Random thoughts about the game (SPOILERS!!!!!)

[InconspicuousBlackVan]

Some random things and thoughts in completely random order:

The ending. It really seems like there should have been one more mission to tie things up. The final scene with Djarak just bluntly cuts away into credits giving almost no closure whatsoever. There is war, Lyssril and Halledryn are who knows where and Djarak betrays Styx for some unknown reason even though he helped him achieve his goals by achieving his own.....

So, if Styx gets rid of his amber addiction and its production is stopped, will he lose his amber related abilities, namely cloning, amber vision and invisibility? I expect not because those all are integral parts of the games, but it better be explained somehow in the possible sequel how and why he can still use them. If they remain, I feel as though some rebalancing has to be done. Invisibility can feel brutally overpowered a lot of times and something should be done about that. Amber vision is there pretty much only to be spammed constantly without remorse the entire game. Cloning is also probably overpowered as hell but I don't know for sure because I don't use it much.

Kudos to them for at least trying to tie the games with the game that started it all: Of Orcs and Men. Still waiting for another game with Arkhail as he was much more interesting to me than Styx in the first game.

Also, the game could be split into 2 parts. The first 6 or so levels were very good and I enjoyed every moment of it. I was actually telling myself "No more backtracking missions, nicely done, good to see they learned from the first game." And the very next mission? It starts all over again. The maps are simply not dynamic enough to make repeated visits interesting enough.

The insignias are really not well thought out. The swiftness one should not even be a thing and is 100% contradictory with thief. I ignore time completely in games so I couldn't care less about the swiftness (got gold everywhere in everything but swiftness which was mostly "not ranked"), but completionists will have no option but to play everything twice. In a given level you can choose one of 2 things: "Do I want swiftness or everything else?" Removing the swiftness (and redistributing the accompanying skill points) would solve this problem. It is also important to note that if there were no tokens (thief insignia), the game would be probably like 40% shorter.

Some improvements to the behavior of the enemies would be welcome especially curing the severe night blindness everyone seems to suffer from. Many times it happened, where I was standing completely in the open and just because I was fully hidden for some strange reason (the dagger was fully glowing), the NPCs couldn't spot me from 3 meters away while looking directly at me. That made me go "WTF how is this working???" so many times it isn't even funny. Being fully hidden should only severely slow down how fast their alertness level rises, not make you completely invisible if they have direct line of sight.

I really like the NPC armor design in this game. The heavy armor variants of enemies look awesome and the art team did a great job. I am not usually a stealth game player but I think the main reason I play these games is because the universe and the art style of the games is so compelling.

I was also glad to see improvements in the storytelling. Actual cutscenes, and even decent voice acting (other than Styx). The only glaring weakness in this regard remains the nonexistent lip syncing.

[StickyPawz]

My pet-peeve is the insignias rank notification that now display as you're playing a level.

Distracting to have rank status *popups* on screen … Especially for goals I wasn't working towards. All this info is perfectly fine staying confined to the TAB menu.

[Count Eyokir]

when I hit the ending, I was in shock. I said aloud to myself "Thats it?!" because it truely felt like so weird. I was really enjoying the developing relationship between Halledryn and Styx but then she vanished for the last few missions with no word on if she escaped the dungeons alright. The ending with Djarak was so stunningly abrupt and nonsensical I find myself truley wishing not to play this game again, it spoilt the game that much for me.

[Space is the Place]

Well, regarding the ending I think that it comes to the fact that the first game is a close story about who is Styx, on this one Styx is participant of the story, Djarak is the true main protagonist of this one, but of course we play the game as Styx. The ending feels irelevant to Styx because he was just in for the lulz, he had no reason to start a war between dwarves and elves other than "that sounds like fun" and he only helped Halledryn to get some ambar.

I honestly think the story would have being more impactful if we had more time with both Halledryn and Djarak, if Halledryn plot didn´t simply vanish after mission 6 and we never see her again, and if Djarak was more sympathetic but had screw on Styx more than he actually does in the game.

Regardless I expect the ending to be a bait and switch, I seriously want a part 3, and i want Djarak to be alive and playable. You start the third game with Styx, war between Dwarves and Elves still goes on and Orcs are being involved which Humans are not happy about; eventually it is revealed that Styx defeats Djarak on the ending of 2 but let´s him live as his prisioner, and then he frees him so he helps Styx in whatever thing he is into.

