Shadows: Awakening

Shadows: Awakening is an isometric action RPG from Games Farm, and its central hook is genuinely clever: you play as the Shadowpuppet, a demon who consumes the souls of dead heroes and can switch between the mortal world and a parallel shadow realm in real time. Those consumed souls become playable party members, each with distinct skill trees, and the game asks you to toggle between dimensions constantly, since enemies and obstacles in one plane often have counterparts in the other. On paper, this is the kind of layered mechanical idea that makes an RPG nerd sit up straight. The combat system, built around that dimension-switching and a roster of soul-possessing heroes, does deliver a reasonable amount of build variety. You assemble a party from the souls you collect, and character classes range from sword-and-board warriors to ranged rangers and arcane casters, each with their own progression trees. The switching mechanic adds a tactical wrinkle that most top-down ARPGs skip entirely, and in the early and mid-game it feels fresh enough to carry the experience. Boss encounters in particular are designed around using both planes intelligently, which is satisfying when it clicks. Where the game struggles is everything surrounding that core loop. The writing is functional but rarely surprising, the main storyline hits familiar dark-fantasy beats without the worldbuilding depth to justify the two-universe premise fully, and side content trends toward the padded end of the spectrum. There are fetch quests here that exist purely to stretch your time between interesting moments, and the pacing in the back half softens noticeably as the mechanical novelty starts to wear thin. Dialogue has occasional sharp lines, but there is no Disco Elysium-grade narrative payoff waiting at the end. Your choices feel limited in meaningful consequence. The 75 percent positive Steam rating and a Metacritic score in the high seventies reflect a game that is competent and occasionally inspired but never transcendent. If you are someone who can squeeze entertainment from a well-designed central mechanic even when the story around it is middling, Shadows: Awakening has enough going on to justify the hours. If you come to action RPGs primarily for narrative and worldbuilding, you will likely find it a slightly frustrating experience, the kind where a genuinely interesting idea is deployed in service of a story that does not quite earn it. Monika, Scout Team