Ereban: Shadow Legacy Review

Developed by the new indie studio Baby Root Games and released on the 10th of April, Ereban: Shadow Legacy is a 3D stealth-based RPG-adventure game in which you play as Ayana, the last living member of her species, the Ereban.

Beginning with a short introductory video, giving exposition to the player while still making sense in-universe, the world and setting are explained: a group called Helios had managed to achieve infinite energy and end all wars over it across the galaxy by harvesting the power of the sun, Khepri. After the video, our main character gets up inside a Helios facility, a little sceptical of it; she is nevertheless on her way to talk to its leader, the Nascent… or, well, an AI replica of her. Immediately upon arriving in the designated room, she is greeted with a lot of screens with the Nascent on them, telling Ayana she will begin the test to become an agent for Helios now. There is a lot more going on, and the lore and story of the game are far more complicated and interesting than initially revealed, but already, the introduction is great and was more than enough to get me engaged and invested in seeing the ending in just a few minutes. Ereban: Shadow Legacy suffers from what I would call the Life is Strange ending issue, though — you just have different buttons to reach each end, and your choices throughout the game don’t really affect it, which is very underwhelming.

Immediately after beginning the test, it’s clear Ayana’s tasks aren’t the same as anybody else’s would be — the Nascent is making her use her shadow powers, something only an Ereban could have. Speaking of these shadow powers, they basically let you move through shadows for a short period of time, being undetected and able to go up vertical walls. These powers are the central point of the gameplay, which is what differentiates Ereban: Shadow Legacy from other, similar games. While there are other abilities you unlock later, such as hiding bodies and throwing blinding projectiles, I didn’t use any of them throughout my entire playthrough, instead opting to just classically sneak by using the shadow movement. It’s a great element, and overall, Ereban feels really rounded out in its gameplay. The only real issue I had with the gameplay is that controlling the character when the angle changes while on walls, using the shadow movement ability, was really hard, especially using a controller, and even after reaching the ending I can’t do it consistently.

The game uses an open-area level design, with different areas per chapter but almost completely free traversal through the levels. There are a bunch of side-objectives you can do and a lot of collectables to find, meaning that if you like to take your time and explore, you will be rewarded with more upgrades for your character, lore bits, and fun and short puzzles to solve for completionists. Unless you do all this, the game is a little too short, though, especially with how easy it is. I managed to beat it all without killing anyone or being detected in under six hours, which is really not a lot for something that costs £20.99, though I do consider myself a pretty good player, so it might take the average person more to finish.

Ereban is viewed from a third-person perspective, and honestly, while I can’t see the gameplay working with anything other than that, I feel like a lot of scenes would hit better if it were in first-person. But again, I can’t see how the shadow movement would function in first-person. The 3D models used in the game are all great, and while some character designs confused me, they were all still great. At times, I found myself just looking and admiring the beautiful world, especially from high vantage points. Optimisation is great, too, with my computer being able to easily meet my 100 FPS cap I put on it without components getting hotter than 50-55 degrees Celsius.

The game has complete voice-acting, which adds a lot to the immersion, especially with how good it is… for most characters. While it’s not terrible, Ayana, who I remind you is the main character, didn’t get the best voice acting performance. Don’t get me wrong, some line deliveries were amazing, but others were a lot less so, to the point I had to pause for a moment and think about what I just heard. And while there isn’t a lot to say about them, the music and sound effects are great, and I genuinely did enjoy listening to the tracks throughout Ereban: Shadow Legacy.

Overall, then, while there are a lot of issues, the game is really good. I loved almost every moment of it other than struggling with controlling the movement while using the shadow movement ability. Ereban: Shadow Legacy is a very enjoyable title with great potential for expanding on the universe, especially with either a sequel or a prequel.