Shame Legacy Review

Villages in the middle of nowhere. We all know that they have a lot of problems in games.

In real life, they have to deal with bad wifi service, buses only arriving once a day, and the village shop closing at 11am on a Wednesday. In games, they have to deal with devil possession, zombie outbreaks, and a ton of horror related nonsense.

In Shame Legacy, the village is back in the picture and not everything is right with the locals. Playing as yet another survival horror game, this one mixes running away, stealth mechanics, puzzle solving, and dealing with fear as one. There is little new there though, so let us see what Shame Legacy does to stand out from the crowd. 

Set in the 19th century, you play a man who wakes up and doesn’t know where he is or what he is doing there. This is always a great bit of storytelling because he is a cipher for what the audience is experiencing at the same time. Slowly you begin to realise you are being hunted by demented cultists in the village, and a huge fire monster who is tracking you. You begin to understand that your family and you have a connection here… but what is it?

The story is the highlight of Shame Legacy. It tells a great tale of cults, villagers turning bad and strange events involving family ties, refugees, and murder. It’s delivered in stages, through characters you meet, journals, and letters you find along the way. There is some nice writing, but it doesn’t feel completely original in its themes. 

Gameplay works a mixture of exploration, stealth, running away and hiding, and a strange defense-like quick-time event that I will talk about in a moment. The exploration side of the game involves walking around, exploring the area, taking in some climbing and the usual fare. Puzzle elements appear, but these are rarely tricky to work out even if some of them are quite clever. You also get to use and pick up objects.

On the stealth front, you are surrounded by demonic angry villagers who will kill or chase you down. There is a sound bar that appears, showing how much noise you are making and how well they will hear you if you don’t move quietly or crouch down. There are also places in which you can hide if you are in danger or in trouble. I found this gameplay mechanic to be the most frustrating element of Shame Legacy, as it feels like you are spotted far too easily, whilst at other times there doesn’t seem to be a path through. It becomes annoying more quickly than it is something you want to master. 

There is another strange device in play in Shame Legacy too and when you gain a certain object in the game you get access to a one-off defense mechanism. Here, when a villager attacks you, a strange quick time event happens that is unlike anything you will have ever done before. It’s unique but feels quite unnatural to action. If you can complete this and escape the protagonist starts to have a panic attack, needing to gain and drink a special potion to calm the nerves. I rarely enjoyed any of these moments, mostly as it takes you away from the solid atmosphere and story of the game. 

Shame Legacy comes with some nice set pieces and good character animations in the visuals department. The atmosphere of the villages – both interior and exterior – feels solid and well-designed. It’s a world I enjoyed spending some frightening moments in, but there are some long loading times that take you away from the world somewhat. The sound design again adds to the creepy atmosphere of the game, whilst the voice-over work is solid and they really commit to the melodrama of the game.

Shame Legacy is a fairly good survival horror game. The story, visuals and the exploration parts are pretty solid, but the stealth mechanics and enemy detection are strange and not particularly enjoyable. I’m not a fan of the strange QTE gameplay elements either. But the puzzles are good and the sound is eerie, however the price feels too high for what it is.

I guess I could come in here with some pun about Shame Legacy being a shame, but I won’t. Just let it be known that this is a good game in which some bits of gameplay let it down.