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Review by
Gaming Masterpieces - The greatest games of all time on Steam.
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Is this game a masterpiece? Yes, as much as the main game already was.
Those who expect Aiko's Choice to be a prequel or sequel will be disappointed, because it takes place during the story of the main game. In the original, after the eighth mission (Kanazwa) and before the attack on the chief villain Kage-sama, our five heroes gathered once again in their camp, toasted with a few glasses of sake, and then set out for the final confrontation. In Aiko's Choice, however, something interferes - namely Lady Chiyo, Aiko's former boss (though the employment relationship was obviously not ended on good terms) - with her small army.
She surprises us at our house, takes Yuki and Takuma captive, and orders her soldiers to kill our remaining three heroes on the spot before she makes an exit. Of course, we don't let her kill us so easily, but escape to the roof of the house through a secret exit. And on the roof the game really begins. We have to escape from the village, free our two friends and of course kill Lady Chiyo, who is in the service of the Kage-sama. This will keep us busy for the next few hours.
Little has changed compared to the main game. We still play the motley crew of five heroes with completely different abilities - Mugen, Yuki, Hayato, Takuma and the eponymous Aiko. Mugen is a samurai and the leader of the troop, Hayato is a ninja, Yuki a thief, Takuma a sniper with a cute pet, and Aiko is a spy who can disguise herself as a geisha (and is also Mugen's lover). The expansion mainly highlights Aiko's backstory, but you also learn a lot about the other heroes.
Even though it is a stand-alone expansion that you can play without any prior knowledge of Blades of the Shogun, that makes little sense. Not only are you thrown into the middle of the story (after a brief introduction), but the difficulty level is not for beginners. Already in the first mission you are on the run in a Japanese village full of enemy soldiers looking for you. In addition to simple soldiers, there are also some heavily armored samurai that you can't easily take out. So it starts off really difficult, not for beginners, even if short explanations of essential game mechanics are shown. However, since you have access to three heroes and their five special abilities right from the start, the help texts will only help you to a limited extent. In order to succeed, the special abilities should be used skillfully - at the right place and at the right time.
We jump from rooftop to rooftop, throw ourselves from the roof onto enemies, or climb down a ladder because our armor makes us too clumsy to jump. If we don't take care not to make noise and remain undetected, we'll quickly have dozens of enemies on our hands, against whom it will be difficult to win. Enemies are best removed one by one. As soon as even one of our heroes dies, the game is over (and hopefully we can load the save game we saved just before). Our enemies are quite effective. Apart from the fact that they always patrol along the same routes, they fight quite well and can kill us with just one shot.
You'll have innumerable options for action at any moment and can solve many problems in different ways, depending on how you use your heroes and their special abilities or the environment. LShift lets us freeze time and prepare chains of commands for all our characters, which are then executed simultaneously. The game environment offers many hotspots that can be manipulated or where you can perform an action. In addition, many of the enemies move all the time (albeit along the same patrol paths). So there's a lot going on, which can completely overwhelm the beginner. For experienced players, however, it's like paradise - how do I best eliminate this guard? Shuriken, sword, sniper rifle... or can I stage a little "work accident" here? What is the easiest way to get there? For every problem there are (usually) a lot of promising solutions.
No surprise for connoisseurs of real-time tactics games (or the main game), but I still want to note it here as well - Aiko's Choice is not an action game. It's about moving with a small squad through vast environments full of enemies. These can be eliminated, but only one by one, and preferably in an inconspicuous way and without alerting their colleagues. It plays like a puzzle game, in which you'll observe your enemies, scout out their (always the same) paths and look at their fields of vision, to then decide whether to simply bypass them or in what way (and when) to eliminate them. Of course, when you implement your plan, things can get a bit hectic and every mouse click has to be right, otherwise your heroes will get their asses kicked.
Conclusion:One of the best real-time tactics games gets a little addon.
