Commandos-Like Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun - Commandos clone with ninjutsu theme

[Volrath]

Have they planned any DLC and/or expansions?

 

[Goral]

Shadow Tactics is 25% off on GOG: https://af.gog.com/game/shadow_tactics_blades_of_the_shogun?as=1649904300

 

[HoboForEternity]

Uu i should get this game but i am,already strapped for time and cash already. I dunno what i want more. This or thimbleweed

 

[Zombra]

Started a replay last week to go through on Hardcore. Tried the English voice acting this time and couldn't handle it. The Japanese voice acting sounds far superior to me. (Maybe it's just because I don't understand Japanese so I can't tell whether the actors are bad.)

 

[miles teg]

Just finished my first playthrough, and it's the best stealth game I've played in years. Impeccable level design and clever enemy placement ensured that the enemy variety or lack thereof was never truly a hindrance to enjoying the game.

Apart from obvious expansion/sequel additions like new abilities, heroes and enemy types, there are a few changes I'd like the (hopefully) next game to have:

1. Even more differentiation between the characters: Characters in ST can all perform 4 broad categories of actions: a primary attack (mostly melee), a secondary ranged attack (except Aiko), a distraction and shoot sidearms. The differentiation between the 5 characters comes from the variation in abilities within each of these 4 primary categories, as well as movement options. For the next game, I'd prefer if different characters performed completely different roles instead of performing largely similar roles through different means.

This is my biggest gripe with the game. However what's really the alternative? I mean, in the first Commandos you had much more diversity and you ended up with the green beret cleaning 80% of the map alone while the driver was just dead weight, useful in the last minute to enter the vehicle and exit the map.
And I think I never used the marine after the third mission or so (apart from where it was necessary to cross water).
The issue in these games is that if you can't at least pickup/hide a body you are pretty much useless and so the marine was just wasted.
I'd like to see a game like this that can combine diversity with usefulness, but between these two extremes, I prefer dudes with similar roles to a one-does-all-the-job.

 

[Nryn]

This is my biggest gripe with the game. However what's really the alternative? I mean, in the first Commandos you had much more diversity and you ended up with the green beret cleaning 80% of the map alone while the driver was just dead weight, useful in the last minute to enter the vehicle and exit the map.
And I think I never used the marine after the third mission or so (apart from where it was necessary to cross water).
The issue in these games is that if you can't at least pickup/hide a body you are pretty much useless and so the marine was just wasted.
I'd like to see a game like this that can combine diversity with usefulness, but between these two extremes, I prefer dudes with similar roles to a one-does-all-the-job.

The Green Beret being too useful was certainly a problem, and not one that a Shadow Tactics sequel should look to replicate. My issue is that Hayato, Aiko and Yuki have too much overlap with one another in terms of playstyle. It would be better if each of those characters had something unique to offer, as Aiko already does with her disguises. In Shadow Tactics, even though Aiko's disguise is arguably the most powerful ability, missions are not rigidly designed around using her disguise to progress; I was a huge fan of those optional badges that challenged the player to not use disguises at all over the course of the mission. This is what I'd like to see more of in the sequel -- give the characters unique abilities that open up alternative paths in the mission, without making the use of those abilities mandatory.

On the topic of Commandos 1, the driver and marine were deceptively useful:

The marine was the only one capable of silently killing patrols of 3 enemies with his harpoon gun. He became invaluable when I didn't want to expend the Sapper's grenades to take out patrols. The driver also had a hidden mechanic where the game would flag his truck as a friendly depending on whether the rest of the commandos entered the truck first or he did. As a result, it was possible to use him to bypass tricky parts of the level in addition to commandeering getaway vehicles. Both these commandos saw a lot of use in the second half of the game where the difficulty ramps up.

 

[miles teg]

Well that's proof that the missions could be handled indifferent ways, since I didn't know these tricks so I used to play with just the spy and the green berret (and the sapper's noisy item).

But regardless, we basically agree on both this game and commandos, it's just that what you are proposing (and I agree with) it's not so easy to achieve without causing other issues.

One thing that I believe helps is to have levels where you start with 2 teams in different parts of the map: in these cases having duplicates is definitely acceptable.

 

[Great Deceiver]

-25% on the Steam sale. Had hoped for a higher discount...

 

[Notorious]

-25% on the Steam sale. Had hoped for a higher discount...

k

 

[zool]

Bought it a few days ago on GoG for -25% too. With the backlog I have, I could easily have waited two years and bought it for 5$ but given what I've seen from the demo, the devs really did a great job, so you might as well encourage them and buy their game at near full price (esp. if you want to see a sequel).

 

[HoboForEternity]

same, a friend can't shut up about how awesome it is. caved in and bought it at 25%

 

[Great Deceiver]

Bought it too. It's awesome.

 

[Sranchammer]

Except for being full of nips and weaboos, the game is good.

 

[Darth Roxor]

why aren't there more people making them?

Because es hard.

