Video Game / Shadow Fight 2

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Shadow Fight 2 is a 2D fighting game for mobile (available for Android and Apple) made by Nekki, the creators of Vector. The game serves as a successor to Shadow Fight 1, an online game released on Facebook. It features similarly stylized character designs as silhouettes against lush background visuals. The game utilizes Nekki's proprietary cascadeur animation technology, which allows for fluid animation of fighting moves and stunts without the need for expensive motion capture tools. The game is optimized for the touchscreen, with nimble controls to maintain a fast-paced playing experience. Players take on the role of a amnesiac warrior who has been mystically cursed to be a living shadow. The story follows him as he travels the land amassing an arsenal of weapons and rare armor and defeating enemies on his way to recovering his memory, his body and his past life.

The game's success leads to receiving a premium version (Special Edition) that adds a new prequel storyline called "Old Wounds", removing the energy system and advertisements. It has a sequel called Shadow Fight 3, and followed by Shadow Fight 4: Arena. A new game called Shadow Fight Shades serves as a direct-interquel to the game that is set after the events of 2, and before the events of Shadow Fight 3.

Tropes

• Acrofatic: Fungus may have a large unwieldy melee weapon. He himself however is elusive as hell.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy:
  • Our protagonist back when he was more than just a shadow. It's what led him into this mess in the first place.
  • A couple of Hermit's bodyguard, particularly Crane and Mantis.
• Artificial Brilliance: The later fights in Survival Mode can be surprisingly intense because the enemies don't just hit harder, they are incredibly patient, tactical and ruthless.
• Artificial Stupidity: This is when they aren't spamming easily-dodgeable ranged attacks at a predictable pace five feet from you, trying in vain to hit you just once, before they finally give in and flip the AI-brilliance switch on.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: Crane is the only Story Mode bodyguard to fight completely unarmed. He is still incredibly dangerous.
• Battle Amongst the Flames: When fighting Shogun and his bodyguards — and it is awesome.
• Battle Intro: All fights with bodyguards, Demon Bosses and Raid bosses feature some one-sided banter.
• Blood Knight:
  • The protagonist was addicted to fighting and showing he's the best, so he kept challenging new enemies until he had to leave his world in search of new challenges.
  • Redhead, one of Butcher's bodyguards, as portrayed in his pre-fight banter. Post-fight however, he seems resigned to the fact that he's getting a bit long in the tooth for that lifestyle.
  • Pre-canon Shadow. His unending search for a worthy battle lead to the events at the Gates of Shadow and thus everything that happens in the game.
• Bloodless Carnage: The entire game. People are hammered into the ground with gargantuan maces, slashed with supernatural blades and Punched Across the Room by magically-amplified blows to no visible effect other than exhausted - but very much alive - defeat.
• Boom, Headshot!: Hits to the head deal more damage and can also impart additional effects, depending on the abilities of whoever inflicted it. A critical hit to the head also has a small chance of disarming whoever it is getting hit
• Boss Rush: When you reach the Gates of Shadows, you get to fight the six Demons all over again — but now they are amped-up to match your new level of strength and you only get one health bar to fight them with. At least it regens a tiny bit between fights.
• The Butcher: Guess who? For bonus point, Bucher dual wields a pair of meat cleavers.
• Cherry Tapping: Theoretically possible if you go into a fight with an underleveled weapon. Takes a great deal of patience and skill though because the AI opponents will punish any error brutally and "time-ups" will always be in the A.I.s favor.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Much more subtle than most fighting games but it's there. If you are under-leveled for a fight (say with a bodyguard or a Tournament opponent) and you somehow start doing too well, the game starts slipping in extra invincibility frames for them that wouldn't be there otherwise. Alternatively, their hit detection becomes more forgiving and yours becomes less.
• Critical Hit: They do more damage, guarantee a knockdown and take away the Mercy Invincibility of a normal knockdown, giving the attacker the chance for one freebie extra hit.
• Death or Glory Attack:
  • Most attacks with the heavy weapons. They are enormously powerful but they are sloooow and will not hit at close range.
  • Most Heavy Melee attacks will overcommit you if you miss — but score big damage if you hit.
• Doing In the Wizard: Possibly the Demons are likely simply aliens and humans enhanced by the high technology of Titan. But enchantments do exist, even the world beyond the Gates of Shadow make use of it. While it may all be just Magic from Technology, there is magic that can be personally learnt and used.
• Double KO: Averted. If you both fall, the AI still wins.
• Dragon Lady / The Vamp: Widow, without a doubt. Beautiful? Check. Mysterious and seductive? Check again. Dual-wields Combat Hand Fans as her chosen weapon? Check and check. Her male bodyguards are all hopelessly in love with her, unaware that they are nothing more than meatshields in her eyes. Her sole female bodyguard, a more rough-hewn warrior-woman type, on the other hand aspires to be like her one day.
• Dual Wielding: Some weapons come in pairs, usually daggers, short swords or batons. Among the bosses, Lynx, Hermit, Butcher, Widow and Shogun all dual wield.
• Enemy Civil War: Half of Wasp's "bodyguards" were actually mutineers fighting against her. You'd happen to fight them all on your way to her.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink:
  • The world of Shadow Fight seems to combine every trope ever seen in Chinese wuxia movies, Japanese chambara samurai movies and shonen anime.
  • Not to mention armor styles from just about every culture in human history.
