History VideoGame / ShadowTacticsBladesOfTheShogun

* DarkestHour: Everything's fun and games until [[spoiler:the imprisonment at Mount Tsuru. Mugen is forced to reveal the secret location of the Shogun's son, resulting in the heir's assassination. The team is imprisoned, then escapes only to watch Mugen commit {{seppuku}} in shame]]. And even afterward, they're not clear of the prison just yet. For some time after, the characters' command acknowledgements are depressive, particularly [[NotSoStoic Hayato the stone-cold mercenary]].

* GenreRelaunch: For the stealth RTS genre. Its success led to the revival of the ''VideoGame/Desperados'' series with ''VideoGame/DesperadosIII'' (which was given to the same developers).

** Strawhats and Samurai and smarter, in that they won't get manipulated by distractions. However, this ''includes'' alerted civilians - even if a civilian runs up to them screaming about ninjas murdering guards right around they corner, they will turn around but ''will not move'' nor raise an alarm. In some situations, this means that if you can rid an area of normal guards, you can effectively run around in front of civilians at your leisure without fear of reprisal.

** Mugen, as a BloodKnight who is both TheLeader and TheBigGuy, specialises in generally killing enemies and can carry barrels, fulfills the role of the Green Beret.

** Rarely when Aiko in disguise distracts a guard, her Japanese voice actress says "Guten Tag" to initiate the conversation, which is german for "Good day", which is what the Spy from ''{{VideoGame/Commandos}}'' would say in disguise to initiate a conversation with a german guard.

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: There's something very strange going on with everyone's armor and guns, to say the least. Mugen has more health than the rest of your team, which one would think comes from his armor, but he has the same amount of health whether he wears his armor or not. [[spoiler:He gets taken prisoner in one mission and has to retrieve his gear, but doesn't have reduced health for it.]] Mugen also takes full damage from gunshots, but you try shooting enemy samurai with either pistols or Takuma's rifle and this only stuns them. Stranger still, in one mission you're called upon to kill enemy officers during a siege so the Shogunate army can advance, and in doing so you get at least one opportunity to see Shogunate riflemen blatantly one-shot enemy samurai.

''Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun'' is a RealTimeStrategy StealthBasedGame developed by Mimimi Productions and published by Creator/DaedalicEntertainment, released on December 6th, 2016. It aims to revive a seemingly long-dead genre set in stone by ''{{VideoGame/Commandos}}''.

* '''Takuma:''' An [[CoolOldGuy old man]] with [[FriendlySniper unique skills]], loyal to the Shogun. His [[HandicappedBadass advanced age and peg leg]] give him Mugen-like agility, plus he makes noise while running. He cannot perform ''any'' physical feat needing more muscle than climbing a ladder. His cane and [[LegCannon peg leg]] convert into a '''SniperRifle''' for long-range takedowns, and can disable groups with either deadly '''Explosive Grenades''' or stunning '''Poison Grenades'''. While between vantage points, his pet {{Tanuki}}, Kuma, can [[CutenessProximity lure guards to it]], similar to Yuki's Whistle.

** Shadow Mode, which allows for you to sync up movements between characters, is excellent for creating elaborate traps to tackle difficult problems. Want to make a difficult move due to wanting multiple characters to act at the same time? Simply queue up their movements in Shadow Mode and press enter to do them all at the same time. It can even be handy with just one character; for example, you can have Hayato kill two enemies in close proximity by storing his attack on one enemy in Shadow Mode then executing it immediately after throwing a shuriken at another.

** In the few mission which require to snipe a target, Takuma keeps a single bullet for this purpose, preventing the mission from becoming UnwinnableByMistake if you use Takuma's rifle too much.

* AntiquatedLinguistics[=/=]BilingualBonus: If the dialogue language is set to Japanese, all the spoken lines will be in period-appropriate Japanese... except Yuki occasionally uses English loanwords more reminscent of modern Japanese, like "melody" or "jump." Aiko also has one instance wherein she uses the English loanword for "message."
** UsefulNotes/JapaneseHonorifics: In line with adjusting the Japanese to the time period, most of the honorifics used in the English written dialogue won't match the spoken Japanese. To cite one example, Mugen tends to use "-dono" to address his comrades, which is not reflected in the English subtitles. Also, Yuki never calls Mugen by name, instead using the phrase お侍さん ("''O-samurai-san''").

