Ereban: Shadow Legacy review

It’s quite rare these days to find a pure stealth game. No swords, guns, or bombs; just you and the shadows and enemies with unfeasibly rigid habits. But Ereban: Shadow Legacy, a new third-person stealth-em-up from Baby Robot Games, has no direct combat, focusing more on recon and sneaky backstabbing to get through.

You play as Ayana, the last of the titular Ereban race who have the ability to merge with shadows. A destructive, callous conglomerate called Helios has clamped a reactor around a nearby sun, draining it of energy and effectively enslaving those who live in the system. Freed by a human resistance movement, Ayana is immediately put to work thanks to her unique powers. But Ayana has an ulterior motive, as she desperately seeks to piece together the lost legacy of her people.

Despite its unique artstyle and Ayana’s impressive array of powers, Ereban: Shadow Legacy is a fairly straightforward adventure. You’re up against Helios’ army of robots, called SYMs, who will end your adventure the moment they catch you. The world is semi open, presenting large environments and objectives you can tackle in any order. Most involve sneaking to an objective marker and hacking or destroying something, which may sometimes trigger an influx of enemies you’ll then need to evade.

Holding the right trigger while in shadow will cause Ayana to merge, becoming invisible. In this state you can travel through shadows, climbing walls, fading through fences and floor grids, or dashing across gaps. You’ll need to come out of the shadows to interact with things or take down enemies. The AI isn’t too bad, and the SYMs will search for you once spotted, but you can escape by hiding in shadows and getting some distance.

Finding workbenches allows Ayana to craft items such as a radar scanner and visor, or upgrade them with scavenged materials. Most of the items you need are well-hidden, which is a mild irritant. It forces you to go off the beaten path and ignore the objectives, which is fine in of itself, but you’re only exploring for the sake of it and things are too easy to miss. I’d rather have these resources locked behind tangible challenges, because Ereban’s world just isn’t that much fun to explore.

You’re limited by the placement of shadows and the art style oversaturates every colour in every environment. It’s unique, and not unappealing, but it means every location has a similar aesthetic. The side missions help flesh out the world and the relationship between Helios and the resistance, and there are some interesting twists in the story, but it’s all held back a little by Ayana herself.

She responds to almost all stimuli with the forced sass and an irritatingly blasé attitude. One minute she’s hell-bent on unravelling the mystery of her people like some kind of warrior-prophet and the next she’s rolling her eyes at everything like she’s just too cool for this shit. It creates an annoyingly uneven tone, and highlights a lack of real direction in the writing. It also shifts Ayana from an interesting, three-dimensional character into just another generic protagonist.

Ereban: Shadow Legacy is a competent enough stealth adventure that’s let down by just not being as interesting as it thinks it is. The shadow-merging mechanic is a cool way to get around the game-world, but it never feels all that new – or all that different to just hiding in shadows or stealth grass in other games. The story is decent but lacks characters to latch onto, while the ruined world you’re exploring is extremely pretty at times but too washed out and lacking in ambient life or personality of its own.

The stealth mechanics are decent though, and there’s a certain satisfaction to clearing out an enemy patrol, even if it’s too easy to be seen by a SYM way off-screen sometimes. If you’re looking for a non-violent stealth game, though, Ereban: Shadow Legacy is a straightforward, mostly uncluttered challenge.