Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

Shadow Tactics is an enjoyable game, though one that wore out it’s welcome a little bit in the end.
At it’s core its a commandos style isometric tactical stealth game. That’s a genre I have occasionally dabbled in, playing Commando’s with a friend over a decade ago, but otherwise being aware but not really doing more than dipping my toes into the genre.
Shadow Tactics is another of those games that ended up being purchased on the cheap for £3.50 around 3 and a half years ago, and in an effort to actually cut down my backlog, I have been diving into those games I have piled up. I went into Shadow Tactics knowing very little, other than it had very good reviews on steam, was sent in Japan Edo period, was a stealth game, and it looked interesting.
The game rewarded me pretty well. Presentation wise it’s excellent. It might not be AAAA graphics in blistering RTX on vision, but each map is gorgeous. Though the game is fully in isometric view, there’s so many different details on each level, and a general sense of scale. I even found the cutscenes, while in isometric view again, well animated so to give people in it a greater sense of character. The art style is beautiful, and in some ways the game reminded me in look of a table top model piece.
Sound design seems decent. The voice acting was pretty good, I only heard a little of the English VO as I chose to have the Japanese voices on instead, but both seemed good, and again characters seemed distinctive and well acted.
The game ran well. As a sidenote I did until the half way point have a huge issue with crashing, which I thought was likely because it was a Unity engine game. Turns out that Unity doesn’t seem to like recent intel CPUs, which have problems with many newer games and engines, eg Unreal Engine 5. Using intel XTU to turn down the core performance ration by 3 fixed all crashes, and I can’t hold Intel’s shoddy CPUs against this game.
Storywise it’s not groundbreaking, but it really held my attention. It’s typical historical Japanese fare, feuding factions, plots and assassins. The main villain of the affair is hidden but very obvious, though I did have it spoiled a bit before this reveal by a walk-through I glanced at, but I wasn’t exactly shocked. A major twist 2/3rds of the way into the game wasn’t spoiled for me, and actually I thought worked really well as an emotional gut punch. The decision that a character makes also feels completely in keeping with the time period and code of morality that would govern historical Japan. The writing for each character is pretty decent, being likeable but again not keeping them too modern, and each was distinctive, so while the main plot of the game is humdrum, the fate of the characters really interested me, as did the general historical atmosphere of the game. I’m a sucker for any historical game that keeps the fantasy elements out and has good atmosphere, and this game delivers.
On the gameplay front, I mostly found it very good. It’s as mentioned, typical commandos fare, control up to 5 different characters with different skills and abilities to complete missions such as stealing items or assisting important officials, while trying to avoid detection. The game has handy tools like vision cones and a shadow mode where you can plan actions and then execute them at the push of a button. The game encourages save scumming with a handy popup when you’ve not saved for more than a minute. While at first I found the odd bit of frustration in getting caught, I quickly found the ability to reload and try again got me through this, and I began to approach each situation like a puzzle, and really found the whole thing enjoyable. I only occasionally glanced at a walkthrough and enjoyed figuring each situation out, using the characters in different combinations.
Minor negatives, I found controlling the characters in some actions when I needed to be quick to avoid detection, eg moving bodies and getting rid of them, a little clunky. I also felt that the game slightly overstayed it’s welcome. By the final mission I felt that the game was starting to get repetitive. The last mission is nothing new, no spoilers but it’s another castle full of guards with a man to assassinate at the top, with nothing to mix it up. By that point all the characters had been introduced and there were no new abilities, so it felt like treading old ground. I confess I used a walkthrough to cheese through the last level.
I have bought the expansion, Aiko’s choice, but will probably give it a break for a bit before moving on to that so it feels a little fresher. Still at 25 hours Shadow Tactics not a short game, and I didn’t think it got too thin until the very end. I think a part of that is that I’m pretty new to the genre and not a stealthy gamer by nature per say. There is plenty here to encourage repeat playthroughs, with badges to encourage different approaches, like no killing or using certain methods to complete missions.
Overall a very enjoyable little game that has opened up a genre to me that I haven’t really got into before.

