Thanks to Selecta Play and Super Baby Games for the review code!

There’s been a lot of talk about how much we all love AI lately, so I wanna talk about one of my favorite things AI has ever done, the crossover. If you don’t know basketball, then welcome, I only know what little I do from Like Mike, rap lyrics, and NBA Street. However, one thing I do know is that Allen Iverson could trip up damn near anyone on the court with that one move. It’s a move I myself have deployed in so many other situations spiritually, but especially virtually. All those times I pump faked someone in Knockout City, I might as well have crossed them over. All those times where I nearly rammed into someone in Burnout only to back off and come right back and follow through, I might as well have broken the ankles, or maybe the axles, on that car. And the moment I was sold on Ereban: Shadow Legacy, I slithered into the shadows as a robot approached only to get behind it and execute a clean stealth kill. While that was a thrilling moment I expected to repeat throughout the length of the game, unfortunately moments like it would be a bit more rare than I would have liked.

Ereban: Shadow Legacy is the debut title from Baby Robot Games, and man does it have a personality. For as modest as the polish can sometimes be, the world is compelling, the characters are pretty strong, and the artstyle is pretty unique. I make this comparison with no intended malice, but the artstyle during gameplay looks like Fortnite when you use a skin from an anime. This means environments are realistically modeled with realistic lighting, but they contrast with the cell shading and bright colors of every character that exists within them. This artistic contrast, along with the sometimes goofy side missions and sometimes brutal violence you witness, makes for a tone that feels grounded and serious, but in a way that feels light enough for a family audience. That alone is refreshing because so often games are either the brightest joy fest you’ve ever seen, or the most gruesome tale of parental trauma you’ve ever seen. So, having something occupy the T-rated space in between is novel.

However, that vibe can only help the story so much. The story is not bad, it’s just not great enough for it to stick with me much. There’s a big twist near the end, but honestly, it feels like all the clues immediately cohere as soon as you discover them, so the revelation that they are all related just doesn’t hit as hard. The characters are fun to see interact with each other, with each feeling distinct without ever being too over the top. Ayana is a character I quite enjoyed inhabiting, as seeing her struggle to learn about her heritage clash with her mission to do good in the world did generate some interesting drama. Also, the choice to not take out certain enemies in the game does pay off with them no longer raising an alarm when seeing you later in the game, and that is a satisfying reflection of my choices as a player. But overall, despite some more-than-decent production value in cutscene direction and voice acting, the tale itself just didn’t blow me away. But I think only so much of that is due to the story itself, as the rest is due to the pacing of the game.

The game is level based, but it nearly fools you early on by presenting itself as an open world stealth game. I love a good open world game, but I mainly only enjoy them if it is fun to get around, or at least fast. After the opening level hooked me with tight play spaces that forced me to cleverly slide past enemies, the very next level is a wide open desert world, with objectives spread several meters between each other. This flipped my first impression completely, as I immediately started to read the game as similar to so many open world games I’ve grown tired of. I expected the map (which is not available to view in any menu) to be filled with collectables to find and busy work I’d need to do, and I was filled with even more dread when I discovered that abilities are crafted from rare components that I would have to discover out in the world. It was quite a shocking sight to be greeted by, and it honestly turned me off of the game for a while.

But I did eventually come back and, to my delight, the map wasn’t overloaded with things to find and do. The core objectives did actually take place in parts of the map that were more dense and city-like, with more authored stealth encounters. And despite knowing I didn’t find every collectable possible to craft what I thought were vital upgrades, I eventually got comfortable enough with my core moveset that I felt like I could tackle any challenge already. Plus, later levels are much denser and, when they are once again more wide open, they tend to funnel you back into alleys and rooftops that make stealthing around so much more fun. Because some of the game’s earliest moments were so off putting, much of the story experienced in that stretch felt like a slog to get through, even when they plant seeds for later revelations. But overall, the story is fine, though the overarching ideas it interacts with are much more interesting to think about than the actual plot and details of this story.

