Shadow Blade is an entertaining little casual platformer that could have been great if not for bugs and inconsistent difficulty. I had a great time playing through the first five areas, little of the platforming was all that difficult but collecting all of the items and getting it all done in a time limit was challenging with a few levels taking me ten or more tries to pull off. The combat is very unsatisfying on its own but when the climbing walls, dodging traps, jumping between platforms and taking down enemies flowed together perfectly you feel fantastic.
It’s such a shame then that when you get to the final Dojo area and seven or eight of the levels are missing coins or have the percentage found miscalculated so you can’t fully complete them. Compounding on that they also thrown together with some of them easily being completed on your first try it’s a pretty poor climax to the game. Not to mention two of the achievements being buggy and not finishing.
There’s a great casual game in here, I loved that I could pick it up and run through a level in a minute or two but often found myself going back for just one more try on particularly difficult levels. It just needed a little more polish to make the experience a more positive one. It’s a shame Apple doesn’t have higher quality control standards for the games they curate on Apple Arcade.
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