• Styx Master Of Shadows Missions
• Styx Master Of Shadows Trophy Guide
• Styx Master Of Shadows Akenash Atrium 1/4 Coins

Haven’t written about non-arcade games that much recently, to be honest I thought 2014 was a pretty bad year overall. Lots of broken games, some even worse examples of DLC and in-game currency sales, remakes as far as the eye can see. It was cynical, depressing, indicative of a sick industry which is creaking under the weight of production values. There were a few gems – the Final Fantasy XIV PS4 client, Sherlock Holmes, Wolfenstein TNO and a bit later in the year – a goblin restored a little of my faith in games.

Styx: Master of Shadows is a Stealth-Based Game developed by Cyanide Studio for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, released on October 7, 2014.The game is a spin-off/prequel to Of Orcs and Men, focusing on Styx as he steals a magical artifact from humans.As the very first of all the Goblins, he’s a master in the arts of stealth, thievery, and murder. Styx: Master of Shadows was a game i was looking to play for a while, and when I picked it up a couple days ago due to the squeal coming out shortly I was timed as to when to complete it. So here is my review: The game is brilliant if you can get over its flaws.

270 Tokens 8 Relics Note. The Tokens are not required for the My Precious Achievement All Relics Video ame= /ame Relic 1 is in 3 - 3 Reminiscences Akenashs Atrium 1 - 4 Akenashs Atrium 2 - 4.

1. Styx: Master of Shadows is a third-person perspective action game in which the player assumes the role of Styx, a two hundred year old goblin assassin.The player is tasked with sneaking up to the Tower of Akenash and stealing the valuable Amber from there.
2. Styx is a stealth game that is billed as a story prequel to Of Orc and Men. You play Styx, the first Goblin, who was one of the NPC characters in Of Orc and Men as he tells his story of trying to steal the heart of the World Tree. Styx: Master of Shadows is told over 8 missions and is a digital only game that costs $30 on Xbox ONE.

Styx is like a game from another time. If you remember the original Tenchu games you’ll be in familiar territory, it’s stealth platforming in its purest form. Styx is a .. troubled goblin, he has a headache and a desire to reach the heart of the world tree for reasons he can’t even recall. The story is actually much better than I expected, I’m not going to say too much for fear of spoiling it. It’s set in the Tower Of Akenash, a vast sprawling labyrinth of a place where humans and elves have an uneasy allience harvesting amber from the tree, a liquid which gives Styx and the elves most of their power while also serving as an addictive drug for humans.

To reach the heart you’ll need to work your way through numerous levels (which tend to get re-used from half way through the game), grouped into chapters in-between which you can restock in Styx’s hideout. Each level simply gives you a goal (sometimes with optional side missions) and drops you right in to make your own way through.

Each chapter also has coins scattered through the levels and a relic hidden in one of them which you’ll have to find based on map clues. Collecting these as well as approaching levels in certain ways, for example without killing anyone or without being detected at all will give you points at the end of the chapter. These points can be used in the hideout to upgrade Styx in various areas from killing techniques to equipment capacity. Each area has 4 possible upgrades, completing these starts to unlock the most powerful upgrades, but it’s unlikely you’ll be able to unlock the entire skill tree on your first play. You won’t be able to abuse the skills too much either, most abilities consume amber and vials are few and far between.

What really makes the game work is the freedom on offer. Even faced with the simplest situation of one guard in a room, you could walk up and attack head on (not advised), you could distract or bind him with a clone, drop from a rafter for an aerial kill, sneak around the outside of the room in the shadows for a stealth kill, throw a dagger at him, poison nearby food in the hope that he’ll eat it, drop a chandalier on his head – the options are varied.

You really do need to avoid straight up fights at all costs though since Styx can only take a few hits even on default difficulty. Elite bowmen will kill you in a single bolt even if you’re mid-fight with a guard, knights and elves will kill you instantly, some enemies are immune to daggers and so on. Of course where there’s a will there’s a way, and you can be quite inventive.

The enemy AI is pretty good if not spectacular – if guards see movement they might just be alerted, a bit more and they’ll come and investigate. If you’re seen any nearby enemies will be called to alert too and the ease of which Styx can be killed means that in this situation you’ll want to just escape until the heat is off. Turning invisible is a good way (which consumes a lot of amber), climbing is another, and there are numerous crawl spaces you can run for. Guards also go on alert when discovering dead bodies so it’s a good idea to hide them in dark corners, drop them into the abyss, dissolve them with acid or find a nice empty cupboard – unless you want them to be found of course. I found slowly emptying areas and piling the bodies up to be quite effective. Styx is a very troubled goblin after all.

