In the Shadows of the PlayStation 2

Mogtones remembered the PlayStation 2 shadows

- Mogtones

I spent several hours, days, years diving into the library of the PlayStation 2 and falling in love with all the amazing titles. There were two titles/series that left an impact on me, that both had the word “shadow” in them, and no Shadow of the Colossus does not make an appearance in this. In my younger days, I would wander the aisles of Walmart, Zellers, and Superstore looking for the next title to immerse me completely.

One day, in my local game rental store (which is a phrase that you don’t hear anymore), I found some box art that appealed to me. Shadow of Destiny (Shadow of Memories on Windows), is a game where you die in the first five minutes. No, this isn’t a precursor to a Soulsborne title. You play as Eike, the unfortunate soul who is killed almost immediately as you begin your adventure. From here you are introduced to Homunculus, a creature who gives you a device called the Digipad, which gives you the power to go back in time to an earlier point of time before you died. So the first couple of chapters are about you preventing your own death, and then there is a shift when you accidentally take someone into the past with you, and to make it worse losing this person in the past.

Shadow of Destiny starts with a simple premise but evolves into a deeper connected story that, as the player, you are able to take in as much or as little as you want. Your efforts lead you towards one of six endings (eight technically with variations of two endings) to learn about how the two major timelines you traverse are related.