you feel like you are very smart figuring it all out on your own while the game systems are actually nudging you in the right direction all the time ideally without you even noticing which is fine there's nothing wrong with that approach it takes a shitload of skill patience experience and dedication to handle that well but back in the olden days a convoluted open-ended overworld that you were guaranteed to get lost in was literally something that would be printed on the back of the box as a selling point not that different from how every single dark souls entry and its many derivatives proudly herald how much you will die in this game as a key marketing point because yeah if you know what you're getting into getting utterly lost but not giving in until you eventually start successfully untangling the gordian knot the game puts in front of you can be immensely cerebrally stimulating and satisfying unlike anything else the beginning hours when nearly every door mechanism and branching path is sealed off or placed just out of reach it felt frustrating and disheartening daring me to just throw in the towel and give up but shadow man really is one of those examples of games that get good if you stick with it for more than the average play time because the more i got into it the more it clicked and the more i got hooked eventually the point of near obsession i couldn't stop thinking about it and haven't played a game that i wasn't able to put down like this in a good while one aspect that strongly contributes to this is the way in which shadow man employs the act of collecting stuff not just as a tact on extrinsically motivating mechanic but as a central gameplay element that is linked to the game's progression and moves the narrative forward throughout deadside we regularly encounter large gates with symbols that correspond to our radial health and magic energy meter the amount of symbols highlighted on these soul gates indicates how much soul power we need to harness before we can burst it open and to increase our soul power we have to collect dark souls which we can find hidden all over both dead side hand life sides oftentimes they're placed in tricky to reach key locations or places beneath some obstruction or skill gate that requires additional powers to overcome and if we collect enough souls the circular magic bar increases one notch michael will exclaim that the power of the dark souls i embrace it and from that point on we have access to soul gates one level higher as well as more power for our shadow gun plus our mana pool also increases for the use of magical items and weapons so story progression skill progression and open world traversal progression are all interconnected aside from that we regularly find kadu scattered all across the game world many of them are in plain sight and right on your path while others are hidden more intricately in places that encourage you to really scavenge every nook and cranny which you will automatically adapt to doing over time because these kado pretty much work like the heart pieces in zelda games only that you need a lot more instead of four like in zelda games you have to collect a total of NUMBER_TOKEN kado and then offer them at the altars of the temple of life which increases michael's life energy by one additional slot oh generous lower a spiritual trade for life beyond this is of course completely optional you can choose to ignore the code completely but by giving you a very real and powerful payoff
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