Shadow Tactics Analysis: Takuma
Takuma is technically the third party member you meet and get control over, but in practice is very firmly the final party member: he shows up in the first mission, but can't do much in it, and in the fourth mission you rescue him and he can't do anything except walk around. It's not until the fifth mission that you get him with his actual full kit.
Internally, Takuma is labeled 'shadow alchemist'. In the final product he's primarily defined by being a gunman, but there's still a few bits that can be clearly traced to the alchemist thing being his core concept, not only in his actual standard kit but in mission-specific bits and plot bits where him brewing concoctions comes up. I'm kind of curious if the devs' early ideas were genuinely more focused on the alchemist angle and they deliberately moved away from that or if he was always intended to have the sniping be a primary part of his definition and it just wasn't reflected in the label they stuck him with.
It's particularly striking since the mission that first introduces the player to him has him only able to fire his rifle, not even able to move from his perch, contributing to the impression that the sniping is meant to be his primary thing.
Carry Behavior
Takuma cannot interact with bodies at all.
What, you thought you could have Takuma at least contribute by carting off bodies once he's out of ammo? Sorry, no.
This isn't a big deal, as for one thing Takuma's most notable utility is long-range shots where you'd need someone else to handle the body anyway if moving it in a timely manner is a concern, but the game never actually tells you about it and body-carrying is a sufficiently standard capability that I suspect at least a few players have gotten in trouble from expecting Takuma to be able to pick up a body and whoops he can't.
Infirm
Takuma is limited to universal movement behavior.
"Oooof... this used to be easier..."
Like Mugen, Takuma cannot enter deep water, perform jumps of any kind, climb ivy, or utilize grapple points. He's thus dependent on ladders and linked sets of doors for reaching isolated high ground. Unlike Mugen, this is actually a pretty important limitation on Takuma, since he wants high ground to snipe from, where for Mugen high ground is primarily useful for the fact that it can be used to sneak about.
Takuma also runs a lot slower than all your other characters, and makes a lot of noise when he runs, due to his peg-leg and cane. (This is specific to running, to be clear; Takuma is the standard level of quiet if moving at walking speed or while crouched) This means there are situations where other characters can literally run right behind enemies to get through a tight window undetected where Takuma cannot. In normal play, this isn't much of an inconvenience since Takuma shouldn't be sneaking around among enemies anyway, but if you're trying to get through a map without killing enemies, this can be quite the hindrance.
Alternatively, this can be used to grab enemy attention from the other side of thin-but-significant barriers. This particular utility isn't all that useful, as most line-of-sight barriers that would prevent Takuma from being immediately spotted wouldn't let the enemy hear him through them in the first place and worse yet Yuki is very consistently in any mission Takuma is a proper gameplay piece in and can perform the same basic utility with her whistle... but it's something to keep in mind, such as if you've gotten Yuki in an awkward position and aren't sure how to get her out undetected.
Also, unlike Mugen, Takuma's inability to swim is actually very noticeably relevant to multiple missions, as he comes along for a few missions that have swimmable water placed to really matter, where if he could swim you'd have access to additional ways of solving the map. In the base game, Mugen simply doesn't deploy in several of the maps swimming is strongly relevant on. This difference is made even more stark by the fact that Takuma would really appreciate the ability to swim just for opening up options on getting firing lines, which Mugen lacks an equivalent reason to care about the potential to swim. (Though as I've noted before, Aiko's Choice actually does construct itself to make Mugen's inability to swim noticeably relevant)
Fire Rifle
Death Duration: 1 second.
Noise: 3
Range: 55
Cooldown: 2 seconds.
Takuma kills an enemy with his rifle. Samurai will be merely Stunned, but can be killed with a follow-up melee attack by another character. Alternatively, Takuma may fire his rifle at certain environmental objects; the consequences are specific to the object, but in most cases this will result in something being dropped, potentially killing anyone it lands on. Takuma starts with a limited supply of ammo, ranging from 3-5 shots depending on the mission, but missions he is in usually have at least one crate for him containing 1-2 more bullets per crate. Note that if the mission intends for you to have Takuma shoot something to be able to complete the mission, Takuma won't spend ammo on that shot and won't need to conserve ammo for it; this is signaled by Takuma having a bullet icon adjacent to his portrait.
"A fine view..."
You might intuitively expect this to be able to instantly kill Samurai given it's a larger firearm than the Matchlocks, but sorry, no. It's just a Matchlock with better range and less Noise. (Which is a bit redundant a combination, actually)
The ability to shoot environmental objects is something loading screen tips will refer to but the game otherwise doesn't explain. Most such objects are specifically something hanging from a rope, in which case you can have Takuma shoot the rope to drop the object, but there's also cases of shooting ninja grapple points that are encrusted with ice to make them usable, and in the final mission there's a particularly unintuitive case where you're supposed to deal with a pair of Samurai by shooting a decoration so it falls on them and kills them. (And no, the game won't let you push it off with someone else if you manage to sneak someone up to it: I've tried it. It doesn't work) Having highlighting on will outline these objects in yellow, same as any other contextual object, which contributes to the confusion (Context objects are normally interacted with via the same input as 'pick up that body'), especially since objects you can drop by shooting a rope are usually highlighted in yellow to connect them to whatever you normally interact with to drop them... which makes the rope look like it's being highlighted as part of highlighting the thing it's holding up, obscuring that Takuma can shoot the rope.
