Shadowveil: Legend of The Five Rings

About

Shadowveil: Legend of The Five Rings is a single player role playing game with a fantasy theme. It was developed by Palindrome Interactive and was released on March 4, 2025. It received mostly positive reviews from players.

In Shadowveil: Legend of The Five Rings, you lead an expedition through the perilous Shadowlands, making strategic decisions to guide your samurai party. Recruit and level up warriors, equip powerful ability and item cards, and form synergy-driven combinations to overcome challenges. Carefully choose routes and unlock new paths to conquer the dangers lurking deep within the Shadowlands.

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Single-Player

Shadowveil: Legend of The Five Rings screenshot

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79%

Audience ScoreBased on 287 reviews

story25 positive mentions

stability14 negative mentions

Engaging gameplay loop that combines roguelike and autobattler mechanics, allowing for strategic depth and character progression.
Faithful representation of the L5R universe with great art, voice acting, and lore that appeals to both fans and newcomers.
Active developer support with regular updates and responsiveness to community feedback, enhancing the overall experience.

Numerous bugs and performance issues, including crashes and UI glitches that can disrupt gameplay.
Repetitive gameplay with limited enemy variety and a lack of meaningful choices in combat, leading to a grindy experience.
Clunky user interface that makes it difficult to access important information and manage characters effectively.

