This was an interesting effort especially for a genre that has seen fewer and fewer releases as the decade has gone by and not even by a big budget studio at that. It is easy to rag on how underdeveloped the game can feel but at the same time due to the above mentioned reasons I'm a lot softer on it. After dropping Styx Blades of Greed a day prior to the game's port to PS5, it just gives me even more reasons to be softer on Ereban. Just for the fact that it's just a "linear" stealth affair and no bizarre and awkward attempts at an open world.
It's easy to draw comparisons between this game and the Aragami series. The visuals, the looks of the player character, the shadows motif, the various upgrades, and the fact that there is no combat option. Getting caught once means that it could lead to a game over.What really surprised that it had much more in common with the Splatoon games than I thought it would. Shadows in Ereban is like the Inkling's ability to travel through ink in that series. You can even attach yourself to walls and surfaces that have shadows on them much like the aforementioned character with ink. The main differences are is that you can't plaster ink to create more surfaces to travel only the shadows is already cast on the level geometry and you can hide under shadows for a certain amount of time.
With that said, as novel as a concept this might be. It can feel more so like a underdeveloped gimmick much of the time. It's often easy to bypass many of the enemies due to how slow they can move and how fast you are when travelling under the shadows.
It's often easy to just knock out a robot, have another robot spot the unconcious body, hide and travel under the shadows and then knock out the suspecting guard.
There are human enemies too and the game does try to incoportate a morality system by having you avoid killing them but they don't behave that differently from the robots.
Different attempts at gadgets are also in here but I didn't really use them that much or as much as the game would want me to due to how OP the base shadow travel ability is. I did you the decoy ability from time to time with that said.
Platforming can also feel stiff and awkward here too especially the base movement ability since your character can't mantle up waist high obstructions as gracefully as I would like. It can also feel unresponsive and awkward trying to from one shadowy surface to another during occasional mandatory platforming section with it. There's also a puzzle section late game that can feel out of place considering there weren't any puzzles before that.
The hardest parts of the game is when you have to deal with key or level progressing item that can't be phased along with you so you have to find a way to travel through the level where you can physically bring the item to the terminal to progress the next level. I did wish the game had more shake ups like this. That or have more enemy can directly influence the environment.
After all that criticism, it should sound like I shouldn't really like it that much, I can say I do at least like it. The level design is at least designed in the "get from point A to B" sqaure and rectectangle design. It's hard to get lost meaning the levels move at a fast and steady pace. The game also checkpoints quite often too so it's never too much progress lost upon death. There's also a really cool and interesting open level at around Chapter 3 that encourages you to explore. The whole game isn't like this and it's a decent way at shaking up the level design. Chaining multiple kills while hiding and travelling in the shadows does feel satisfying to pull off in the moment.
The story while nothing special never gets in the way. Main character can get a little chatty but nothing that gets in the way.
Overall, while the game can feel underdeveloped, I can say as a stealth game it does get the basics right and while I wish there were more higher quality new releases in the genre, I'm happy to say I atleast enjoyed this one.
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