In what seems like a religious successor to 2016’s Aragami, Ereban: Shadow Legacy transforms you right into a lethal shadow that may grow to be one with the darkness–the final stealth operative. The sport would not fairly ship the mandatory problem to make for a profitable stealth recreation, nonetheless, as the primary trick you be taught will get you thru your entire recreation with out a hitch. It does much better on the platforming entrance, and although its solid of characters may have used some fleshing out, the futuristic sci-fi world they inhabit is cultivated with colourful sights and intriguing snippets of lore.
As its identify implies, Shadow Legacy’s essential gimmick is its use of shadows. You play as Ayana, the final of the titular Ereban, a individuals who possess the innate capacity to grow to be one with and manipulate shadows. Utilizing her shadow merge capacity, Ayana can sink into shadows to creep previous enemies, slink up partitions, and get rid of our bodies, encouraging you to stay to the shadows the place your toolbelt is at its strongest. Alongside these shadow skills, Ayana has an assortment of superior gadgets–some are at all times helpful like a recon pulse that marks enemies and gadgets by means of partitions, whereas others are extra situational like mines that stun targets–which work whatever the lighting scenario.
I initially thought that this might current loads of alternatives and methods to sneak previous enemies, most of whom will take out Ayana in a single hit. There is a wholesome number of foes who need to take her down–standard enemies do not pose a lot menace past the flashlight they carry to remove your darkness, however the more proficient snipers can spot you from afar and the stealthy droids who can go invisible can break your day should you’re not taking time to search for the telltale shimmer. After which there are the human enemies who current an ethical quandary relatively than a gameplay one–while the mechanical droid-like enemies that dominate every stage may be killed with impunity, murdering the dwelling and respiration human staff will negatively influence Ayana’s morality and others’ notion of her (which I will contact on a bit extra later).
Sadly, Ayana’s pure capacity to merge into the shadows and traverse unseen may be very powerful–so {powerful}, the truth is, that you do not actually need to depend on the rest. The enemies aren’t very good both, in order that they’re straightforward to keep away from even should you solely depend on shadow merge. Which means that it is really fairly straightforward to undergo your entire recreation with out being seen or resorting to lethally slicing down people, making for a stealth recreation that does not fairly offer you sufficient opposition to problem you to assume critically in the case of circumnavigating a menace. There are no problem settings to make the enemies smarter or extra plentiful either–though you may regulate what number of environmental guides present up in every stage (purple lamps or purple paint that time you within the normal path you need to go, for instance).
Shadow Legacy teases you with a tantalizing view of what it might be in its third chapter, briefly breaking free from its in any other case linear stealth ranges to provide you a playground in which you’ll be able to sort out an assortment of missions in any order inside an open space. Inside this open area, you’ve extra of a alternative in the way you method every task as an alternative of being funneled by means of a extra linear problem. Errors have a extra drastic influence since you’re not shifting from one space to the next–it’s all one huge related location, the place your actions can snowball into unintended results. Ayana’s assortment of skills and devices even have far more utility on this stage. The binoculars used for scouting and mapping enemy actions are far more worthwhile in a large open area than in an enclosed laboratory or metropolis road, for example. The sport by no means opts for this format once more, nonetheless, and in doing so it leaves me wishing for what might need been.
To the sport’s credit score, the again half of Shadow Legacy has some artistic set items from a platforming standpoint, with one part specifically that I adored for the way properly it challenged and inspired me to make the most of all I had realized as much as that time in a single fast-paced gauntlet. Shadow merge can be utilized to eject out of shadows to make in any other case unimaginable jumps or work together with the atmosphere to resolve easy riddles–skills that apply to challenges that steadily get extra advanced as the sport goes on. Even when Shadow Legacy falls wanting being an ideal stealth recreation, it is a good platformer. The environmental components create an assortment of shadows–some oddly formed, others that transfer, and nonetheless extra that may be altered–and determining how you can attain an out-of-the-way platform is usually a puzzle inside itself, made trickier and extra rewarding to resolve given the stamina meter tied to Ayana’s shadow merge. Not solely do you need to work out which shadows to maneuver or observe or soar between, however you additionally normally should do it in a well timed method.
In service of those platforming challenges, Shadow Legacy includes a colourful variety of locales, starting from an outpost within the desert to an autonomous manufacturing facility. My favourite is an city road that hints on the human life that when populated it, now devoid of any motion save for the autonomous drones that patrol the streets and promise that that is for the most effective. Sporadic graffiti and textual content logs trace on the rising lack of autonomy among the many human residents main as much as the company takeover that promised everybody a greater life. It is such an eerie stage, framed towards the setting solar that is inflicting the road to slowly be encroached by shadow. It feels becoming that Ayana makes use of those self same shadows to sneak her well beyond the guards looking for her, paralleling how the oppressive regime’s efforts cannot cease the resistance–they squeezed a lot life out of this one metropolis block that now there is no dwelling soul to report Ayana to the authorities, simply dumb, easily-fooled machines.
Guiding Ayana by means of these challenges is a narrative that by no means fairly will get room to breathe. Initially trapped by an AI-controlled entity hellbent on utilizing her powers for some unknown goal, Ayana finds herself rapidly working with the resistance searching for to free themselves from company tyranny. Ayana is hesitant to work with them, having heard they’re nothing greater than terrorists however agrees to make use of her distinctive skillset to assist on the situation that the group offers her every little thing they know concerning the Ereban individuals. There are some fascinating, albeit acquainted, narrative themes right here, however Shadow Legacy rushes by means of them–Ayana buys into the resistance’s trigger remarkably rapidly, for instance, regardless of being given no catalyst to take action.
Within the recreation’s third chapter, Ayana is warned to spare people in order to assist alleviate the accusations that the members of the resistance are terrorists. That is the sport’s morality system, shifting the coloring of Ayana’s design towards shining white or sinister purple relying on how bloodthirsty you play her. So far as I can inform, the ramifications of this solely influence one small second within the remaining stage of the game–it’s not a lot of a story payoff.
At sure factors within the story, Ayana can improve her shadow powers and you’ve got a alternative of whether or not to unlock new branches on one among two talent bushes. One department leans towards non-lethal skills, like cushioning your footsteps, whereas the opposite opts for expertise that make you a greater killer, like making it simpler to cover our bodies so your deeds aren’t found. This creates some enjoyable replayability because it’s unimaginable to totally unlock each branches in a single playthrough, however, once more, shadow merge is simply too sturdy. The brand new powers are cool, however I by no means had to make use of them, as shadow merge makes it pretty straightforward to sneak by means of a stage with out being noticed. Granted, I opted for a nonlethal run. It is attainable that if I had aimed for a playthrough the place I killed every little thing that moved, I might have wanted to depend on extra of the powers that disguise our bodies or kill a number of enemies at a time in an effort to not alert guards that one thing was incorrect.
Ereban: Shadow Legacy sits in a bizarre place for me. As a stealth recreation, it not often challenged me, lowering protagonist Ayana right into a one-trick pony that might sneak previous any goal with the identical shadow merge talent each time. However as a platformer, Shadow Legacy incorporates some entertaining puzzles that develop more and more advanced and rewarding to beat. I by no means fairly managed to connect with Ayana’s journey towards the autonomous overlords planning to doom a whole civilization, however I had a whole lot of enjoyable slinking up partitions and exploding out of the darkness, striving to time my jumps with the motion of a windmill and the rotating shadow it was casting. These nail-biting moments are those that caught with me, not the dozenth time I slunk previous an unsuspecting droid.