Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun [Steam, GOG] is a very good tactical stealth game, it just got a whole lot better with a new beta patch too.
When going over various changelogs as usual, I came across one for Shadow Tactics (see here). It mentions "Major performance improvements" along with "Reduced mission loading times" and "Reduced saving and loading times". I honestly thought that the performance improvements would be really minor and likely be more tuned for the Windows version. I was wrong—very wrong.
The performance impact of this opt-in patch is staggering. Times when I was getting 30FPS while moving the camera, is now giving a solid 120FPS+ even while zoomed out. The performance, for me, has at least doubled in all cases across every level I tried. Absolutely amazing, I have no idea what they've done as I'm on the same settings and it looks as crisp and beautiful as ever.
On top of that, they really did work on loading time which has also been dramatically reduced. Before, I could probably pop downstairs and grab a biscuit before it loaded a level, now it's mere seconds before it's ready.
I'm extremely impressed with the post-release effort Mimimi Productions has put in with Shadow Tactics. I already enjoyed the game and I did recommend it when I initially covered the release at the start of 2017, now it's a very clear and solid recommendation.
I'm sure once the patch is stable and released properly on Steam, it will also make its way to GOG too. For now, if you wish to test it, simply opt-in to the "patch-preview" branch on Steam.
GOG links are affiliate links.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
All posts need to follow our rules. For users logged in: please hit the Report Flag icon on any post that breaks the rules or contains illegal / harmful content. Guest readers can email us for any issues.
buenaventura 21 Feb 2018
Wow great! I was waiting to play this, I have tried the GOG demo but found it too laggy, I hope they update that one too so that I can see if it is worth buying now. Great!
0 Likes
This game is on my wishlist, I am really looking forward to buying it at some time. Curiously enough, at some time I bought the game "Satellite Reign" because I found it beautiful and it was super cheap, but I thought it was a simple action game, or in the best case a dumbed-down action RPG. After trying to play it a few times and being killed at every minute, I let it down for a while, and at some time I started looking at some gameplays and saw that the game is incredibly sophisticated, complex and rich, and THEN I started using tactical and strategic thinking and now I am addicted to it, enjoying every little moment, and somehow upset because it offers "only" about 90 hours of gameplay. So, I saw that Shadow Tactics is pretty much the same kind of game (a weird mix of RPG + RTS) and I will buy this game to fuel my newly acquired addiction. Any of you know any good games in that style for Linux besides Satellite Reign and Shadow Tactics?
I own both and while on the surface they may look similar, they are totally different genre imo. Satellite Reign has rpg/progression components and the world is more "sandboxy", and people compare it with the old Syndicate (I haven't played it) while Shadow Tactics is a Commandos-like: each level is carefully designed, enemies have a predictable behaviour and everything is laid out almost like a puzzle that you have to solve using specific abilities of each of your characters.
There are not many games like those, let alone in linux. I would take a look at Commandos 1+2; they are old games but still let themselves play very well and at least the first works in Wine without a problem. Also "Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive" and "Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood"
5 Likes, Who?
Avehicle7887 21 Feb 2018
Liam can you please check if they included a 64bit exec with this? Last I recall the game was 32bit only.
1 Likes, Who?
It never worked for me properly (doesn't save anything), which I suspect is an infamous lack of LFS bug that hits XFS filesystems because the game is 32-bit. I was a bit lazy reporting it to developers, though I should do it really.
Last edited by Shmerl on 21 Feb 2018 at 11:16 pm UTC
Last edited by Shmerl on 21 Feb 2018 at 11:16 pm UTC
0 Likes
Liam can you please check if they included a 64bit exec with this? Last I recall the game was 32bit only.
Yeah, 64-bit version would be very welcome. Before developers said they had no interest in doing it, because it required a lot reworking for them.
Last edited by Shmerl on 21 Feb 2018 at 11:20 pm UTC
0 Likes
This was my GotY for 2016. Great to see Mimimi continuing to support their game and I look forward to seeing what they develop next.
6 Likes, Who?
Wow, great news. I've been meaning to go back into it, and this just inspired me.
0 Likes
Some people said Wasteland 2 (which I just bought on that humble bundle classic, but haven't played yet) also works that way.Wasteland 2 is a classic cRPG, much like a modern Fallout 2. Not surprising, as the original Wasteland is said to have been a big inspiration for Fallout. While the combat is turn-based and tactical, there's a lot more to the game. I loved Wasteland 2, but it doesn't seem similar to Satellite Reign or Shadow Tactics.
