Shadow Tactics - Commandos in Japan

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A group of soldiers patrols a cold snowy area. Suddenly, they find some suspicious footprints, so they decide to follow them, and they lead them to a mysterious young girl playing a flute. The soldiers ask the girl to surrender and aim at her with their rifles, but the girl ignores them and keeps playing her flute. Angered by the girl’s behavior, the soldiers ready their rifles and prepare to fire, but then, all of sudden, a shadow jumps out of the bushes nearby and dashes towards them. A couple of seconds later, one of the soldiers can hear his colleagues agonizing screams, and when he finally manages to react, he can see the figure of a samurai holding two swords standing between them. The solder tries to aim with his rifle, but he suddenly feels a piercing pain in his abdomen that completely immobilizes him. When he looks down, he can see a deep cut from which his blood flows like a steam down to the white snow. He feels everything around him starts to get blurry, and then he finally collapses over the blood soaked snow underneath his feet. The solider lies down on the floor quietly while he listens to the sound of the flute, till finally everything fades out. On the distance, a solider has witnessed the whole happening, and decides to run to set the alarm. The samurai and the young girl remain idle looking at the soldier in complete silence, as if they already knew what was going to happen next. Suddenly, a shot can be heard in the distance, and after stumbling for a few meters, the soldier finally collapses. An old man comes down a nearby hill, and the samurai makes a sign to them indicating it´s time to move on. No. I did not decide to start writing novels (at least for now). This is just one of the many possible scenarios we will be able to experience while playing the game I´m going to talk in this new entry. The game is called Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun. Hello everyone, and welcome to a new entry of my blog.

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun has been developed by Munich-based studio Mimimi Productions, and opposite to what we saw in Onimusha Tactics, the samurai strategy RPG I talked about a few entries back, Shadow Tactics is a real-time tactical game. The story takes us to the year 1615 of the Edo era in Japan. The new shogun has managed to seize control of the country, unifying it and putting an end to a long dark period of constant wars. However, the rumors on the street say that an individual known simply as Kage-sama is planning to take down the new shogun. Truth or simply rumors, the shogun has decided to put together a special team of assassins to hunt down this Kage-sama before he can carry away his plan, and our objective will be to control the shogun´s assassins team through the 13 stages of the campaign in order to eliminate Kage-sama and his conspirators. Our team will be composed of five experts in the art of the assassination and sabotage, which include Hayato, a ninja who can eliminate his enemies silently with his shurikens or climb on buildings to run across the rooftops, Mugen, a sturdy samurai warrior lethal with his katakana, Takuma, an elderly sniper, Yuki, a young girl specialized in traps, and Aiko, a beautiful and lethal assassin and master of disguise and infiltration.

The five protagonists.

Perhaps the easiest way to describe Shadow Tactics´ gameplay system is by simply saying “Commandos”, for the title follows closely on the steps of Pyro Studios´ genre-defining timeless classic. Thus, in order to complete the 13 stages of the game, we will have to use the special skills of each of our characters to eliminate our enemies and make our way to our objectives, and just like in Commandos, the key will reside in team work, patience and planning. How we do it will be completely up to us, and there will always be plenty of choices, some more effective than others. Like Commandos, we will be able to observe our enemies vision field and movements patterns in order to plan the best action curse for each situation, but Shadow Tactics takes the whole team work concept to a new level with a feature called Shadow Mode. This option will allow us to assign one skill to each of our characters and have them execute it all at the same time, thus allowing us to set in motion a series of actions that, provided we did the right planning, will unfold in perfect harmony. This feature not only emphasizes the team work aspect of the game, really helping to give the impression of handling a real team of specialist that have to rely on each other’s skills in order to succeed, but it is also a true joy to see the plan that we carefully designed being carried away in perfect sync by our characters. But despite its many tactical possibilities, not everything in Shadow Tactics will focus on our characters an our skill to observe our enemies, for the beautiful environments in which the missions will take place will also play their role, sometimes to our advantage, and sometimes against us. On top of some interactive objects that we will be able to use, such as levers that will allow us to open gates or cannons that will allow us to blast away obstacles, we will also have to keep in mind other elements of the environment that will play a more “passive” yet determinant role, such as snowy terrains in which we will leave footprints that the enemies will be able to follow to our current position… or our trap, or chickens that could get scared when we walk nearby, drawing attention to our location and leaving us completely exposed, which could lead to our character´s dead and the end of the mission. All this add an extra layer of complexity to the already rich gameplay, making of Shadow Tactics a game that will surely please all those who care about planning and tactics. The game has a pretty lengthy campaign, for depending on our skill, each stage could take somewhere from one to two hours to complete it, which means it could easily takes us around 20 hours to complete it, perhaps many more if we want to complete also all the secondary objectives.

Regarding the presentation, Shadow Tactics might not boast any jaw-dropping graphics, but overall does a good job, especially in the artistic side, and that is especially true when it comes to the stages´ design, for not only they are very varied, but they are also full of small details that turn them into small living dioramas that represent perfectly the Japan of the Edo era, with every single detail proving how much love and care the team had dedicated to them.


Shadow Tactics is definitely a great game that comes to revive an almost dead genre, and it truly does it the big way, and although it surely isn´t a perfect game, for there are a few things that could benefit from some improvements, like for example it´s slightly clunky camera system or perhaps a bigger variety of enemies, there is no doubt that this a great beginning for what it could become a relevant franchise in the coming years. It is surprising to see a game like this in these times where there seems to be a never-ending demand for adrenaline-pumping and instant satisfaction titles, but it is definitely a nice and more than welcome surprise. Whether you like games like the above mentioned Commandos or Desperados, or you just like games where thinking comes first and acting comes later, you should definitely give a chance to Shadow Tactics, for I´m sure it won´t disappoint you. The game is available via Steam on PC, and on physical and digital version for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Enjoy it!


GAMEPLAY VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQEIGL4zZVM