Review: Official Set - The Shadowed One

It’s been a few weeks since our most recent blog post, but today we pick right back up with the second of the three titan combination models from Bionicle’s 2005 set line: The Shadowed One. The Shadowed One is as we know the charismatic leader of the Dark Hunters, which are an influential mercenary faction in the world of Bionicle. Along with being very charismatic, The Shadowed One is very arrogant and sadistic. His crystalline staff of Protodermis is his greatest weapon to hold against those who may dare to oppose him.

The Shadowed One can be built by combining the parts that come with Keetongu and Roodaka. The instructions can easily be found at the back of Roodaka’s instruction booklet.

Packaging

There never was any sort of exclusive packaging released for The Shadowed One, but his image is featured on the backs of all three Titan sets from 2005. Way back when these sets were in retail there was at one point a “Shadowed One Bundle” where you could get both Keetongu and Roodaka for a slightly discounted price.

Unlike our typical set builds, this time around we simply have two large piles of pieces, each containing the pieces to either Keetongu or Roodaka.

Review

The build for The Shadowed One ran me about 33 minutes, and it was certainly an enjoyable 33 minutes. There wasn’t much repetition going on throughout the assembly, and there were some interesting techniques used that kept things interesting all throughout the build.

The most prominent thing that strikes me about The Shadowed One is the aesthetic. This build absolutely nails the look that I would have in my mind for the leader of The Dark Hunters. He has a very imposing stature to him, and just an overall vibe that strikes me as you won’t see him fight often, but when he does, he’ll be sure to remind you why he’s the one in charge. There are a lot of intricate details and good piece usage throughout the finished build that help to enhance the scale of the model and make different sections flow together really well.

The color scheme is another thing that attributes to the successful look of The Shadowed One. If you saw our video review of Sentrakh last week, you’ll know that the color scheme just felt a bit off to me. The gray and the silver combine to give us a good, balanced dark feeling to the character, and then the small punches of bright light orange are perfect accent pieces that aren’t too distracting, and don’t go too far to the point where he starts to look like a hero. The designers really executed this aspect of the build well in a way that does justice to the lore and mystique of the character.

My favorite design choice was the decision to add in a third leg that sticks out the back. At first while I was building, I thought it was going to be a tail or something of that nature, but once I saw what it would become I couldn’t be much happier. This third leg adds incredible stability to the finished build by turning what would have been a large two-legged build into a bigger build that has a tripod base. Especially when we constantly are running into issues with the rubberized joints failing, the third leg is more important than ever to The Shadowed One.

Another great part of this build is the head design. They did a lot with the space that they had available to them and made sure to pack it full of pieces. The design ends up being very menacing and unique and has a simple look to it despite the complexity that goes into forming the various geometries showcased at the head.

Of course, since this is a 2005 set we have some built-in Rhotuka Spinner action. The spinner is not “hidden” but blends in nicely with the staff. The top of the staff is attached to the rip cord that controls the spinner, so pulling the top of the staff out launches the Rhotuka Spinner into the air. I feel like it was a bit unnecessary to include this feature, and more so was done to ensure every set from 2005 included the gimmick, but I’m still glad they found a way to fit it into the finished model.

The biggest disappointment with this build is without a doubt the arms. The arms are elementary in their design and take a step back by refusing to create complex arm assemblies for the larger titan sets. With the amount of pieces we had left over at the conclusion of this build, there’s really just no reason to avoid creating some amazing arms.

Another issue I had with The Shadowed One revolves around the model’s playability. The front two legs are fine for putting the build in a static, standing mode, but as soon as you move him around a little bit the legs tend to slip out and the model falls over. This is likely caused by the legs being opened up quite wide to begin with, so it doesn’t take much movement for them to get to a point of frictional failure in the rubberized joints.

Final Thoughts

Thankfully this combination titan model is a very solid increase in quality compared to Sentrakh. The look is really quite nice and sculpts a great representation for this character that is the leader of The Dark Hunters. The obvious downside is that it really only is a static display model, so if you’re looking for a set you can play with, this is not the one for you.

If you’d like to purchase this set for yourself, you’ll have to obtain both Keetongu and Roodaka, and then break them down for parts. Therefore, with their combined prices, it’ll run you about $125 to build The Shadowed One in used condition, and a whopping $275 for new condition. This does make it a pretty expensive one to get for yourself, but if you’re collecting The Dark Hunters, it’s pretty essential.

There’s a lot more this set could have given us, but at least we get a fantastic display that makes this a must-have for any Dark Hunter collector.

SCORE: 7.6/10

Video Review: