Ereban: Shadow Legacy

[b] This game is sooooo much fun, more people need to play it! [/b] It's a great stealth game with a really fun mechanic, Shadow Merge, that lets you to roll around unseen in any shadow area, including up walls, for a timed period. It's hugely satisfying and gets you to think about your path and movement in a completely different way. There's a fantastic flow to it, and the game uses it very well, not just for stealth, but also for reaching hidden areas and solving puzzles. The world is unique and eerie, and the graphics are beautiful. The character designs and character development are cool, and the voice acting is really good. Altogether, it creates a satifyingly immersive experience. The story is engaging and interesting, and kept me dialed in the whole time. There's a (small) degree of choices-matter, and the game has different endings that depend on your own moral compass, which I enjoyed. The game isn't perfect. I came across a few hilarious bugs: I got caught inside a wall once, and another time I clipped through a massive vault door and fell into a different part of the level. To be honnest, it almost feels appropriate for a game that turns you into a shadow, and it's super easy to reload the last checkpoint and just go back a minute or two. I also had a few instances of the controls getting weird through a change of camera angle, and I got caught because of it a couple of times. That was frustrating, but the joyful flow of moving in and out of the shadows, from the ground to the walls, vastly outweighs the occasional issue. The game's levels vary quite a bit in scale. Some are quite short and linear, while others are fairly large, more open, and a lot longer. I enjoyed each of them in its own way, and ended up finding the variety more intresting. The game guides you through the levels a fair bit, which I actually liked. There's still a lot of figuring-out to do, and it helped progress the story consistently. It took me a couple of levels to fully click with the mechanics, and once I did I switched it to hard difficulty. I actully think there would be room for an even harder mode. I left the guidance markers enabled (occasional marks on the wall) but they can be reduced or disabled entirely, which is cool and will make the game fun to replay. It's a fairly short game. I like exploring every corner, and it took me around 15 hours to complete. Each level contains a bunch of notes you can find that develop the lore and do a great job of fleshing out the world and the perspective of the differenct factions. There's a few short sidequests which are neat. The gear upgrades and skills tree are a good balance: satisfying to develop without being overcomplicated. The game has great replayability. There are multiple ways to go through each level: eliminate guards quietly, sneak past them entirely, experiment with gear, or challenge yourself not to use any. Different badges encourage playing around with different styles and reward finishing the level in a particular way (ghost, ruthless, or merciful). Overall, I had a fantastic time playing through Ereban: Shadow Legacy, and I can't recommend it highly enough. I originally picked it up though a Humble Bundle, and I had so much fun playing it that I bought a second copy to support the devs and gift it to my brother so he can play it too. Knowing that the project began while the devs were still students, and was carried forward by a core team of only eight people for quite a while, makes it super impressive. It's a real shame they were dropped by their publisher before the PC release, because the game deserves a lot more attention. Give it a got, you'll have a great time!