Ereban: Shadow Legacy PC review – At one with the dark

There just aren’t enough stealth games. Considering how well-liked the genre is, I can’t remember the last time a good stealth game came out. The genre is notoriously difficult to do well for a plethora of reasons. But Ereban: Shadow Legacy is just that – a good, modern stealth game that has a unique central gimmick and some really terrific design choices. It all comes together for a compelling stealth title that reminded me of why I love the genre so much.

Ereban: Shadow Legacy is a fairly story-intensive affair. Ayana is the last of the titular race – a people that is one with the shadows. Ereban are able to literally merge themselves with any shadows, as well as utilise various other shadow abilities. After escaping an attempted abduction at the hands of Helios, an energy company up to no good, she joins up with a resistance force and aims to uncover the truth about her heritage and stop Helios for good. It’s a fairly effective narrative with full voice acting that more than gets the job done.

The game is broken up into several chapters where Ayana has to sneak around robots and humans. Missions are graded and receive ranks, as well as medals for completing them a certain way. For instance, you get the Ghost metal for not getting spotted once. It adds a lot of replayability if you’re looking for it. Each chapter also has collectibles, including orbs that let you buy new powers for Ayana and crafting materials that allow you to add extra charges to her gadgets. There are also data logs you can find and read for even more context to the plot.

Waiting in the shadows

The central mechanic in Ereban: Shadow Legacy is simply incredibly clever. Whenever Ayana is standing in a shadow, you can press a button and instantly hide her within. This has a stamina metre tied to it and, once it runs out, Ayana is kicked out of the shadows. While in them, though, enemies can’t see her at all. But you can hide her in pretty much any shadows whatsoever. It makes things more tactical than I was anticipating, plus you’ll be navigating areas by making use of shadows in various positions. One such instance has you reach higher ground by riding windmill blades. Riding up walls and the like vertically using shadows never gets old.

Enemies come in multiple forms, including normal robots, robots that can repair other robots, snipers, regular humans, and more. Ayana can take most of them out by sneaking up on them and using a takedown, but doing this to a human will kill them. Guards will find bodies, which will reduce your rank and make them more alert. You can use tools and powers to make this easier, but most have a limited number of uses, as mentioned above. For instance, Ayana can temporarily blind enemies with shadows, or hide their bodies in shadow too. Of course, you can just reload a checkpoint and try until you get it right.

As for the levels themselves, they’re nicely varied and quite large. Early levels take you to a desert planet and a city that have notably different considerations. There are even side quests that typically have NPCs asking you to track something down for them. Ereban: Shadow Legacy plays well too, even if the physics and movements can feel lighter than I would have liked. There just isn’t any weight to anything, including landing on an enemy for a takedown, which is disappointing. The graphics are colourful and fairly detailed, although the game’s budget meant that the humans wouldn’t look very convincing, but that’s not much of a problem.

You can freely return to past chapters to hunt for items, collectibles or higher ranks, which I really appreciated. Plus the game has multiple endings, extending playtime even further. Ereban: Shadow Legacy is easily the best stealth game I’ve played in years and genre fans would be remiss not to check it out. Between its strong ideas, solid presentation, and enjoyable level design, it’s quite the little stealth game. Of course, how polished the shadow movement is needs to be appreciated.

Check out more of our latest reviews:

Bears In Space PC review – Bear with me | Dragon’s Dogma 2 PC review – We’re all just Pawns | Outcast: A New Beginning PC review – Let’s jet |