Shadows: Awakening
Shadows: Awakening is the new adventure in the Heretic Kingdoms saga. After the members of the secret council known as the Penta Nera are assassinated, their souls are consumed by the Devourers – evil demons which possess the ability to absorb the memories and personalities of the souls they acquire and materialize them as their puppets. Re-emerging into the mortal realm once again, the demonic Penta Nera continue their quest for power and immortality, but at what cost? Shadows: Awakening is a unique, isometric single-player RPG with real-time tactical combat. You take control of a demon summoned from the Shadow Realm – the Devourer – to consume the souls of long-dead heroes and embark on an epic adventure with challenging gameplay, a gripping storyline and enchanting graphics. Do you have the focus and wits to master the world of the Heretic Kingdoms? Gather your party, control powerful heroes and use their skills to your advantage.
Steam User 33
This is not just another stale loot clicker. It's actually a full-fledged RPG with an interesting hook, complete with numerous recruitable characters, side quests, puzzles, and hand-crafted levels. Swapping between the Devourer and your chosen set of puppets during combat is an interesting twist on this style of gameplay, though class balance is a little skewed.
A crucial point is that unlike most games in this genre, Shadows does not waste your time by expecting you to sort piles of trash. Your inventory is fairly large and is laid out as a list, not a grid. Loot hell is not an issue here. Some treasure is randomized, but the best equipment is unique and hand-placed, often behind side quests or optional puzzles (some of which you may not even notice if you're paying attention).
Shadows had a very troubled development history, so it's impressive that it all came together as well as it did. If you enjoy the Diablo lineage of action RPGs, but want something more substantial and less tedious, get this.
Steam User 13
I’ve just finished the game, and while I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it, there’s something that leaves me unsettled—namely, the pacing. The game offers a decent amount of content, yet it lacks the open-world experience that it's often advertised as having. Players need to be prepared for significant limitations when it comes to available areas. What frustrated me the most was the frequent use of artificial time extenders, such as needing to find a lever on the opposite side of the map just to open a door. If the developers were confident that exploration was fun and rewarding, they wouldn’t force players to backtrack just to experience repetitive elements and waste time. Unfortunately, this makes exploration feel tiresome rather than engaging.
The puzzles are abundant, with some being genuinely interesting, but it doesn’t take long before they start to feel repetitive and lose their appeal. The character-switching mechanic, where we only see one character at a time during gameplay, is intriguing. However, even if we have, say, eight characters to choose from, we won't utilize them much because they lack meaningful dialogue or compelling backstories. This same issue extends to the three characters available at the start of the game. While we do learn more about them as the game progresses, it feels forced and isn’t particularly engaging.
Although the number of characters is decent, the lack of interaction between them—aside from simple in-game dialogue—provides no real satisfaction from having these characters (or their souls). I also found myself missing any kind of romantic subplot or flirtation—something that could have added depth to the experience.
The combat is solid but won’t appeal to everyone, but I personally enjoyed it. The graphics, however, have aged, and it’s noticeable. There aren’t enough unique mechanics to keep things fresh, which, as I mentioned earlier, leads to boredom after a while. The same goes for the towns in the game. While there are a few people around, they don’t feel like a living, breathing part of the world, as you can’t interact with them—they’re just there, standing still.
The game also has a few bugs that are hard to ignore, but I won’t go into detail about those here. Overall, the experience feels underwhelming. Still, I’m giving the game a positive rating because it’s been a while since I’ve played an RPG, and this title rekindled my interest in the genre. My final score is 6/10.
Steam User 6
A good ARPG with some nice game play mechanisms, a good amount of content and a decent story.
Definitely worth it.
Steam User 6
I played the game through normal difficulty and still finding myself dying. Well it's a skill issue in my part.
This game revived my motivation and passion playing 3D isometric ARPG games.
Story is solid 8/10, you play as a demon who acquire souls and make it as a host. Apparently this demon is the only one that can manage to use multiple host. game has 3 endings and i got the good ending and trying to start a new game the reach true ending.
Gameplay is simplified 8/10. The system is somewhat similar to torchlight 2, basic stats, basic equipment system, and equipments that can be modified depending of the essence you insert to said equipment. Essence are like gems that you put in equipment sockets to put additional equipment skills.
Soundtrack was on point 9/10. Not too much and not too over the top.
This game also needs some QoL update. some quest are buggy(kiri quest). if you talk to her as Carissa, you will get teleported to kyallisar and quest is stuck back to the firstr encounter (i had to restart whole game for this). Quest mark also seems to not display properly sometimes leaving you thinking the quest is bugged.
Overall is a fun game and definitely check it out.
Steam User 6
I really like this game and I see it as what I wish the Diablo series had become. I recommend it with only 1 caveat: there is a type of puzzle that reoccurs through the game and while is isn't hard to solve getting your character to move in a way where they don't end up endlessly running into a wall or hung up on some other object instead of to the switch a few easy steps away IS INFURIATING! The game has been out long enough that I know it will never get fixed so I just do the puzzle for a few hours at a time until I find that perfect place to click where that doesn't happen than go back to enjoying the game immensely. Everything else is awesome.
Steam User 5
This is one of those B-list games you breeze through, then forget you've played. However, it's an okay one as far as B-list games go.
There are three possible characters for you to choose at the start, each with their own game-spanning quest, so it features replayability of sorts. You can also play as a good guy or as a bastard, and there are several choices throughout the storyline that produce different consequences depending on your decisions. It's not really deep, meaningful change, but it's there.
What is cool about this one is that you control 4 characters at once, and switch them in and out on the fly. They all have their own attacks, skills, and buffs, so there's a lot of combos you can pull off. Most of them are also kind of interesting, the ones included in the story at least.
Shadows: Awakening is also one of those games where you can play your own music in the background and just dilly-dally around as it doesn't require too much brainpower (despite controlling 4 characters).
Steam User 4
Uff, that was nice run. Really enjoyed, very nice driven story it's like diablo just much better.
Nice hidden gem and very surprisely good quality game!
Beautiful rpg that i'm happy didn't skip.