You play as the demon. In this one, the demon is a devourer of the souls of lost heroes. By devouring a soul, the demon can give that hero life again, basically swapping into their body and running around as a sword-swinging fighter or fireball-flinging spellcaster or, the archer one. You can have a handful of puppets (the game’s terminology) at any given time. It’s a party-based RPG but your party is mashed into one person.

That person includes the demon. The demon can jump into the realm of shadows, which not only means more chances to kill things and take their stuff, it can also provide new avenues around the level, additional chances to make money or upgrade, and story tidbits. And everyone levels up, unlocks skills and abilities, and otherwise progresses.

The fun twist on this is that swapping happens instantly, which means you can effectively swap characters mid-combat. Learning how to make this work is when the game really opens up. Initiate combat as a spellcaster, swap to the fast-moving demon to get back out of range, jump to an archer/ranger type and pepper them with arrows, then switch to one of the fighter types to finish them off. Enemies are tough, even at low levels. You’ve got to work every angle, not just charge forward face-first.

Shadows: Awakening follows the Diablo script: Journey to a hub, go through the hub and do all the quests and find out what’s going on, beat up monsters, kill them and take their loot. As in Diablo, it’s a good idea to smash everything you can because it’s full of silver, and then explore every last nook and cranny for secrets. The main story clocks in at around 15 hours with 15 hours of side quests coming to 30 hours total for one playthrough. With each character and mission, there is new dialogue and a new path. While isometric RPGs can be a negative to some, Shadows: Awakening absolutely nails it in the artistic department for environments, enemies, and overall immersion.

THE GOOD
- Replayability is high
- Intuitive Controls
- Puzzles and synchronized attacks
- Talented voice actors
- Immersive atmosphere

THE BAD
- Gameplay can get repetitive
- Progression feels controlled


DISASTER | BAD | MEDIOCRE | OKAY | GOOD | GREAT | AMAZING | MASTERPIECE

If you like this review, then please consider giving it a thumbs up. I've also reviewed other games that you might find interesting. If so please follow Top of the Chart.

Reviewed on: Win10 Home 64-bit, Intel i7, GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4MB GDDR5, 8MB RAM

Shadows: Awakening is a really nice ARPG game where you control one of up to four characters which you can switch anytime. One of these is a demon in the shadow realm which is a special layer of the material world if you want. It's basically the same world, but with important differences. In order to fulfil quests, solve riddles or succeed in challenges, you often need to do things in both layers of the world. For example, a bridge may only exist in the shadow layer and once you moved over it, you can switch back to the material layer and continue on the other side.

There's an individual skill tree to each of the playable characters, allowing to enhance their skills and abilities as they level up. Of course there's lot a loot to collect and not all items are useable by all characters. Items come in four different levels: normal, magic, enchanted and legendary. Of course you're watching out for the legendary stuff.

The world is nicely designed as you would expect from a solid ARPG. Environments are changing as you travel on in your journey, e.g. there's dungeons, desert, woodland, etc.

Fighting typically means clicking the enemies until they die (you can hold the mouse button for repeated attacks though). Depending on your character, you can use melee, ranged or magic attacks. The different skills allow for various special attacks of the respective character.

From my impression, the game is well balanced and fun to play. The graphics and music (from Dynamedion) are nicely done and there's an interesting plot the game is based on. The concept of switching to the shadow layer is unique and one of the best elements in the game. If you're looking for a nice ARPG for single player gameplay, this might be a good choice.

There's one more thing I'd like to add: The game was originally published as Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms by Bitcomposer. The game was incomplete and contained "book 1" only, which means that half of the story and content was still missing. Book 2 was supposed to be delivered some time later for free to the original customers. However, Bitcomposer eventually went bankrupt and didn't want to put any more money into the project. Instead they offered a 50% discount without notifying the dev studio (Games Farm) about it - just to make some more money from an incomplete game. The problem for Games Farm was that they wanted to finish their game and not let down their customers, but didn't hold the rights to do it. However, during the resolution of the insolvency, they fought for the rights of their game and eventually succeeded in this.

Now what they tried was to finish book 2 and resolve a performance issue as the original engine could not make use of multiple CPU cores. After a while they came to the conclusion that the whole game engine needs to exchanged, requiring lots of changes to most of the game. And while doing this, they reworked much of the UI and many details of the game as well. What you get with Shadows: Awakening is the result of all these efforts.

