It harks back to the golden age when games didnвЂ™t hold your hand, but at the same time you wonder how we ever coped without the auto save function.

With no auto save, I got caught out on a few occasions and had to replay the last ten or fifteen minutes of a mission. One great feature of Shadow Tactics is the ability to quick save whenever you want, and not only that, a small counter appears on the screen telling you how long ago you saved, reminding you itвЂ™s probably time you did. On one hand, you feel a real sense of achievement when youвЂ™ve sneaked past a hundred guards without detection, and on the other youвЂ™re so worn out that a rest in-between them is rather necessary. It takes hours to finish a single mission, which is both a blessing and a curse. I canвЂ™t tell you the amount of times I took their intelligence for granted, thinking I could sneak past without triggering their attention, only for them to attack or call for back-up. You can crouch-walk past them and if thereвЂ™s a big cart or rock between you and them, itвЂ™ll stop them from seeing you. Each guard you come across has a view cone, and if you step inside it theyвЂ™ll come rushing. The enemies are very smart and assertive which makes for a rough ride. Some moves are only altered slightly between characters, such as the ability to throw stones or sake bottles for distraction, but overall each person has a unique skillset thatвЂ™ll help you through a range of tough encounters. You start playing as Hayato, a ninja with the ability to climb onto rooftops, throw shurikens at guards and stab enemies with your ninjato. In the first mission, youвЂ™re shown a handful of skills to help you either fight or sneak to your MO. The story takes place in the Edo period of Japan, where you take control of five characters (not all available from the start) who have been hired by a new Shogun to instil nationwide peace and fight against the criminals and conspirators holding Japan from moving forward. Shadow Tactics doesnвЂ™t take forever and a day to get to grips with вЂ“ in fact, youвЂ™re pretty much given the knowledge you need thanks to a great tutorial mission that introduces you to the gameвЂ™s mechanics in bitesize chunks. WeвЂ™ve already had XCOM 2, Total War: Warhammer and The Banner Saga 2 among others this year, so surely weвЂ™re done with real-time strategy games in 2016? Well, if Shadow Tactics is the last RTS of the year, it tops off a fantastic 12 months for the genre.

But overall, if you're new to the strategy genre or simply looking for something you won't be able to blaze through in an afternoon, give this a whirl.There are some pretty steep learning curves in RTS games, and grasping the complexities of commands can take hours until any of it sinks in. Otherwise, you're in for extra complications that are unfair (like hiding your characters in front of a bush instead of behind it), since gameplay hinges completely on your ability to avoid conflicts and discover solutions on the fly. Since your monitor size is likely to be smaller than your TV, playing on a computer helps considerably. Although console ports have recently been released, the biggest snag on PlayStation or Xbox One is how much detail is on-screen, which can completely hide your characters. Similarly, the main way to play this game, if you're at all intrigued, is on a PC. That likely will be a huge turnoff for a lot of players. Here, you have to monitor the world around you at all times, make sure you stay out of sight lines, and make sure you have a plan of escape before trying to do anything. One of the main things that makes this game so hard and so great is its refusal to give you a way to pause the action and issue commands, which is an expected standard in the tactical role-playing game genre. Unlike in other games where saving and loading is something you do occasionally or at pivotal moments, Shadow Tactics has an unspoken expectation that you're going to save and try again almost every few seconds. Although you can opt for an easier mode in Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, if you don't know what you're doing, you'll almost instantly cause a 'game over.' But gameplay isn't really unfair, because you have to fail, constantly, before you finally succeed. What makes this strategy game so excellent, ironically enough, is what also makes it so frustrating: its sadistic difficulty level.

Shadow tactics ps4 review