Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms Preview
I still don’t know exactly what to think about Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms; on one hand, it offers an interesting twist to the classic dungeon-crawler/ARPG genre but, on the other, it still manages to feel painfully generic and boring. It’s a weird contrast, Shadows goes from feeling clever and engaging to feeling tired and tedious in the blink of an eye leaving me with mixed feelings.
The story is your generic fantasy plot and rarely feels interesting enough to be attentively followed. Generally, stories in dungeon crawlers tend to be forgettable, with even Diablo‘s story failing to keep me interested throughout its duration; however, this isn’t a big deal as the games tend to be all about swatting down ridiculously large groups of enemies and picking up an even more ridiculous amount of loot. At the start of the game, you play a spirit called the Devourer who is tasked to bring back to life a hero to help him achieve his quest; you have the choice between a tough warrior, a nimble ranger or a powerful wizard. Once you have made your choice, that character will become playable.
This is where Shadows: Heretic Kingdom becomes interesting and tries to differentiate itself from all the other dungeon crawlers: you can switch between both characters at any time and both characters see the level layout in a different way. Whilst the Devourer lives in the spirit world, your chosen hero lives in the real world and therefore both are bound to be different. This makes it such that each level or area in the game is actually two areas. You might come across an impassable wall or precipice in the spirit world but, switch to your human hero and that wall might not be there or a bridge may allow you to cross.
In addition to different environments and layouts, the two worlds also have different enemies and different loot. Having to switch between characters makes the levels feel like there is much more depth to them and really encourages exploration to find all the areas you otherwise couldn’t access with your character.
This system, however, doesn’t come without its flaws. A big issue you will find is that if one of your characters die, you may be stuck in an area and be forced to reload an older save (so save often and keep more than one save slot!).
For example, if your human character dies, he can be brought back to life by killing enemies with Devourer and collecting their souls but, if there are no more enemies to kill in the area and something is blocking your path to the next area, you are pretty much boned.
Another issue I had with Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms is its slow and bland combat system. Unlike some of the more modern dungeon crawlers like Diablo III and Torchlight II which feature a fast and visually appealing combat system, Shadows has the slower combat system more common in older dungeon crawler titles. Whilst this may be good news for some, it felt way too slow and uninteresting for me, especially since I recently went back to Torchlight II with 3 other friends, Shadows‘s combat system just felt too cumbersome and uninteresting and the lack of multiplayer didn’t help alleviate the boredom.
This is why I am left with mixed feelings about Shadows; I love what they are doing with the interchangeable characters in two different worlds: it makes even the most generic and boring dungeon feel like an intricate maze full of surprises. However, gameplay itself feels just so… boring. The story fails to remain interesting after the initial premise of switching between characters - even now I can’t quite remember what the point behind it all really was. The combat, whilst it may be appealing to some, especially fans of older dungeon crawlers, also failed to keep me engaged, with the majority of abilities lacking personality and rarely feeling like little more than “generic wave clearing ability” and “generic power attack”.
I guess how much one would enjoy this game strongly comes from how much that particular person like dungeon crawlers. Personally, I love dungeon crawlers, but the latest ones such as Torchlight got me used to a different kind of experience. I play dungeon crawlers mainly for the epic hack&slash combat; if I slam my hammer on the floor, I want to see the earth crack and flames shoot out from the pores. I want a skill tree which can offer many different play styles with some unique or exciting abilities for me to use. I want to be able to upgrade my favorite weapons and armor and think hard whether this new, shiny piece of gear is really worth using over my current one. Throughout my experience with Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms, I never felt that.
The game is still in Early Access, so things are bound to change. At the moment, I would only recommend Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms to only the most hardcore dungeon crawler fans who prefer titles such as the original Diablo, Diablo II or Titan Quest over the more modern style of Torchlight and Diablo III. Regardless, I would still recommend players to wait for the full release of the game rather than buying into the Early Access. Whilst I personally didn’t run into any major bugs, Shadows isn’t yet complete and could use some more refinement.