But hey, thank God the gameplay is so solid! The closest analog to Ereban I can think of is Dishonored, as that is also a stealth game that gives you multiple abilities to take down and distract enemies, and keeps a background tally of how many foes you dispatch, and how fatally, in service of a narrative consequence later on. However, this game leaves almost no room for aggressive play. In Dishonored, you could always run in guns blazing, as long as you have the resources to handle the frontal assault or the skill to manage the overwhelming negative attention. In Ereban, being seen at all is a near immediate death sentence, one you can only stop if you manage to retreat into the darkness fast enough. The only way to fight back is in the shadows, as stealth kills are the only way (outside of late game abilities) you can take an enemy off the board permanently. This means all of your gadgets are focused on helping you plan your approach, temporarily disabling enemies so you can get in close for the kill, or distracting them so you can sneak behind them. I was surprised that I enjoyed being constricted in this way so much, as I felt way smarter slithering past unsuspecting enemies than I did in other stealth games where I just faced them head on when they let me.

But none of that mentions the biggest standout feature of the game, literally diving into shadows. Much like swimming through paint in Splatoon, you can dive into the shadowy part of nearly any ground or wall texture, and this mechanic is what elevates the stealth here. It only works in the shade, so you still have to stay well outside of each enemy’s headlights, which act as their vision cones. But if you do, you can get behind them in a flash and take them down. That’s fun enough, but then the game further capitalizes on the mechanic with platforming challenges. Similar to Compulsion Games’ first title, Contrast, some chasms can only be crossed by diving into the shadows across a wall and advancing when the shadow of a fan blade rotates or a drone carrying a cargo box passes. It takes advantage of the realistic lighting of environments to make that lighting even more prominent and give it a mechanical purpose instead of just an aesthetic one. My disappointment at the second, wide open desert level came in part because, due to the openness of the level, I rarely found places with enough shade to slither through. This one power, when in levels that invite you to utilize it, forces you to look at levels in a completely different way than in other stealth games, similar to how you would always look for gargoyles in a Batman Arkham game. It also acted as a get out of jail free card more than once, as it is so quick to round corners and climb to rooftops that I often used it to nearly evade capture.

However, capture was one of my few gripes with the gameplay of this game. As I said, once you are seen, your only hope is to duck back into the shadows, but if too many foes have been alerted to your location, that is impossible to do. But once they have you in their clutches, the animation that plays as they shock you unconscious and throw you on their back is so long that I wish I could skip it just to retry the encounter faster. There is one ability that will give you a temporary shield that disables any enemy that touches you, and later you do receive a last minute ability that can get you out of that bind with a last minute quicktime event, but both are a bit too clumsy and finicky to use in the heat of the moment. So many times I made a mistake only to have to sit through the consequences for several seconds instead of just getting a second (or twelveth) chance already. Thankfully, checkpoints are plentiful and I never had to replay half an hour of a level upon failing, but that’s all the more reason that sitting though the fail animation everytime is annoying.

Insult is added to injury as your performance is graded each level, a la Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. This is certainly a bonus for stealth sickos who chase the high of getting in and out of a fortress completely undetected. But for me, someone who plays stealth much more scrappily and with only the hope that I make it out alive at any cost, seeing the in-game tallies of my mistakes were a bit disheartening. Every dead body discovered or enemy alerted would play back at the end of the level and, while my grade never fell below a C, that grade rarely aligned with how satisfied I felt having gotten through a level with minimal deaths. Beating the game unlocks a hardcore mode with permadeath, which I’m sure is music to someone’s ears, but I was just glad to have seen the game through to the end without doubling it’s 6 hour playtime.

Ereban: Shadow Legacy is absolutely a game with strong visual style and some unique gameplay ideas, and anyone itching for a modern stealth game in the vein of Dishonored should check this out. But for me, someone who only visits this genre but has never bought a second home here, I found it to be merely pretty good. There are things this game could change that would make it appeal more to me, like picking up the pace of stealth, allowing me more ways to fight back once spotted, and keeping its’ tighter style of level design throughout, but I also recognize that changes like these might make it appeal less to the demographic is seems squarely aimed at. Even if the story isn’t groundbreaking, the polish not perfect, and some of the edges of the gameplay design not perfectly sharp, this is not only a solid stealth title, but a solid first attempt from Baby Robot Games. I look forward to whatever they do next, and while I hope it’ll resonate with me deeper, I feel confident in saying it’ll at least be worth paying attention to.