Styx: Blades of Greed review: Small goblin, enormous trespassing problem

The big picture

Styx has the physique of someone you could technically lift out of trouble and the personality of someone you would immediately put back. That is a useful combination for a stealth protagonist. A heavily armored hero sees a fortress and thinks about the front door. Styx sees it and starts evaluating drainage, roof access, and which guard looks most susceptible to an extremely avoidable workplace accident.

Cyanide's single-player sequel builds around that unpleasant little advantage. Blades of Greed gives its goblin a zeppelin crew, a hunt for the valuable mineral Quartz, and large vertical spaces in which being overlooked is practically a professional qualification. It is available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Quartz Edition access began February 17, 2026, before the February 19 general release; that was paid advance access, not a development Early Access period.

The roof is a suggestion

The three main environments give that thinking plenty of vertical context: the human frontier known as the Wall, the orc settlement of Turquoise Dawn, and the ruins of elven Akenash. Grappling, climbing claws, and a glider make height an actionable part of the design rather than attractive scenery above the bit where you are allowed to walk.

A glider is a particularly good fit for Styx. It turns a creature already associated with questionable judgment into airborne questionable judgment. More importantly, traversal equipment changes how a space can be read. A distant ledge becomes a possible route instead of an architectural insult, while an overhead approach can alter the entire problem below it. The interesting path may be several floors away from the obvious one.

New tools also open previously inaccessible places in a Metroidvania-style progression. That gives exploration a practical reason to revisit old geometry. The potential drawback is straightforward: remembering promising routes and returning to them demands more patience than following a marker through a corridor. For players who enjoy mentally annotating buildings with “come back with better burglary equipment,” that is a selling point. Anyone craving a brisk sequence of contained stealth rooms should notice the broader commitment.

Borrowing another person's bad decisions

Cloning and mind control offer different answers to the same wonderfully grubby question: must the real goblin personally handle this? A clone makes the protagonist less precious as a single point of failure. Mind control lets an enemy become part of the solution. These powers broaden the fantasy beyond finding the one correct gap in a patrol, because the patrol itself is no longer entirely beyond negotiation.

Time manipulation adds another layer of intervention, though the presence of a power should not be confused with an unlimited promise that every mistake disappears. The useful appeal is flexibility. Different systems encourage experimentation, and experimentation is much more interesting when the experiment has teeth, a dagger, and absolutely no intention of being mentioned in the incident report.

The tradeoff is cognitive clutter. More abilities mean more possibilities to compare, and a beautifully simple route can become an elaborate plan involving three powers and a drink nobody should have touched. That complication is largely the point, but it defines the audience. Blades of Greed makes its best pitch to people who enjoy constructing an infiltration rather than merely completing one. Direct confrontation is a much less distinctive reason to come here.

A captain nobody should invite to dinner

Putting Styx in charge of his own crew changes the scale without requiring him to become respectable. The zeppelin gives the adventure a mobile base, while the Quartz hunt provides a reason to keep entering places with clear opinions about goblin admission. Freedom suits him better than nobility. A character this well equipped to avoid responsibility should never be forced to become a shining example of it.

The story connects the beginning of the Great War and the formation of the Black Hand to the wider setting, preceding Of Orcs and Men. Existing fans have continuity to chew on, but the immediate hook remains comprehensible: a dangerous resource, competing interests, and a very small opportunist with several excellent reasons to stay out of sight. The setting supplies stakes; the goblin supplies the smirk.

The verdict

Styx: Blades of Greed has a clear identity: expansive, tool-driven stealth for players who consider the front entrance a failure of imagination. Its vertical spaces and overlapping powers are the main attraction, with the broader exploration asking for patience in return. If your ideal fantasy adventure involves saving your own skin while making everyone else's security arrangements look faintly embarrassing, this goblin has the right qualifications. References may be difficult to obtain.