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The group delivers Masaru to the Shogun, the former revealing the truth and clearing the group's name, with the Shogun sending them to assassinate Noboru. When all is said and done, the group, still affected by Mugen's death, go on their separate ways and cease contact instead of returning to the Shogun, though Aiko still reports the mission's success.]]

* CursedWithAwesome: Yuki is impressed by Hayato being able to carry guards while walking, lamenting that she's not strong enough and has to drag them. In actual gameplay, she (and Aiko) are actually much more useful than the others for moving bodies because they remain crouched while doing so, allowing them to move bodies through an enemy's second sightline.

* NeverTrustATrailer: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgg0Jpwg61o The announcement trailer]] shows all five party members in a night town scenery. In the proper game, this setting is the 11st mission, in which [[spoiler:you only control Hayato and Aiko, while Mugen is dead since the previous level.]]

* NoGearLevel: Mount Tsuru- [[spoiler:the second time]]. You begin the map only with Hayato (who has only rocks), Yuki (who has nothing), and Takuma (who still has his rifle and Kuma, but no bullets). Aiko, Mugen, and the remainder of your gear are spread throughout the area. One of the challenge badges wants you to collect none of the confiscated gear.

* NonLethalKO: You can make your melee attacks non-lethal. Knocked out enemies will wake up if found or after some time, but they won't raise the alarm if they can't find you. Outside of some badges, there's no real benefit to this.

* PacifistRun: Doable, but ''extremely'' hard due to nature of knocking enemies out. Guards will wake up after about a minute, take a look around, and return to their post. If someone sees an unconscious guard, it'll trigger an alert just the same as a dead guard would. There are awards if you complete some missions this way.
* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: [[spoiler:Both Kage-sama and his son, Masaru, express sexist viewpoints, particularly whenever they deal with Aiko. While their beliefs would certainly be in line with Japanese norms at the time, it's notable when they're the only characters who are shown to hold any disdain toward women in the game.]]

* ShoutOut: In Mission 12 there is a wall you can attack.[[spoiler:When you do, the illusory wall will disappear and reveal two messages written in red on the ground and a bonfire you can light, upon which an achievement called "Praise the shogun" is unlocked, which all in all is a good shoutout to the ''{{VideoGame/Dark Souls}}'' series of games.]]

* {{Speedrun}}: Each level has a challenge badge for completing the mission under a given time. The timers are pretty tight, but made even tougher by the mission timer continuing to run between quickloads.
* StealthRun: Encouraged with the ease by which a player can quicksave and quickload. Even a single alerted guard can result in additional patrols permanently added to the map, making further stealth even more difficult.

* YouHaveResearchedBreathing: Only the ladies are capable bending down and dragging bodies along the ground to try to avoid being seen while doing it - your physically-capable male assassins apparently will not stoop that low.

''Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun'' is RealTimeStrategy StealthBasedGame developed by Mimimi Productions and published by Creator/DaedalicEntertainment, released on December 6th, 2016. It aims to revive a seemingly long-dead genre set in stone by ''{{VideoGame/Commandos}}''.

