Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew

I loved Shadow Tactics and Desperados 3, and Shadow Gambit left me super satisfied too. While I feel the story suffers a little by allowing the player to choose which characters to take on each mission (reduces unique and fun banter relevant to the mission, as seen in previous games), the premise of a bunch of cursed pirates searching for the former captain's lost treasure kept me interested from start to finish. The gameplay loop of stealthily killing and hiding enemies is pretty similar to Mimimi's previous games, but the combinations of characters to use offers tons of replay value and makes each mission feel fresh. Nobody is overpowered or overly weak, and I appreciate how balanced the characters are. The DLC characters were super fun and had very unique abilities too. Allowing the player to customize how they approach each mission with different character loadouts and landing spots might've been for the better or worse. I really can't decide. The only conclusion I could make was how much I enjoyed each mission and how I never became bored. I don't know what this "sweet baby inc" controversy is all about, and i don't really care. I found all the characters very interesting and enjoyed the compelling main story too. I might've had an axe to grind if I found the writing and dialogue boring, but that didn't happen. It also doesn't hurt that the voice acting in Shadow Gambit is really impressive. This was a very long game and there's much more to do after completing the main story. It took me 40 hours to finish the campaign, and there's still plenty more completionist activities left for me to do. You definitely get your money's worth with Shadow Gambit. I encourage anybody who enjoys challenging real-time tactics games to try Shadow Gambit! Also check out the DLCs, because I had a lot of fun with them.

Compared to Desparados III wich was absolutely perfect, they tried a new concept here with an "open world" and a lot of characters to choose for your crew. This works exceptionally well, choosing only one different character can change the whole experience of going though a chapter. The only problem i see is quite natural to open worlds: The story has to be more generic - it is still good, but not quite as catching as what we saw with desperados III oder shadow tactics (both from the same studio). However, this is still a really good game which gave me lots of fun!

Everytime I load a save it crashes

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is excellent in every possible aspect of the game as are Shadow Tactics: Blade of the Shogun, Desperados III and Shadow Tactics: Blade of the Shogun - Aiko's Choice all coming from the same amazing game studio called Mimimi. I've been a long time Commandos and Desperados hardcore fan and this game is everything I expect it to be an even more than that regarding RTT or now called stealth strategy genre. I recommend buying it with all of my heart as you won't regret it!

Even though I think this game is an improvement over Shadow Tactics specifically, it doesn't hold a candle to Desperados 3. Gameplay is fine, I like that the characters this time (for the MOST part) aren't just reskins but in turn there is 8 characters which means that there's obsolete characters because some just outclass others, I think Gaelle is a good example of a character you ALWAYS want on your team; she has the fastest KO in the game with an upgrade, a distraction and can launch her crewmates through defenses, while someone like... Quentin or Pinkus is more so a gimmick more than anything. Some abilities make this game a bit too easy though. The in-between missions hub serves barely any purpose, the only side-quest that was somewhat interesting was Toya's one, the "upgrades" are just straight up weird, feels like most of them should have just been basekit for the characters. Ending was pretty anti-climactic for a "memory forge" since most of it was a rescue mission :p