So why am I writing this, you may wonder? Well, they put in all the work without getting any money for it. They did it not to let down their customers and to hold up to their promise to deliver a complete game. In the end, all buyers of the original Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms received the all new Shadows: Awakening completely for free. In my view, this is very rare and really exceptional, so I want to stress the fact that Games Farm is a great studio who really deserve respect and acknoledgement,

Shadows: Awakening is a fantasy themed action RPG set in the Heretic Kingdoms. The main character is a demon called the Devourer, who only exists on the shadow plane. The Devourer interacts with the physical world by absorbing the souls of other important characters, which then allows the player to also control those characters.

There are around a dozen characters to "recruit", and you can have four in your active party, including the Devourer. You only control one character at a time, but you can instantly shapeshift into another at the press of a button. Each character is either a warrior, rogue or mage, and they all have eight unique skills, of which you can select three at a time for use in combat. These include the typical aRPG ranged attacks, radial attacks, summons and buffs.

When I’d got a full party and upgraded my favourite skills, I found the combat to be quite enjoyable, and a little bit tactical. I got into the habit of quickly switching between my four party members, using all of their skills instead of just waiting for a single character’s skills to cooldown. Skills with an ongoing effect continue to benefit all party members after you switch away from the character who activated the skill. Its also possible to protect characters on low health by switching away from them, giving them a chance to regenerate.

Most enemies only exist in either the physical world or the shadow plane, but more powerful enemies exist in both. Some have a shadow shield that has to be destroyed before you can deal physical damage. When you switch to the shadow plane, enemies in the physical world are frozen in place, allowing you to easily get in melee range before switching back to the physical world.

Unfortunately the story is very poorly written, and failed to hold my interest. It didn't help that the mage who summons the Devourer at the start of the game, doesn't really make an attempt to explain what is going on, who the bad guys are, or why its important to stop them, until several hours of gameplay have passed - by which time I'd stopped caring. There were a couple of other Heretic Kingdoms games released a few years ago, but I haven't played them. I suppose its possible that Awakening’s story could make more sense if you’ve played those other games, but I doubt it.

Voice acting is mostly terrible, including some really strange conversations with a race of wolf people who speak with normal Human accents. I'd expect this type of character to speak with a beast-like voice, with some amount of growling or snarling. I couldn't believe that these voices belonged to those characters and I found that quite distracting.

There's also some frustrating puzzles involving guiding a rolling boulder onto a pressure plate to open a door. You have to pull levers in the correct order to activate platforms to stop the boulder falling into a cavern. If you mis-time one you have to start all over again. Its like the most difficult challenges from the UK TV show The Crystal Maze. And there are other puzzles that require physically pushing a boulder onto a pressure plate. Its almost impossible to push it in a straight line for more than a couple of seconds, as the boulder starts to curve off course to the left or right. So its a case of push it a bit, reposition your character, push a bit more, reposition, push a bit more, continue for a couple of frustrating minutes.

Overall Shadows: Awakening is another of those games that makes me wish Steam had a third, neutral rating. If you’re a big fan of action RPGs, you might find some enjoyment from the combat, although the default purchase price is ridiculously high. I finished the campaign in 23 hours, so you should wait for at least a 50% discount. But if you want a good story, you should look elsewhere.

Highly recommended for fans of European rpg's.

I'm finding this game to be a hybrid of several different games, as far as playability and style. It *does* look like Diablo on the surface, but it's definitely NOT one of those loot farming grindy ARPGs - if you're expecting PVP and NG+, and working out the best tactical skill tree development ala Path of Exile/Grim Dawn and company, this probably isn't your cup of tea.

Instead, it borrows more from Fable and Legacy of Kain - it's an action adventure, with a lot of story and exploration and puzzle solving built into the core mechanics. The lore and world building are optional, but highly enjoyable for RPG fans who don't just rush the quests. Then again, I played "Heretic Kingdoms Kult" back in the day, and am pretty old-school.

There's actual moral choices here, though as of yet I'm unsure what it all means (does it ONLY change the appearance of the demon, or the endings?). And from playing around with the 3 different archetypal starter classes, the dialogs with npc's and quests vary as well. You're meant to replay this as the different characters, if you really want to see/do everything. For example, there were doors I couldn't open and npc's who wouldn't give me information, unless I was playing a particular main character.

I'm also a fan of quality voice acting, and I'm getting a huge kick out of the voice over narration by Tom Baker and the lady who voices Evia. The rest of it's a bit cheesy, but you can tell where most of their budget went here.

