Having recently come out of Early Access, Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms is available now for $30. It’s an isometric action RPG in the vein of Diablo or Titan Quest, and offers players a diverse and deep experience even if not particularly long (although the sequel is likely out next year). The game takes place directly after the events of 2004’s Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition. I have never played The Inquisition, but I bought it on GOG after playing Shadows for a few hours because I wanted to experience that story. Anyway, since Shadows’ release, several quick patches have already come up to address launch time bugs, which really any game of any budget has, so it’s good to see the devs participating and responding to community needs. In short, if you played this in Early Access and had trouble, it’s quite likely those issues have been fixed. The most recent 3MB patch from yesterday fixed a minor issue for me that made it impossible to get to the ‘Exit’ option in the main menu while running at 2560×1080 (I had to use ALT+F4 to exit the game before now). In my experience thus far with the game, I haven’t experienced any other noticeable issues, but I’m sure some tweaks to the gameplay and balance are forthcoming.
Shadows has a compelling, multi-layered story that you can get immersed in whether you have played the predecessor or not, but if you are familiar with HK: The Inquisition, there are references to events and characters in Shadows that give you a more complete experience. Since I had not played the previous game, I looked up where Shadows fits in. In brief, a powerful relic known as the The Godslayer sword was destroyed by the protagonist at the end of HK: The Inquisition. The destruction of this sword disrupts the veil between the mortal realm and the Dreamworld, and now demons have begun to take over the Dreamworld and make it a Shadow Realm. A mysterious character uses a hidden well of souls deep underground to conjure the Devourer, a demon that has the ability to consume souls of fallen warriors and possess them in the mortal realm, including their memories and personalities. The mysterious man at the start of Shadows makes a pact with the Devourer to possess one of three fallen warrior’s souls in order to attempt to turn back the forces of evil in both the mortal and dreamworld realms.
So that’s roughly the overall story line, but each of the sixteen playable characters (“only” nine through your first play-through) has a story of their own, including the Devourer. The Devourer is the main character; if he dies, it’s game over. You can only control the Devourer in the Shadow realm, and switching between this realm and the mortal realm is as easy as pressing A to go into Shadow, or S, D, or F to switch to any of the other three members of your party. The first few hours see just the Devourer and the chosen warrior you selected together, but soon after other characters are met within the story and join up. Which character you choose at the start of the game is obviously important; combat styles vary significantly between them. Melee-focused players might want to start with Kalig, the Bandit King. A Hunter character who looks cool as hell and carries a bow is also available in Jasker. My selection turned out to be Evia, the Fire Mage. She lived some 300 years ago and finds her memories of Thole and neighboring areas differ very much from the present.
Interactions between the Devourer and his ‘puppets’ are interesting, and also between the puppets themselves. The variety of character types and personalities between the group is very diverse and the inter-dialog between the group gives them an appreciable amount of depth and intrigue as you learn more about all of them. You will face a lot of choices within NPC conversations and quests that have lasting effects in many cases, and there are even pacts that the Devourer can make with other demons that you can choose to break with your mortal character. So there are some cool interactions and possibilities there that lead to multiple endings and good reason to use multiple save slots.
Each character has their own skill tree with passive and active abilities, and active abilities can actually vary depending on what weapon you are currently wielding. Multiple upgrades per skill (usually just stats boosts, i.e., increased damage, lowered cooldown, etc) means that are are always plenty of ways to spend your skill points. Leveling up is not a common thing in Shadows, meaning that each level with a character gives a sense of triumph and excitement; you won’t level up nearly as fast as you do in Diablo III anyway. Maintaining a good balance and synergy between your party is not only required in the tougher areas, but fun. As with any game that offers this kind of insta-change party system, you will come up with combinations and routines that suit your playstyle.
In any exploration or combat scenario, it’s important to not forget the Devourer, for only he can traverse the shadow realm. Within the shadow realm you are safe from most enemies in the mortal realm (Shadowwalkers exist in both, so watch out), but the shadow realm has its own enemies, and lots of them. The Devourer, fortunately, has his on XP, Skills, and Inventory that only he can possess and use. Better still is that every area that you visit in the mortal realm can instantly be switched to the shadow realm, giving you a very different visual presentation as well as more gameplay options in that there are additional items, puzzles, NPCs and quests, and paths (sometimes safer than the path offered in the mortal realm) that you can only get to using the shadow realm. It’s not quite like playing two games at once, but for every area I went to, I always made sure to switch to the Devourer to see the shadow realm perspective of the same area. Just be ready to move or fight (or both) as soon as you transition realms in either direction though; sometimes you can appear right in the middle of several foes.