 

[Jimmious]

imagine having "evangelist" as your job title.

Sounds funny but "evangelists" tend to get a lot of money, especially in the IT sector... If you see a "Microsoft Technical Evangelist" for example, be sure that he is being payed well

 

[Cyberarmy]

Seems like they are working on console versions and bug/performance fixes for a long time...

http://steamcommunity.com/app/418240/discussions/0/133258593390118933/

Sorry :/
It is already fixed internally, like many of the other bugs.
The big problem here is that we have been working on the console version of the game for the last months.
Doing this we made a lot of performance improvements etc. to the game.
What this means, though is that lots of stuff has been going on under the hood of the game.
That means we cant just push a quick PC-hotfix to change these issues, since making a new build of the game with all those changes without testing it enough could create problems. So it needs to be tested thoroughly and until the console version is done (which it is very, very soon <3) we couldn't start with this testing, since things might change.

Pushing this patch will also mean, that quicksaves etc are lost for everyone who updates. Important: The progress of levels etc. would not be lost, but people would have to restart their currrent mission. This would of course♥♥♥♥♥♥them off if it just happened automatically.
So we need to figure something out here as well to communicate these problems and find solutions. We already have something in mind here but it makes things a little more complicated, as you can imagine

On the bright side: Once that patch ships it should fix most problems AND give a huge boost to loading times for example We are already down to only a few seconds of quickloading on consoles, so for most PCs with an SSD etc it will be almost instant.
Level loading times will also decrease.


So you can see, sadly it isn't so easy to just fix stuff like that . We are working on getting that patch out, but it will still take time.

Sorry about that.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Seems like they are working on console versions and bug/performance fixes for a long time...

http://steamcommunity.com/app/418240/discussions/0/133258593390118933/

Sorry :/
It is already fixed internally, like many of the other bugs.
The big problem here is that we have been working on the console version of the game for the last months.
Doing this we made a lot of performance improvements etc. to the game.
What this means, though is that lots of stuff has been going on under the hood of the game.
That means we cant just push a quick PC-hotfix to change these issues, since making a new build of the game with all those changes without testing it enough could create problems. So it needs to be tested thoroughly and until the console version is done (which it is very, very soon <3) we couldn't start with this testing, since things might change.

Pushing this patch will also mean, that quicksaves etc are lost for everyone who updates. Important: The progress of levels etc. would not be lost, but people would have to restart their currrent mission. This would of course♥♥♥♥♥♥them off if it just happened automatically.
So we need to figure something out here as well to communicate these problems and find solutions. We already have something in mind here but it makes things a little more complicated, as you can imagine

On the bright side: Once that patch ships it should fix most problems AND give a huge boost to loading times for example We are already down to only a few seconds of quickloading on consoles, so for most PCs with an SSD etc it will be almost instant.
Level loading times will also decrease.


So you can see, sadly it isn't so easy to just fix stuff like that . We are working on getting that patch out, but it will still take time.

Sorry about that.

ow, it seems i am gonna hold out playin this till the patch rolls out meguess

 

[Urbanolo]

ow, it seems i am gonna hold out playin this till the patch rolls out meguess

Don't. The game is extraordinary in the current state and definitely worth a playthrough. I haven't encountered any bugs and I've played it at release.

 

[Darth Roxor]

ow, it seems i am gonna hold out playin this till the patch rolls out meguess

Don't. The game is extraordinary in the current state and definitely worth a playthrough. I haven't encountered any bugs and I've played it at release.

this

 

[Zombra]

ow, it seems i am gonna hold out playin this till the patch rolls out meguess

I have to agree with my colleagues. One visible bug on one achievement if you do a certain thing in one level is a ridiculous reason to hold your breath on this excellent work. Play it today.

 

[LESS T_T]

Also:



"We're actually working on a next big project which is similar genre to Shadow Tactics"

 

[Zombra]

"We're actually working on a next big project which is similar genre to Shadow Tactics"

Bah, that sounds like same genre but different gameplay. I'd rather reverse those, but eh maybe it will also be great.

 

[ColCol]

Clearly with the little evidence available the new game is a Edo period sniper game.

 

[zool]

Just finished the last mission, had a blast with the game. I still can't believe how it came out of nowhere. Watched the credits at the end and that's some awesome deutsche qualität on all levels here, mixed with great Japanese voice-overs. Has anyone checked if any of the developers who worked at Spellbound on Desperados more than a decade ago joined Mimimi Entertainement? That would explain a lot.

Extremely minor nitpicks :
- not being able to tie up knocked down enemies and civilians make (admittedly self-imposed) non-lethal playthroughs a chore.
- civilians are shown by the same color than enemies on the minimap, it would have been great if they showed up in a different color.
- it would have been nice to have character stats added up for all thirteen missions when you finish the game, so you can see who your best killer is and so on.

 

[Silva]

Got this for PS4 after trying the demo and HOLY COW what a great game. And playing with a controller where you control characters directly like an action game feels soooooo good.