* '''Hayato:''' TheProtagonist, [[HiredGuns experienced mercenary]], and classical {{Ninja}}. Hayato is agile enough to walk tightropes and scale buildings with ease, and strong enough to walk while carrying an incapacitated guard. His '''Shuriken''' is a somewhat noisy way to take out an enemy from afar, while his '''[[ThrowingTheDistraction Throw Stone]]''' forces any foe to face the noise for a few seconds. He is a strong infiltrator and stealthy killer, but has no way to manipulate the enemy's movements.
* '''Mugen''': {{Deuteragonist}}, BloodKnight, and honorable {{Samurai}}. Mugen lacks the agility of his comrades but is capable of astounding feats of strength. He can throw heavy objects onto rooftops, carry two dead/incapacitated people while running, and outfight enemy samurai without any firearm assistance. His '''Sake Bottle''' will entice normal guards to come pick it up, his '''Sword Wind''' ability can kill any number of guards in a small area, and his unique '''Hand Cannon''' can instantly kill samurai. He also has more health than the others.
* '''Yuki:''' A [[TagalongKid young girl]] whom Hayato stumbles across as they both hunt rebel forces. Her difficult, isolated life has given her skills like the group's ninjas, but her relative lack of muscle only lets her slowly drag incapacitated guards. Her '''Little Trap''' is a pressure-activated mine that will kill any guard who steps on it, and she can '''Whistle''' to lure guards into blind spots, including right into the trap.

The story follows these five as they work together to undermine the conspiracy attempting to overthrow the era of peace set in by the Shogun in the Edo Period. The five characters must use stealth, tactics and their wits to perform espionage on rebel forces of the would-be usurper, Kage-Sama.

** Given the effectiveness, you'd think the characters would carry more of their tools like shuriken, sake bottles, bullets, and such, but it'd reduce the challenge.

** Shadow Mode, which allows for you to sync up movements between characters, is excellent for creating elaborate traps to tackle difficult problems. Want to make a difficult move due to wanting multiple characters to act at the same time? Simply queue up their movements in Shadow Mode and press enter to do them all at the same time.

** In the few mission which require to snipe a target, Takuma keeps a single bullet for this purpose, preventing the mission to become UnwinnableByMistake if you use Takuma's rifle too much.

* ArtificialStupidity: ...yet, as AcceptableBreaksFromReality dictate, they're easily distractable and quite easy to manipulate.

* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: All five characters are marked with a different color to make it easier to differentiate them on the map. Hayato is blue, Mugen is red, Yuki is yellow, Aiko is purple, and Takuma is green.

* CrutchCharacter: In a sense, Mugen. He's the ''only'' character in the game who can kill Samurai with a single attack, pick up and throw heavy objects, run while carrying corpses (and hold two at the same time no less), and can kill multiple enemies at once as often as needed. Which makes missions where he's absent notably more difficult. [[spoiler:Including the last four.]]
* DarkestHour: Everything's fun and games until [[spoiler:2nd Mount Tsuru. Mugen is forced to reveal the secret location of the Shogun's son, resulting in the heir's assassination. The team is imprisoned, then escapes only to watch Mugen commit {{seppuku}} in shame]]. For some time after, the characters' command acknowledgements are depressive, particularly [[NotSoStoic Hayato the stone-cold mercenary]].

* DifficultySpike: The third mission, Imai Town, represents a dramatic increase in difficulty. The map is much larger, there are more enemies than ever, [[EliteMooks Samurai]] make their first appearance (unless you somehow raised an alert in the mission preceding it which CAN spawn a samurai), and the footprints you leave in the snow can compromise your stealth.

** During mission 8, the final segment has the ArcVillain emerge with a small retinue of soldiers and patrol an extremely small space. The intent is for the players to slowly thin his soldiers to eventually make enough space for an attack on him, but you can circumvent this entire segment by placing an explosive barrel right next to the entrance of his tent and firing on it with Takuma the second you're able, which will immediately kill him and end the mission.

** Enemy samurai are very difficult to distract, see through Aiko's disguises, and the only quick ways to kill them are explosives, Mugen's sword or hand cannon. They can be stunned by gunfire and then melee-killed by other characters, but even this is challenging as the samurai retain a small view cone and will shoot while on their knees.
** Straw hats, in a lesser measure. They're not harder to kill but they are much harder to distract, meaning they never leave their posts and noises distract them for like 1 second. It takes Aiko to divert their attention.

