Desperados III

Desperados III is hands on the best game of its genre released so far. As a big fan of the Commandos series I have been waiting for a long time for a game which is of the same type but even better than the Commandos games. It is finally here. The previous incarnations of the Desperados series were good but Desperados III is truly a masterpiece. The story, the graphics, the gameplay are all excellent. So far I have completed 7 missions and I could not find anything to complain about. It is a truly beautiful and thrilling game.

The best way I can describe this game is a very well crafted series of puzzle boxes. As the player you are given certain tools and several paths to get to the center of the puzzle, including (though it isn't usually the best approach) breaking the box by going in hard and loud. I see a lot of people mention Commandos in their reviews. I've never played any Commandos games, dabbled a little with Shadow Tactics on gamepass, and I wish this genre had more entries. This game has me very interested in trying out these other titles in the real-time tactics genre. This is a phenominal game from a gameplay and level design point of view. The story is a little cliche, but the characters are well written for the most part. If you are even a little interested you should give this one a shot.

After playing Shadow Tactics: Blades of The Shogun I knew that the devs from Mimimi were the ideal team to make a Desperados game. Desperados 3 has all the good parts from Desperados 1 while taking care of a lot of the issues in it. I still consider that the hand drawn 2D maps of Desperados look better, but I think that the art style of the Desperados 3 is as close as it can get trying to achieve the same aesthetic but in 3D. The soundtrack is also great and worth listening on its own. The gameplay is similar to the first game but with a lot of "quaility of life" improvements. The ability to pause the game and give orders to some degree solves the problem where you need to do an action quickly while trying to manage multiple characters. Also I feel that using guns is much more viable. In D1 once you go loud you can expect all the enemies on the map to pile up. In D3 the guns have a radius of noise which the gun makes so they are much more viable. I also like Desperados 3 a tiny bit better than Shadow Tactics: Blades of The Shogun. There is similarity in the characters and the skills they have but I think that D3 allows for a much more flexible approach for beating the levels than Shadow Tactics. Not sure if this is due to better skill synergy, maps layout or enemy placement but it is much easier to come up with a working plan. All in all Desperados 3 is how I remember Desperados 1 through a rose tinted glasses. It has the same feel, the same idea, but playing it is much more enjoyable.

To be very frank I was rather sceptic to say at least when I heard about a new entry into the Desperados series. The game design, writing and game mechanics however do justice to this much acclaimed series, and I can nothing but recommend Desperados III to fans of the previous games, genre fans or honestly pretty much any person who has only the slightest interest. Thanks to Mimimi Studios and THQ Nordic for bringing this series back to gamers. 5/5

Shadow Tactics was great, this is much better with better graphics and the voice acting is top notch! This is wild west so expect a little wild language. 10/10