Styx: Shards of Darkness marks the first time in a while I’ve played the sequel of a game so close to the first. While the first Styx didn’t blow me away, I found it so refreshing to play a pure stealth game that actively discourages you in combat, and so I decided to jump right into the second. If you enjoyed the first game, this one maintains the same formula while mostly improving on the missteps of the original.

For starters, platforming is much more consistent across the board, as far as I can recall there were no infuriatingly buggy sections and though the jumping is still very prompt based, it feels more like an integral part to Styx’s kit instead of a frequent annoyance. The game is also in an entirely new engine, which at a base level does look better. I’m one of those people that loves the visual style of ~2012 games where the lighting engine wasn’t being used to its absolute maximum, and Styx 2 definitely feels this. It still looks pretty good overall, I just found the visual style to have lost some of its luster. With this we also get the ultrasmooth UI design that, to be honest, I really don’t vibe with at all. I don’t know why a game about a murdering goblin needs to have this “racing game” looking title screen but call it a product of mid-2010s game design.

However, one benefit of the lighting engine receiving a facelift is that now it’s much easier to tell how to play in the darkness, which, combined with some improvements to AI and the aforementioned platforming fixes makes Styx 2 a much smoother gameplay experience. Aside from those improvements gameplay functions about the same, there’s a few new enemies and a much better and fleshed out leveling system that actually contains some flat stealth buffs instead of everything buffing invisibility for whatever reason.

For some reason, this game felt way easier than the original? I played the first Styx on Normal and got spotted a lot of times. Some sections were extremely difficult to get through, but here, I played on the hardest difficulty and got through most levels without difficulty. Maybe it's the increased openness of the levels, or that the AI was nerfed/improved to be more consistent, but regardless, it felt streamlined. Sometimes, it was a little bit too easy, to be honest. On the subject of levels, Styx 2 also has a lot more variation, traveling between multiple civilizations and cities. Many levels are outside, with lots of verticality, and contain a huge breadth of routes with which to traverse.

It’s hard to compare the stories of Styx 1 and 2 as they seem to exist for entirely different reasons. The first Styx was a real Hero’s Journey, he learns of his true nature and strikes out against the original Styx to become his own separate person, and that is the emotional core of the storyline. In Styx 2, he instead gets caught in political warfare between humans, elves, and dwarves as they tiptoe the lines between alliance and war. He is used by multiple races to push the different nations back and forth while Styx himself aligns himself with the highest bidder. Both stories were pretty enjoyable overall and I didn’t have many issues with them. I guess if I had to say something, I wished that Styx 2 had some more emotional punch, Styx’s involvement felt like it wasn’t really necessary and that can make your actions in the game feel less valuable.

One last thing I’d like to touch on is the boss. Styx 2’s boss feels like a direct response to my exact feelings on the first game, where though the emotional core was certainly there, the design of the final boss itself was so lackluster and weirdly annoying? The sequel seems to do a complete reversal of every characteristic of the first game, you don’t know this final boss, they are not personal at all, and the battle itself feels more like an Uncharted set piece than anything resembling stealth. It’s weird, though I did enjoy it.

These games make up a nice duology, they present a great pure stealth experience that calls on a lot of mechanics not seen since early Thief games, and while there is certainly some jank (and Styx as a character can be kind of annoying at times), both games are oddly satisfying to master slipping through undetected.