The amount of detail, the way the water and the trees are constantly moving, the way the grass ripples as you move through it - it’s spellbinding.Īnother way in which Shadow Tactics improves upon its predecessors (in this genre) is through its excellent user interface.
It might be five years old, but you’d be hard-pressed to tell that from how good it looks. Scanning the level for these little oddities is no hardship, either, because Shadow Tactics is nothing short of beautiful.
These environmental tricks and hazards are like a series of Easter eggs just waiting for you to figure out the best way to use them against the foe. Or maybe there are some truculent cows that you could provoke into knocking out a hapless guard or two. Or maybe there’s a wagon doing the rounds that you could take a ride in on.
However, by the end, you’ll have sliced and weaved your way through those enemies in an extremely satisfying manner.Įvery mission throws new wrinkles into the mix - maybe this level has secret tunnels that you can use to get from one end of the map to the other, but only if you figure out how to find them in the first place. At the beginning of every level, you’ll pan the camera over the hordes of armed guards and other obstacles in your path, and you could be forgiven for feeling a certain amount of trepidation. Most missions in Shadow Tactics will see you trying to infiltrate a heavily-guarded compound or sneak up to ambush a heavily-guarded convoy or maybe ghost your way through a heavily-guarded temple - you get the idea. Veterans of the earlier series will feel right at home here, although there’s not too much of a learning curve for newcomers either, thanks to the excellent UI design here. Good news for those people, and everybody else - Shadow Tactics wears its Commandos-inspired heart proudly on its sleeve. For many people, myself included, the Commandos games represent the pinnacle of real-time stealth strategy. You’ll start off playing as the ninja Hayato, but you’ll soon be joined by various other characters - each with their own skill sets, personality and play styles - through a variety of missions.įirst, though, let’s talk about the games that inspired Shadow Tactics, and one series in particular. Set in Japan’s Edo period, Shadow Tactics puts you in charge of a ragtag group of unlikely heroes trying to unmask and thwart a mysterious warlord who’s threatening to drag the country into civil war.