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The old thief is better than the new two. Review of Styx: Shards of Darkness. The old thief is better than the new two Styx shards of darkness sequel

Styx: Shards of Darkness was announced on October 14, 2015, after six months of development. Cyanide said that the game has a larger budget compared to the previous part, and runs on the new Unreal Engine 4. A trailer for the game was shown at E3 2016. The hero of the game, Styx, must infiltrate the dark elf city of Kerangar and find out why the dark elves formed an alliance with the dwarves. The gameplay takes place in large open environments. As in the previous game, Sticks can clone himself and set traps. Also, he can temporarily become invisible. The player chooses whether to engage in conflict with enemies or avoid them. Ropes and hooks can be used to reach elevated sections. The game contains cooperative multiplayer: the second player controls one of Styx's clones.

Story and gameplay

Styx: Master of Shadows Prequel OfOrcsandMen(the stories of the orc Arkail and the goblin Styx fighting against human oppressors), the events take place 200 years before this game. The protagonist, Styx, is a small green goblin who remembers little of his past, but has a clear mission: to infiltrate the imposing Akenash tower, built by humans to steal the heart of the world tree - the source of all "amber", a special substance from the game's mythology. In addition, Styx will deal with a despotic governor and a rift in the fragile alliance of humans and elves, learn an unexpected truth about the properties of the world and his mysterious past.

Styx: Master of Shadows is divided into missions, and each mission contains 3-4 separate levels. Each level has a primary objective, most commonly hitting the exit, and a secondary objective that creates some additional difficulty (such as committing a kill and carrying a body to the exit). The level can be completed in different ways, the player chooses the way of passing. For fulfillment side quests the player gains skill points to improve Styx's abilities. The skill tree allows you to improve all 3 Amber powers of the protagonist, as well as his carrying capacity, lethal force and agility. Most of Styx's abilities are focused on stealth movement. Each improvement significantly affects the gameplay: it becomes possible to hide your clones in chests, kill enemies from the air, etc. If you wish, skills can be reset and bought again. In addition, by winning emblems, you can get additional skill points. One emblem each player receives for: passing without death; passing without alarm; speed passage; collect all the signs in the level. Signs are only needed to get the emblem.

In general, despite the presence of role-playing elements, Styx: Master of Shadows belongs to pure stealth games in the spirit of the series Thief . Due to its small size, Styx is significantly inferior in strength to people; fighting two or more enemies at the same time is deadly for him, and on the highest difficulty setting, it is impossible to engage in battle at all. If Styx is spotted, it is usually necessary to run away under fire from arrows or throwing knives. Styx has several supernatural powers, the use of which is limited by a special scale. "Amber Vision" highlights guards and objects, "invisibility" allows you to temporarily leave the field of view at the cost of half the scale, "clone" is a controllable character capable of scouting the path ahead. The clone cannot be a cause for alarm, and he cannot kill enemies and collect items. Styx can summon and destroy a clone at any time; in the latter case, the cost of the clone is returned to the player - a quarter of the scale. You can restore the scale using bottles of Amber. Styx can carry only 2 of these flasks. The same goes for restoring health.

Styx can kill weakly protected enemies with throwing knives. Killed bodies can be hidden or liquidated with acid vials. Mud balls can be used to extinguish torches and attract the attention of enemies (the whistle can also be used for the latter). Lighting is an important gameplay element: in bright rooms, enemies will notice Styx from a much greater distance than in dark ones. In the darkness on the Styx, amber marks on the body glow. It is often beneficial for the player to eliminate lighting. Also, Styx can make noise when walking on the floor or bumping into small obstacles like buckets and mops. The quietest surface in the game are carpets.

The game has influences from Assassin ’ s Creed . The levels are open, stretched and vertical. Styx has to jump and climb a lot. It is advantageous to stay above the enemies, but the game often requires you to go down.

Reception

Shortly after the release, the game collected the following scores: 71% (31 reviews) and 73% (272 reviews) on Metacritic, 159 reviews (86% positive) on Steam. In Gamingtrend, Victor Grann noted: “ In today's gaming era, the bar for stealth action has been set high. Once upon a time, stealth offered little more than an invisibility spell and moving around rooms with obvious dark and light areas. Today fans of the genre expect artificial intelligence, which takes into account low light conditions, limited visibility, response to sound, etc.Styx: Master of Shadows, following these trends, is done in a distinctly hardcore manner; this game will find its place in the library of any stealth". Jeff Tew at HardcoreGamer wrote: " It seems like an eternity has passed since we saw a good stealth game, and not some kind of hybrid built on player decisions. Of course, it's nice to see stealth capabilities in games likeDeus Ex andDishonored , but there should be games where stealth isn't just a possibility. How inThief or Mark of the Ninja , inStyx: Master of Shadowsit is almost impossible to go ahead: you need to observe, think and plan your progress».