Finally, for "lighter" players (aka filthy casuals) - it's still got rather challenging boss fights. I needed to borrow my gamer spouse even on "Easy" mode, on occasion (they tend to be "puzzle" bosses though). And they love their trap dungeons here. It's not super casual friendly, but easy enough for anyone who grew up playing realtime isometrics. The hardcore crowd will probably find it TOO easy and just roll through the game in 2 hours, but it's a nice balance between quest and skill based rpg's. IE if you can play Bethesda games, you can do this just fine.

Shadows: Awakening may look like a Diablo-like on its face. But it has its own thing going on. Let me qualify that, as far as it being an isometric hack and slash with loot and levels — that's exactly what it is, however you play as a demon with other people inside of them — a devourer of souls.

Shadows is a bit more story driven than its contemporaries. And while you will be picking up loot and leveling, the game places significant importance on dialogue decisions as well as quests taken and completed. Some areas will have lite puzzle solving as well, additionally, many side dungeon/caves are available. — Now, enemies to do not respawn should you decide to travel back to a completed area stay for a few enemies that pop out of jars or some other environmental object. So, there isn't much reason to return unless you want to satiate the completionist in you that missed a side quest. You won't need — or even be able to grind levels or gear out of those areas once you've moved on.

You primarily control the Devourer, and up to three active puppets at any given time. There are more than three throughout the game to find and recruit but you cannot ever take more than three with you.

There can only be one. —
Much akin to dissociative identity disorder, someone has to take the helm of the vessel. The game is structured in such a way that both the mortal and shadow realms are accessible at any time. However, only the Devourer can interact with shadow objects and needs at least one puppet to interact with the mortal realm. This is true for enemies as well, however, there are some enemies that exist in both realms. Death — or failure, really — is either when all three active puppets die or the Devourer themselves does.

At the start of the game, you get to choose from three traditional archetypes. A warrior, mage or a hunter. This person, alongside the Devourer will be set on their adventure that Krenze, another mage, sets out for you. You'll run into more characters but you can only absorb certain ones. Some of them are missable. And some are required to interact with certain clans or NPCs within a city.

Gear is not shared. But, soulstones are — soulstones can augment the entire party's makeup. I was a little confused as to the precise nature of how the soulstones worked at first. Each soulstone has a specific amount of charges it holds and each time you use a charge it will replenish either your HP or MP for one character. There are no potions in the game. The soulstones are the only way to heal. Stay for the passive trait of regeneration which you can acquire through XP. But that won't help in battle much. The only way to recharge the soulstone is to either kill enemies until one of its sections is filled or simply recharge it through Shadow Traders in exchange for a substantial portion of gold. No need to fret, you'll be finding a lot of junk loot you can sell — I never found keeping any of my soulstones charged very difficult. Shadow Traders usually hang out around sanctuaries in the Shadow Realm which will heal the whole party just by standing in it. This won't charge the soulstone, but it's a free action. Any fallen puppet can also be revived at sanctuaries.

THE GIST:
Shadows is a decent loot/story driven hack and slash that isn't necessarily focused on character builds, but more team composition. The voice acting is decent and the lore doesn't take itself that seriously. It's even funny at times. I didn't find it necessary to have played Heretic Kingdoms before this, though I'd venture you'd get a bit more out of the story had you done so. The art design is also pretty good with its weapon/armor design as well as having varied and interesting environments.

If you've read this far, consider following my curation — Station Argus

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2040319809

This is one of the games where you want to give it a score, not just thumbs up or down. The score would be barely 6/10, so this is a barely thumbs up.

The good:
A lot of different characters, which means a lot different skills, which means a lot of different combos
Nice soundtrack
Nice voice acting

The bad
Camera angles
Very short and unsatisfying ending cutscene
Player choices doesn't matter. For example you help someone rule a city instead of someone else in your playthrough. There is no difference. Not when you are in the city, not when you return to that city and no mentions about this in the ending cutscene either. Even some lazy pieces of ending slides would be acceptable but nothing. So what's the point in replaying the game with different characters and choices?

The meh:
Almost everything, which is why this game is barely 6/10
Gear is meh because cosmetics is the same, no legendary or set weapons no additional weapon affects. In some games gear changes your playstyle, in this game it's just +4 to def and +2 to agility

Leveling is meh because you allocate 5 points to str,dex and all that. And that's just it. There is no enjoyment or expectation because there are no good weapons you look forward to when you reach a certain lvl. Also you can reach max lvl 30 without any grinding which is good for some people and bad for others.

Talents are meh because they offer the same game mechanic as gear. If you have 50 str, a new talent gives you %5 increased damage. If you have 100 str, a talent gives you %10 increased damage. It's just that "+4 dmg +2 dex" mentality all over again. No excitement at all.

