Depending on whether you have already played Of Orcs & Men or not, get ready to discover or rediscover the mischievous Styx. Two centuries old, the first of the goblins seeks to penetrate the Tower of Akenash, which houses the World Tree from which flows Amber, a precious substance with magical properties. If he were a muscular orc, Styx might think of rushing into the heap and roughly decimating all the guardians guarding the tree. But when you're about four feet tall, it's better to be cunning and discreet. Therefore, the subject of the game turns entirely to infiltration, which we can already congratulate ourselves. To carry out his journey, Styx has a fairly wide range of skills and movements. Master of shadows, our goblin first has every interest in smothering the torches attached to the wall, or even extinguishing them from a distance using balls of sand. Darkness management is done in a binary fashion, with Styx's body glowing when in a shadowy area, so the player is always aware of the chances of being spotted . For maximum discretion, it is possible to take cover by pressing against certain decorative elements, which also reduces the risk of being detected. And in case of emergency, all you have to do is dive under a table, in a barrel, a trunk or a cache on the ground, to escape the vigilance of the guards. However, be aware that if they see you hiding, they will dislodge you from your hiding place without any consideration, and it will then be certain death. More generally, the gameplay of direct confrontations with enemies is quite frustrating. It consists of parrying at the right time several times in a row, before being able to deliver the coup de grace. Faced with several enemies, it is almost an impossible mission. But it doesn't matter, since players who are really keen on infiltration generally do not hesitate to reload a save as soon as they are spotted a little too much.
1001 ways to get there
No worries, however, regarding "surprise" assassinations since they can be carried out in two ways: fast but noisy, or discreet but long. We will therefore favor one or the other method depending on the rounds and the disposition of the surrounding guards. And of course, do not hesitate to move the corpses in order to prevent the colleagues of the stiffs from falling on them and triggering the alert. Or else, try to disguise your murders as accidents, via an opportune drop of chandelier for example. Another classic of infiltration games: the pickpocket option, which allows you to steal objects worn on their belt by the guards, when approached from behind. Be careful, if you decide to assassinate them before looting them, you will get less loot because the vials will break when their owners fall to the ground. By the way, note that Styx is also a master in the art of throwing knives, which allows him to overcome enemies from a distance. If all these abilities are quite common for an infiltration game, they are supplemented here by more specific skills. Amber allows the goblin to become invisible for a few seconds (useful for sneaking into a place that is a little too guarded or to flee a fight), to trigger a special vision that highlights interesting areas (hiddens, enemies, mechanisms miscellaneous…), and finally to create a clone! The latter can reach certain areas inaccessible to Styx, distract enemies or activate certain mechanisms.
Obviously, all these possibilities would not be very interesting if they were not taken advantage of by an adapted level design. And we certainly touch there on the main quality of the game, which plunges us into vast open levels and constantly offers us several means of achieving our ends. Will you choose to take the narrow corridors dug into the walls to bypass as many guards as possible? To evolve in height on beams? To progress from hiding place to hiding place to collect as many objects as possible? To climb the walls to take advantage of the verticality of the levels? To encourage us to exploit all the possibilities offered, the game uses a system of skill points. We earn a little by completing the main objective of the mission, a little more if we also complete the secondary objectives (which generally forces us to visit the level from top to bottom rather than rushing towards the final goal), and even more so if you win one of the four end-of-mission emblems. The Shadow emblem is granted if you have not triggered any alerts, Mercy if you have not killed any enemies, Haste if you have completed the mission quickly, and Thief if you have collected all the tokens scattered around level. To maximize Styx's skills, we therefore have every interest in replaying each mission several times, which the game encourages us to do, since the goblin has a hideout from where he can restart any level already completed, admire the relics previously harvested and spend his skill points, in order to further expand his panoply.
UHU STYX
Grouped into six major categories (Stealth, Agility, Cloning, Amber Vision, Equipment and Assassination), these skills compensate for certain initial shortcomings and allow, for example, to carry out aerial or covert assassinations, to carry more vials or knives, to make less noise when you drop to the ground, or to remain invisible indefinitely as long as you don't move. So be careful not to judge the game on its first minutes, because the gameplay continues to grow richer over the missions. On the other hand, it must be recognized that everything that is technical leaves a little to be desired. We can thus see Styx pass through certain unimportant decorative elements, witness a few graphic bugs here and there, and undergo rather poor cinematic scenes, produced using barely animated cartoons. As for the cutscenes made with the game engine, they are never epic. It must be said that the graphics engine shows its age a little. Or more exactly: the use made of it is not really up to current standards, since it is all the same the Unreal Engine 3, which we saw very recently with The Vanishing of Ethan Carter that he could still do wonders. All this undeniably reflects a somewhat too limited development budget. In return, the game has the good taste of being offered at a reasonable price. So there's no reason not to give it a chance.