They really should've had shootable objects be highlighted in green or something.
Note that it's possible to fire Takuma's Rifle at empty space and so waste it: Takuma fires wherever you click. It's surprisingly susceptible to this, because if you order Takuma to fire on an enemy who is either out of range or in range but blocked by the environment, Takuma will immediately fire the shot, wasting it, where ordering someone to fire their Matchlock on an enemy who is out of range or has blocked line of fire will cause them to maneuver until they have a clear shot and then fire. This includes that Takuma can move with his own Matchlock, unlike his Rifle. This makes sense when you consider that Takuma's Rifle is literally his peg leg, but is not actually communicated explicitly by the game, and as it's the only ability to have this limitation I suspect most players don't expect it and stumble over this limitation several times before figuring it out.
Fire Rifle
Death Duration: 1 second.
Noise: 3
Range: 55
Cooldown: 2 seconds.
Takuma kills an enemy with his rifle. Samurai will be merely Stunned, but can be killed with a follow-up melee attack by another character. Alternatively, Takuma may fire his rifle at certain environmental objects; the consequences are specific to the object, but in most cases this will result in something being dropped, potentially killing anyone it lands on. Takuma starts with a limited supply of ammo, ranging from 3-5 shots depending on the mission, but missions he is in usually have at least one crate for him containing 1-2 more bullets per crate. Note that if the mission intends for you to have Takuma shoot something to be able to complete the mission, Takuma won't spend ammo on that shot and won't need to conserve ammo for it; this is signaled by Takuma having a bullet icon adjacent to his portrait.
"A fine view..."
You might intuitively expect this to be able to instantly kill Samurai given it's a larger firearm than the Matchlocks, but sorry, no. It's just a Matchlock with better range and less Noise. (Which is a bit redundant a combination, actually)
The ability to shoot environmental objects is something loading screen tips will refer to but the game otherwise doesn't explain. Most such objects are specifically something hanging from a rope, in which case you can have Takuma shoot the rope to drop the object, but there's also cases of shooting ninja grapple points that are encrusted with ice to make them usable, and in the final mission there's a particularly unintuitive case where you're supposed to deal with a pair of Samurai by shooting a decoration so it falls on them and kills them. (And no, the game won't let you push it off with someone else if you manage to sneak someone up to it: I've tried it. It doesn't work) Having highlighting on will outline these objects in yellow, same as any other contextual object, which contributes to the confusion (Context objects are normally interacted with via the same input as 'pick up that body'), especially since objects you can drop by shooting a rope are usually highlighted in yellow to connect them to whatever you normally interact with to drop them... which makes the rope look like it's being highlighted as part of highlighting the thing it's holding up, obscuring that Takuma can shoot the rope.
They really should've had shootable objects be highlighted in green or something.
Note that it's possible to fire Takuma's Rifle at empty space and so waste it: Takuma fires wherever you click. It's surprisingly susceptible to this, because if you order Takuma to fire on an enemy who is either out of range or in range but blocked by the environment, Takuma will immediately fire the shot, wasting it, where ordering someone to fire their Matchlock on an enemy who is out of range or has blocked line of fire will cause them to maneuver until they have a clear shot and then fire. This includes that Takuma can move with his own Matchlock, unlike his Rifle. This makes sense when you consider that Takuma's Rifle is literally his peg leg, but is not actually communicated explicitly by the game, and as it's the only ability to have this limitation I suspect most players don't expect it and stumble over this limitation several times before figuring it out.
Anyway, point being you might wish to be more aggressive about dropping a quicksave before trying to fire Takuma's Rifle than with other ability usage, as it's really easy to just waste one of your limited number of bullets. Exacerbating the issue is that selecting the Rifle has the unique behavior of switching your cursor to a scope effect, where said scope is a very large icon; this does not match to how generous the actual pick-your-target behavior is, by which I mean it's absolutely possible to have a target inside the scope such that it looks like a valid shot but in actuality you'll tell Takuma to shoot thin air if you click. I like the flavor of the scope icon, but it's unfortunately bad for the actual gameplay.
Also note that Takuma's Rifle is unique among ranged attacks in that if you set up a Shadow Mode shot, the firing line will continue to be shown until you fire or cancel the order. This means you can set up a shot without having to worry about guessing whether Takuma currently has a clear line of fire on a patrolling victim: if he doesn't, the line will turn red starting from the blockage, and you know to not kick off the Shadow Mode order. If it never turns fully green... then you need to re-position Takuma or reconsider your current idea.
It's actually a little frustrating the game doesn't do this with other ranged attacks. Takuma's Rifle has it particularly important a feature due to its extreme range, but I've had literally dozens of times where I would've really appreciated Hayato's Shuriken having this feature, and less frequently but still so same with everybody's Matchlocks.
