Styx: Blades of Greed Review — A Gob in the Dark

I’m of the opinion that a good stealth game is hard to make. The genre, arguably popularized by the success of the Metal Gear franchise, is one of established design philosophies and mechanical nuances, the developer’s understanding of which can make or break their game. While there are titles that try and sometimes succeed in reinventing or twisting these familiar principles, it seems like the best in the genre are the ones that understand and flawlessly execute on the foundations that fans are familiar with.

Because of this, I wasn’t surprised that Styx: Blades of Greed proved to be an exceptionally fun and downright near-perfect staple of its genre. While it was my first time experiencing the Styx franchise firsthand, I was familiar with the series’ reputation among the community for being a fresh, modern take on the classic formula, combining a masterful understanding of what makes a stealth game good with an incredibly interesting fantasy world and clever, comedic, character-heavy writing. That reputation proved itself, in my opinion, to be true, and it is only further exemplified by this newest installment.

Styx: Blades of Greed follows the titular goblin assassin into yet another adventure, one that sees him forming his own crew, discovering bold new Quartz-charged powers, and leading into the events of the 2012 title Of Orcs and Men, a story with which I am somewhat familiar.

The game plays as a series of small, thoughtfully designed, and detail-heavy locations, each interconnected as one of three large open maps. My favorite, and the first you’ll explore, is the Wall, a city built alongside a massive fortified bastion on the edge of human civilization, and it is one of the more interesting fantasy settlements in media, in my humble opinion.

Each of these segments plays as part of an interconnected campaign where Styx must sneak, steal, and stab his way to fortune and freedom. Missions are centered on key locations across the larger maps and seamlessly blend into each other. You almost forget that you’ve gone through the equivalent of three or four “levels” as you wander from location to location without load screens or transitions, with the occasional cutscene being the biggest exception.

As I hinted at before, the stealth mechanics in Styx: Blades of Greed are phenomenal. The game takes advantage of our character’s small stature to create well-designed but immersive paths through enemy vision: you’ll crawl under tables, parkour across rooftops, and creep through ventways in ways only a goblin master assassin can, believing the entire time that these areas are real, lived-in spaces and not conveniently designed video game levels.

The game also manages to keep things from being too repetitive by changing up your objectives from place to place. Not every mission is the same “reach point A without dying” format, and my favorite is always when your goal is to outright kill all of the guards in a given area.

Every area in the game can be navigated a few ways, and oftentimes killing is optional. However, the game’s narrative never makes you feel bad or out of character for executing the phenomenal stealth kills; Styx himself is a villain, and the characters you go up against are unambiguous bad guys themselves. It’s a refreshing writing style, especially with the trend of morally gray villains and fantasy settings, and it makes it easy to take out both armed henchmen and unwary citizens who happen to be in your way.

When you choose to kill a guard rather than just slipping past them, you can do so with some excellent assassination mechanics. Enemy sightlines feel real and believable, and I never felt like I failed to kill someone because the game caught me in a moment where it shouldn’t. The ability to drag enemies along while stabbing them and quickly haul their bodies off the ground makes the process of silently killing feel buttery-smooth and incredibly satisfying to pull off.

If there is one problem I have with Styx: Blades of Greed, it would be in the non-stealth combat. While, of course, regular face-to-face combat should always be your last resort, when you do have to whip your blade out, it can feel kind of rough and unintuitive. Namely, enemies don’t stagger, or really show any response to hits from your rather big dagger. The majority of combat amounts to slashing at stiff enemies multiple times until they suddenly fall down, with no way to interrupt their attacks and an awkward dodge roll that often doesn’t work in tight areas. Again, the game is not designed around this kind of combat, but when it does happen, it doesn’t feel very good.

I also found the game’s deluxe edition bonus, which offers two talent points and extra crafting materials, to be a bit odd and pay-to-win-y. Since it’s a single-player game, this doesn’t matter much, and choosing to ignore the deluxe edition isn’t going to put you behind or make the game significantly harder. Still, it just strikes me as odd to essentially give players a paid head start in a game where earning your progression is all a part of the fun.

If I were to give you one piece of advice before charging into Styx: Blades of Greed, it would be to pick up a controller. While the game’s keyboard controls are far from terrible, there were certainly times when quickly pulling off a parkour mechanic, or drawing my blade in a timely fashion for the aforementioned face-to-face combat, felt a little slow or sluggish, if only because of how the game is key-bound by default. Again, while not unplayable on keyboard, a controller will definitely elevate your goblin assassin experience.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of Styx: Blades of Greed. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Styx: Blades of Greed is available on Steam, Epic Games, PlayStation, and Xbox.