Crafting is meh because there is essences which you can craft into your weapon for gold. And that's just it. It doesn't require mastery, or lvl, or anything else just gold. They just give you +10 posion dmg or +5 crit chance etc. So you just find essence on the map (they don't drop, just found in demon-world chests) and slam them on your gear. If you craft 4 of them onto the same gear you get a legendary weapon (with no additional effect or stat). Meh.

Story is meh, And lore is meh.
Watch some gameplay videos and buy it on discount if you like.

There is gated content that can only be played if you buy the physical copy - not only that, nowhere is it stated that there is locked content (I checked Steam, their website, retailers that sell physical copies, etc.). One of the devs said it would be released later as a DLC but after 7 years, it's still nowhere to be found so there, negative review from me since I find this unacceptable which is a pity since I was enjoying the game.

Your initial impression of Shadows: Awakening is highly likely to be formed by your opinion on whether it is too much like Diablo or not enough like Diablo.

Yes, this is an isometric third-person fantasy dungeon-crawling ARPG clickfest. Unlike Diablo, however, the emphasis here is not on a loot loop of killing enemies to get better gear to allow you to go kill more enemies and get better gear. Shadows: Awakening tries to differentiate itself by being the only (so far as I am aware) party-based (or pseudo-party-based) Diablo-esque RPG.

Your main character is a demon, and the rest of your party is composed of "puppets," souls of ancient heroes and defeated foes who the demon claims over the course of the story. Only one character is active at a time, but you can switch between party members on the fly. The demon and each party member have their own stats, abilities, and types of gear, and you have frequent opportunities to swap party members in and out. All of the "souls" can die and then be resurrected, but if the demon dies, "you're dead" and have to load from a save. When acting as the demon you are in a shadow realm and the demon can allow the party to reach areas other characters cannot, but only the "puppets" can interact with certain things in the physical world. Some enemies exist only in the shadow realm and others only in the physical; some exist in both, or have a spirit version which must be vanquished in the shadow realm before being defeated in the physical. In theory there is the potential for combo tactics by using one character's ability and then switching to another character to use a different ability.

For the first few hours, all of this seems like a breath of fresh air if you're a person who finds the min/maxing loot treadmill of Diablo and most of its clones tedious. The game also creates the initial appearance of having some pretty intricate lore behind it, making you feel in your first couple hours like you're really stepping into an epic dark fantasy story.

Unfortunately, by 10-15 hours in the charm of all of this starts to wear off fast, at least it did for me. While I am willing to cut a lot of slack for "AA" games by smaller developers whose abilities don't quite measure up to their ambition, this isn't just a case of a mid-tier game that's rough around the edges. The fundamental gameplay of Shadows: Awakening is flawed and does not hold the player's interest.

While I did not expect the game to rely on the dopamine rush of constantly replacing your gear to min/max your build the way Diablo does, and even welcomed that it did not, the selection of gear and abilities the game does offer becomes monotonous. Most of the loot that does drop in any given area is not an upgrade. The pool of abilities each character has is limited, you can only have 3 usable at any given time, and you only get to pick a new one or upgrade an existing one every few levels. You'll spend hours at a stretch using the same gear and same attacks, and it doesn't help that the variety of enemies in any given area of the game is also small. The potential for comboing abilities between characters is also not deep - aside from the demon's starting ability which temporarily freezes groups of enemies so you can pound them with impunity, there's just not a lot going on there.

The game tries to break up the monotonous mob-slaying with puzzles, but these are usually more tedious and frustrating than clever, and the same types of puzzle are repeated without alteration in multiple dungeons.

You acquire new "puppets" for your party for completing quests as part of the story, and certain party members are required for certain areas for story reasons. You also have to make mutually exclusive choices during the story which will allow you to add some characters to your inventory of puppets but lock you out of others. This means you can't just form a party of the characters you like the most, and there is no New Game+ mode which allows for greater freedom as far as I am aware.

Even story and world-building, which at first seems like it could at least be a redeeming point of the game, ultimately disappoints. After multiple chapters of gameplay over the course of a dozen hours, I could not explain to you anything about the game's overall plot except that the main bad guy (who I only know of by reference) is apparently called the Theocrat, and I am the type of person who listens to and reads lore in games obsessively when other people skip or skim. There are periodic infodumps about new areas and quests, but none of it holds together as part of a coherent story. The player goes from one place to another, is sent on one task after another, each stop along the way punctuated with a fresh helping of context-free lore, but I have no clear idea what my overall objective is.