System requirements

• OS: 64-bit Windows 7/8/10
• CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz or Intel i5-2500 3.3GHz. AMD FX-8350 X8 4.0 GHz or Intel Core i7-4790 3.6 GHz recommended
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• video card: 1 GB, AMD Radeon R7 260X or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560, DirectX 11. 4 GB recommended, AMD Radeon R9 390 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
• Free disk space: 11 GB

Standard Sequel: Loved by fans of the original, but unlikely to appeal to others.

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Eh, old Styx... Sneaky, eared, agile goblin Styx. You're out of luck anyway. AT Of Orcs and Men you were stuffed for the sake of show, but you can’t pull out a mediocre game with humor and charisma alone. A debut Styx: Master of Shadows, although liked by stealth fans, it seemed to everyone else a far from brilliant game.

Did luck smile on the sullen goblin scout this time, in Styx: Shards of Darkness? In short, no. However, this does not mean at all that the sequel turned out to be bad.

The hero is not very strong, but agile and agile. At each location, players will be waiting for several dozen enemies at once, so Styx will have to use his entire arsenal to stay in the shadows.

Good, bad, green

Shards of Darkness dispenses with preludes. After the events of the first game, time has passed: the Tree of the World, the source of the magical substance - amber, is destroyed, and with it the floating city of Akenash, which literally fell from heaven to earth. Hastily collecting things, Styx goes to the fishing town of Toben, teeming with criminals of all stripes. The place is exactly for our "hero".

But even there he did not find a quiet life. Due to the direct participation of Styx in the destruction of the Tree, hordes of mindless goblins filled the world. Dark elves capture the greenskins alive, smugglers trade them, and human clans equip punitive squads to hunt the half-witted dwarfs.

It is from the leader of one of these units that Styx receives a contract. Deceptive in its simplicity contract. Oh, the poor fellow should not have agreed ...

The plot seems to be intriguing, but the plot will not be able to surprise. It doesn't compare to the story in Styx: Master of Shadows. There, by the way, she didn’t shine either, but she was saved by a bright plot twist that presented all the events from a new angle. In Styx: Shards of Darkness, the authors tried to do something similar, but the local "shocking denouement" causes nothing but indifference. There is no question of a decent presentation of the plot.

The most offensive thing is that Styx himself suffered at the hands of the writers. In rare moments, he, as of old, lets out caustic comments, swears dirty and looks very menacing, despite his small stature. Most of the time, though, he's just joking around. And often tries to flirt with the "fourth wall". Styx reflects on the “as if created for him” architecture, constantly sprinkles references to modern pop culture, and after death he directly addresses the player in scenes similar to those in Batman: Arkham Asylum .

“I have read the script and I know that we will go further. It's just a matter of time".

Since when does Stix know he's inside the game? Mystery. Of Orcs and Men and the first Styx were serious projects, and such a sudden change of tone seems out of place. Different scenes in the case of Game Over, of course, can cheer, but was it worth it to radically change the mood of the game for this?

One way or another, you will surely be pleased (or, conversely, disappointed) by the fact that we have almost the same game as three years ago. Only with a bigger budget. Developers from Cyanide Studios they didn’t break what worked well in the original, but they also worked on the bugs with grief in half.

Goblin - in each barrel a plug

The level design in the first part was praised even by those who do not like the game. In the spacious Akenash there were plenty of places to climb, sneak, do acrobatic somersaults and hide in the dark. Wherever you go, there is a way to go further. Styx: Shards of Darkness has remained true to this tradition and even managed to multiply the achievements of its predecessor.

Moving to the engine Unreal Engine 4 went to the benefit of the series. The locations in Shards of Darkness are huge and never get boring. Wherever the hardship has brought Styx - whether in the garbage slums of Toben or the ominous capital of the elves of Korrangar - dozens of routes open before him everywhere. Levels are even "higher" than before, and running across rooftops and cornices sits side by side with a tense game of hide-and-seek on the ground full of guards. And the game has improved a lot. Cyanide Studios has a hard time animating the cutscenes (the characters move painfully twitchy), but the lighting game sometimes evokes fond memories of the early parts Thief.

