Styx: Blades Of Greed Review - A Stealthy Homage to Thief and Dishonored

Styx: Blades Of Greed Review – A Stealthy Homage to Thief and Dishonored

Fans of immersive simulation games are in for a treat with Styx: Blades Of Greed, the latest entry in the Styx series. This title draws clear inspiration from classics like Thief: The Dark Project and Dishonored, offering a rich, sneaking experience that nearly rivals the best from Looking Glass and Arkane Studios.

Legacy of Immersive Sims

For enthusiasts of Looking Glass Studios and their successor, Arkane Studios, games such as Thief: The Dark Project, Dishonored, Prey, and Deathloop hold a special place in gaming history. These titles are celebrated for granting players exceptional agency, allowing multiple approaches to objectives with powers that reward restraint and non-lethal tactics. The acquisition of Arkane by Microsoft sparked concerns about the future of this unique game-making style, especially after the disappointing response to Redfall and the closure of their Austin studio.

While Dishonored remains a pinnacle of finesse, the Styx franchise has emerged as a worthy, albeit distant, relative in terms of gameplay and design philosophy. The series, starting with 2014's Styx: Master Of Shadows and its sequel Shards Of Darkness, introduces players to Styx, a thieving goblin in a faux medieval, steampunk-influenced world. His gravelly voice and cynical demeanor make him an instantly likable protagonist.

Gameplay and Mechanics

In Blades Of Greed, players navigate multi-layered environments using rooftops, crawl spaces, and shadows to avoid detection. Stealth is paramount, as open combat is deliberately clumsy and unrewarding. Players must creep up behind guards, choosing between silent takedowns or instant kills that risk alerting nearby enemies. The game encourages systematic elimination and hiding of corpses, with mechanics that become more refined through skill trees.

Skill Trees: Unlock abilities like brief invisibility, traps, decoys, and acid for dissolving bodies.
Crafting System: Gather lootable ingredients to create essential tools like acid and traps.
Exploration: Travel via a sailing boat-style zeppelin hub to discrete open-world locations, each featuring dizzyingly tall levels.

New additions such as a grappling hook and miniature glider offer vertical mobility, reducing reliance on ladders and stairs. However, the control system can be occasionally unreliable, leading to missed jumps or accidental alerts. To mitigate this, quick save functionality is conveniently mapped to L3, allowing frequent saves without menu navigation.

World and Narrative

The game's world is expansive, with players splitting time between hunting magical quartz, completing main missions, and undertaking side quests from fellow outlaws on the zeppelin. While the plot takes a back seat to sneaking and thievery, the sandbox stealth arenas reward experimentation. Locations vary from bustling cities to forested areas populated by sound-sensitive cockroaches, though wilderness maps are less engaging than urban settings.

Voice-acting, aside from Styx himself, can feel basic and workmanlike, and graphical glitches occasionally appear in cut scenes. These issues reflect the mid-budget nature of the development, but they are outweighed by the game's ambition and scale.

Final Verdict

Styx: Blades Of Greed is a cracking addition to the series, offering thoughtfully crafted challenges for fans of Dishonored and Thief. It may lack triple-A polish, but it carves its own path with a gruffly appealing hero, consequential skill trees, and sandbox levels that encourage playful stealth. For those starved of exploration, infiltration, and stealth, this game delivers a satisfying experience.

Pros:

Maps designed for experimentation with Styx's skillset, especially the grapple hook and glider.
Large multi-level areas to explore and a likeably roguish antihero.

Cons: