyboard, i have such a hard time believing how miserable the controls are. It's just as difficult to create your own key bindings because I don't know any of the moves, abilities, etc.

On controller, they feel better, but still suck. The camera manipulation is awful. You can either follow your character with no regard for where your facing (no auto rotate, no camera shift based on where you're looking, etc) OR you have to manually adjust it. Manually adjusting the camera movement AND rotation while trying to move your character, place a trap, pick up a body, or whatever, just feels like the dildo of god thrusting into your backside.

You can also completely brick a playthrough on a map with an unlucky quick save. For example: map 3, i reached the point of playing as the Samurai. I was stealthy, killed a bunch of bad guys, then hid in a bush and quicksaved. Immediately after, one foot print made it right outside the bush and two enemies + 2 more behind me now insta kill me every time on this save. My last quick save was before I even got the key.

This game has good ideas, but the execution sucks IMO.

I had never played a game like this before, so I wasn't sure if I would like it. Well I ended up loving it. The game and level are very replayable. Eventhough, it took me everytime hours to finish one level, I still replayed the levels multiple times to get the badges. I recommend to play the game with mouse, since you lose alot of features if you play with controller, making the game less enjoyable.

This game has probably the most impactful story moment i've ever seen in a videogame. I'm not gonna spoil anything. But it hits harder then my dad. I highly recommend playing with Japanese voice acting, it's really well done (although it might be hard to read subtitles mid gameplay). From what the devs said, they only had budget for 2 voiceovers. And because the studio and publisher is German, Japanese being the second language was a very controversial decision.

It's crazy good. Hardest stealth game i've ever played for sure. Each level will take you about 2 hours to beat. What I like the most is that it really forces you to use every tool available. Guards are constantly watching each others backs. Waiting for them to separate won't work. You need to be smart and proactive and find a way to separate them yourself.

The setting is absolutely beautiful. Every level is unique both visually and gameplaywise. Each one brings a new twist on the table or combines the preexisting mechanics in a new, interesting way. The team really did their homework and i genuinely don't see a way the game can be improved.

Ok, maybe the controls are a little weird. I'd expect camera rotation on mouse3. If i bind it there, it's inverted to the conventional standard. But i was able to finnish it with a broken wrist, so you got no excuses.

If there is such a thing as souls-like for stealth games, this is it.

The enemy AI aren't blind/ short-sighted.
They don't shirk their duties saying "probably nothing"
They'll hunt you down.
Enemies are not stationed in isolation for you to kill; virtually all enemies are protected by another's line of sight or patrol route.
Extensive enemy patrol routes that may change depending on the conditions your characters may make.

And this is playing in normal mode. I'm too scared to try hardcore mode.

Stealth games get very boring for me fast, not Shadow Tactics though. After 2 years I'm playing back through it to get more achievements/badges and it's still such an enjoyable game the second time around. 9/10