Kuma
Placement Range: 13
Noise Radius: 8
Duration: 20
Takuma may send out Kuma to anywhere within the placement range. Kuma can navigate ladders and doors to reach his destination, but is otherwise restricted to walking along the ground. (ie Kuma will not make jumps, swim, or use ninja hook points) Kuma may be freely given new placement orders, but Takuma can only designate locations within range 13 of himself. Kuma may also be ordered to generate noise at any time, without regard to how close Takuma currently is to his location; Guards that hear this noise will investigate it, and once they spot Kuma they will walk up to him and focus on him for a while.
"Work your charms, Kuma!"
Note that 'duration' in this case refers to how long Guards will remain distracted by Kuma: Kuma can maintain his noise-generating routine indefinitely, it's just enemies will individually eventually stop responding to him making noise. Also note that enemies become immune to further manipulation from Kuma once they hit this threshold; I'm not sure if this is an immunity that eventually times out or permanent to the map, but at minimum it lasts a while, so I personally treat it as permanent immunity. Regardless, this means that if you have Kuma distract an enemy and then they lose interest in him without you accomplishing whatever you were trying to accomplish, you should probably reload so you can actually try again.
Also note that Kuma is Takuma's only way of contributing that isn't hard-capped in uses or based on interacting with certain environmental objects. And Kuma still has to deal with the acquired-Kuma-immunity thing! This really limits Takuma, and also means if you're quick to use his ammo Kuma will end up being the only thing he can do later in a mission.
Surprisingly, if Kuma is heard by Guards who are part of a group that includes one or more Strawhats, the Strawhats will come to investigate Kuma. This is counterintuitive, as they do not do the same with Yuki's whistle, where instead the Guards will investigate while the Strawhat will almost immediately lose interest.
The fact that Kuma is on Takuma is one of Shadow Tactics few relatively serious design errors. Kuma is, on paper, a really powerful tool for manipulating enemies, in some ways more powerful than Disguised talking, since it allows you to tie up enemies at a preferred location with a preferred facing while the character making this happen is free to contribute in some other way elsewhere... but the fact that it's on Takuma is a serious error.
First, there's the mission distribution consideration. Without going into the details, Mugen and Takuma share almost no missions, and some of the missions they do share are designed so you have limited ability to have the two work together. This is important, because in theory one of the most powerful uses of Kuma is to set up for a Kazekiri, but in practice you have almost no opportunities to take advantage of this combination -indeed, in my first playthrough it didn't ever occur to me this was a possible ability combination because it simply never came up organically.
Second and more significant/frustrating is Takuma himself. If Kuma was on, for example, Yuki, she would be able to set up Kuma to distract a Guard, then circle way around to attack someone that Guard is covering and dispose of the body before they turn around, all without expending resources or needing the assistance of an ally, which would be appreciated in missions where she's paired solely with Takuma or Mugen since she can reach places they just plain can't. On Takuma, however, Kuma isn't adding a lot: Takuma needs other people to handle bodies, and his actual offensive actions all kill at range, with the victims dying really fast. The fact that he needs help carrying bodies means that, for example, having Kuma distract a Guard so Takuma can shoot someone the Guard is watching with Yuki ready to dispose of the body... well, at that point why don't you save ammo and just have Yuki kill Takuma's would-be victim? And at that point, what's the advantage of Kuma over having a Disguised Aiko talk to the Guard, or Hayato distract them with a thrown rock?
Like yes there's edge cases where Kuma is bringing something unique to the table, such as distracting Guards who are being watched by Samurai and have no nearby hiding places for Yuki to whistle from, but the point is that Takuma's kit doesn't synergize with Kuma particularly. Having Kuma on Takuma doesn't really let you get more done with less to resolve complicated situations with a small number of characters the way Kuma would if he was on literally any other character.
As a bonus layer to this being a frustrating mistake, it seems more natural on the narrative level for wild-child Yuki to have befriended a tanuki. The game makes it pretty clear that animals have been closer to friends for her than human beings have for much of her life, whereas Takuma just kind of... randomly... and without explanation... has a trained tanuki pet or something. Like, just replacing Yuki's whistle with Kuma and then splitting Takuma's two grenades into being two separate skill slots with separate ammo supplies would honestly be a pretty huge improvement to the game's design with no real need to change map designs or come up with a replacement skill on Takuma. The only change that would be needed would be to a specific plotpoint in a single mission, and it wouldn't be hard to come up with a replacement for the purpose Kuma serves in that particular scene.
It's particularly weird since the game's main menu art really seems to be trying to get the player to associate Kuma with Yuki. I spent a good chunk of the game assuming Yuki's empty skill slot was going to be filled by that conspicuous tanuki standing nearby her. (The slot that Matchlock goes into) And... nope, the tanuki is on Takuma.
Huh?
I should explicitly note that there are Badges you'll fail if Takuma just blows people up, but won't fail by knocking them out and having someone else finish them. So if you're trying to do everything of interest, the poison grenade is liable to see some use. Just... not much.
Matchlock
Death Duration: 1 second.
Noise: 8
Range: 17
Cooldown: 3 seconds.
Takuma kills an enemy with his wrist-mounted matchlock pistol. Samurai will be merely Stunned, but can be killed with a melee attack while Stunned. Takuma normally starts with three shots and cannot acquire any more within a mission unless an ammo crate is present.
"Medium range will do!"
