It’s always a tough gig making a third game in a series, especially when the first two have been so loved.

The Styx series has a pretty firm cult following, with two games already deemed as solid takes in the stealth space. But with it being nearly a decade since the last, perhaps there’s a mix of fresh appetite and new tricks that can make this one the best yet.

But turns out, in fact, the latest Blades of Greed might just be the weakest entry so far. And that’s such a shame because there’s some great graphics and voice acting here. And the series is well known for good character development, lore building and writing around these games which make for a compelling world. Yet it’s the game’s stealth mechanics and moment to moment gameplay that really let it down.

In a way, it actually feels like a regression of the good work Cyanide did before. And being a bit harsh, the studio in general has seen a decline in the quality of their games since the last time Styx came around, with Call of Cthulu being a little bit of an outlier.

For Styx: Blades of Greed, the game’s stealth just feels…broken. Right from the get-go, I’m being spotted at far range with barely a moment to react. And then, before I know it, in the game’s opening area, I’m being completely swarmed by the entire captain’s guard. Even the game’s tutorial felt quite bruising. These guards are almost too good at their jobs.

It got so bad I had to dial the difficulty down to easy, which, to be honest, didn’t even help me all that much either. As I started to work through the levels more, though, I did eventually get more comfortable with Styx’s movement and guard patterns and I started to really make meaningful progress. But it definitely takes a minute.

Styx can send crates crashing down on top of unsuspecting heads to satisfying impact. He can poison water, creep through drainage pipes, pop out and go stabby crazy on baddies. He can even melt corpses of his enemies with acid so he’s not caught in the act. And there’s quite a lot of variety in places he can hide like chests, chimneys, wardrobes and under tables.

The feel of the game is actually pretty good, then, with the climbing sections as you vault between rooftops and ledges, though I definitely got a bit confused by the hanging and moving between ledges with there being a bit of a confusion around buttons and a lot of mistimed jumping. Still, as I started feeling it more,  I chalked it up a bit to the game just having a steep learning curve and me needing to get better.

But sadly, it was more than that. There was a bit of monotony in the game mission patterns, with the concept almost repeating a similar objective time and again. The previous games definitely offered more variety in that sense and were much more conducive to a stealth game. It feels like you’re encouraged to kill more here between weapons lying around, certain situations being really difficult to get out of unless you do due to the numbers game. But also how overpowered the enemy is compared to you.

I think objective markers aren’t always the clearest either as you move from room to room trying to find where to go next and you’ll find there’s a lot of dying and repeating as you’re trying to find out where to go because the enemies just don’t give you room for air.

Blades of Greed is more of a sandbox style stealth game compared to the others which are more linear feeling. And I appreciate the idea of that as you can definitely go off the beaten track, look around, try to uncover and unpick more about the world and wider setting, but unfortunately the story does also let this one down as some of the key beats fall a bit flat, feel a bit flimsy and it doesn’t generally feel like the game has good payoff in those big moments.

And then there was the frame rate. Oh boy, I’m never one to complain about this generally, I grew up with Amigas and Commodores for goodness sake, but this game basically shut down on me at a few points to the point where I was playing guess work on where to go and had to literally run to the other side of the map to get it to half calm down again. But it chugged and chugged with enemies in pursuit of me and it just could not handle the sheer numbers that were on my tail. And quite why there were so many is anyone’s guess, I wasn’t THAT noisy…

By far, this is the most stunning take on Styx yet and Unreal Engine 5 really shows its prowess here with the models and textures, but the game pays the price in performance and there’s no way to even adjust the settings either.

This was just one of several bugs, too, with enemy pathing going off in all sorts of weird and wonderful random directions. Enemies seeing me when they absolutely shouldn’t, environmental clipping and even a hard crash at one point that threw me out entirely.

There’s some cool abilities in here, like the ability to clone which is a nice touch, and this can result in a clone distracting an enemy as you take it out or even killing two enemies together with you and your clone. There’s also some great stealth takes that add to the fluidity of movement like stabbing enemies from your hiding spots, closing doors behind you and even cover movement. You’ve also got a nice travel system with the zeppelins that lets you get around the wider environment more rapidly and explore the wider sandbox in full.

But the issue is how sensitive enemies are, how much they’ll surround you, how difficult it is to get away, the bugs and lag that creates, trying to work out where you need to go, and then when you do, the story just feels a bit paper thin in a world where it should be a lot more detailed and enjoyable.

If you’re desperate for a new stealth game, there’s quite a bit to like here with exploration and variety, and if you’ve been eager for a new Styx adventure, you’ll probably feel a bit more lenient toward this than most. But on the whole, it just feels a tad too rough and a little too ambitious for what it’s actually capable of pulling off at times and it really struggles under the weight of that.

Verdict

Styx: Blades of Greed looks stunning, offers some fresh ideas of the original games and takes the bolder approach of going more open world, letting you explore a setting in new ways, but in so doing gets a bit caught up under its own ambition, with bugs, glitches, lag, odd control choices and highly sensitive enemies that can really frustrate. Coupled with a story that is a bit hit and miss at times, you’ll come to miss the linearity and tightness of the first two games that felt more compact and complete and wonder if sometimes bigger isn’t always better.

Pros

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Styx: Blades of Greed is out now on PC, PS and Xbox.

Reviewed on PS5

Code Kindly Provided by NACON for review purposes