• Effortless Achievement: Shadow Fight has these, usually of the "lose x number of times" kind. It also has much more challenging ones.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Averted. After you go through the Gates of Shadow, you can get [[Magitek firearms with enchantments]] on them. These are the Incinerator, Blaster Tonfas and Plasma Rifle.
• Galactic Conqueror: Titan, the final boss of the main story mode. He is the largest character model in the game, wears powered armor and carries a huge high-tech sword.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Magic is presented as a rare and mysterious power, with Hermit's mastery of them considered something very impressive. However by the time you reached the next chapter, every two-bit thugs living in the slum knows how to use one.
• Genre Shift: The game turned from a vaguely medieval Wuxia like setting into Science Fiction once you go beyond the Gates of Shadow.
• Heroic Mime: Shadow apparently. He doesn't speak but his allies and enemies never seem to notice.
• Identical Stranger: According to Shogun and his men, Shadow looks remarkably similar to the Prince they usurped and murdered, which led many of them to think Shadow was his ghost looking for revenge.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: Only when a fighter has been knocked down by a Critical Hit.
• Lag Cancel: The low single sweep kick can be canceled into a low double sweep for extra range.
• Living Shadow: The protagonist is exactly this. While in combat all characters are living shadows, in-story everyone else looks normal while Shadow remains ... a shadow.
• Made of Iron: Everyone, given the insane amounts of damage they dish out and take.
• Magic Enhancement:
  • Quite a bit. Enchantments can be placed on your weapons, armor or helmet to enhance your capabilities in various ways and then there are the magic amulets that let you unleash blasts of elemental fury at your foes.
  • Interestingly, enchantments can also be placed on your magic.
• Mercy Invincibility: Characters are immune to harm when getting up from a non-Critical Hit, when wall-jumping and when being bouncing off a wall.
• Multi-Melee Master: The protagonist is this. He is capable of wielding any kind of weapons from the rather mundane ones such as swords and spears to the less orthodox such as giant scythe and nunchaku.
• Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups:
  • The Perk system. Most times you level up, you get to choose between two different perks that augment your offense, defense or survivability.
  • If you try to enchant an already-enchanted weapon, you lose the first enchantment — with the exception of Tempest Rage.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Desperate for a challenger, the main protagonist "broke the law of the elders" and opened the gate of shadows, which unleashes demons from the other side and turns him into a shadow, setting the events of the sequel in motion.
• Ninja: Lynx, most of his bodyguards and all the Survival Mode opponents.
• Noble Demon: To the point of Token Good Teammate. Hermit seems to differ from the other Demons in that he appears content to just train students and kick all the ass. He doesn't even appear to be a bad guy at all.
• Old Master:
  • Hermit fits this trope to a T. Even Ascension mode can only be found in Hermit's domain.
  • Sensei, even more so. He appears to have been Shadow's teacher before the Gates of Shadow incident.
• Outside-Genre Foe: Titan apparently. He is referred to as the most powerful of the Demons ... but he is gargantuan, wears powered armor, fights you aboard a spaceship and the music and aesthetic for him and his bodyguards is very very technological.
• Pirate/Pirate Girl: Wasp is a pirate princess who apparently overthrew her dad and took over his fleet. The crew is not entirely pleased though ...
• Punched Across the Room: Or kicked. Or sworded. Regardless of what limb or weapon you use, when Tempest Rage is fully charged and you land a hit? BOOM!!!!
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: Unusually, each of the Demons themselves has a coterie of five Bodyguards who you have to fight through before you can face them.
• Samurai: Shogun's aesthetic. All his bodyguards are dressed as stereotypical samurai, armed with stereotypical samurai weaponry and use military ranks as their names. Shogun is just that, a powerful Japanese military general.
• Samus Is a Girl: The masked assassin Justice is revealed to be the blacksmith May under Titan's mind-control.
• Scratch Damage: Unless the Shielding enchantment kicks in, all attacks, blocked or not, will do some damage however feeble.
• Self-Made Orphan: Wasp became the pirate queen by killing her father and usurped his group.
• Shockwave Stomp: Butcher has an attack where he grunts and jumps up a bit. If you're on the ground when he hits, you take a lot of damage and get critted. Fungus shares the move.
• Standard Evil Organization Squad: The Demon Bosses that the protagonist accidentally freed from the Gates of Shadow.
• Stock Ninja Weaponry: With the exception of calthrops, every stock ninja weapon appears in this game. Shuriken, chokuto, kusari-gama, they're all in there.
• Tin Tyrant: Titan is a giant in scifi Powered Armor with a giant sword and he is the final boss.
• Thug Dojo: Butcher's schtick. In contrast to Hermit who cultivates an image of the sage-like martial artist seeking and sharing enlightenment (even if most of his bodyguards are treacherous weasels who just want the secrets of his magic), Butcher favours brutality and the ultraviolent exercise of power as his espoused philosophy, one shared by his bodyguards.
• Unblockable Attack: Amulet magic, Shockwave Stomps and ranged throwing weapons are unblockable. The former are, if properly leveled-up, extremely damaging while the latter generally do Scratch Damage. Both are fortunately dodgeable for an alert player — unless you're just getting up from a hit. Then you're screwed.
• Versus Character Splash: Before every fight, there's nifty art of the characters about to fight.
• World's Best Warrior: The protagonist was the greatest warrior in HIS world. Unfortunately he wasn't satisfied with this and traveled to another world where Titan and his cronies teach the guy the error of his ways. When he kills Titan, who'd be the current greatest warrior, he's best of more than one world.