Despite the scale, the levels are always arranged in such a way as to emphasize the unprecedented agility of Styx. Everywhere there are sure to be huge chandeliers, striving to "fall" on the head of the guard, or bowls of water that can be poisoned. You can almost always reach the goal in almost a dozen ways: climb a rope, crawl through ventilation, jump over roofs and cornices or bypass guards with vegetable gardens. Most often, the player is required to combine all this.

It's funny, but although the player always has a chance to use some ability, the game does not force it. Generally. The fact that a goblin spy is capable of conjuring can simply be forgotten, because he climbs sheer walls so well.

The abundance of possibilities can be confusing, but the developers have tried to make sure that the roads are always obvious. Thanks to this, in the shoes of Styx, you feel like a truly elusive goblin, effortlessly diving from one loophole to another. Like a real master of shadows, and Styx, for a minute, is.

All the positive spoils a couple of little things. Like its predecessor, Styx: Shards of Darkness recklessly uses the levels already completed several times, slightly changing the enemies. A great thing, considering that (ideally) Styx will not catch anyone's eye anyway. Yes, and it spoils the impression: exploring locations is always exciting, but different, not the same. In addition, the game likes from time to time to throw the hero into places where acrobatics is impossible, and “corridor” stealth is noticeably more boring.

Jack of all trades

In between missions, the hero finds himself in a shelter - a safe corner where you can rest, upgrade your skills and replenish your supply of items.

Styx may be a great scout, but he's not a fighter. First, any enemy will kill him with one or two hits. Secondly, the combat system still does not stand up to criticism. Therefore, the goblin compensates for its growth with all sorts of tricky skills scattered throughout the pumping tree. At the top of each of the branches there is always a special skill, one of two to choose from, but you can only get it in exchange for quartz - a rare elven mineral.

In addition to the usual bonuses, like "jump higher" or "run faster", there are also unusual finds: how do you like the skill that makes Styx mumble thoughtfully every time something valuable catches his eye?

Goblin's signature ability - summoning disposable clones - hasn't gone away. Here, unlike the first part, the copies are not inferior in dexterity to the "original": they can climb and hide just as well. Very convenient, especially if you acquire a skill that allows you to swap places with a clone. If the dummy dies along the way, climbing into a particularly dangerous jungle, it’s not a pity if it reaches the whole place, you can immediately move into it. But hiding clones in cabinets and chests in order to ambush, alas, is no longer possible.

But there was a simple crafting. From improvised materials on workbenches, it is allowed to collect things useful in the household: bolts for a mini-crossbow, health potions, master keys, and more. Some instruments of Styx surprise more than others.

For example, a cocoon to call a clone remotely or a special cologne that masks the goblin smell, otherwise the local gnomes can easily smell Styx in any shelter. If you meticulously do everything Additional tasks and rummage through all the hidden corners on the levels, you can get hold of new weapons and armor. Alchemist robes, for example, will allow Styx to craft items at any time, but armor full of vials will strum loudly as he runs and rolls.

The humble but cozy hero's nest also serves as a great place to wait for a co-op partner! You can go through the whole game from start to finish with a friend - the "perfect clone" that Styx calls to make his task easier. Alas, the multiplayer here is purely for show, since the levels are designed for passing alone and teamwork is not required anywhere.

Styx: Shards of Darkness is a sequel in the most classic sense of the word. All the same, but more. Unfortunately, with the same errors and shortcomings. Interesting multi-level levels... but they are repeated throughout the second half of the game. Charismatic, but gushing with inappropriate jokes main character. Unusual abilities - but you can not remember them at all.

• Witty sayings of an extremely charismatic hero - the green resilient goblin Styx;
• A huge number of ways to pass each vast location;
• A complex skill tree that allows you to customize the hero for a specific tactic of passing;
• An interesting crafting system that allows you to create crossbow bolts, potions and more;
• Co-op - now Styx can create an exact copy of himself, controlled by a second player.

Game Review

At the center of the events of Styx: Shards of Darkness is again a familiar goblin named Styx. As a result of his activities in the previous game, the World Tree was destroyed, due to which the city of Akenash, hovering at a decent height, collapsed and crashed. This led to the appearance of a huge number of goblins. Aggressive and stupid creatures caused a lot of problems for people and elves, so special squads were created to catch them and turn them into slaves. Styx receives a contract to kill the commander of one of these units. If the poor goblin knew what the consequences would be.

