Shadowgate 2

This game has been released in an unfinished state and clearly hasn't been play tested by QA. It's riddled with bugs that range from "annoying" to "game breaking" and features some poorly designed gameplay. When there is a patch I might reconsider the review and try to finish the game. The basic premise in Shadowgate 2 is to walk around the environment in a first person perspective, look for key items, clues, fight enemies with magic and solve puzzles. The main protagonist Raven likes to comment on everything and her companion Yorick is there to give the player hints. From time to time the player encounters an enemy. These enemies float around statically until you approach them. By approaching the enemy, the game switches into a turn-based combat mode. Every enemy is unique, which means there are no multiple foes of one enemy type wandering the castle but instead they are mini-bosses. Each of these enemies can only be defeated using a certain strategy, which can be obtained from stories. Raven simply remembers these stories upon entering certain areas. Sometimes she literally remembers the story right before encountering the appropriate mini-boss. The design feels very lazy. The turn-based combat is very simplistic and literally boils down to executing the correct spells in the correct order with little to no room for mistakes. With each encounter your health bar resets to 100%. There is zero strategy involved. Use ice magic on fire enemies, thunder magic on earth enemies etc. You get the idea. If you fail to execute the correct spell at the correct moment and die, it is possible to retry the fight and work your way onwards using a simple trial and error approach until the enemy is finished. The graphics, music and sound effects are all entirely generic and uninspired. The 3D graphics in particular are boring and simply poorly made, apart from some key items here and there that stand out with better quality. The 2D artwork and the voice acting are solid though. I reviewed Shadowgate 2 on it's own merit and so far it has been a very generic and stale experience with bugs locking me out from continuing. The whole game feels to me as if it is made mostly from generic "game maker assets" with some unique elements like the artwork thrown in. The solid 2D artwork and voice acting can't outweight the negative aspects of Shadowgate 2.

Stumble around a Unity asset castle on an unstable framerate, solving puzzles that amount to just rubbing items on objects, and occasionally fight some enemies with painfully slow turn-based combat that requires extremely specific attack patterns.

A Disappointing Departure I’m only an hour into Shadowgate 2, and I’ve already encountered game-breaking bugs and graphical issues. While I expect these to be patched eventually and can overlook them to some extent, my bigger concern is that this game simply doesn’t feel like Shadowgate. I loved what they did with the remake of the original Shadowgate, but this sequel is nothing like that. Instead, it feels more like a mobile game—something I’d expect to play on my iPad—rather than a proper continuation of the series. It seems to be attempting a blend of Legend of Grimrock and Wizardry, but it executes that style poorly. The interface is both overly simplistic and frustratingly clumsy, making interactions feel tedious rather than intuitive. The biggest issue, however, is the combat. Battles are frustrating, even when you know exactly what to do. The difficulty feels poorly balanced—why even have hit points if I’m reduced to 5/100 after every fight? Most games ramp up difficulty gradually, but Shadowgate 2 throws players into punishing encounters right from the start. This will likely turn off newcomers to the series. That said, I don’t want to be entirely negative. One thing I do appreciate so far is the puzzles. While they aren’t on the same level as Shadowgate, they are at least decent. Overall, this isn’t what I was expecting or hoping for in a Shadowgate sequel. Even if the bugs and graphical issues are fixed, the core game play choices may still leave longtime fans disappointed.

What an insult to Shadowgate and Beyond Shadowgate. This feels like a bad mobile game. You are frozen in place EVERY TIME you click anything, the screen darkens and the main character talks. The fighting? What the hell. See enemy, walk into enemy, screen freexes and covers in blood, character or the skull talks over it all, then the creature hits you, then round 1 starts and the painfully slow fighting starts, including pointless descriptions of attacks that slowly type on the screen.. The game isn't grid movement or room movement, it's free roam until combat locks you in place, or you know, interacting with anything or if the npcs want to talk. I've completed the other 2 games I mentioned but this, I can't get past these horrid systems you've put in place.And for gods sake why is the female hugely chested, that wasn't needed for this type of game. Plus the game stutters, walk one way, turn and walk forward? nope you are back to where you were previously but turned around. This feels like one of those really cheap phone games that baby you around everything rather than an intelletual lore based game. This is not a "point and click", the direction you've tried to go in is more akin to Legends of Grimrock but really badly. The free roam movement gives no benefits over the grid/room based. Compare the dragon encounter in Shadowgate 1 with the first dragon you come up against in this game, danger, puzzle, trying to find out what to do, this game? Here's an animated two headed dragon extra from the Jason and the Argonauts 1963 film, kill it in 3 moves, but first let me talk about it and give you turns while it mauls you. If you are making in free roam, don't lock people in place, decide on one method. This game just feel bad,which is a shame because I like the world's lore and logical puzzles. Remove the constant freezes and talking on every interaction and maybe I could play it but as it is at the moment, it is too irritating to sit through, I'm hesistant to click anything. But then I just remembered the combat, no, I'm gonna put in for a refund. This was really disappointing.