It's one of those rare games where I'm naturally good at it and I pick up real fast because I am already a real life basement ninja who has been sitting and hiding in my mom's basement for decades to avoid any social interaction.
I can even crouch-walk to get to my microwave at 3 am without waking my parents up, so this game is like a piece of cake for me. It's a perfect simulation of my daily existence. 10/10 I can finally utilize my microwave tactic for a game, I’ve been training for this my entire life.

In short, I enjoyed this game a lot but I think it might not be for everyone.

I started this game a few years back but dropped it part way through. Recently, I came back to it to give it another go and I really enjoyed it.

The thing is, this game is a stealth game, and it is nothing else. While you can technically fight head on, this game accommodates open combat even less than series like Dishonored, Metal Gear Solid, Sniper Elite, and so on. The penalties for being noticed are harsh and you'll probably just want to reload upon being found. And as a game where you click to tell characters what to do, there isn't the joy of traversal or directly controlling your character like in games such as Dishonored. I enjoyed this game a lot, but the joy from this game comes from stealth in a much purer form, and if you're not a fan of stealth games, or are not in the mood for this particular style of stealth game, this game doesn't have anything else to offer. Understanding what to expect when I came back to this game allowed me to fully appreciate it for what it is.

Ultimately I thought this was a great game. I really liked the party of different characters, each with their own flavour of stealth. For example, one character's a sniper, one character focuses on traps, and one character can use disguises to hide in plain sight, bringing a sort of Hitman-like playstyle. Different combinations of characters being available for each mission gave each mission a different feel. I should say this is also a relatively hard stealth game. The difficulty ramps up steadily but quite steeply, and the last third or so of the game often had me staring at the screen and stroking my chin trying to think of what to do next for much longer than most stealth games, even on harder difficulties. This game doesn't require you to be a genius or to flawlessly control 5 characters simultaneously or anything--I don't want to make this game sound harder than it is, and it's not intimidatingly hard--but it is a Thinker. You have to plan each manoeuvre.

I'm glad I came back to this and it is a solidly above-average stealth game, and if you're a fan of stealth games, this is definitely worth trying. Just be mindful of what it is when going in to it.

Game so good I dream about it. I'm at work thinking through strategies for whatever mission I'm on.

I spent over 30 hours silently removing people from existence and hiding their bodies in bushes like a very polite serial killer. If you've ever wanted to be a ninja, a samurai, and a walking HR violation all at once, this game gets you.

Each mission is a puzzle box. You sneak, stab, lure, distract, and always hide the body because apparently, guards get upset when they see their friend taking a dirt nap in broad daylight.

Lord Noburu? Absolute worst.

I might have missed killing off one developer, might go through it all again someday.

Final thoughts: This game makes you feel smart... until you quicksave into a bad decision. A true trailblazer for the stealth tactics genre, and an absolute delight for all you sneaky sneaks.

Play it. Kill (or I guess knock guards out, meh) silently. Hide the bodies. Regret nothing.

There are 2 type of games that i usually spend time getting all the achievements
1st) easy and fun games that allows you to get all achievements in one playthrough
2nd) an addicting gameplay loop that keeps rewarding you as you play in multiple playthroughs
This game fits the 2nd criteria
One of the best stealth strategy game i've played. Every mission stage is a set piece, but the game allows you to be creative on how you approach objectives, and oh boy it can get quite crazy.
This is the first game of mimimi games series of stealth strategy games, so if you play their latter games first, this game is quite relatively rough at first compare to their latter games.
But if this is your first taste of their games, you're in for a ride!
Highly recommended game!

I've played Desperados 3 before this so I'm getting used to the lack of other mechanics that game had like; stopping time when planning, and then there's still bugs after all these years, anyhow other than that this game feels more like an actual puzzle game than all of the previous titles Mimimi has developed. Not bad but I also don't recommend this on full price, buy on sale.