story
93 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
27%
70%
3%
The story aspect of the game has received mixed reviews, with many players finding it repetitive and lacking depth, particularly due to the forced narrative structure that often leads to retracing steps without clear motivation. While some appreciate the intriguing setting and voice acting, others criticize the thinly spread story and generic character arcs, which detract from the overall experience. Overall, the narrative serves its purpose but fails to elevate the gameplay, leaving players wanting more substantial storytelling and character development.
- “The story is incredibly well written, and they service the L5R franchise very well.”
- “A solid story to bring newcomers and veterans into the universe, and a solid core gameplay loop constantly making me want to play more; I've been recommending this to everyone.”
- “Voice acting is fantastic, and the story is great.”
- “The main story seems somewhat unsuited for the main game loop, in which you retrace your steps, as you now awkwardly fight up to the same bosses in the same order even though story-wise you no longer seem to have any reason for it.”
- “The story is too short and not very interesting; the post-campaign gameplay (already boring auto-battling) doesn't even have any flavor, and the recruitable characters are all generic, meaning none of them get their own story arcs or even opportunities to contribute to the story based on a player's decision to take them in their squad.”
- “The story is overly simplistic in a negative way; the 'hidden' villain is so obvious that it feels like a cliché, resembling a character who'd tie a girl to the railway tracks just to keep things clear from the outset.”
gameplay
70 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
30%
60%
10%
The gameplay is a mix of autobattler and roguelike mechanics, offering a strategic experience that can be enjoyable but often becomes repetitive and tedious over time. While the core mechanics are easy to grasp and provide a rewarding loop, many players feel that the game lacks depth, variety, and engaging content, leading to a less satisfying experience in the long run. Additionally, the aesthetic and user experience choices have been criticized, with some players noting that the gameplay can feel simplistic or reminiscent of mobile games.
- “It's a weird roguelike hex-based autobattler with enough mechanics to keep you thinking about strategy.”
- “The gameplay loop really appeals to me and has multiple levels of interactions and controlled randomness to work with.”
- “As a fan of the roguelike genre and the autobattle gameplay, this game really hits the nail on the head.”
- “Unfortunately, the gameplay is very ugly.”
- “Unfortunately, while the game does a decent job capturing the lore and atmosphere, it falters in nearly every aspect of its gameplay.”
- “The 'story' feels like an effort to mask the subpar gameplay experience.”
graphics
30 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
40%
10%
The graphics of the game receive mixed reviews, with some praising the beautiful art style and well-designed maps, while others criticize the low-quality animations and inconsistent visual presentation. Many players appreciate the sleek and stylized graphics, particularly in character and card designs, but note issues with optimization and performance. Overall, the art style is often highlighted as a strong point, despite some technical shortcomings in the graphics.
- “Legit really fun, and the graphics are so sleek and pretty.”
- “The artwork is beautiful, and the maps are usually well-designed and random enough to provide challenge and replayability.”
- “The game play in Shadowveil is fun and engaging, the graphics and art style are beautiful, the voice acting is stellar, and it's a great all-around roguelite/strategy game.”
- “To add insult to injury, the graphics are 16-bit quality with blurry outlines and poor animations. If you value your time too much to sit and watch the pointless auto-battle, they put literal VCR fast forward lines on the screen to make it even worse.”
- “Poor optimization—despite its low graphics, my CPU and GPU run intensively and overheat.”
- “Most common criticism so far from people seems to be the hand-drawn art style with stop motion animation.”
stability
14 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game's stability has been widely criticized, with users reporting numerous bugs, glitches, and crashes that affect gameplay. While some players note that these issues do not significantly detract from their overall experience, many express frustration over the lack of ongoing support and fixes for the game's persistent problems. Overall, the game is considered to be poorly optimized and still in a buggy state at the time of review.
- “Too buggy, crashes and fatal errors too many times.”
- “Update: support for the game ended, essentially none of the things I (and many others) see as incomplete or buggy were fixed.”
- “Game is incredibly buggy and poorly optimized.”
grinding
13 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Players consistently find the grinding aspect of the game to be tedious and frustrating, often feeling that progression is slow and unfulfilling. Many reviews highlight the lack of impactful upgrades and the repetitive nature of battles, which detracts from the overall enjoyment. While there is potential in the game's mechanics, the excessive grinding and shallow content lead to a sense of monotony and make it feel more like a chore than an engaging experience.
- “The upgrades you get in the main hub fail to be impactful and the level grind is beyond tedious, having to do multiple runs with ease only to be blocked by that boss.”
- “The game feels like a chore to play due to grinding for character levels, and there is a lack of strategic elements.”
- “There is teasing at progression, but so far, this game is very tedious - I'm almost 6 hours in and still haven't been able to defeat the chapter 2 boss, which I need to in order to use up the vast amount of influence or whatever it's called to upgrade my starting loadout.”
optimization
9 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
33%
34%
33%
The game's optimization has received significant criticism, with many players reporting that it runs poorly even on high-end hardware, leading to overheating and excessive resource usage. Despite some improvements in patches, users still experience major performance issues and bugs, indicating that the game is not well-optimized at launch. Overall, while there is potential for improvement, the current state leaves much to be desired in terms of performance.
- “There is enough variety and optimization that you could build with your team if you wanted.”
- “No, it's clear that the team, while passionate and very lore-accurate, aren't industry giants as the game is a little rough around the edges with performance and bugs at launch, but those can be cleaned up over time.”
- “It's all good except there are some bugs that cause the computer to make loud noises sometimes, which I think is due to programming or optimization mistakes.”
- “Poor optimization—despite its low graphics, my CPU and GPU run intensively and overheat.”
- “It just feels like there are major optimization problems.”
- “With a Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU and an RX 7900 XTX GPU, I shouldn't even notice that the game is running, but instead it turns my GPU into a leaf blower (this is after the 1.0.1 release, which improved performance).”
replayability
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
50%
The game's replayability is mixed; while some players appreciate the randomization of maps and the challenge it offers, others find it lacking depth and overall replay value. The balance between story and gameplay elements has led to varied experiences, with some praising the replayable mechanics and others criticizing the auto-battler format for its limitations. Overall, the artwork and design contribute positively, but opinions on replayability remain divided.
- “It's a rogue-like auto battler with a light story and some replayable content.”
- “The artwork is beautiful, and the maps are usually well-designed and random enough to provide challenge and replayability.”
- “Everything great: replayability, mechanics, use of the setting, voice acting, music.”
- “For some reason they decided to make this a brain-dead auto-battler with little depth and no replayability.”
- “Not a lot of replayability value.”
- “They split the difference of making it replayable and having winning as a goal versus going for a story game.”
music
5 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
60%
20%
20%
The music in the game receives mixed reviews; while some players appreciate the chill samurai themes and sound design, others find the soundtrack lacking. Overall, it seems that the sound design enhances the experience, but the soundtrack itself may not meet expectations for all players.
- “+sound & music (generally very nice sound design with chill samurai music, and nice drums for battle)”
- “I especially like the music...”
- “Everything great: replayability, mechanics, use of the setting, voice acting, music.”
- “Avoid this game unless you are buying it for the soundtrack.”
atmosphere
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
67%
100%
The game's atmosphere is generally praised for its strong lore, storytelling, and sense of discovery, which enhance the overall experience. While some gameplay aspects may be lacking, the atmosphere and character development significantly contribute to its appeal.
- “The game is pretty solid; it has some flaws, but it more than makes up for them in atmosphere and character - on its own, it's a neat little deck-building auto-battler.”
- “In addition to the core gameplay loop, I am enjoying the storytelling, atmosphere, and sense of discovery.”
- “Unfortunately, while the game does a decent job capturing the lore and atmosphere, it falters in nearly every aspect of its gameplay.”
- “The atmosphere is lacking depth and fails to immerse the player in the game world.”
- “While the visuals are appealing, the overall atmosphere feels flat and uninspired.”
monetization
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The monetization strategy of the game is criticized as exploitative, with users labeling it a cash grab that detracts from the overall experience.
- “Just another garbage game on Steam for a cash grab.”

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12h Median play time

13h Average play time

4-22h Spent by most gamers

*Based on 3 analyzed playthroughs

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Frequently Asked Questions

Shadowveil: Legend of The Five Rings is a role playing game with fantasy theme.

Shadowveil: Legend of The Five Rings is available on PC and Windows.

On average players spend around 13 hours playing Shadowveil: Legend of The Five Rings.

Shadowveil: Legend of The Five Rings was released on March 4, 2025.

Shadowveil: Legend of The Five Rings was developed by Palindrome Interactive.

Shadowveil: Legend of The Five Rings has received mostly positive reviews from players. Most players liked this game for its story but disliked it for its stability.

Shadowveil: Legend of The Five Rings is a single player game.

Similar games include Gordian Quest, Tainted Grail: Conquest, Across the Obelisk, Legend of Keepers, Star Renegades and others.

Shadowveil: Legend of The Five Rings

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