Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

Who would have thought that a raccoon would save my life . The enemy soldier has already come within a few meters of my hiding place in the shadow of the old shed. Even if the darkness protects me like a heavy cloak from his eyes, the light of his torch would blow me up at the latest. If it weren't for the trained tanuki of my old, frail friend Takuma, who distracts the guard with his practiced trick at the last second.

I take the opportunity and pull my katana to do the guard from behind before the trick of the cute little animal gets boring. My instinctive control gaze tells me that nobody sees me except Aiko, my second companion on this mission. I nod silently to her, thrust my sword through the guard's chest from behind and hide the lifeless body in the bushes from prying eyes. When I turn to Aiko again, I only see a geisha in front of me and am shocked.

She is a true master of disguise , I almost didn't recognize her. In this disguise, she can go unnoticed into the enemy camp and distract the guards so that the old man and I can sneak through the gate at the right moment to steal the chief's important documents. It just has to work that way. The future of the Empire depends on the success of this mission. About us and that damn raccoon.

The ninja commandos

The five-person team consists of very different characters that we get to know throughout the course of the story, along with their unusual skills and dark pasts. On the one hand there is Hayato, an agile ninja who silently and unscrupulously kills his opponents out of the dark with a sword and shuriken throwing stars. The samurai Mugen goes to work a little more brutally and can defeat several enemies at the same time, but loses significantly in mobility due to his heavy samurai armor. While Aiko, as a geisha, is a master of disguise and can distract enemies, the street child Yuki lays traps and lures opponents from their posts and into their fatal fate with simulated bird sounds.

Takuma, the oldest of the group, relies primarily on his sniper rifle. Due to his age-related frail stature, climbing or carrying corpses are not part of his repertoire. To do this, he can have his raccoon-like raccoon dog, more precisely a Japanese tanuki, make noises on command or perform cute tricks to distract guards and civilians.

With the help of this team, we sneak through a total of 13 beautiful mission areas designed with great attention to detail: From the small fishing village at night to rice fields pervaded by fog to light-flooded mountain villages, the areas offer a lot of variety, both visually and playfully. The graphic style has a strong comic aesthetic with thick, black outlines and pastel colors. That may be a matter of taste, but always consistent.

We're not always out and about with all five characters at the same time. We only get to know some of our fellow campaigners in the course of the campaign and, depending on the mission, we start in different team constellations. Which team members we have available is fixed and results from the framework story, which is told both during and between the missions. The story did not surprise or occupy us particularly, but atmospherically helps to justify the assignments in a meaningful way and to link them with one another. It can also happen that the group starts completely at the start of a mission, but is scattered far across the map. The respective starting position influences the required style of play.

Large areas with scope

The areas are completely self-contained areas with a clear goal, which is introduced in the mission briefing and marked on the map. The range of movement in the areas is huge, however, in most cases there are a number of smaller intermediate steps before the task is reached, which must be completed in order to get to the target person at all.

A locked gate, several particularly strong or vigilant guards and similar obstacles block our direct path. Taking up a head-on fight with several guards is possible, but usually does not lead to the desired success, but only to more guards and the quick death of the protagonists.

How we achieve our goals is up to our abilities and creativity. Here the level design deliberately offers a lot of leeway and invites you to experiment with a variety of possibilities . Do we get the guard's key to open the gate? Or are we looking for alternative approaches and gaps in the wall? Are we eavesdropping on the guards in the shade of the stable, or do we steal a disguise and can enter the camp camouflaged as civilians?

As in Hitman, there is never one correct solution, but always several approaches and possibilities. Some are clearly pointed out by, for example, two characters arguing which way is the smarter one, others can only be found by looking closely and trying out.

Hardcore mode and challenges

After a successfully completed mission in the "normal" level of difficulty, additional goals, so-called "badges", become visible as awards for each level. These call indirectly to accomplish the mission just completed "without swimming through the water" or "not killing anyone". These badges are very attractive and replayable . For experts there are additional speedrun goals and really tough tasks that can only be achieved with absolutely precise planning and hours of devotion to the one, perfected battle plan.

If all of this is too strenuous for you, you can choose between the normal and hardcore mode (guards are alerted immediately when they see each other, characters have fewer health points), as well as a beginner-friendly easy version. It is extremely forgiving and makes guards less aggressive. In addition, each figure has more life energy, so that it can also take more in direct confrontation. In this way the game becomes less frustrating for beginners, as a "punishment" the badges for the respective mission are not activated.