0 Likes
lucifertdark 22 Feb 2018
Does this remind anyone else of the old C64 games called The Last Ninja? is anyone else old enough to remember them or have played them back when they were released?
0 Likes
Does this remind anyone else of the old C64 games called The Last Ninja? is anyone else old enough to remember them or have played them back when they were released?I remember the games (I loved the music in TLN2), but the gameplay is very different. :)
1 Likes, Who?
Is this an actual gameplay screenshot? It looks better than any other I've seen...
0 Likes
The loading time indeed is ruining the good impression a little. Great ga.
me, unfortunately a bit too short.
me, unfortunately a bit too short.
0 Likes
I really love this game, and some performance dips were really my only concerns about it. I hope they release some expansions. Mod support and level editors would be great too. :D
0 Likes
lucifertdark 22 Feb 2018
I remember the games (I loved the music in TLN2), but the gameplay is very different. :)Glad I'm not the only one who remembers them from back then, the music was really good, Shadow Tactics is high on my list of games to buy asap.
0 Likes
Maybe as a side effect of the Unity renderer seemingly taking care of everything, it appears that before this patch, they couldn't be bothered to dig into it and apply some very obvious optimizations:
https://kosmonautblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/09/shadow-tactics-rendering-breakdown/
Some of the stuff in there will make a real graphics programmer facepalm pretty hard...but it seems that they finally got around to it, and it's astonishing what kind of a difference it makes.
That's not to say this isn't a good game, and I'm not bashing the devs themselves - they got it right in the end, so everyone is happy. I'm really more upset about Unity giving everyone the impression that nice 3D graphics are easy to do, which leads to a lot of small studios pushing out titles that are performing really badly, and most of them never see performance patches later on.
Learn your craft, people! Sorry, rant over.
https://kosmonautblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/09/shadow-tactics-rendering-breakdown/
Some of the stuff in there will make a real graphics programmer facepalm pretty hard...but it seems that they finally got around to it, and it's astonishing what kind of a difference it makes.
That's not to say this isn't a good game, and I'm not bashing the devs themselves - they got it right in the end, so everyone is happy. I'm really more upset about Unity giving everyone the impression that nice 3D graphics are easy to do, which leads to a lot of small studios pushing out titles that are performing really badly, and most of them never see performance patches later on.
Learn your craft, people! Sorry, rant over.
4 Likes, Who?
Philadelphus 22 Feb 2018
I run it off an SSD so loading times were already just a few seconds for me, but quick-loading is even faster now. Like, less than a second. Loading a level for the first time still takes ~10 seconds or so, but the new progress bar feature that shows how it's going is rather nice. :)
2 Likes, Who?
I've tested it and... WOW!
I've got i7-7700K and Titan XP.
Before path game was playable with framerate around 40-60 with ocasional drops to 20. I was able to play up to a snowy prison map, where the map size and intense snow effects was killing performance and FPS drops below 30 with drops to around 10 on low settings.
Now on everything on max settings I don't see FPS lower than 120. While zoomed in, I've got over 200 FPS.
Oh, and loading times for a game installed on SSD.... nearly instant.
Best performance path ever!
I've got i7-7700K and Titan XP.
Before path game was playable with framerate around 40-60 with ocasional drops to 20. I was able to play up to a snowy prison map, where the map size and intense snow effects was killing performance and FPS drops below 30 with drops to around 10 on low settings.
Now on everything on max settings I don't see FPS lower than 120. While zoomed in, I've got over 200 FPS.
Oh, and loading times for a game installed on SSD.... nearly instant.
Best performance path ever!
0 Likes
I've tested it and... WOW!
I've got i7-7700K and Titan XP.
Before path game was playable with framerate around 40-60 with ocasional drops to 20. I was able to play up to a snowy prison map, where the map size and intense snow effects was killing performance and FPS drops below 30 with drops to around 10 on low settings.
Now on everything on max settings I don't see FPS lower than 120. While zoomed in, I've got over 200 FPS.
Oh, and loading times for a game installed on SSD.... nearly instant.
Best performance path ever!
To be honest, that's the only acceptable performance experience for such a game with you hardware setup. :)
0 Likes
Runs absolutely great now, with never lower than 180FPS! Now the game will be more fun as it was already.
Mimimi promised a performance patch after the console release and they have delivered. But it took a long time, the game was released over a year ago.
Mimimi promised a performance patch after the console release and they have delivered. But it took a long time, the game was released over a year ago.
0 Likes
Avehicle7887 23 Feb 2018
Can someone please check if they included a 64bit exec with this patch? :)
0 Likes
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me