The level layouts really are superb with few forced routes or choke points – each one is huge and multi layered, in some areas you can almost get a feeling of vertigo hopping around tiny platforms on the outside of a tower. Fortunately the controls and ‘stickiness’ of Styx are just about perfect – if you’re generally accurate then you can move around the levels quickly, but if you’re in a rush or get a little too ambitious you can expect to fall. Too far and you’ll take damage or die instantly – assuming there’s a floor at all.

Overall I’d say Styx on the PS4 is a nice looking game, we’re in 30fps territory – sometimes the engine can get bogged down but it’s infrequent, there’s an odd texture loading glitch when you spin the camera quickly which can lead to some colour errors but in normal play you rarely see it. It’s an overwhelmingly dark game of course being set mostly in the shadows, but the developers added enough light areas to give some relief and contrast. Audio is excellent with atmospheric music (individual musicians getting credit at the end is nice to see) and good voice acting for Styx, while some of the guards can be a little comical at times – a personal favourite was when one found a body I’d carelessly left out in the open and shouted ‘What the fuck is this madness?’

Problems? A couple – a few times I did have it hang, but we’re talking two over the course of the entire campaign and thankfully it didn’t crash the entire system. Autosaves are few and far between and quite often you’ll get engrossed in creeping around solving a area, only to die and find yourself a long, long way back. Fortunately you can save at any time, but it doesn’t make the slow loading time between deaths any more enjoyable, and you will die a lot. The AI can (rarely) break leading to individual soldiers just standing there until you walk within attack range or stranded at scenery they don’t know how to navigate.

Overall though, if you like stealth platforming you simply can’t go wrong here. It’s the exact opposite of the mainstream gaming experience at the moment and I’d put it alongside Sherlock Holmes as one of the stand-out titles of 2014 which dared to just make the game they wanted without needing to appeal to everyone. Something different. Something that does what it says for a reasonable price. Something that works. Something I enjoyed.

It’s available on PS4, Xbox One and PC – and for some reason gaming media seems to be totally unaware of it.

Styx: Master of ShadowsCost$29.99FormatDigitalSize6.48 GBAvailable OnXbox ONE [Reviewed], PS4, SteamRelease Date10/8/14DeveloperCyanidePublisherFocus Home InteractiveModesSingle Player

Styx is a stealth game that is billed as a story prequel to Of Orc and Men. You play Styx, the first Goblin, who was one of the NPC characters in Of Orc and Men as he tells his story of trying to steal the heart of the World Tree. Styx: Master of Shadows is told over 8 missions and is a digital only game that costs $30 on Xbox ONE. Each mission runs about 30 or so minutes but takes about 2 to 3 hours each because of the shear number of deaths and reloads. Being a stealth game though if you follow someone’s perfect guide its going to go a lot faster. Digital only games over $15 are a hard sell as people are just getting used to the idea that on the ONE there is no distinction. There are just games, big and small, cheap and not so cheap. So does Styx: Master of Shadows have enough quality gameplay to justify the $30 price?

Styx is a pure stealth game in that there is no run and gun option. You can kill enemies in stealthy manners, like from behind or hidden from a chest, but direct confrontation is a recipe for death. When you are seen and attacked you have to successfully parry several attacks, with the harder the enemy the more parries needed, before you are given a direct kill option. Which seems fine since you are just a little hunched over Goblin and not made for direct contact with Humans UNTIL you see Styx pick up these fallen enemies and just toss them about like rag dolls so he definitely has the strength to just win any battle. So chalk that up to a thematic choice to keep with the straight up stealth style of the game but a blunder none the less. The thing that Styx excels at is little touches that other stealh games miss out on. The biggest is accidents. Accidents don’t count against you and don’t make guards freak out and instantly start searching for a spy in their midst. Don’t get me wrong, they react, but in a realistic fashion. Worried about what happened, but not insane about it. Noise levels are handled extremely well. Knocking over broom and kicking pots is going to make some noise and get people investigating as it should.

As far as the story is concerned, let’s play a drinking game. Every time Styx has a line of dialogue where he mentions his headache, take a drink. You’ll be dead before the end of the first mission. The story is told in cutscenes and in game audio dialogue. The story does luckily pick up in the first mission but it’s presented in a weird fashion. The opening level story is told in a in-game rendered cutscene. This is followed up by in-game dialogue as you go through the mission. But after you finish a mission the wrap up, which is technically a continuation of opening story, is told with audio over paintings. It just comes off weird because it’s all part of the same scene where Styx is relaying the story so why such a huge change in style? Then we start the next mission and it’s back to cutscene.