Note that Takuma permanently joining up with your crew is the point at which Matchlocks -and Mugen's Hand Cannon- are added to everyone's repertoire.
For Takuma, the Matchlock is redundant with his Rifle, with the Rifle having better range, producing less noise, and even having a shorter cooldown. The main reason to bother with his Matchlock is to save Rifle bullets, as their ammo stocks are separate.
This has the odd implication that optimal play involves you preferentially using Takuma's Matchlock over his Rifle where feasible, and furthermore that you should preferentially use his Matchlock over other Matchlocks since Takuma's limited mobility means he's flatly inferior as a Matchlock user to your ninja characters; having Yuki run out of Matchlock ammo while Takuma is full may mean you've denied yourself the ability to set up a rooftop shot or similar. The converse is not true, especially since Takuma can just fall back on his Rifle once his Matchlock is out of ammo.
Put another way, this means good play maximizes Takuma's Matchlock use because of it being terrible.
Also note that Takuma's Rifle is unique among ranged attacks in that if you set up a Shadow Mode shot, the firing line will continue to be shown until you fire or cancel the order. This means you can set up a shot without having to worry about guessing whether Takuma currently has a clear line of fire on a patrolling victim: if he doesn't, the line will turn red starting from the blockage, and you know to not kick off the Shadow Mode order. If it never turns fully green... then you need to re-position Takuma or reconsider your current idea.
It's actually a little frustrating the game doesn't do this with other ranged attacks. Takuma's Rifle has it particularly important a feature due to its extreme range, but I've had literally dozens of times where I would've really appreciated Hayato's Shuriken having this feature, and less frequently but still so same with everybody's Matchlocks.
Regardless, setting up the shot via Shadow Mode is one way to avoid accidentally wasting the shot. This is particularly helpful with moving targets, not only for the obvious reason that if your click isn't on-target you can just try again instead of it having wasted a bullet, but also for the less obvious reason that a moving target makes it really blatant whether you assigned the shot to your target or to somewhere pointless: if you targeted your intended victim, the icon indicating you've set up a shot in Shadow Mode will move with your victim, after all. Even on an immobile target, though, it's easier to tell -if you got it right, the game will draw the targeting line right to the target's head, and the Shadow Mode icon will be hovering over their head and thus noticeably above where you clicked. If you got it wrong, the targeting line will be stopping somewhere that isn't the target's head and the Shadow Mode icon will have appeared exactly where you clicked.
Or you can just quicksave/quickload a lot, of course. That works fine, too.
Anyway, Takuma's Rifle is a powerful tool the game does a somewhat poor job of introing you on, and in fact your initial introduction to it has very little to do with how Takuma works later missions: in the first mission, Takuma joins the party standing atop a high tower, and the Rifle is the only action available to him, to the point that if you select him the game goes right into the targeting mode with the Rifle: he can't use his other abilities, and in fact can't even move! Some of the misleading elements are easy to get past; him being way up on a tower when he can't actually climb like that in later missions can be readily put down to him still having both legs in the first mission, for example.
Anyway, Takuma's Rifle is a powerful tool the game does a somewhat poor job of introing you on, and in fact your initial introduction to it has very little to do with how Takuma works later missions: in the first mission, Takuma joins the party standing atop a high tower, and the Rifle is the only action available to him, to the point that if you select him the game goes right into the targeting mode with the Rifle: he can't use his other abilities, and in fact can't even move! Some of the misleading elements are easy to get past; him being way up on a tower when he can't actually climb like that in later missions can be readily put down to him still having both legs in the first mission, for example.
But the usage of Takuma's Rifle is not communicated well, even though the only mechanical difference in its behavior is Takuma's unwillingness to move at all in that first mission. That first mission basically presents the Rifle as having utility akin to Aiko's Disguise, in terms of getting to kill enemies who are difficult to reach conventionally, and that's all you really get conveyed. Later missions guide you to recognizing the utility of its very long range, but the way they do this doesn't really translate into regular mission usage; one mission has you killing a target where it's impossible to avoid being detected in the process, with the Rifle being one of your options for this kill, when in every other case the game really expects you to respond to being detected by quickloading, so 'shoot a target you don't mind being seen killed' isn't really a utility that actually exists otherwise.
On the plus side, this isn't particularly problematic in practice, as the game is extremely reluctant to present you with situations that basically require a Rifle shot to disentangle. It's entirely possible to get through the entire campaign almost never firing Takuma's Rifle, and thus if you're not sure how the game intends you to use his Rifle, that's only liable to be a significant obstacle one time in the final mission because of that decoration thing I described earlier... which is a different design issue...
... anyway, what I'm getting at is that Takuma's Rifle has two key qualities that are uniquely useful: the target dies fast (Shared with Matchlocks at 1 second) and for most purposes it's accurate to describe the Rifle as silent, as its noise value is far below its firing radius (A bit under 5.5% of its firing radius is occupied by its noise radius) and due to the extreme range there's rarely any need to move Takuma anywhere near other enemies while setting up a shot. This allows Takuma to eliminate enemies in very brief windows other characters would struggle to match (Even with Matchlocks having the same death duration, their shorter range and larger noise radius makes them inferior to the Rifle at this), where you can drop a target who is actively watched by one or more other enemies by shooting them in the second or so the other enemies are looking elsewhere.
