Desperados III

Review

As you may know, one of my favourite genre of games is strategy games. I have been watching Desperados III closely since it was announced.  As I attended E3 2019, PAX AUS 2019 as part of the media, and had a private showing from Koch Media early this year in Sydney, I had the privilege of playings the demo firsthand on three occasions. It’s tough to make a fair assessment when the game is in development, but in this case, I felt that Desperados III was always going to become one of the greatest strategy games we have seen for quite some times. Are you ready partner?  It’s time for Desperados III!

Desperados III is an isometric real-time strategy game developed by Mimimi Games and published by THQ NORDIC on the 17th of June 2020 on Steam, Xbox One and PS4.

The game consists of 3 chapters and 16 missions which will take place in Colorado, New Mexico and New Orleans in the time of the Far West. You’ll be able to choose to play each of the missions in 4 available difficulties, from Beginner to Desperados. 

The story is around John Cooper, who is tracking down a man named Frank, who works for a top guy named DeVitt, who resides in New Orleans. In fact, the first chapters start with a small mission where you control John Cooper when he was a youngster. After finishing these small missions, you’ll enter the first hardcore scenario of the chapter.

As you move through the missions, you’ll meet or save some of the characters who will become part of the John Cooper gang (so to speak). Before each of the missions start, you’ll get a fabulous cut-scene which will continue to elaborate the story and explain what you need to do in the mission ahead of you. You start the scenario with one to three characters, and not necessarily with John Cooper; you might also have one of the characters coming along towards the end of a mission to help out.

I love each of the characters you control as each of them has particular skills which you need to understand and use throughout the missions. John Cooper will have the ability to distract an enemy with a coin for a short period of time but can also shoot two enemies at once. McCoy has a few abilities,including healing the other members of the gang, shooting an enemy from a distance with his sniper pistol (I’d like to have one of those) and attract attention towards a location by throwing his explosive bag into an enemy field of vision to lure him/her towards it. Hector can lure an enemy to his favourite utensil, a massive bear trap, by whistling from the place where he applies the trap. Kate is the master of seduction, but she will need to pick up a dress to disguise herself in order to do so.  She can chat with enemies, or maybe ask a cowboy to follow her for a short. And she can also blind enemies for a short period of time by throwing a bottle of perfume on the guards. Isabelle can distract foe by sending her cat towards him/her.  She can also blow poisoned darts into them, and then choose to either control their minds or connect them (when they’re connected, it’s only half the work for Isabelle, as one blow will affect/injure both of the connected enemies).

Essentially, you need to eliminate these nasty guards without being noticed, so definitely avoid having the alarm raised, as that will attract more enemies to the area and you will likely die.

So, stealth is the way to go. To do that, you’ll have to understand the pattern of each of the guards but also understand their field of vision so you won’t be noticed while moving your characters around the map (by the way, they will be crouching quite a lot and can also hide in bushes). But there will come a time when you’ll have to combine actions from each of the characters to eliminate enemies, which can be very tricky; it might take you a while to perfect the combinations. Essentially, you can stop the time, select a skill for one (or all) of your characters to perform, re-start the time,  and then execute the mix at just the right moment by pressing the execute button.

You can also use items such as dynamite, Gatling guns and canons, use wild stock (cows, horses) as well as push big rocks into a group of enemies to kill them. But make sure you have taken care of all other soldiers in the vicinity before doing that, otherwise the alarm will be raise. In some instances, you’ll not be able to use them; there will be nearby a location where the enemy’s reinforcement is located. And don’t forget to hide each of the enemies you have taking down; otherwise they might be seen by other soldiers, and the alarm will go off.

In terms of enemy, the standard guards can be killed silently or knocked down with a punch, but then it will take a few punches to knock down the long coat soldiers. And the ponchos and long-coat soldiers will not be lured by some of your character’s skills; for example, the long-coat soldiers will detect that Kate is in disguise and not fall for her wiles.  Equally, her charms will not work with female soldiers.

In terms of how to use new skills or learning what’s happening in the environment, there are these old pages with a question mark lying around the map, and when you reach them, a small video tutorial will appear on your screen to show you what to do. They are very handy.

Impressive graphics and soundtracks. The game is just brilliantly done in every aspect; it’s a cracker of a game!

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com!