I played Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun back in 2018. I thought it was good but way too long. At the time the development studio Mimimi made a DLC for PC that was never released for console, until now 2025 after the studio have shut down. What a weird thing, or maybe not so weird. If you are a publisher and have this game with a DLC that only needs to be added to the already released console version of the game, you’re looking at a low investment with potentially high profit.
This is the same game as I played in 2018, except that it’s shorter as you only get the DLC levels. There are 3 major missions and 3 small ones. A major mission takes about 2 hours to finish, so that is more than enough content for me.
The missions are quite hard, because they take place just before the end boss of the main game, so you need to use all your cunning to solve the puzzles. The game has some useful tips at the first mission to help you get back into the gameplay and I thought it was just the right amount of help I needed. I haven’t played Shadow Tactics for 7 years but found no big obstacle to get back into it.
The game is fun and the maps and missions are great. They are just the right amount of complexity. You run into a scenario and wonder, “how the heck am I supposed to deal with this?” but you always figure it out. That’s what makes it feel awarding when you finish a mission.
As far as I know the DLC didn’t introduce any new mechanics, no new character or anything like that. It was just a couple of new missions. It would have been fun if they dared to go a little bit beyond the original formula. But I did have a ton of fun with the new content. It was never too hard, it wasn’t too easy and I find the console port to be perfect.
I rate this game as GREAT.
Replay 