The maps are still extensive and superbly designed, which is good news. Almost always you can reach the goal with a dozen different ways- Climb walls, crawl over beams, make your way through sewers and use many other detours. Fight Styx is not worth it - one or two blows and he will die. Therefore, it is better to bypass the guards, especially if they are going in a group, and it is worth attacking only on the sly. The appearance of a crafting system can be called a pleasant surprise. Using special workbenches, you can create healing potions, crossbow bolts, master keys and a bunch of other useful things.

Gameplay Weaknesses

All the shortcomings that were in the first part of the game, in in full force migrated to the second. For example, you often have to act in the same locations. This quickly gets boring - covert movement turns into a routine, because nothing except the placement of the guards changes. And the guards must be avoided anyway, so it seems that the same level is passed several times.

A cooperative has appeared, but there is little benefit from it. It’s still dangerous to fight anyway, so you have to make your way through inconspicuous places together, greatly interfering with each other, or act separately, but in this case, the whole difference between a cooperative and single player comes to naught.

/
Platform: PC, PS4, X One
Language: English only

Minimum:
Operating system: Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit)
CPU: AMD FX-6300 (3.5GHz) / Intel i5-2500 (3.3GHz)
RAM: 8GB
Video card: 1 GB AMD Radeon R7 260X / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560
DirectX: 11
Free space: 15GB

Endless self-interest leads him to the ancient haven of Körangar, where the day before the dark elves entered into an unbreakable alliance with the dwarves and initiated a real genocide against the goblins after their participation in the fall of the Akenash tower, which was observed in the final of the previous game - Styx: Master of Shadows. Without thinking twice, Styx intends to destroy the threat hanging over his people.

- a reference stealth action game that differs from its predecessor in focusing on a full-fledged co-op for two people. This means that it is desirable to steal, kill and canonically save the world together with a partner, since the game is configured to search and select players on the network.

There is a trend in many game aspects. So, leveling up the character will allow you to hone team interaction, and the features of the locations will open up new opportunities for the duo to destroy enemies and progress through the game. This leads to tactlessness in relation to players passing Shards Of Darkness in single player mode.

Along with the cooperative is the plot worked out thanks to huge locations: in gameplay, in addition to the plot, clearly stand out additional quests and tasks that complement the world and bring clarity to some gaps. It is they who will open the story of Styx to the player, tell about the plans of the dark elves and, most importantly, add weight to the money bag on the hero's belt.

The gameplay notes full emphasis on stealth: the player controlling the undersized goblin will have to rationally build paths to the goal, often bypassing the enemies in a long arc, because any open fights are punished by the rapid death of the main characters. Lovers of blood and unnecessary victims are presented with an extensive arsenal: sharp daggers, crossbows, poisons and other means of easy killing.

Information about network modes:

CO-OP: 2

MULTIPLAYER: 0

Internet:✔
The local network(LAN):✘
On one screen: ✘
Free play option: ✔

The Styx game is back in a brand new stealth adventure.

Explore Huge open world, sneak past or kill new enemies and bosses, experiment with a new set of deadly abilities and weapons in the goblin slayer's arsenal.

Go your way alone or with friends in cooperative mode. Climb into a dizzying elven city, traverse dangerous dwarven territory and survive in vast uncharted lands, full of missions... the failure of which will have enormous consequences for the goblin lineage.

Climb, swing and float on a multi-layered sandbox world powered by Unreal Engine 4. Hide in dark corners, climb high to avoid detection. Spend experience points in assassination, infiltration, sorcery and more to learn new skills and abilities. Discover valuable artifacts while exploring the world, look for ingredients to craft deadly traps and useful things, create clones of yourself to distract enemies on your way - the choice is yours.

System requirements

minimum:

• OS: Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit)
• Processor: AMD FX-6300 (3.5GHz) or Intel i5-2500 (3.3GHz)
• RAM: 8 GB
• Video Card: 1 GB VRAM, AMD Radeon R7 260X or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560
• DirectX 11

• OS: Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit)
• Processor: AMD FX-8350 X8 (4.0 GHz) or Intel Core i7-4790 (3.6 GHz)
• RAM: 8 GB
• Video Card: 4 GB VRAM, AMD Radeon R9 390 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
• DirectX 11
• Free space on HDD: 11-15 GB

Premiere trailer: