YMMV / Styx: Shards of Darkness

• Complete Monster: High Priestess Lyssril is the leader of the dark elven city of Korrangar. Longing to maintain her power over the dark elves, Lyssril and her forces began to kidnap and kill thousands of goblins so they could turn their remains into Amber . With the power of Amber, Lyssril was able to control the entire population of the city, and manipulated the elves into becoming fanatical slaves. Seeking more allies, Lyssril began to sell Quartz to surrounding nations so the other nations would be able to capture and deliver more goblins to her and fuel her amber distribution. When Styx and Djarak destroy her operations and manipulate a conflict between the dark elves and the dwarves, Lyssril abandons Korrangar so she can save her own hide before the dwarves attack.
• Demonic Spiders: Dwarves. Not only can they sniff out Styx if he gets too close to them, but they're wearing armor, so they can only be killed via poisoning or acid traps. And they can One-Hit Kill you.
• Game-Breaker: The Flow Control skill causes Amber to slowly and passively regenerate, allowing Styx to turn invisible and throw clones into danger without having to worry about resource management, and it can be even stronger with the right combination of the skills and equipment. Though it can only be gained after collecting all seven pieces of Pure Quartz and gaining every mastery skill, it avoids quite being a Bragging Rights Reward since it's still useful for anyone who wants to replay the levels for 100% completion. Combine it with all of the invisibility upgrades and the Invisibility Cloak and you can silently and invisibly murder almost everyone with no difficulty. Toss the Akenash Dagger on top of that and everyone you kill will be automatically disposed of as well, with the muffling power of invisibility totally negating the dagger's drawback.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: This game took everything that didn't work in Master of Shadows and either changed it for the better, or removed it completely. The levels are much bigger, but not divided into four parts, so there's little to no Padding; the second half of the game isn't the first half backwards; the cutscenes and animation looks much better and less stiff/uncanny; co-op mode was added so multiple people can play missions together; you can craft items and secondary weapons instead of just having to find them; the tone is much more fun and darkly-comical instead of being straight and serious. Even major gaming reviewers who didn't love the game still acknowledge that it's at least better than Master of Shadows.

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