Shadowgate in name only.

To Be Honest, have you read the negative reviews? It's why this game has such a low rating. The reviews I took the time to read are simple things where the gamers frustration is in getting stuck on a puzzle and or combat mechanic. I myself have not taken the time to write a review. I assure you it would only be of positive experience. In recommending this game and possibly encouraging others to share their experiences in their own review. I first wish to Begin my story by telling you I am a gamer of the original Shadowgate when it popped up on the open market for Nintendo. Are there any folks out there like me that had so much fun with the OG game, and also played De Ja Vu? If you played DeJaVu as well then you must hear my fumiest moment was finding the fat lady in the trunk. Now, back to Shadow gate. Shadow gate via Nintendo decades ago was a completely outside the box, ahead of it's time dungeon crawler. I absolutely loved it and played the living crap out of it. A lifetime later, here I find Shadowgate 2. I may have come across a few bugs in the beginning. I had frustrating moments. I can also tell you, the kindness and genuine concern for players was, and is well met by the developer. Listening to us in the forums as we post bugs and stumbling blocks. They fix and patch these things very quickly. You play as the main protagonist Raven. (Oooh, sexy name for a Goth-Sorc) in direct blood line of Lakmir the Timeless. Lakmir. Say it folks, Lakmir, sends cold electrical shivers down my spine to hear that mythical and Ancient name. Lakmir, The theme is starting off at the Living Castle Shadow Gate! You learn and develop skills and sorcery. Battle monsters strategically and solve puzzles in order to proceed and find hidden paths guarded by lustfilled fiends ready to kill you on the spot as if you were meaningless like a stained spot on the wall. Be wary adventurers , this ambient, atmosphere is not for the faint of heart. Clear thinking and time tested patients will be your only source of allies in this dark void filled with Evil shadows. Do you have what it takes adventurer, or do we need to send you home to drink some milk?

Update 2: Okay i am switching this back to not recommended until the Djinni bug is fixed. This is a widely reported issue by other players, and now its affected me as well. The game specifically gives the player instructions to go and talk to the Djinni to solve the next puzzle, but the Djinni is broken. So once again i cannot recommend this game until its fixed. Update: I rebooted the game this morning to see how things were going, and now im not entirely sure if its a graphics issue or a memory leak. because this morning the frame drops on stage 3 were only to around 80fps, so im not entirely sure what is happening here. Regardless, id sure like to hear something from the Devs on this one. Game is still fun, if not a big departure from previous games. Game is fun, stage 3 is literally unplayable until they patch it. The smoke throughout the stage from whatever magical puzzle thats there, takes the games framerate from around 150+ and drops it to 12-13. Dont buy it until they patch the issues graphically. I will update this after they fix the issue, but until then, both the devs and players need to know what they are getting, and what they are currently getting is a game that is interesting for the first couple of stages, and then just straight up dies on stage 3 entirely.

I hoped, being 3D, that SG 2 would be very similar to SG 64, the best SG, but it is definitely not... SG 2 is 3D, which is cool, but the RPG-like turn-based puzzle spell enemy counters are very boring, repetitive, uninspiring, and just not interesting at all. They also take forever, have zero randomization, and the UI is always getting in your way, and slowing the game down. This game is also not particularly technically good, or artistically pretty, and highly variable framerates often make you feel nauseous and motion sick. It feels like this game had very little playtesting, either by QA playtesters to test for bugs and complete-ability, or by focus group playtesters to make sure the game was actually interesting, engaging, and fun or not. I don't know who the people are that made this game, but I don't think any of them had been involved with making SG 64, SG, or Beyond SG. If you want a fresh SG experience, Beyond Shadowgate is DEFINITELY what you're after. If I had to choose between SG 2 or SG 2014, I would probably pick SG 2.

Had high hopes, but this is pretty lame and really buggy. Couple crashes, and random game logic hangs within the first hour of play (with latest updates as of 3/21/2025). Like monsters will just sit there and you can't do anything but the game engine is not hung. The look overall is half-baked, like it was thrown together in a hurry with little attention to detail. Combat is just annoying trial and error until you figure out the right sequence of spells. Seems like the hardest puzzle is working around the bugs to actually be able to play.

To be honest: I was expecting a complete disaster after the "silent" announcement without any real material and the "silent" release. As a fan of the original Shadowgate and especially Shadowgate 64, I still treated myself to this sequel as a release. What is particularly striking is the new combat system, which consists of turn-based battles. Unfortunately, since there are no real RPG elements, it often comes down to trial and error. The actual puzzles are ok so far and have always been solvable logically. The atmosphere is more reminiscent of the remake than of the hopeless mood from the original and especially SG64 - but Shadowgate II still manages to capture the basic feeling of its predecessors. Due to the low price and the reasonably stable performance, I would give it a slight recommendation for fans. Be careful: there are supposed to be some serious bugs. If they are not resolved, I will withdraw the recommendation