Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew

Core gameplay is as good as it was in Shadow Tactics and Desperados 3. That's what I expected and why I really like these games. However, I really dislike what they've done with this hub approach. Their previous games were pretty straightforward. You just progressed linear with the story and that gave you a good sense of being on a journey towards a crescendo. In this game, you have the "freedom of choice" and can choose your missions and your characters. Sounds great right? This however leads to the story feeling bland and the missions itself are constructed in a way that they can be done with whatever squad you choose and therefore don't feel as tight as in their previous games. Moreover, it doesn't even matter if you've already done a different mission on a specific island, since the progress is reset each time! I appreciate they wanted to try something different with this one, but this ain't it. Either go full out and somehow create a truly open and persistent world, or go back to the more linear approach. The hub itself and the little stories that are tangled within are just boring tbh and feel a lot like busy work where I find myself just skipping stuff. Tutorials? Skip. Side lore "quests"? Skip. And even talking to the ship is often times boring and results in a skip. Overall, the game lacks pace and the "freedom of choice" leads to its own problems with story and mission design.

3.5 stars. Shadow Tactics was a bit clunky and simple, but had good characters and decent story. Desperados 3 was fantastic. Shadow Gambit has even better mechanics, but feels generic. In the previous games, you felt like you were solving carefully crafted puzzles. In this game, it feels a bit more like a top down FPS. The story is a confusing mess and the characters ... have no character. The writing is just poor and the voice acting is ... annoying. The story doesn't draw you in from the beginning like in their previous games. It has the feel of a generic heist movie. Most missions can be 95% completed with a single character, whatever their skills may be. Still a good game, just disappointing compared to Desperados3.

Taking a break from a large name brand RPG waiting for a few patches when I stumbled on this gem. Going in with no pre-conceptions or nostalgia from other games by the same developer (Never played Desparados, or Shadow Tactics). Its a great RTS + Stealth Strategy game! I was blown away with how polished it was at release. Pros - Queued actions for crew - Strategy in combining different crew. The synergies are great fun and when you 'solve' a combat scenario it feels so rewarding! - The writing is better than average - Non-linear mission choice from ship hub - In-game achievements (badges) for crew - Quick Save - You can pet the monkey Neutral - Writing is above average. More than I expected but not stellar. (its possible I'm biased because I've just been immersed in a very text heavy RPG prior to this one) - Most levels can be brute forced. I consider this a neutral as it adds accessibility for those that can't strategize but I never mind tough levels that require several attempts to use s-t-r-a-t-e-g-y - Controls are not bad but they feel slightly .. clunky? Its not a con yet. (KB+M player here) Con - A few bugs - none gamebreaking for me. Feels like the result of having so many options for synergy that testers might have missed a few unique combinations. Or I'm really bad at math. - Played on 2nd level from top difficulty and I havne't seen any npc strategy changes. They seem to prefer a hard rush strategy. This might change as I progress. Honestly not a lot of cons. Its a ridiculously fun RTS game for a decent price with a fun setting.

... or Desperados III. I subtracting one star because of this special disappointment. The game has pretty much the same mechanics as the other games. So this is certainly not the problem. The problem is in my opinion that this game is missing its heart, or the love put into its story and level design. Someone else already said it: It's quantity over quality. The story is progressing too fast and with too little introduction into this new universe they created. The mechanics for each playable character are surely creative, but the individual characters lack heart. Playing all the levels feels like boring work. There's nothing really special about any of the missions. Most of the islands are visited over and over again with respawned enemies. Large regions of the islands don't even have to be visisted for finishing the missions. It's just kind of arbitrary. This is all far away from the depth the caracters especially in Shadow Tactics had. There was really a mood setting that is somehow missing here. It feels like mimimi games went to Hollywood. Even on "Legendary" difficulty setting it's not really a problem just charging forward in most of the missions. Finishing the missions rarely feels like an accomplishment. That you can play each mission with mostly arbitrary character selection is probably at the root of this. The levels have to be playable by all kinds of character combinations. While in the other games the level design was more intricate and you e.g. had certain characters in different locations and had to join them first. Not even talking about the bonds that the characters had through their missions and the story telling. This is - again - just kind of arbitrary in Shadow Gambit. I really hope mimimi games is not continuing on this path.