... anyway, what I'm getting at is that Takuma's Rifle has two key qualities that are uniquely useful: the target dies fast (Shared with Matchlocks at 1 second) and for most purposes it's accurate to describe the Rifle as silent, as its noise value is far below its firing radius (A bit under 5.5% of its firing radius is occupied by its noise radius) and due to the extreme range there's rarely any need to move Takuma anywhere near other enemies while setting up a shot. This allows Takuma to eliminate enemies in very brief windows other characters would struggle to match (Even with Matchlocks having the same death duration, their shorter range and larger noise radius makes them inferior to the Rifle at this), where you can drop a target who is actively watched by one or more other enemies by shooting them in the second or so the other enemies are looking elsewhere.
Indeed, Takuma can be used to take apart an entire patrol unit by simply shooting whoever has the misfortune of being in back, repeating until they're all dead or you're comfortable sending in other characters to handle the remainder: enemies make no noise as they hit the floor, and the bullet impact is silent as well, so the other members of the patrol won't know you're killing their buddies so long as you don't kill someone standing in front of someone else!
Among other points, this is one way to handle a mixed unit that includes a Samurai, as they always march in front, meaning you can snipe the Guard(s) trailing behind them without alerting the Samurai, then shoot the Samurai and finish them in melee. Such mixed patrols are one of the more difficult things to cleanly deal with if you're unaware of this trick, especially if you don't have Mugen in the mission, since you have only one tool for instantly killing a Samurai that isn't single-target; Takuma's grenades.
This is all possible to do with Matchlocks, of course, but if there's other enemies nearby, even if they don't have sight, the Matchlock's noise may make this difficult or impossible to arrange unnoticed, when doing it unnoticed is the point.
Mind, this isn't to suggest that shooting difficult-to-reach targets is a poor use of the Rifle; that's absolutely one of the better uses of the Rifle. Enemies up in towers in particular can be a pain to reach and kill in melee without being noticed, but their deaths are generally impossible for other enemies to see; some cases of an enemy in a tower are pretty clearly intended to be shot as the straightforward solution, even, though it's never strictly necessary. (This comes up in the very first mission Takuma deploys in properly, for example)
Also, I should point out that clicking the Rifle's icon causes Takuma to stop whatever he's doing and get his rifle ready. This is unique among all abilities, and can get you in trouble if eg you walk Takuma toward a bush and then click the Rifle icon in preparation for firing from the bush -and whoops, Takuma didn't get into the Bush before you clicked and so is standing out in the open, and a patrol spots him.
Kuma
Placement Range: 13
Noise Radius: 8
Duration: 20
Takuma may send out Kuma to anywhere within the placement range. Kuma can navigate ladders and doors to reach his destination, but is otherwise restricted to walking along the ground. (ie Kuma will not make jumps, swim, or use ninja hook points) Kuma may be freely given new placement orders, but Takuma can only designate locations within range 13 of himself. Kuma may also be ordered to generate noise at any time, without regard to how close Takuma currently is to his location; Guards that hear this noise will investigate it, and once they spot Kuma they will walk up to him and focus on him for a while.
"Work your charms, Kuma!"
Note that 'duration' in this case refers to how long Guards will remain distracted by Kuma: Kuma can maintain his noise-generating routine indefinitely, it's just enemies will individually eventually stop responding to him making noise. Also note that enemies become immune to further manipulation from Kuma once they hit this threshold; I'm not sure if this is an immunity that eventually times out or permanent to the map, but at minimum it lasts a while, so I personally treat it as permanent immunity. Regardless, this means that if you have Kuma distract an enemy and then they lose interest in him without you accomplishing whatever you were trying to accomplish, you should probably reload so you can actually try again.
Also note that Kuma is Takuma's only way of contributing that isn't hard-capped in uses or based on interacting with certain environmental objects. And Kuma still has to deal with the acquired-Kuma-immunity thing! This really limits Takuma, and also means if you're quick to use his ammo Kuma will end up being the only thing he can do later in a mission.
Surprisingly, if Kuma is heard by Guards who are part of a group that includes one or more Strawhats, the Strawhats will come to investigate Kuma. This is counterintuitive, as they do not do the same with Yuki's whistle, where instead the Guards will investigate while the Strawhat will almost immediately lose interest.
The fact that Kuma is on Takuma is one of Shadow Tactics few relatively serious design errors. Kuma is, on paper, a really powerful tool for manipulating enemies, in some ways more powerful than Disguised talking, since it allows you to tie up enemies at a preferred location with a preferred facing while the character making this happen is free to contribute in some other way elsewhere... but the fact that it's on Takuma is a serious error.
First, there's the mission distribution consideration. Without going into the details, Mugen and Takuma share almost no missions, and some of the missions they do share are designed so you have limited ability to have the two work together. This is important, because in theory one of the most powerful uses of Kuma is to set up for a Kazekiri, but in practice you have almost no opportunities to take advantage of this combination -indeed, in my first playthrough it didn't ever occur to me this was a possible ability combination because it simply never came up organically.