Experiment makes you smart: the return of the "Quick Load" orgies

Those familiar with the genre will not be surprised that, at least in the first run, each mission can only be accomplished with excessive use of the quick save and quick load buttons. Everyone else should be forewarned: This type of game lives from attentive and patient probing, studying the opposing movement sequences and lots and lots of trial and error . That's ok in this case! Failure is part of the game concept and only a courageous attempt will show whether the idea of dropping the rock on the guard works or not.

If we don't like the result or a plan fails, we use the Quickload function to reset the current status in a few seconds and try another way. Maybe with Yuki's trap? No, too conspicuous. Quickload. You could also use the throwing star ... No, not either. Quickload. But here from the side over the bushes, yes, that worked. Save quickly and go to the next watch.

This score and all the hours of mission progress would be ruined in such situations. To prevent this, three quick saves are automatically created chronologically so that the two previous saves can be called up at any time, quasi-graduated quick save states. In addition, an unlimited number of manual saves can be created, even outside of the three quicksave slots. Exemplary!

Direct and indirect: GamePad vs. mouse & keyboard

Shadow Tactics appears first for the PC, and you notice that - in a positive way. The control layout is consistent and feels used and familiar to real-time tacticians. We point to a place with the mouse and click to order a figure to this position or to carry out an action. With the right mouse button we switch on the cone of vision of the opposing pieces and the other hand rests on the keyboard for a command selection. With the quick selection buttons, we swiftly switch back and forth between the characters and the individual actions of the characters. Alternatively, all of these commands can also be selected with the mouse using the icon bar at the bottom of the screen. In the heat of the moment, however, it helps enormously to be able to select these commands via quick selection without having to leave the "source of the fire" with the mouse cursor.

In 2017 the title will also appear for current consoles, but the entire game can already be played on the PC with the gamepad . If a button on a connected controller is pressed, the entire user interface changes automatically to this mode. The previously displayed icon bar of the keyboard and mouse layout then gives way to a command wheel that is operated via the left shoulder button.

Characters change using the right shoulder button, context-sensitive commands such as "use ladder" are displayed on the spot with the respective button symbol. In this variant, the characters are controlled directly instead of indirectly. We use the right analog stick to direct the positioning of traps or aiming with projectiles. Even if we prefer mouse and keyboard control, the gamepad control is extremely successful - that pleases couch tacticians.

Japan at the turn of the Middle Ages and Renaissance - a world of intrigue, ninja and spinning shurikens. It's hard to find a better background for a production that is supposed to breathe new life into a real fossil from the Palaeozoic gaming period - a genre of tactical RTS. This category of games was born in 1998, when the "pentium of two" was sweating the last of their 233 MHz, and the electrostatics of CRT monitors lifted small items from the desk into the air. A pioneering work of this type was Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, in which - observing the board from a bird's eye view - we commanded a group of British commandos , carrying out special missions at the rear of the World War II fronts. Despite its bright prospects, three successful sequels and two decent followers, the genre did not stand the test of time.

In the era of the rapid development of three-dimensional graphics and the general trend of simplifying games, difficult and not very spectacular isometric stealth games have lost the support of developers. It is even more surprising that, after so many years, the beginner studio managed to successfully and in an impressive style reactivate this seemingly out of date branch of the market . Vigilant as a dragonfly, nimble as a panther and silent as bamboo shoots in the wind - commandos in their new robes are lurking around the corner again.

Over the dead to the target

In Shadows Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, we command a five-person team of special agents in the service of the military feudal lord of Japan . As peace and prosperity under the rule of our dear boss are not everyone's taste, a rebellion breaks out in the country led by the mysterious Kage-Sama. In thirteen missions of the campaign, we have to infiltrate enemy bases, eliminate enemies and try to unravel the mystery of the identity of the main villain.

The essence of the game is to fulfill the objectives of the mission in such a way as to remain undetected and not raise the alarm - usually ending in our miserable defeat. So we have to sneak between the guards, carefully observing the green cone that marks their field of vision, and eliminate the affected soldiers quickly, quietly and without a trace. We observe the game in an isometric view, but the environment is fully three-dimensional, and the camera can be freely rotated, which is the first significant improvement compared to the classics of the genre . We give orders using the "point and click" system, well known to all RTS fans, we also use keyboard shortcuts very often.