Inevitably, you’ll have some party members die. So long as the Devourer is alive, the game goes on. You can revive fallen party members quickly if you have enough collected souls, indicated by the blue bar on the HUD. You also use these souls to heal up instantly while exploring or fighting simply by pressing and holding Space. The healing ratio is not one to one, perhaps obviously, because character’s HP gets into the thousands while your collected soul count maxes out well below that. In practice, ten or so souls is worth a few hundred HP, at least on Normal, just be sure to let go of spacebar once you have used the souls you need or it will continue to drain them even though your health is already maxed out. I see that as more of a thoughtful feature than a bug, as it requires the player to take a little extra care and responsibility instead of just being lazy and holding the spacebar down. Souls are gotten from defeating enemies. Alternatively, once you have access to the Realm of Souls, all party members get resurrected and their health restored upon visiting. This is also where you change out party members. The Realm of Souls is reachable via the Cenotaphs, which are the fast travel portals that only the Devourer can use which transports you to previously visited areas. Speaking of areas, while HK: The Inquisition took place exclusively in Corwenth, Shadows includes Corwenth and three other major hubs. These are the dark jungles of Taymuria, the Outlands, and the frozen tundras of the Sura Wastes. There are more than fifty zones total amongst these locations, and some eighty-plus quests.
Let’s shift gears a bit. To my surprise, one of the first compelling aspects of Shadows I noticed was the quality of the voice-acting, and this was something that would persist as I continued to play. There is a lot of spoken dialogue from a variety of your characters and NPCs alike, including those from the mortal realm and the shadow realm (i.e. demons and souls, etc., whose voices are inherently different than mortals’). It’s pretty darn rare, especially for a game priced at $30 that has an indie-like budget, for the dialogue to be this interesting and spoken so well, so hats off to Games Farm and BitComposer for that.
Similarly, the soundtrack — which the Budapest orchestra performed by the way — is great. Sound effects are too, but I have to say the voice-acting and score are more impactful. A very wide color palette was used for all of the game’s diverse visuals and it’s eye-candy for sure, especially with the DX11 features enabled and running at a high res, 2560×1080 in my case. Framerate issues were a non-factor with my new rig, composed of a 4790K, 16GB TridentX, and Gigabyte GTX970. Recommended specs call for a 3Ghz i7, 8GB, and a GTX 680, by the way. One advantage of playing in ultra-wide res is that the HUD elements are way off to the edges of the screen, giving you a massive playable area in the middle while not sacrificing any of the convenience and realtime info the HUD provides.
One part of the HUD is of course a mini-map that shows various icons that indicate places for fast travel or the exit for a particular ‘dungeon’ you are in, and so forth. Of note, when you first go to start a new game, you are asked if you want to have your quest objective markers visible on the map, or play Shadows “old school” and not have the quest markers on the map. I decided to play without the quest markers, and I’m happy I did, although I will say at times I’m a little bit lost, although never for very long. The Journal, accessed by pressing J, makes it pretty easy to keep track of your goals, plus whichever quest you have selected as active has its details situated on the right hand side of the HUD. That said, I wouldn’t mind the ability to toggle between standard and old school mode from time to time while in-game.
Navigating your way around the opening scene in the city Tholes and all of the dungeons and forests and cool places you will visit is a cinch, you simply point and click where you want to go. You can zoom in and out with the mouse wheel to get your preferred view, and I should add that combat animations are slightly on the underwhelming side so I found myself playing zoomed out most of the time. Plus, playing in this way makes it easier to move about the game world quicker. The game starts you off with several tutorials about the controls, including one that I use constantly: ALT. Pressing Alt highlights and labels all objects on the screen that you can interact with, be it some silver you can loot, an NPC to talk to, a monster, or destructible objects, etc. Since the camera is fixed in its nice isometric view and items in the world can blend in, it’s nice to have this so you can be sure you’re not missing anything.
Other important keys include QWER and ASDF, which are used for your skills and to switch between characters, respectively. What skills are assigned to QWER are up to you and can be changed anytime, assuming of course you have leveled up enough to unlock enough skills to fill those slots. The same goes for characters — to start with, you have the Devourer and your chosen warrior soul, but more become available as the story unfolds. Skills are bound to characters and the weapons they have equipped. Some skills, especially ranged ones that Evia has a lot of, have an area-effect that you can aim before casting. Oh, I liked that when you hover over an inventory item, you can not only quickly tell if it’s suitable for any characters you have in your party currently, but a side-by-side comparison window pops up that shows you what you have equipped versus whatever item you are hovering over, if they’re in a comparable category that is (i.e. comparing one bow to another). The brief summary description of every item at the bottom of each such window, and the massive space you are allotted in the inventory, means you won’t spend much time micro-managing stuff, which is nice given that there are over 1,000 items in-game. Recipes that you find or buy can be used to craft goods as crafting anvils or alchemy labs too, although the crafting was a little sluggish.
It’s taken me a while to get to this point, but no discussion of Shadows would be approaching complete without looking at the combat. The biggest point I would make about combat is that you have to be active; staying your ground and clicking on enemies to attack is a good way to waste a lot of HP, and eventually that will catch up to you. What works best for me, and this sounds really obvious, is clicking to attack, and then immediately moving by clicking again in a nearby space. For my first couple of hours I didn’t really do this, and while it didn’t cost me any restarts, I just realized that my collected soul stock was getting reduced fast, and that instead of waiting for an attack, I just had to pre-emptively move after I made an attack. I haven’t looked back since, and doing this makes the combat far more dynamic and engaging than just standing your ground and taking a beating (while giving out one). Anyway, combat became more enjoyable after this little ‘discovery,’ and even more so once I started getting more party members that had their own unique take on battle.
With that, let’s get to the summary…
