Styx: Shards of Darkness a True Stealth Experience

I’ve not completely finished Styx: Shards of Darkness yet but I’m having a really great time with it as I go. Very few things frustrate me in this game, and the more I play it, the more I appreciate the stealth mechanics implemented by the developers. Whether I’m using elements to sneak around, or one of the many special skills that Styx can use, I’m always having a great experience and trying to figure out how to do things differently, more efficiently, and just flat out better.

There are 12 levels to play through in Styx, but each will take you a number of hours to fully complete. There are lots of things to pick up and find in Styx: Shards of Darkness, and you will be rewarded for looking in every corner of the map. What makes Styx such a great experience, however, is not the level design, but how you can go about getting around guards and solving various puzzles. In true stealth fashion – or as it should be in ALL games – there usually is not only one way to complete and objective. Players can play to their own strengths to figure puzzles out, or tackle each situations as it comes up. Sometimes creating a clone of himself is the best way to get Styx past a sticky situation, or perhaps using sand to douse fires from afar is the route to go. You get to decide, which makes Styx such a compelling game.

If the developers hadn’t spent so much time on the character of Styx himself, the game might not come off as a unique experience. Strip him out of it and add anyone else, and you would have a slightly better than average stealth experience. Add the character of Styx into the equation and I think you have a must-play title on your hands. Styx is interesting because Styx is a bad, bad goblin. That’s what is compelling. His jokes – whether in game or during the numerous death screens I sat through – range from incredibly clever to downright abysmal. But I listened every time, because I was invested in his characteristic’s.

What else makes this great is that Styx: Shards of Darkness is a true stealth experience. Unlike other ‘stealth games’ – think Assassins Creed, which is joked about in this game – when you are discovered, the chances of you fighting your way to safety is pretty good. This is not the case in Styx. Where I would argue AC is a fight-and-run experience when being detected, Styx is a pause-and-reload experience. This is yet another way Styx is different form your average stealth title.

We will dive into this further and throw a score on this article down the road, but for now we are giving Styx a solid 8.5/10!