So what does Styx add to the stealth genre? The whole game is about finding and drinking Amber to power Styx’s abilities with the main ability being that Styx can clone himself and use the clone for various activities. Most of which revolve around the clone being able to squeeze through small areas to activate doors for Styx to go through. The big problem with the clones is that only Styx or the clone can act at once. If you need to move Styx, the clone is just standing around waiting. Then you have Styx wait while the clone moves. There is no go do this while I do this other thing. The clones has 4 abilities but the best abilities are all attack oriented and this is in a non-combat oriented stealth game. This leave you with using the clone as distraction so you can sneak past. The thing that is nice is the game doesn’t count clone alerts against you for the sake of stealth. All in all the clones felt like more of a hindrance and kind of gimicky then something that helped me move forward in the game mainly because of the time it take to switch between the two. The guards would already be in the process of resetting before I could even get Styx to start to try to sneak past them.

Styx Master Of Shadows Missions

This comes to Styx: Master of Shadows best point. Pathing. There are a multitude of ways to get from A to B in this game. There is almost always ways up, through, or under any obstacle. Some are quite obvious, but the best ones need to be scouted and discovered. Your Amber Vision points out things that can be grabbed and showcases graphical hints that certain ways may lead to collectibles or simpler travels. One of the issues with the game is Styx’s movement through these levels. Since we are going for stealth precise jumps are extremely important to the game to navigate the ledges above the enemies, Styx’s movement through the game is kind of stiff. I find myself saving quite a bit as even the slightest misstep could send you 4 levels down to either your direct death, a crowd of enemies, or just the inconvenience of having to do everything over again. When most of the best routes are above the ground it adds a false level of difficulty just based on how awful the jumping is.

Styx uses the Unreal engine for graphics and it’s presented in what I would call a dumbed down Dishonored. They have a very similar look but Dishonored was just so much crisper. Styx also suffers highly from the Stormtrooper problem. There only seems to be 4 or 5 guards models so you’ll be stabbing or sneaking past the same guy about a billion times. The lip sync on cutscenes is also just enough off to be distracting. The graphics are definitely above average, just not as clean as I’ve know the Unreal Engine can be. The levels themselves are pretty good looking and are extremely varied so although the enemies repeat, the level design is fresh.

Styx does feature a skills progression system. There are 5 categories and each category contains 4 upgrades. When you complete objectives in the game or finish a mission with special criteria, like no alerts or no deaths, you earn Skill Points. You can spend these back at your Hideout between missions to improve Styx. Things like producing less noise, using a visions ability to find collectibles or being able to do a death from above kill. You can also upgrade your clone so that he can grab enemies for you to run up and get the quick kill or even cooler is you can place a clone in a chest or closet and he will kill any enemies that happen to wonder by. Besides the 4 clone abilities they are all typical stealth skills that every single stealth game in the universe is using.

The collectibles are horrible. Each level seems to have 10 Tokens / Coins you need to find per section. These must be found in one playthough of a mission to unlock the thief insignia for that level. Until you get all the tokens in all sections of a level restarting a mission will reset your progress for that level. I’m sure people will come up with 100% stealth, no kill, get all coins videos but for your average gamer you are going to be doing a lot of playthroughs of a mission to get everything completed. Most of the coins are right next to enemies almost forcing you go on the attack if you want to get them all.

Styx Master Of Shadows Trophy Guide

All in all Styx is a fine game and a generally good time. It simply doesn’t push the stealth genre to anything new or exciting. If you come to Styx as a Run and Gunner stealth player you’re going to have a hard time adjusting to this sneaky combat system. You’re going to die a lot. This game is set up more towards Outlast where you are punished for being seen. It is possible to escape and hide, in fact like most stealth game enemies give up pretty quick [like seriously? If you see an enemy combatant in your base you just figure you were day dreaming if you don’t catch him in 2 minutes? This is ALL stealth games], but the name of the game is stealth. If you are a pure stealth fan than it is worth the $30.

Styx Master Of Shadows Akenash Atrium 1/4 Coins

NOTE: If you are playing Styx and need help we do have an Achievement Guide right here on GameGuideCentral!

FINAL VERDICT

PROS:
1) Strong level design
2) Strong stealth mechanics

CONS:
1) Minimal enemy differences
2) Large sections of non-precise jumping