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 2
Shadows: Awakening is an isometric action role-playing game in the style of Diablo with an interesting story and pleasing graphics, though released in 2018. However, the game presents some issues that may compromise the gameplay experience, especially in combat and inventory management.
The game has an isometric style similar to Diablo, with a 3D top-down view. Players explore procedurally generated dungeons, complete missions and defeat monsters in hack-and-slash combat.
The plot and story of Shadows: Awakening are the highlights of the game. The player takes on the role of a demonic entity able to possess and control the souls of the dead. The story is well-written and engaging, enriched by voiced dialogues that increase the player's immersion in the game world. It is a game that stimulates exploration of the game map, with a wide range of side quests to complete.
The game's graphics are noteworthy, with detailed and well-crafted environments. Although the game was released in 2018, the graphics retain good quality, with light and shadow effects helping to create a great atmosphere.
However, combat is one of the main flaws of the game. At high difficulty levels, combat becomes extremely difficult, forcing the player to repeatedly save after every single fight to avoid losing progress. This can become very frustrating, as the game does not automatically save after every fight. Commands also do not always respond reactively, making combat even more challenging.
Inventory is another negative aspect of the game. Each time you want to check if an item is suitable for a character, it is necessary to enter its specific slot and then exit to return to inventory. This process can become extremely annoying and make the game less smooth.
Finally, the game requires the player to constantly change the character, based on the specific abilities required by the mission. This can become repetitive and frustrating as the player might prefer to use a specific character but cannot due to limitations imposed by the game.
In summary, Shadows: Awakening is an isometric action role-playing game in the style of Diablo with an engaging story and good graphics, but plagued by issues in combat and inventory management. However, if the player is willing to tolerate these difficulties, the game offers a pleasant gameplay experience, with many hours of gameplay and a wide range of side quests to complete.
If you are a player that prefer to play always on max difficulty but don't have patience, avoid, otherwise is worth !
Steam User 1
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 3
Due I don't want to pay 70€ for Diablo 4, checked my "Not played" Steam Library and found this.
Even as being released the end of August of 2018, Shadows: Awakening is in my eyes good ARPG, hack and slash game with a great talent tree + characters and mechanics. There is two world "shadows and real" which you'll need to swap between to find a new paths on maps and solve puzzles. Both realms have their own enemies and later combats are utilizing using both in the advanced boss mechanics.
Storywise; You start as a devious shadow demon, but soon after you'll get to choose from three deceased souls (melee, range, mage) to continue their own story as a part of the shadow demon story.
On your adventure you'll encounter new characters and souls you are able to take control off. You can have totally Demon + 3 other characters to choose from. Their skills are unique on each character and switching between them on each area is recommended but not forced. As a nice touch, the characters that are saved in bank will level up upon the active characters do.
Character max level is 30 and you have a 10 talents to choose from, skill, character points and talents can be respecced so this won't turn to as a big issue even on the later of the game. Picking few specific talents will then provide an upgraded versions of them, so mix and match to find best combination for your characters.
As to leveling you'll gain enough experience from start to end, that you don't need to do half of the side missions at all. Also almost everytime the farming enemies in the story zone is enough.
If you are willing to look into some older released ARPG's, I can totally recommend this to play out.
Final score: 8/10
Steam User 1
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 1
-there's an objective that's broken during the quest to find the dream portal with one of the trials being the "trial of doubt"...when switching character to proceed, even tho the character is right in the middle of the rune, the game just think i'm on the wrong rune and i had to re-do the whole thing because of 2 small rune hitbox for 7 times! it was really annoying, it's not a trial of doubt, it's a trial of patience with the section needing the dev to expand the correct rune detection...what needed 30sec to complete took 4 minutes
-the repetitives lines when switching to a different character get's old really quick
-some items get's hidden by the camera view and makes it difficult to reach them by clicking on them
-items have poor value and cost a lot, it is a nescessessary need to collect items and sell them to be able to afford a few items...which makes it annoying to check a ton of items before selling them...and armor pieces are not very common...which led me to often use 3-8lv under the character's level...and in the forest, i got some kind of humanoid tree character and didn't had a single piece of equipment for it in maybe 4 hours, which was a very slow progress considering i was taking more damage and dealing low damage aswell, so i had to recover between fights
-why can we not keep the rat as a playable soul? ( as a joke or for small spaces to access treasures and whatnot )
-in the frozen land, the boars' front leg is flipping on it's own when attacked
-took about 25h to complete on normal difficulty with only a few side quests done
-there's an achievement of "Rat Plague" with 6.9% (nice) unlock rate (kill 100 rats)
-the first boss was harder than the final boss (from tactical combat to being idle spamming from start to finish)
-you level up really fast with ridiculous amount of xp over lv 20, which makes it near impossible to not reach max level inside the final boss arena (happened to me)
-there was no dog to pet in my playthrough 0/10 for that *frown face*
a solid 7/10, not for everyone and be ready to hear repeated lines like "thou shall face me now" "what other's have begun, Evia shall finish" "enter repetitive non generic line here".........i prefer generic lines like "let's do this" "time for pain" "here we go" than non generic lines like "thy soul has becometh mine" when you're just walking around town....it's unimersive as hell
Steam User 1
Good RPG game. Different to others giving a unique experience. The interactions between the puppets and demon are interesting and give depth to the story and characters often lacking in other RPGs. The ending feels untidy almost as I felt there were a lot of loose / abrupt ends to story lines. Could see the possibility of a sequel to it. Definitely recommend a play.
Steam User 1
absolute genius game. the 2 wold system is so good. everyone should play this. this game doesn't even get grindy even after 80 hours because the gameplay is so fun.