I got this game for, I believe, under $10 in the last summer sale, and that price I can't feel too chagrined at it falling short of my positive first impressions. If you're a fan of hack-and-slash, clicks-and-cantrips ARPG's and would like to give one that tries to do some things differently a chance, maybe consider Shadows: Awakening the next time it's deeply discounted. At its regular price of $40, though, don't even think about it.

For context, I am a big-time aRPG fan. I played Dungeon Siege 1 and 2, Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, Diablo, Path of Exile, etc. I like finding games with satisfying visual and skill progression and gameplay.

Shadows Awakening is one of the most enjoyable entries in this genre I've ever played. I can't think of anything in the game that was a substantial negative for me or an annoying thing to deal with in the game.

1. The World
Usually in RPGs, you have different large areas that you remain in for a significant amount of time. The desert area, tundra area, jungle area, etc. In Shadows, you have several different regions, but most of them are just 1 or two areas (with extra dungeons, caves, etc.). I found it quite refreshing how the game never lets you stay in a region long enough to get bored of the desert/jungle/tundra/etc. You can come back to complete side objectives you missed, but for the purposes of the story the game keeps you moving through its diverse regions at a really good pace.

2. The Story
One thing that attracted me to Shadows and convinced me to buy it was that I found the premise really interesting: You're a demon that collects the souls of different characters to build your party. What I didn't expect was that the story itself would be really interesting as well. I didn't go in expecting a great story because I can push through a sub-par story if the gameplay and characters are really good. (They are, but I'll get to that). I won't say too much, but the story and the way it was delivered through the narration, visual storytelling, voice acting, books, exposition, etc. was quite compelling (Your mileage may vary though. This is just my opinion based on my experience).
I played through the story with Evia the fire mage, and just finished it earlier today. I don't know about the other two main souls, but I did at least finish the story as it currently stands.

3. The characters (Your party)
For starters, one of the things that made me want to play this game was the promise of a diverse cast of party members that would interact with each other. I love when aRPGs do that, and the premise of collected souls as your party is an interesting way of bringing a party into the genre.
As for the characters themselves, I loved all of them and how they play off of each other. They're all well-voice-acted and are interesting characters on their own. I loved how some different characters had drastically different-looking armor and weapons, and how they interacted with the story.

4. The gameplay.
I love mechanic of switching between different characters. It gave a really compelling dimension to party composition and your ability to handle different kinds of threats. For my three souls, I mainly stuck with Evia for ranged damage, Zaar for melee damage, and the Zombie for tanking. I enjoyed the upgrade and talent systems and the different combinations of abilities. I also liked the switching between the mortal realm and shadow realm as a way of re-evaluating a situation and for solving puzzles that required switching.
The actual fighting was really fun and there are a lot of enjoyably satisfying abilities across the different souls.

5. Conclusion.
Overall, what makes this game good is the world, story, and gameplay. What makes this game truly great in my honest opinion is the characters in your party. From a voice-acting, customization, skill/visual progression, character development and writing perspective, this team deserves to be ranked alongside the most iconic RPG parties like Knights of the Old Republic.
Truly special game and I look forward to trying the other characters and to seeing how the story progresses in the future. Highly recommended.

This is a pretty cool hack and slash game. You start off as a demon and choose 1 of three classes each with their own voice acting and unique dialouge and sub quests, as you go you pick up other souls along the way that fall into the categories of warriors, ranged and magic users. Some of the souls you pick up are significant to the story line and even if you aren't using them will still comment on whats going on in the story; others don't really speak at all but then again you don't really need to hear what a wasp thinks. Some of the loot you can pick up is specific to each soul which is pretty cool when you grab a nice set of armour that makes your lizard mage look unique while other loot can be general use armour, axes etc.

Gameplay-wise you are going to get a standard hack and slash where you beat the devil out of beasts, humans, demons, undead etc but the ability to switch between 4 souls at once keeps things feeling fresh. You can use your demon to cast a freezing spell then switch to your warrior with a fire enchanted axe to deal extra damage against your enemies. The max level you can reach is 30 and you will have several milestones upon leveling up where you can select a passive skill to apply to your souls, this means you can customize a soul to fill a particular purpose e.g., selecting passive skills that increase enduance and resistance to physical attack can get you a good character for tanking a group of enemies.

There are some puzzles occasionally, some of them are frustrating but they can give you a decent little break from all the killing if you need one. I think this is a good game, price might look steep in some countries but I got a good time out of it and am planing to play through again and focus on the souls i didn't give much attention to in my first playthrough. Give this game a shot a lot of indie games dont offer this replay value.