Second and more significant/frustrating is Takuma himself. If Kuma was on, for example, Yuki, she would be able to set up Kuma to distract a Guard, then circle way around to attack someone that Guard is covering and dispose of the body before they turn around, all without expending resources or needing the assistance of an ally, which would be appreciated in missions where she's paired solely with Takuma or Mugen since she can reach places they just plain can't. On Takuma, however, Kuma isn't adding a lot: Takuma needs other people to handle bodies, and his actual offensive actions all kill at range, with the victims dying really fast. The fact that he needs help carrying bodies means that, for example, having Kuma distract a Guard so Takuma can shoot someone the Guard is watching with Yuki ready to dispose of the body... well, at that point why don't you save ammo and just have Yuki kill Takuma's would-be victim? And at that point, what's the advantage of Kuma over having a Disguised Aiko talk to the Guard, or Hayato distract them with a thrown rock?
Like yes there's edge cases where Kuma is bringing something unique to the table, such as distracting Guards who are being watched by Samurai and have no nearby hiding places for Yuki to whistle from, but the point is that Takuma's kit doesn't synergize with Kuma particularly. Having Kuma on Takuma doesn't really let you get more done with less to resolve complicated situations with a small number of characters the way Kuma would if he was on literally any other character.
As a bonus layer to this being a frustrating mistake, it seems more natural on the narrative level for wild-child Yuki to have befriended a tanuki. The game makes it pretty clear that animals have been closer to friends for her than human beings have for much of her life, whereas Takuma just kind of... randomly... and without explanation... has a trained tanuki pet or something. Like, just replacing Yuki's whistle with Kuma and then splitting Takuma's two grenades into being two separate skill slots with separate ammo supplies would honestly be a pretty huge improvement to the game's design with no real need to change map designs or come up with a replacement skill on Takuma. The only change that would be needed would be to a specific plotpoint in a single mission, and it wouldn't be hard to come up with a replacement for the purpose Kuma serves in that particular scene.
It's particularly weird since the game's main menu art really seems to be trying to get the player to associate Kuma with Yuki. I spent a good chunk of the game assuming Yuki's empty skill slot was going to be filled by that conspicuous tanuki standing nearby her. (The slot that Matchlock goes into) And... nope, the tanuki is on Takuma.
Huh?
Desperados III thankfully doesn't repeat this mistake, with its Kuma-analogue attached to a character with no Shadow Tactics analogue, while Takuma's sniper duties are on a different character entirely. I'm not sure its Kuma-analogue really realizes the potential to the concept, but it's at least sidestepping all this wonkiness.
... on a different note, Kuma is immune to Takuma's grenades. The great thing is that Takuma will comment in response to catching Kuma in a blast radius, saying things like, "How does he do that?" It's a nice little touch, and funny every time it comes up.
Throw Grenade
Throw Range: 15
Noise Radius: 13
Blast Radius: 4
Cooldown: 6 seconds.
Takuma throws a grenade, killing everyone caught in the blast radius, even Samurai. Has a limited number of uses per mission, usually 1 but sometimes 2.
"Fireworks, ready!"
The exploding grenade is unique for being an area-of-effect tool that kills Samurai, and thus is generally best used to kill clustered Samurai that would otherwise be extremely difficult to kill without alerting anyone, particularly since this frees up Matchlock/Rifle ammo to be spent elsewhere, whether on more isolated Samurai or even on non-Samurai.
Keep in mind it has a noticeable travel time, much more so than Hayato's rock or Aiko's Sneezing Powder. This isn't a huge deal overall, as it's very rare for a patrol to be made up of multiple Samurai and the arcing behavior means that against standing Samurai you don't necessarily need to risk being spotted as part of a throw, but if nothing else you should remember to quicksave before prepping for a toss on moving targets.
... on a different note, Kuma is immune to Takuma's grenades. The great thing is that Takuma will comment in response to catching Kuma in a blast radius, saying things like, "How does he do that?" It's a nice little touch, and funny every time it comes up.
Throw Grenade
Throw Range: 15
Noise Radius: 13
Blast Radius: 4
Cooldown: 6 seconds.
Takuma throws a grenade, killing everyone caught in the blast radius, even Samurai. Has a limited number of uses per mission, usually 1 but sometimes 2.
"Fireworks, ready!"
The exploding grenade is unique for being an area-of-effect tool that kills Samurai, and thus is generally best used to kill clustered Samurai that would otherwise be extremely difficult to kill without alerting anyone, particularly since this frees up Matchlock/Rifle ammo to be spent elsewhere, whether on more isolated Samurai or even on non-Samurai.
Keep in mind it has a noticeable travel time, much more so than Hayato's rock or Aiko's Sneezing Powder. This isn't a huge deal overall, as it's very rare for a patrol to be made up of multiple Samurai and the arcing behavior means that against standing Samurai you don't necessarily need to risk being spotted as part of a throw, but if nothing else you should remember to quicksave before prepping for a toss on moving targets.
