Styx: Shards of Darkness - Styx: Master of Shadows sequel

[Parabalus]

I got the amber dagger+stealth/kill ultimates so I took a break from ghosting - it's pretty rad to chain kill people that way, though by the time you get them almost everyone is in heavy armor.

I constantly seem to forget that I have Cloning and Invisibility at my disposal. But it's just more fun to play without soft cheat mode.

There are some scenarios in later levels which are really hard to deconstruct, if you're going for Mercy, without using clones or invis. They are both IMO weaker than the craftables.

Spoiler

once you steal armor and report success you are supposed to finish mission by going up few meters. Couldnt find a way to do so normally. The only path I found was to make few jumps in plain sight and there is elf always facing that direction. I could either use poison dart, invis or clone for distraction. THen I decided to play with egg. Range was too small to throw it any meaningful spot. That being said you can throw it while jumping(possibly doing so while free falling for death?) which gave me enough edge to teleport myself up

I saves myself once with the egg, with the clone tree invisibility ultimate - threw an egg just as I was about to be discovered, then ran away with the clone and later rebirthed to him.

On that part you menationed, I first threw sand at the torch, then died while climbing. Second time "Distraction item" did the charm. The game's levels are really well crafted with a bunch of options.



How do you guys deal with the giant bees? Crossbowing them down is very effective, but I feel like I'm missing something. Also, do you manage to get the gold Swiftness insignia on a first run of a mission? It seems awfully tight to me, but I'm a bit out of practice.

 

[Heretic]

Only 11 thousand owners on Steam. What went wrong?! The first game has 460 thousand owners.
The game couldn't have flopped that hard, could it? The first part was a good stealth game, this is an improvement... Do people not appreciate this genre? Is it saturated? (Hardly) Is the game not that good? Does it have technical issues?

 

[Morgoth]

People have shit taste and prefer Herpa Derpa Effect, that's what is wrong.

 

[Roguey]

Only 11 thousand owners on Steam. What went wrong?! The first game has 460 thousand owners.
The game couldn't have flopped that hard, could it? The first part was a good stealth game, this is an improvement... Do people not appreciate this genre? Is it saturated? (Hardly) Is the game not that good? Does it have technical issues?

Those are sales it accumulated over time.

If Sunday passes and it doesn't match or surpass the peak players of the first one, that's a cause of concern.

 

[Parabalus]

Only 11 thousand owners on Steam. What went wrong?! The first game has 460 thousand owners.
The game couldn't have flopped that hard, could it? The first part was a good stealth game, this is an improvement... Do people not appreciate this genre? Is it saturated? (Hardly) Is the game not that good? Does it have technical issues?

They didn't pay the "professionals" their cut, just look at this :

GameSpot awarded it 6.0 out of 10, saying "an experience that feels like it's stuck in the past.".

That should be a fucking badge of honor.

I liked it a lot and will probably get the first part when I find the time.

 

[Roguey]

Eurotrash getting middling scores is nothing new though http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/styx-master-of-shadows

 

[Infinitron]

I'd like to see a Codex review of these games if somebody is willing to write one.

 

[Parabalus]

I'd like to see a Codex review of these games if somebody is willing to write one.

I'll do it when I finish the first part, which could take a bit, since it's apparently twice as long.

Review Preview :

Styx 2 has better character development than Tworment.

Eurotrash getting middling scores is nothing new though http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/styx-master-of-shadows

In some ways Styx feels like a stealth game from an earlier era, but one that's more dated then vintage. It tries to pick up a few tricks from more modern games in the genre, but much of its core wouldn't have been out of place alongside the earlier Tenchu or Metal Gear Solid games. 5/10

You're right, the first one got barraged even harder. Frenchies don't pay enough bribe money apparently.

 

[flyingjohn]

Only 11 thousand owners on Steam. What went wrong?! The first game has 460 thousand owners.
The game couldn't have flopped that hard, could it? The first part was a good stealth game, this is an improvement... Do people not appreciate this genre? Is it saturated? (Hardly) Is the game not that good? Does it have technical issues?

All those sales were probably from bundle sales.
Modern gamer's don't like stealth games that have stealth game play(which styx has in plenty).
It is the same reason a call of duty player will play witness and brag about how puzzle games are awesome(yet the witness is simplistic and almost mobile like compared to any heavyweights like myst or asa),they just want to play something labeled "hardcore and complex " not actual complex game play.
I mean every single modern stealth game play elements is there to remove actual stealth game play(tagging,wall hacks and dumb ai)
Let's just hope when the bundles and discount happen that they actually recover some sales.

 

[Roguey]

I'll do it when I finish the first part, which could take a bit, since it's apparently twice as long.

Ha, that's one way to solve the level recycling problem.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Are ownership numbers even reliable shortly after launch?

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Abu Antar]

Are ownership numbers even reliable shortly after launch?

One should wait a week or so. They are hit and miss this early on.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Parabalus]

ive missed one optional objective

Spoiler

loved hunters vilage so much that Ive both put drunken cpt in his boat and gave airship back to imprisoned one. After completing I can see missed optional: spy on dwarfs. Where was that one? I was quite through or so I thought

about equipment, whats the actual bonus of going bare handed into mission?

You can

Spoiler

find a treasure. You have to listen to 2-3 groups of dwarves, then you get a subquest to get to the top of the lighthouse. You can also skip all that and

Spoiler

just take the cloak of invisibility from the well next to the airship. There is also a crouch passage in the left cliff face, when standing at the tavern entrance and viewing the ocean.

It's just for style points I guess, you lose the glowing dagger runes so that's a plus.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Parabalus]

Spoiler

Can you give me more directions about dwarfs groups? I think something was bugged as even some group of humans that obviously were to talk were just standing there and was forcing them to move by throwing objects.
Went to top of light house without triggering anything but there was nothing of value

also nothing in the well.

There are a bunch of them and you need to listen to 2-3 to trigger the light house. You can't break their dialogue or it won't trigger, which is easy to do since they can smell you, breaking the quest. It's this well, you can just pick it up and bypass them

Spoiler

 

[Morgoth]

The game seems to be quite lenghtly. Of course I take my time with everything but I'm already 6 hours in and still only at Mission 2, section 3. So far, I like it more than it's predecessor.

Also, slitting homosexual elf throats is a joy.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[flyingjohn]

Well unless the game had a pretty low budget it is a failure according to steam spy.
A jump from 12 to 13k in a day means the final owner count will probably be less then 50k.
I guess this is a perfect example of why it is impossible to make a modern stealth game with any actual stealth game play elements(no wall hacks,tags,etc),unless you include predator style stealth killings as the primary focus.

 

[Roguey]

I would have bought a copy already, except it will take me several months to download it so I might as well wait until it looks like patches are done (and if patches are done I might as well wait until it's on sale and so on).

 

[Great Deceiver]

Where do you live, Roguey?

 

[Roguey]

Where do you live, Roguey?

My bandwidth cap is just something I have to live with for the foreseeable future.