Shadow of Destiny is a simple yet adictive adventure game with a solid plot and great replay value.
Weird as it may seem, Eike is murdered at the very start of the game but thanks to the help of a strange creature, a homunculus, he does not fade away or go to heaven, instead, he's presented with an opportunity to travel back in time using a strange pocket device called digipad and somehow prevent his own demise.
As one would expect, each time Eike travels in time and interacts with people and places, his future changes, for better and worse. There are some key moments in this timeline that will define the outcome of his journey but there's also plenty of things to accomplish if you're willing to let Eike save people's lives or just bring happiness to a lonely child.
The game takes place on a small German town and the game does manage to create decent graphics for it. The character models are well designed but a bit overused as ancestors from a given character use the same model with a few touches. It does make easier for the player to identify the a given character's father but it feels silly if you're to meet four of his clones.
The game is divided into chapters, each chapter involves being able to find out a way to escape a given murder attempt, which obviously involves some knowledge about how you're going to get murdered. Sometimes you have to die in order to fully understand how the killer will act. Don't worry, homunculus will prevent you from fading away.
Travelling is time is very well designed since you can only travel to certain key points in the past, which are somehow attached to your destiny. This makes game play much smoother as it limits the places where the puzzle solution could be found. As the game progresses, the number of places to which you can travel to increase.
As said, death does not represent a problem in Shadow of Destiny but that does not mean you can't fail. There's a limit to the time you can stay in another time line, if you fail to return to your time before this limit expires, it's game over. There's also a few tricky situations concerning the overlapping of time lines but I won't spoil anyone's fun.
After you beat the game for the first time, you're invited to try again. This time, everything that you change is still there and you're affected by the changes you made in the first go. I found it very rewarding as it makes game play faster (you don't have to solve all the puzzles) and gives the player a strong sense of achievement.
There are six different endings (I've managed to get four so far) and each reveal a bit of the plot like why are you connected to the homunculus in the first place or who's the girl that you feel so strongly related to.
I'd say Shadow if Destiny is a very good adventure game with a huge replay value and smooth game play. Definitely worth buying.