The grenade is, unfortunately, probably bad for the design of the game. It's oppressively powerful, where any mission you have access to it is a mission where you can just delete one group of enemies (Or two groups in the cases Takuma has two), and the 'balancing' factor is that it's limited use. This just encourages you to identify what group is the most problematic and use it on them, skipping the actual puzzle-solving of working out how to disentangle that group. Since the game's handling of enemies is largely hierarchal, where Strawhats are almost always more problematic than Guards and Samurai are almost always more problematic than Strawhats, this isn't even a tricky judgment call: you basically just blast the largest group on the map you can catch or blast the largest group of highest-threat enemies you can blast. (eg blasting the only example of two Samurai hanging together the map has)
In theory its massive sound radius is another balance factor, but it's hampered by a mixture of map design and the behavior of the more elite enemies: if a Strawhat or Samurai hears the explosion, they don't assume something is seriously wrong and trigger an alert, they just glance briefly in the direction of the explosion and then ignore it if they don't immediately spot a dead body or one of your characters. In conjunction with terrain blocking line of sight, it's entirely possible to vaporize a group of enemies, have it heard by several other enemies, and have it not matter because none of them can immediately see anything concerning and none of them are willing to investigate. Furthermore, Shadow Tactics is quite fond of having its largest groups of enemies poorly-covered, such as patrolling through large stretches of 'dead' areas that lack other enemies close enough to see or hear anything happening in, relying on the patrol's own large size to make it hard to trivially remove them... which the grenade bypasses as a protection.
The game giving you very limited supplies of it does at least limit the damage, but... only really in a first-order sense of preventing the player from trampling all over a map with rampant grenade abuse. The strain it puts on mission design exists regardless, where the devs can't really present certain kinds of obstacles as interesting challenges; say you made a map with a five-Guard patrol, where Takuma is present and has one grenade use. If you want the player to actually take apart that five-Guard patrol with clever tactics and so on... you need to add another such five-Guard patrol, or else they'll just blow up the one group and that's that. That's ugly, and it only gets worse as you imagine further attempts to solve the problem; among other points, if you instead designed a map so it demanded the player use their grenades on specific, otherwise-unreasonable groups, then what about if a player gets 50 minutes into your map and only then realizes they needed to save a grenade for your ludicrous 7-Samurai patrol blocking access to the final objective?
This is an example of a design mistake I tend to be very sympathetic to; an element doesn't look problematic until you've explored the space a little and seen that obvious answers just change the nature of the problem without meaningfully reducing how much of a problem it is.
Even so, if there's ever a proper Shadow Tactics sequel, I very much hope the grenade does not come back in a recognizable form. It's a good sign that Desperados III doesn't have a clear equivalent, at least.
Though we're not really done talking about the grenade, as it shares space with...
Throw Poison Grenade
Throw Range: 15
Noise Radius: 0
Blast Radius: 5
Cooldown: 6 seconds.
Takuma throws a grenade, knocking unconscious everyone caught in the blast radius, even Samurai. Shares its limited number of uses with the exploding grenade: throwing a poison grenade when you have one grenade left means not getting to throw an exploding grenade later.
"This'll put them to sleep."
... this.
Throw Poison Grenade
Throw Range: 15
Noise Radius: 0
Blast Radius: 5
Cooldown: 6 seconds.
Takuma throws a grenade, knocking unconscious everyone caught in the blast radius, even Samurai. Shares its limited number of uses with the exploding grenade: throwing a poison grenade when you have one grenade left means not getting to throw an exploding grenade later.
"This'll put them to sleep."
... this.
The poison grenade shares a lot of the design oppressiveness of the exploding grenade, and in some ways is even actually more powerful than the exploding grenade; since it's completely silent and has a larger radius, it can catch more enemies and be used even if there are other enemies nearby with potential for a clear line of sight to your victims, so long as they don't turn to look that way as part of their normal routine. The fact that it merely KOs enemies is only mildly inconvenient if you're in a position to have other characters run in and finish off everyone, as enemies take sufficiently long to recover from unconsciousness that even a single character can finish off even a very large number of enemies before they get the chance to wake up. (For one thing, every character's kill-time on unconscious targets is really short, less than a second)
Even so, the fact that you need to be able to follow up immediately is an important limiter. Part of how the explosive grenade is oppressive for the design is how casually you can delete groups of enemies; if a group ever patrols sufficiently far out of reach of other enemies with any kind of hiding place nearby (Even a solid wall), you can immediately delete that group without any thought, no need to bother disentangling the complex knot of patrols and so on. The poison grenade adding the need to actually be able to follow up means you can't just vaporize an isolated group from the other side of a wall for free, or vaporize a patrolling group as they pass through a spot you can't reach undetected just yet, or otherwise remove a group in one action without worrying about how they fit into the larger state of the map.
Anyway, as far as its usage as a game piece, there's not a ton of distinction between the poison grenade and the exploding grenade. The exploding grenade is more convenient if you don't have to worry about the noise drawing investigation, the poison grenade is what you use if either noise is a problem or you need its slightly larger radius to catch everybody you want to catch. This is at least more of a reason to go non-lethal than with melee attacks, where only Hayato's unarmed melee attack has any advantage over the lethal melee attack, but not much of one.
In theory, it could be appealing for cases where a mission demands you KO a target instead of killing it. Unfortunately, while this happens, it never aligns with Takuma being along for the mission, so this usage is entirely theoretical. Aiko's Choice doesn't correct this either, alas.
