The game that I am requesting is Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, which is currently on sale with a -60% discount on Steam.

My steam profile

As someone who likes the concept of stealth games, I was aware that Shadow Tactics existed and that it had good reviews. However, since I had a bad streak of not particularly enjoying playing games that were marketed as "stealth", I didn't look into it until a few days ago.

My previous experience with playing stealth games are usually one of the following:

• The game plays better as an action game rather than stealth game. I found this to be the case for most of the games that has both a stealth route and a kill-them-all route. Dishonored and Hitman: Absolution are the most two prominent examples for me - the stealth system wasn't bad, but the combat was just better.
• The stealth gameplay was not very enjoyable. Thief (2014) was just a bad game all round, and while Mark of the Ninja had good reviews it never really clicked with me. Being able to easily see and identify the enemies on-screen was an implementation that I liked, but the gameplay of relying on shadows to remain in stealth resulted in consistently dark colors for all the levels and the frequent enemies was a huge negative that soured my experience.

Anyway, so I recently realized that Shadow Tactics actually has a demo and decided to try it out a few days ago. Even though it was only the tutorial level, I found it to have one of the best stealth gameplay mechanics out of all the "stealth" games that I have played. The following is what I enjoyed about it:

• Colorful visuals in the level design. Unlike Mark of the Ninja where keeping in stealth relied on hiding in shadows, hiding in Shadow Tactics mainly involve in staying out of the enemies' line of sight and hiding in bushes. This allows levels to be set aesthetically pleasing locations, such as a castle for the tutorial level. The screenshots in the game's Steam store page shows that other levels are just as colorful and vibrant.

• The game uses an isometric perspective with a rotatable camera. Combined with the gameplay mechanic where it is possible to see an enemy's line of sight, it provides the player with a full awareness of what is happening in the area of interest. This also gives the game an RTS-feel.

• A team of playable characters each with their own areas of expertise. The tutorial level had a ninja (with the stereotypical equipment like shuriken and grappling hook), a samurai (with an AoE kill skill), and a musketeer (which functions like a sniper with his improbable aiming skills). Rather than controlling one character to going through the level, the levels are designed so multiple characters must be used to progress. The gameplay mechanic that allows the player to assign commands to each character and have them execute the commands at the same time further reinforces the idea that teamwork is necessary for infiltration. I found it intuitive to set up plays like having the ninja throw a rock to provide the distraction necessary for the samurai to close in and kill a pair of patrolling guards with his AoE skill.

• Stealth is the only option. This is truly a game built around the concept of stealth. Unlike Dishonored and Hitman: Absolution where brazenly killing everyone in sight is not only viable but also entertaining, doing so in Shadow Tactics just makes everything harder. The characters aren't significantly stronger than the enemies in a direct confrontation, and if they raise the alarm then more enemies will show up. In the tutorial level, the mission was to infiltrate a besieged enemy castle and open the gates for the allied army. Since the castle is currently under siege, there are defenders on the cast ramparts attacking outside; I had assumed that they were background noise as there were no reason for my controlled characters to interact with them. Turns out that if the alarm is raised, they will stop what they were doing and act as reinforcements to hunt down the team.

• Quick saving/loading is actually quick. I like this feature because it allows me to make daring actions without having to worry about the consequences of failure. During the tutorial level, I made several mistakes when trying to coordinate teamwork between the characters due to being unfamiliar with the controls; it is nice to be able to just reload the latest quick save in a second.

Thanks for those that took the time to read this request. If you enjoy the stealth and/or RTS genre, then I would recommend that you take a look at Shadow Tactics and try the demo for yourself.