Ereban: Shadow Legacy Review
A stealth platformer where traversal shines, but the stealth never asks enough of you.
Ereban: Shadow Legacy. Credit: Baby Robot Games / Selecta Play
Ereban: Shadow Legacy is a stealth action game from Baby Robot Games. Its hook is a great mechanic: shadow melding, letting you slip into darkness, travel through it, and pop out behind someone. The game makes it feel genuinely cool, and that’s both its biggest strength and its most honest limitation.
You are Ayana, the last survivor of a mysterious race able to meld with shadows. Naturally, this makes her very good at stealth, as she can melt into and travel through shadows for a limited time. She goes in for an interview at megacorporation Helios, monopolistic controller of energy for the universe, only to find it's a trap. Helios wants her shadow powers. She falls in with a resistance group, determined to learn more about her people as she uncovers the corp's possible role in their near extinction.
Characters, including Ayana, are a bit flat. The voice actors do a great job with the script, but the performances are undermined by the animations. Every character wears a full face mask, so body movement overcompensates to emote, and it feels unnatural. It’s not great, but it doesn’t affect the gameplay.
Ereban: Shadow Legacy. Credit: Baby Robot Games / Selecta Play
The levels are large, some closer to open-world regions, with multiple routes and optional objectives. At times, they feel a little too large, leaving dull gaps between the stealth and platforming sections that carry the game. I had the most fun in the tighter spaces. Hidden upgrades encourage exploration, though I got frustrated missing them until an upgrade let me spot them through walls.
Shadow melding makes traversal genuinely fun in a way normal movement doesn’t. You melt into shadows, move along walls, and pop up directly behind enemies. It can make stealth a little too easy. The game pushes back with level design and enemy placement, and larger groups create more interesting situations, but it never pushes the challenge far enough.
Ayana gains access to abilities and tools in a skill tree, unlocking moves like stunning and blinding foes, or hiding bodies to prevent detection. They’re cool ideas, but I rarely felt compelled to use them. The enemy AI is limited enough that the upgraded radar alone handled most situations. Simply navigating the levels covers for some of that letdown, but only partially. The shadow mechanic is genuinely fun to use, the levels give you room to explore, and there’s a satisfying loop in finding a clean route through a well-placed group. But the stealth never pushes you to use most of what Ayana can do. It’s a missed opportunity.
Ereban: Shadow Legacy is still worth playing, especially if you want something that feels good to move through without demanding much from its systems. Just don’t expect the stealth to keep pace with how fun the traversal feels.
Ereban: Shadow Legacy
A stealth platformer where traversal shines, but the stealth never asks enough of you.
