Ereban: Shadow Legacy (PC) | Review

Solid Stealth

Jesse 'Doncabesa' Norris 3 weeks agoLast Updated: April 9, 2024

1 324 4 minutes read

Ereban: Shadow Legacy is the debut title for Baby Robot Games, out of Barcelona. Originally coming to Xbox & Game Pass Day one, they lost their publishing deal so the title is releasing first on Steam for PC. They’ve promised it’s still coming to Xbox eventually, so I figured I’d take a look at the title and see how things turned out. You are the last Ereban, named Ayana. A shadow-powered race long since seen you’ll use your power over the shadows to stealth, kill, consume, and spare your way through a handful of replayable levels. The Helios Corporation has seemingly fixed this universe’s energy crisis, but secrets lurk in the dark. Kinda bland secrets, but still I think I had a decent enough time overall.

Ayana the Ereban

The game begins with your player character being offered a job by Helios, the big bad conglomerate founded by “The Enlightened”. They felt like villains from the moment I saw them, so I don’t think it’s much of a shock that they are your main antagonists throughout. Ayana is an Ereban, a long-forgotten race of shadow-powered individuals who can blend into the darkness & much more. Ayana’s voice actress does a solid job of carrying stiff dialogue that feels a bit predictable throughout. She’s occasionally likeable though despite being essentially an alien-species she just feels like a human with cool abilities.

Helios has two worker types you’ll be either sneaking around or taking out. The majority of the game’s enemies are robots, who come in a few varieties. You have your standard walk-in straight lines over and over again bots. Bots who are purple, walk in lines and can rez any disabled bots they come across. There are sniper bots, stealth bots, and more as well. All of them have various light sources they emit, and their range of detection for your character is decently large.

Humanoid workers don’t fight but will raise alarms if they see Ayana. Your choice of whether to kill these workers or avoid them alters the outcome of your campaign. This carries over into your choice of upgrade paths as you hit the end of certain levels. You can go with stealth or more murder-focused powers. To upgrade these you’ll use various shadow orbs and other items hidden throughout each stage. You can replay stages at any time, though your main story choices will be locked in and unable to be changed for that playthrough.

Stealth Platforming

Ayana isn’t much of a fighter. Anytime a robot sees her they’ll pick her up by the neck and quickly subdue her, ending the game. Checkpoints are generous and there’s no penalty for failure outside of the end-mission grade you’re given. Getting through each stage and playing in various ways, either killing, stealthing, or sparing can gain you various points toward that final score. I went for the full stealth, only stun robots playthrough, and was happy with my outcome.

Ayana has a few gadgets to aid her in the “don’t be seen” variety. A decoy, mines that only stun robots, a flash bang that blinds the enemy, and a shield that lets you take a few hits are part of a decently wide selection.

You will need to find crafting and upgrade materials to make them feel powerful, and in my run, I barely used any of them. The more useful abilities require you to have a crafting material on hand for them and I didn’t feel like searching every nook and cranny to find more of them. The radar ping has no requirements and ended up being my go-to for most of the game. As far as the platforming goes it’s a mix of light jumping and occasional stealth puzzles. The stealth ones require you to use your shadow form to hit parts of the environment in a certain order and were “fine”. Not too hard, occasionally too easy, and kinda boring to figure out.

Controller-wise the Y button interacts, A jumps, B crouches (key for noise levels), and X is your stealth attack. You can’t disable robots if they’ve seen you, though you can skewer people at any time. The right trigger is used to put you into shadow mode. This makes you invisible to any enemies and able to climb up most surfaces, as long as they’re not bathed in light. The left trigger is used to run and an upgrade lets you dash while in stealth mode at the cost of your stamina bar. That bar is straight out of Breath of the Wild and limits you from staying in Stealth forever. Overall the gameplay in Ereban feels decent enough, which goes for how most of the game hit with me.

Graphics, Sound, and Bugs

Ereban: Shadow Legacy looks like a gorgeous 360-era game with a graphical remaster, if that makes sense. I love the art style of the main character and the cel-shading adjacent look, though the robots and humans are a bit bland. Environments look decent enough though the texture work can be decidedly low-resolution at times. Ayana and a few of the other main characters look damned good, I just wish it didn’t look like an old mobile game at times in the environment.

The soundtrack for the game is pleasant. While not memorable it matched the tone well enough so as to not be distracting. All of the game’s voice acting falls into a similar category as well. It’s fine, with the main cast doing their best to carry occasionally clumsy dialogue. There were a few times where it felt like “Hello there I am doing an acting” was the feeling a side character wanted to convey.

Bug-wise I didn’t run into anything noticeable. My main issue with the game was the occasional frustration in a forced camera change during a stealth wall climb. There are spots where you’ll need to jump from wall to wall while in your wisp form. The camera likes to shift for this and it can throw off the orientation of what your movement starts to do. I’d be holding left to go left and then the camera would shift and suddenly I was moving straight up into some lights which caused me to fall to my death. It happened a lot later on once the mix of puzzles and platforming got tougher.

Wrapping Things Up

Ereban: Shadow Legacy is an occasionally pretty, decently fun title. It’s not too long, and if you’re into collecting things there’s a solid reason to replay each chapter. I’m not sure when it is going to hit Xbox but if you have even a decent PC and love stealth platformers then this could be one worth picking up.