While the visuals of this game don't have anything wrong, they also don't stand out. Each of the game's settings fits the time period they are meant to depict and, quite frankly, do so in a very stereotypical way. Again, that isn't really a bad thing, but it just feels a little bland. Yes, the Old West looks like the Old West, but it looks like pretty much any semi-ghost town you would seen in an old movie. The same can be said for the ancient Middle East time period. On the other hand, I found the modern-day setting to be different enough from the rest of the game to really make me take notice. That being said, I also found the Chinese locations to be the more difficult portions of the game.
Where the visuals of Shards feel very run of the mill, the audio seems to be dead on. Only a few of the characters you meet actually talk, but when there is voiced dialogue, it sounds good and I never got the feeling the performance was phoned in. Likewise, the music used in each of the game's main locations felt right, which was good since you will be hearing a lot of that music as you spend a lot of time in each period.
