In ancient times, hundreds of years before the modern era, there was a genre of game called Diablo clones. They were usually isometric, overhead action RPGs and the main point of the genre was frantically clicking on monsters to make them drop loot, upgrading your gear, then doing it again for hours and days on end. Tragically, such things aren’t made anymore.
Shadows: Awakening
Developer: Game Farm
Price: $39.99
Platform: PC (reviewed), PS4, Xbox One
MonsterVine was supplied with PC code for review
Okay, okay, Diablo 3 took forever to get there but wound up good…eventually. Then there’s Grim Dawn and Path of Exile and Torchlight. But for me, nothing quite captures the combination of clicky-clicky-clicky action and neo-Gothic atmosphere like Diablo and Diablo 2 did.
Shadows: Awakening is the closest I’ve seen to getting it there. The frame story is suitably Diablo-gothic: A mysterious hooded man who–he assures us–is quite evil, just the evillest man in the world summons some kind of demon to save the world, or possibly destroy it. It’s hard to tell because he’s just so gosh darn evil.
The gimmick is: 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, uh, the archer one. You can have a handful of puppets–the game’s terminology–at any given time. Effectively, it’s a party-based RPG but your party is mashed into one person.
That person includes the demon. See, 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. You get the entire party in one dude.
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. You almost want to use a controller to get fast enough with it. Enemies are tough, even at low levels, and I saw my first resistance and immunity monsters by level 3. You’ve got to work every angle, not just charge forward face-first (and I am the king of the face-chargers). Saving is, fortunately, pretty quick, and there are save points in dungeons that also let you swap your puppet loadout.
As for the writing it’s…well, it doesn’t reach the melodramatic heights of the Diablo series, but it’s pretty good. There’s not really “party” chat, but everyone stuffed in the demon talks to the demon. The demon uses “thou” a lot, which I think is supposed to make him sound mystic and spooky but makes him sound like a confused old medieval dad dealing with teenagers that ignore him. “THOU MUST LISTEN TO ME! I ATE THOU!” “lol no” is the tone of most of the interactions. There are lore books around the world and you can dive into that if you like, but I’m more the type that just needs an excuse to clobber monsters.
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. The environments are pleasantly destructible, with barrels and sarcophagi and all sorts of other things to destroy. 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.
Will we save the world or destroy it? That depends, what kind of loot does it drop?
The Final Word
If you like your dungeon crawls with a ladle of gothic atmosphere, you haven’t seen anything like this in an eternity.
– MonsterVine Review Score: 4 out of 5 – Good