* HeroWithBadPublicity: [[spoiler:The Shogun puts a bounty on the whole crew after Noboru frames them for the death of Ryūnosuke.]]
* HonorBeforeReason: [[spoiler:Mugen commits suicide as a result of getting his master's son killed in order to save his friends. However, this means he's not around to protect his master from the aftermath of that decision, and he doesn't even stay around long enough to help his companions finish escaping from their prison. This puts the burden on his friends to clean up his mess, and it makes fixing the problem far more difficult in-universe and in gameplay (since he is invaluable in taking down samurai and groups).]]

* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: Accidental-looking deaths are advantageous since they won't cause guards to sound the alarm. [[spoiler:You can even do this to the Big Bad by way of sneezing powder on a conveniently-placed rifleman.]]

* NintendoHard: ''Oh boy.'' There's a reason that the game tells you how long it's been since you last quicksaved. Be prepared to mess up and fail numerous times before the solution is found.

** Rarely when Aiko in disguise distracts a guard, her japanese voice actress says "Guten Tag" to initiate the conversation, which is german for "Good day", which is what the Spy from ''{{VideoGame/Commandos}}'' would say in disguise to initiate a conversation with a german guard.

* SomeoneToRememberHimBy: It's only implied, but Aiko whispers something to her love Mugen [[spoiler:before he commits seppuku]], and the only hint we have for she said is his reply of "Ah, something ends, something begins. As it should be", implying that she is pregnant.

* TakeAThirdOption: The game rewards you for not following the suggested ways to accomplish mission objective, like neither sniping or poisoning the tea to kill Lord Yabu, or kidnapping [[spoiler: Masaru]] without overheating bathwater or taking out his private masseur.
* TamperingWithFoodAndDrink: In the "Assassinate Lord Yabu" mission, one of the ways to completing the objective is to send Yuki poison his tea.

* TemporalParadox: If you somehow manage to kill General Okkoto in Hida village, the battle of Kanazawa will not happen and the trace to Kagesama will be lost, screwing everything after mission 9. In fact, the GameOver will say "you created a time paradox!".

* WhamEpisode: Mission 9, Kage-sama's camp. [[spoiler:The heroes have fallen into a trap set by Kage-sama, who reveals himself to be the Shogun's brother. To save his friends from being killed, Mugen is forced to reveal the location of the Shogun's son and heir. Ryunosuke is tracked down and murdered, which eventually leads to a shamed Mugen to kill himself.]]

** In the first level, Hayato has to help Mugen (who is pinned down by three enemies) before you can control him. The expected way to do this is to take a long route across the level to sneak up behind them and kill them yourself. However, if you use Hayato's Throw Stone to distract them, Mugen will take advantage of the distraction to rush in and kill them all himself.

* DarkestHour: Everything's fun and games until [[spoiler: Mount Tsuru. Mugen is forced to reveal the secret location of the Shogun's son, resulting in the heir's assassination. The team is imprisoned, then escapes only to watch Mugen commit {{seppuku}} in shame]]. For some time after, the characters' command acknowledgements are depressive, particularly [[NotSoStoic Hayato the stone-cold mercenary]].

** In the final mission, the BigBad periodically watches a group of soldiers practice with their guns. [[spoiler:Tossing Aiko's sneezing powder at one of the soldiers right as they're ordered to fire will make him accidentally shoot and kill the BigBad.]]

** Straw hats, in a lesser measure. They're no less easier to kill but they are much harder to distract (they never move from their position and noises distract them for like 1 second).

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The group delivers Masaru to the Shogun, the former revealing the truth and ckearing the group's name, with the Shogun sending them to assassinate Noboru. When all is said and done, the group, still affected by Mugen's death, go on their separate ways and cease contact instead of returning to the Shogun, though Aiko still reports the mission's success.]]

''Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun'' is RealTimeStrategy StealthBasedGame developed by Mimimi Productions and published by Creator/DaedalicEntertainment, released on December 6th. It aims to revive a seemingly long-dead genre set in stone by ''{{VideoGame/Commandos}}''.

''Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun'' is RealTimeStrategy StealthBasedGame developed by Mimimi Productions and published by Creator/DaedalicEntertainment, rleased on December 6th. It aims to revive a seemingly long-dead genre set in stone by ''{{VideoGame/Commandos}}''.