It remains very funky how Shadow Tactics has this whole distinct system of non-lethal takedowns and then it's just... something that has nearly no reason to come up in actual play if you're not specifically pursuing one of the non-lethal Badges. Desperados III does revisit this topic and try to fix it, but unfortunately its main solution is to provide a widespread way to make a KO function almost exactly like a kill aside not failing challenges that forbid killing per se, which doesn't really fix things.
I should explicitly note that there are Badges you'll fail if Takuma just blows people up, but won't fail by knocking them out and having someone else finish them. So if you're trying to do everything of interest, the poison grenade is liable to see some use. Just... not much.
Matchlock
Death Duration: 1 second.
Noise: 8
Range: 17
Cooldown: 3 seconds.
Takuma kills an enemy with his wrist-mounted matchlock pistol. Samurai will be merely Stunned, but can be killed with a melee attack while Stunned. Takuma normally starts with three shots and cannot acquire any more within a mission unless an ammo crate is present.
"Medium range will do!"
Note that Takuma permanently joining up with your crew is the point at which Matchlocks -and Mugen's Hand Cannon- are added to everyone's repertoire.
For Takuma, the Matchlock is redundant with his Rifle, with the Rifle having better range, producing less noise, and even having a shorter cooldown. The main reason to bother with his Matchlock is to save Rifle bullets, as their ammo stocks are separate.
This has the odd implication that optimal play involves you preferentially using Takuma's Matchlock over his Rifle where feasible, and furthermore that you should preferentially use his Matchlock over other Matchlocks since Takuma's limited mobility means he's flatly inferior as a Matchlock user to your ninja characters; having Yuki run out of Matchlock ammo while Takuma is full may mean you've denied yourself the ability to set up a rooftop shot or similar. The converse is not true, especially since Takuma can just fall back on his Rifle once his Matchlock is out of ammo.
Put another way, this means good play maximizes Takuma's Matchlock use because of it being terrible.
So that's odd.
Heal
Takuma restores up to 3 missing HP to himself or a single adjacent ally. One charge per mission, with any overhealing wasted.
Heal
Takuma restores up to 3 missing HP to himself or a single adjacent ally. One charge per mission, with any overhealing wasted.
"
Like Takuma's Matchlock, you should prefer to have Takuma burn his heal when someone needs one over having someone else heal. Not that this is terribly important given that normally you're either quickloading anytime someone takes damage or just not getting your people hurt in the first place, but in the event you are accepting mistakes and whatnot Takuma is by default going to be your least likely character to be both injured and away from everyone else and possibly unable to meet up without risking further damage. As such, he's the least likely to be in a position of needing to heal himself with no backup healing available from someone else, and thus your best choice to burn a heal charge from if someone is injured.
Like Takuma's Matchlock, you should prefer to have Takuma burn his heal when someone needs one over having someone else heal. Not that this is terribly important given that normally you're either quickloading anytime someone takes damage or just not getting your people hurt in the first place, but in the event you are accepting mistakes and whatnot Takuma is by default going to be your least likely character to be both injured and away from everyone else and possibly unable to meet up without risking further damage. As such, he's the least likely to be in a position of needing to heal himself with no backup healing available from someone else, and thus your best choice to burn a heal charge from if someone is injured.
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I quite enjoy that Shadow Tactics is a video game where an older individual gets to be an active participant in events instead of being relegated to a support role. Pop culture in general tends to ignore older folks, but video games especially are a relatively young industry that has always skewed on the young side for its creators, with their stories in turn tending to put the focus on individuals in the late teens to mid-twenties sort of range: Takuma is very surprising to see in a video game.
A related point is that Takuma also stands out for being written as a full person. When 'the elderly' do show up in video games (And to a lesser extent other pop culture), they tend to be flat caricatures -even when a game is made of flat caricatures, older individuals often stand out anyway for being especially flat! Whether it's a granny being restricted to being A Nice Old Lady, an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn, or any number of other one-note presentations, the elderly are rarely allowed by fiction to have varied opinions or, bizarrely, history: I frankly don't understand how a person could write a character who is 70 years old but nothing of any note has stuck with the character in all those decades, but it's somehow the default!
Takuma's history doesn't get attention, but he has enough skills and interests to imply details about his off-screen life, and more importantly to my point is that he gets to meaningfully respond to the events of this story. I could overall summarize Takuma as 'a kindly old man', and that wouldn't be completely wrong, but it would be covering up nuance, where for example at one point your team assassinates a man who Takuma has a grudge against because of the mistreatment he suffered from his man's decisions. That's not why your team is assassinating the man, but it's why Takuma is happy to help!
Overall, Takuma didn't shock me with how well-written he was the way the rest of the party did, but his writing is solidly competent in a way I'm not sure I've ever seen another game do with such an elderly character. I'm actually a little sad any kind of Shadow Tactics sequel has like zero chance of exploring Takuma more: he's overall got the least screentime and attention, and it would've been nice to see more regarding him.
I mean, I guess it's possible we could get a prequel exploring Takuma's past more, but that would miss out on the qualities that are why I'd like to see more Takuma...
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Lastly, we wrap up this miniseries with a basic overview of enemy types.
See you then.
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