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 5
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
One-of-a-kind ARPG. I'd say Diablo-like, but that would do the game a disservice. Yeah, in part, it's a click-ey RPG with various builds, but with an original twist on companion system and two dimensions to play in: the real world and the demonic nether-realm.
+ Gritty amosphere
+ Superb, imaginative voice-overs and rich soundtrack
+ Puzzles
+ Original companion system and two realms to play in, which intertwine in puzzles and quests.
+ Nice stories and investigative side-quests.
+ Well-thought-out combat (unfolds later on, it tends to be rather simple in the beginning)
- No dodge. (I mean, I know Diablo-likes usually don't have one and even so, there are some defensive abilities, it's just that the gameplay calls for it so much, oh well... maybe someone could mod it in?}
- Difficulty = bloated HP.
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Last but not least, I would like to mention that the devs stood by their promise, and once they acquired the intellectual rights to their own game, they'd finished the whole second part, which was missing in the OG published by bitservice FOR FREE to the owners of the OG. By buying this game, you get both parts now. Shows the amount of dedication and character-consistence often unheard of in today's troubled world of gaming development.
Steam User 2
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 3
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 2
A good ARPG with some nice game play mechanisms, a good amount of content and a decent story.
Definitely worth it.
Steam User 3
i grew up playing heteric kingdoms so that one was a great experience for me too
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