TLDR at bottom
So with Styx landing on PSN Plus a few days ago I went looking around Gaf to see if it was worth my time and if anybody had said much about it. Sadly post launch it seemed mostly forgotten by gamers and Gaf. Having just finished it's 20 hour or so campaign I figured I would offer up my opinion and observations on why it's a flawed but worthwhile title to enjoy.
First off this game is stealth, and stealth only (mostly). What little combat that exists is stacked against the player semingly intentionally by the developer, and is only a last resort as it often leads to death, or at best wastes a large amount of very valuable resources resulting in major difficulty for the rest of the section. It's worth pointing out that these sections often last lasts up to 3 hours across the 7 included in the campaign. So combat it a serious no-no.
The good:
By the end I enjoyed the game quite a bit and beat it in 3 sessions of about 7 hours apiece. The main highlights included wonderful level design, including never less than 2 ways to move through any area of each subsection (4 per chapter). Also often you will only visit less than 1/4-1/2 of the actual rooms, making the game lend itself to significant replayability. This title also includes lots of vertical movement and strategy as well.
As for goals, there are usually 2-3 secondary missions per subsection which allow you to earn more skill points useful for things like increased carrying capacity or sneak attack moves such as aerial stealth kills.
The story and world are decent as well. You play as goblin anti-hero the titular Styx ( at least until the twist halfway through) in cool and fairly varied environments. It's not terribly original, but it is immersive.
The so-so:
The controls are difficult to perfect leading to a lot of seemingly cheap deaths until, at least for me, nearly halfway through the game when I nailed them. So they aren't broken, just very touchy and demanding more precision than most games. It doesn't help that you're thrown into the action quite quickly and with little time to experiment.
Also checkpoints are usually 30 minutes or so apart, which until I realized that you can save at any time drove me insane. I didn't even think to look, since so many console titles don't offer that feature. Clearly the developers realized this essential need and included the ability to save manually to avoid flying controllers after losing tons of progress. I it dozens of times per section and after nearly every especially tough encounter or area. This addition literally saved the game from a rage quit more times than I can count.
All the skills on the skilltree are quite useful with the exception of the cloning skill, which is clearly a gimmick and rarely useful despite the developers making it sound great during the load screen tips. (disputed by a user below)
The bad:
On PS4 the load times are brutal. Expect to spend a good amount of time staring at them while you master the controls. I'm talking more than 30 seconds after each death. For me I suspect I died 100-150 times over the course of my 20 hours so do the math. If you have the game on PC or are willing to buy it there this issue is totally removed since it loads very quickly. I really wish they had been able to get the times down to 15 seconds or less since the many deaths combined with the wait can raise blood pressure.
Also an issue is the uneven difficulty. While the game is hard all the way through, I found it peaked at about the 2/3rds mark before I began to accrue enough skillpoints and perfect the controls so that I wasn't wondering if I even had the skill to finish a chapter with my dwindling supplies.
In the end I really enjoyed my time with Styx. It pushed me hard and felt really rewarding. It's also the kind of game you rarely see these days and is decidedly a well made mid-budget title.
I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have about it and my experience.
TLDR:
Styx is a pure stealth experience with great maps, a fun world and story, tons of ways/paths to get to each goal, and enough challenge to feel highly rewarding over it's roughly 20 hour length
It's a game where you will die a lot, but with the ability to save whenever you want this doesn't make you want to break your controller. Sadly load times on PS4 are long and you will spend quite a bit of time looking at them.
The controls are hard to master and the game gives you little time to get used to them before throwing you into the heat of things, but they are not broken even if early on you might not be used to how precise you need to be to get the desired result.
As a whole this is the rare stealth game that punishes you for combat, and rewards you for careful diligence. Well worth the time to any gamer who is willing to put in the effort to master it and reap the rewards of beating each room or obsticle