Shadow Tactics faithfully follows in the footsteps of its master - the Commandos series. The gameplay, both in its main assumptions and in numerous details, is based on the same philosophy, although of course it has been adapted to different historical realities. As in the original, we must plan our actions carefully, and their execution is only the culmination of many minutes of observation and combination. The tasks are difficult and force the team to properly coordinate, but their effective implementation gives a lot of satisfaction. In addition, thanks to the proper balance of the mission, it rarely happens that we get stuck for longer, which ensures the gameplay with the right rhythm. I must admit that the creators of Mimimi Productions managed to recreate most of the advantages of the mechanics from Commandos and at the same time, add a lot of nice new solutions, thanks to which Shadow Tactics plays really well.

The successful gameplay in Shadow Tactics, apart from the mechanics mentioned above, also consists of many other important elements. Practical solutions in the field of control deserve praise. The quick save option, used very often here, allows you to save several game states at once and go back to any of them at any time. This saves time.

It is also a good idea to introduce an extensive "shadow mode" in which we can plan the actions of team members, and then, using a convenient panel and keyboard shortcuts, perform them in the appropriate sequence. Thanks to this tool, we can easily develop the most spectacular combinations that would not be possible to synchronize manually. We can, for example, acting in a group, in the blink of an eye jump from the roof right onto the opponent's head, dagger another, and send a shuriken straight in the neck to a third who would see all these actions and raise the alarm. All this literally in a second. It is a pity, however, that in "shadow mode" each member of the team can only assign one action. This restriction is especially acute when, after a successful collection, you need to quickly evacuate all characters and corpses to avoid alerting the incoming patrol.

In the service of the shogun

The characters on our team are very diverse, and their skills have been selected so that each team member plays a different role in the mission. Hayato is a classic ninja - agile and equipped with a deadly shuriken, Mugen - a strong samurai with great sword wielding, Yuki - a clever thief, luring enemies into automatic traps, Takuma - a sniper, eliminating enemies from a long distance, and Aiko - a geisha who disguises can get into the very center of the enemy camp. It is a pity, however, that we have no influence on which heroes will take part in a given mission.

Each member of the team, apart from a specific operational suitability, also has a place in the game's plot and a specific character that emerges during numerous dialogues carried out during the mission. Particular attention is drawn to the figure of Yuki, about ten-year-old girl, whom Hayato meets when she tries to rob a convoy with a gun. The little thief has the best set of skills to eliminate the basic type of opponents, so during my game she probably lost the entire Olympic pool of enemy blood. Listening to her statements, in which - using a child's understanding of the world - explains the murders committed, and numerous praises for her murderous skills from other companions, I felt a certain ... discomfort. However, for people familiar with the psychedelic climates of anime and manga, it will probably not be a novelty.

In the Land of the Rising Sun.

The boards in Shadow Tactics are varied and enchant with a phenomenal Japanese atmosphere. We have an autumn castle bathed in the afternoon sun, rice fields drowned in the rain, a majestic mountain monastery or villages illuminated by colorful lanterns at night. To give the game a touch of traditional Japanese watercolor, a cell-shading filter was applied. The overall great graphic effect, however, should be entirely attributed to the artistic craftsmanship of the graphic designers, and not to the technical qualities of the production, because although everything looks great from a distance, when zoomed in, a small number of details can be felt, especially in the case of character models. In addition, a small level of the maximum approximation does not allow for a more precise observation of the actions of our pupils, burying hope for potential effective repetitions of the action. Character animations seem quite nice as far as they can from this distance, but their pool is far too small for the number of possible situations. So, there are flowers such as an enemy attacked from the side, who turns his back on the assassin punishingly to be effectively slaughtered with a katana.

The level designs are successful, and most importantly, they allow you to achieve your goal in a variety of ways. Although the authors suggest certain solutions, there is nothing to prevent you from doing everything your own way. There are also interactive objects on the boards, unfortunately, their use is usually obvious and comes down to simply dropping heavy objects on the heads of enemies. It's a pity that you can't use the elements of the environment for more sophisticated deadly combinations.