Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
Worth it · Strategy · 2016
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $39.99, a BANGER if it drops to $34.42.
- Length
- 24.9h
- Value
- $1.61/hr
- Reviews
- 96% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, Nvidia GT640, AMD Radeon HD7750, 1GB Vram, 13 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
Shadow Tactics is a hardcore tactical stealth game set in Japan around the Edo period. A new Shogun seizes power over Japan and enforces nationwide peace. In his battle against conspiracy and rebellion, he recruits five specialists with extraordinary skills for assassination, sabotage and espionage.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
February 2021 is where it bottomed out, at $3.99. It has been discounted 95 times in the 10 years tracked here, typically at 90 percent off, with about 5 weeks between sales. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 4 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 5 weeks. The math puts its BANGER price at $34.42. The record reaches that level 94 times.
On value it sits in the top 1 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 99 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 99 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Desperados III ($39.99, scores 84) beats it on value, while it beats Shadow Tactics: Aiko's Choice ($19.99, scores 57).
Critics scored it 85. Players sit 11 points higher at 96 percent, which usually means a game that plays better than it reviews.
Steam's global achievement data says about 6 percent of players ever finish it. On a 24.9-hour game, that is a lot of paid-for hours most people never see. This site sampled 800 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 4 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written July 2021 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 78 percent of the 1,836 reviews written there were positive, against 96 percent overall, and those are 6 percent of everything written about it.
The main story runs 24.9 hours. Doing everything runs 57, 2.3 times as long.
Deck Verified, so no launch options and no controller remapping before it runs.
The drop-off
39% start to 6% finishMost players never reach the end. On a 24.9-hour game, that's a lot you pay for and may never use. Steam global achievements
Players
218 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
A nice, sneaking in the shadows type game with cool music, fun characters, and quite challenging puzzles. Often it is not obvious what path to take, how to sneak past guards, or how to eliminate them and in what order, and when exactly. I have only played it for 11 hours, but it often happens that I try something, that doesn't work, and then I need to reload, try the same thing differently, only to discover that...
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
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Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun scores 82/100 on the BANG Score (worth it). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/418240/shadow-tactics-blades-of-the-shogunThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 13, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.