With Styx we get the gameplay of an acrobat, the clones, invisibility, using his short stature to hide... with Djarak things could be the opposite, you lose most of the acrobatics, the hidding places for Styx (but still you can use wardroves and crates since we see human bodies fit in there when you hide their corpses) and both clones and invisibility, but Djarak could be more resourceful on combat (not a killing machine but perhaps being able to defeat at least 3 dudes at the same time), carry more items as well as dead bodies from heavy armored guys and dwarves, be more silent (thus helping him compensate for all the places he can´t go without the short stature or acrobatics) and off course the main gameplay feature for him would be to disguise into other races and people, with limitations like only having two disguise ready for use that are from the last two people you killed, forcing you to kill somebody in order to move around and to think if you´re gonna kill the next guy and lose the previous disguise, could be even more complex if you introduce ranks. And since and Elf I would even go as far as to give him an ability to affect Rubies so he can enrage them and made them attack their masters or stuff like that.

[Dehya]

Originally posted by Caius Misus:

Some random things and thoughts in completely random order:

The ending. It really seems like there should have been one more mission to tie things up. The final scene with Djarak just bluntly cuts away into credits giving almost no closure whatsoever. There is war, Lyssril and Halledryn are who knows where and Djarak betrays Styx for some unknown reason even though he helped him achieve his goals by achieving his own.....

So, if Styx gets rid of his amber addiction and its production is stopped, will he lose his amber related abilities, namely cloning, amber vision and invisibility? I expect not because those all are integral parts of the games, but it better be explained somehow in the possible sequel how and why he can still use them.

The game does actually offer an explanation as to how Styx could retain his amber abilities, which Im guessing is something.
Here's how:
(Also, spoilers.)

So in-game there are 7 pieces of Quartz you can get. But there are 5 skill tree's and you can only pick 1 "Ultimate" from each one of the two you have available, meaning even if you max out all skills, you'll still have 2 Quartz Shards left over. Not only that, but the game has a total of 9,500 Skill Points, and if you max out all the tree's, there'll still be 500 Skill Point's left over.

Why? There's a good reason for that.

Because there's actually 1 more completely hidden Skill that can only be unlocked by obtaining 5 Ultimate's, 1 from each Skill Tree, before this Hidden Ultimate Ability to rule all others becomes available to you.

Its called Flow Control. With it, our favourite Goblin Assassin can regenerate his Amber Supplies without need of a vial. Its description even reads "All this pure Quartz allows Styx to free himself from Amber and master the flow of Amber within his body. Amber now slowly regenerates itself (inactive during invisbility).

There you go. There's your reasoning as to why, even if Amber production does cease, Styx could retain his Amber fueled abilities without having to stockpile viles of the stuff, as if he's prepating for the end times lol.

Oh, not only that, but there's also said to be other world tree's on other continents as well. In one of the missions in Styx: Master of Shadows, there's a conversation that can be heard between two NPC's. (Im gonna go back and confirm which mission after I finish writing this. Maybe see if I can get a recording of the conversation.)

NPC 1: You knew that there were other world tree's? Everywhere on the continent? And this one is the only one in human territory?
NPC 2: No, and I don't care.
NPC 1: Well, this is gonna be a long day...
EDIT: Video as promised | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K1OCx9wPVM

Now I do want to acknowledge that Styx does say in this game that "the last world tree was destroyed in Akenash" so this could infer that they are extinct in a manner of speaking, though this may not be intended to be taken literally, which could mean there are other World Tree's still out there, with Amber still flowing freely from them. Plus that doesn't mean the end of Amber even if the tree's that produce them are gone.

Also, if I remember right, all the way back in the game where Styx first appeared, of Orcs and Men, there was a substance called "Amber Powder" which can be used as an explosive, potentially meaning Amber is still something that exists in Styx's world, even a good 200 years after Akenash's collapse, which is when the OOAM takes place.

[Warpuke]

The thing I HATE in this game is the boss missions. That's not stealth, thats a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ 3rd person platformer. I hate platformers. This isnt super mario.