Styx: Blades of Greed review

Styx: Blades of Greed review | PC Gamer Skip to main content Open menu Close main menu PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES US Edition UK US Canada Australia Subscribe Sign in View Profile Sign out Search Search PC Gamer Games Hardware News Reviews Guides Video Forum More PC Gaming Show PC Gamer Clips Software Codes Coupons Movies & TV Magazine Newsletter Affiliate links Meet the team Community guidelines About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine SubscriptionWhy subscribe?Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming magTry a single issue or save on a subscriptionIssues delivered straight to your door or device From$1Subscribe now Don’t miss these RPG The dev behind my top upcoming RPG is a Hungarian chef who thought ‘if not now, then when?’ and learned coding from scratch to make his dream ‘eurojank’ masterpiece FPS High on Life 2 review Horror Reanimal review: Astonishingly bleak and oblique survival horror RPG Warhammer 40k: Dark Heresy might just have everything I want from a CRPG Roguelike Mewgenics review: The creator of The Binding of Isaac has transcended his own past work with this sprawling, ridiculous, and endlessly surprising roguelike Puzzle Relooted is a fine heist game—but it’s a better history lesson Action Underrated hack ‘n’ slash Blades of Fire heads to Steam with a 2.0 update, bringing new game plus and ‘expanded death and mutilation variations’ for you sickos out there FPS Highguard review Action Nioh 3 review: This samurai soulslike epic is a serious contender to Elden Ring Action Absolum’s first update dares you to unravel the threads of fate, introducing rule modifiers, corrupted biomes and improved mounts into 2025’s best beat ‘em up RPG I’ve already put 10 hours into this upcoming RPG’s demo because it has the best combat I’ve seen outside a FromSoft game RPG The best King’s Field-likes on PC Games PC Gamer’s Game of the Year Awards 2025 Horror Burglin’ Gnomes is the next great friend-slop game that everyone with a PC and at least one other friend should check out Assassin’s Creed In defense of Assassin’s Creed Unity PopularNEW: PC Gamer Clips!Arc RaidersBest PC gearFalloutGame Quizzes Games Action When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. 82 Styx: Blades of Greed review This third instalment expands Cyanide’s infiltration blueprint with open worlds and other people. Reviews By Shaun Prescott published 17 February 2026 0 Comments Join the conversation (Image: © Cyanide) Our Verdict Nine years in the making, Cyanide has expanded Styx’s scope in all the right ways without sacrificing its steadfast focus on stealth. PC Gamer’s got your back Our experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you. Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware. Need to knowWhat is it? Goblin stealth goes semi-open world and hugely vertical.Release date February 19, 2026Expect to pay $40Developer Cyanide StudioPublisher NaconReviewed on RTX 3060 (laptop), Ryzen 5 5600H, 16GB RAMSteam Deck TBCLink Steam $31.99View at Fanatical $31.99View at Green Man Gaming $39.99View at Humble Bundle, Inc.I have a fractious relationship with the Styx series: I love its highly vertical and often punishing approach to third-person stealth, but I loathe its foul-mouthed, quippy goblin protagonist. I can’t even stand the look of the bastard. Styx has made me cringe through dozens of hours of otherwise brilliant sneaking and terror-wreaking, and I guess it’s saying something that I enjoyed pretty much every moment of Blades of Greed despite wanting to slug the sleazy green sod in the ear.It’s been nine years since the last Styx game and quite a bit has changed. Blades of Greed shifts towards an open world format, but the result is not dissimilar to the level-based design of the first two Styx games. There are three massive maps here, and all sprawl vertically to an extent that makes Dark Souls’ Blighttown look like the Sahara. I can’t access everywhere immediately though, because Styx now has metroidvania-style traversal upgrades that make returning to previously visited regions hugely rewarding.The first is a hookshot I can use to reach otherwise inaccessible heights (or accessible ones faster), and the second is a parachute for riding wind columns like elevators or breaking my fall. These and more are doled out during story beats but, as usual, Styx has a range of optional unlockable abilities too. I mostly used his returning temporary invisibility cloak, but Styx can also possess enemies, create a clone, and slow down time, in addition to some more offensive upgrades that didn’t suit my playstyle. Related articles The new game about the loathsome ancient goblin who kills people for fun and profit is delayed into 2026 To celebrate the imminent launch of a new Styx adventure, Epic is giving away Cyanide’s last two goblin-flavoured stealth games for free Cairn review: A gripping ‘strand-game’ about the limits of the body There are a lot of RPG-lite decisions to make, but they ultimately come down to whether you like to just sneak around, or if you plan to take a more brazen approach. Either way, for most players Blades of Greed demands that direct encounters be kept to a minimum. It’s possible to engage in direct combat with a foe but remember: you’re a piddling goblin. (Image credit: Cyanide Studio)HobnobbingMaybe surprisingly, Blades of Greed is an utterly gorgeous game, even on medium settings. My favourite map was The Wall. It’s a tumbledown multi-storeyed city built in the arches of a towering viaduct. I loved ferreting around in the upper reaches of this tenebrous ghetto, scaling heights that seem impossible or else off-bounds from afar. There’s also Turquoise Dawn: a verdant, swampish expanse once the sole province of orcs, with monolithic trees and even taller strongholds. Styx even revisits the ruins of Akenash, which was destroyed in the first Styx game.When a foe spots me I can escape up a chimney, parkour down a nearby rope, leap through the window and cut his throat from behind.As much as the Styx games are stealth they’re also basically platformers, and Blades of Greed’s shift to an open world format has resulted in hugely rewarding exploration. There were a couple of occasions during my playthrough when I was pretty sure I was sequence-breaking the game. But no: it’s always perfectly valid to shuffle dangerously along a wall above a sheer drop rather than take the stairs, and there’s always probably a couple of other routes to take as well.The maps are designed like sprawling honeycombs, and this is most obvious when I have to make a quick escape: crawlspaces connect chambers, which are also connected by rooftops, windows, corbels and pilasters. When a foe spots me I can escape up a chimney, parkour down a nearby rope, leap through the window and cut his throat from behind. By the five hour mark Styx takes on an expressive fluidity