I had concerns if Heamimont could pull it off, but they did. JA3 feels like a modernized version of JA2 which is what the fans wanted. No funky realtime battles like Back in Action, no half-baked stuff like Flashback, no two man squad weirdness like Rage. I would argue that following JA2 so closely caused some of the issues of JA2 to be also present. JA2 didn't have great UI and JA3's UI is not great either. Having to switch between the different height levels of a map (ground level, 2nd floor, roof and so on) was a thing in JA2 and it was most likely due to the 2D engine and I am not sure why this is still needed in a 3D environment. If I want to see a ladder leading to the roof I need to switch to the roof level view which is mind boggling. This however and all the other small imperfections do not stand in the way of fun. I know I am enjoying a game when I spend more time in the inventory deciding what is the best way to equip my characters than in the exploration mode. The lack of chance to hit perecetnage does not bother me at all. I get what the devs were going for. If, for example, the chance to hit was displayed and I saw that moving 1 square to the left would give me +3% I would have moved there despite that +3% would not make that much of a difference in the great scheme of things and I would have wasted time overthinking and checking each possible position hunting for that +3%. All in all a very enjoyable game, not perfect but it doesn't need to be in order to be fun.
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.
There are still some bugs in the game, some more annoying than others, but apart from that it is a very good game. The visuals are good, the soundtrack is good, the gameplay is good but what I really liked is the story. At first I thought the main plot was stupid and found that whole thing with Johnny annoying and intrusive, but as missions went by I kind of got sympathetic towards Johnny despite being full aware that he is a narcissistic, overexaggerating, manipulative scumbag. Most of the side characters are interesting and each of them felt in place in the context of the Cyberpunk setting. One thing that has been taken straight out from Witcher 3 is that when you encounter some of the minor events which are spread throughout the city like "assault in progress" it has a backstory, explaining why this whole thing is happening. It is not just some random guys shooting at each other there is a reason behind it which is being revealed in the form of messages or emails found on decks lying around. It is a little thing but gives the world credibility. About the not so great things. There are quite a few bugs. The most annoying ones are when something that is needed for a quest is not showing up. There was a bartender that I had to talk to but he was missing. I saved the game, reloaded it and he was there. The AI of the people walking on the streets is weird, they get startled very easily. One time I loaded a game when I was parked in the car on a sidewalk and people spawned in the hood of the car. Walking animations sometimes don’t play so you can see people gliding. Textures on people sometimes are slow to load so they look like characters from Grim Fandango. All the bugs however did not spoil my experience. Cyberpunk 2077 is a good game, which tells an engaging story with characters you start to care about as you learn more about them.
