Game review 16 June 2020, 00:28

author: Przemyslaw Zamecki

Desperados 3 Review – The Perfect Nine!

Thanks to the Mimimi Games, the genre established by the unforgettable Commandos makes a big return. With their second stealth-RTS, the German studio not only solidified it's reputation as masters of the genre, but also brought Desperados back to life!

The review is based on the PC version.

Released by the now-defunct Spanish Pyro Studios (you can find them on Facebook under the name Pyro Mobile) in 1998, the game Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines invented a whole new genre of real-time tactical stealth-games, with isometric perspective and characters with different abilities.

At the time, it was the first game from the Iberian Peninsula to gain such recognition and popularity. Over 900,000 copies of the game were sold in the first six months. Soon after, players got the first addition, which also generated considerable – though smaller than the original – interest, bringing a few good changes.

The pioneers

After Commandos successfully established the new genre, many copycats followed, and many of these games enriched the gameplay and took the action to different battlefields. One of those games was Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive – a Wild West story about bounty hunter John Cooper and a group of his friends who go on a manhunt after a menacing train robber named El Diablo.

The reception was enthusiastic enough to warrant two installments more (the latter was actually just an informal follow-up developed for a new publisher). Both were, however, built on a new, 3D engine, which didn't really make people happy.

German ninjas

Subsequent titles, however, did not gain such notoriety, and as interest declined, the genre slowly fell into obscurity. However, as Horace wote millennia ago, Non omnis moriar. In 2016, the independent company Mimimi Games, founded in 2008 in Munich, brought it back to life. Teir first major and serious project was Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, and it came after several years of flirting with casual mobile productions. The game is developed on Unity 3D, and the devs defined it as ninja Comandos.

They made a very bold decision, too – before that game came out, they had been facing bankruptcy, and taking on an almost forgotten genre after all these years was quite risky. Shadow Tactics proved a big hit, however, and later that same year, Mimimi Games was recognized as the best German studio at the Deutscher Entwicklepreis (German Developer Award) gala.

Mimimi kept the momentum. In August 2018, they announced Desperados 3, a new installment in a brand that, apart from having achieved cult-classic status, was also neck-deep in obscurity. John Cooper and company's revival project, originally called Codename Kartoffel (potato), was hailed as the most anticipated title at Deutscher Entwicklepreis 2018, and now, after another two years, it has finally hit the hard drives of our hardware. Was it worth the wait? Hell yeah!

Panopticone

Desperados 3 is a prequel to the series, and we find some familiar characters such as Doc McCoy. John's party is only getting formed, and the gunslinger is looking fro the quickest hands. The game will also show us how the first con-lady of the Old West, Kate O'Hare, was conned herself. There will be some completely new characters as well. Here, I discreetly look at Isabelle Moreau, a witch I've met in New Orleans, who not only does voodoo stuff, but is also able to control minds of guards, for example.

The woman also possesses the ability to link the souls of two enemies. Once you do that, killing either of them will kill both. Isabelle is also accompanied by a cat who can distract her opponent for a time. By the way, when I first took control of the priestess, it seemed for a while that the game had become easier, all of the sudden.

If you've played Shadow Tactics before and remember the skills of the characters in that game, you'll have a sense of deja vu in Desperados 3. Some of the solutions invented by the studio in the previous game return, but the devs also draw inspirations from the heritage of the genre. In their feudal Japan epic, Mimimi was inspired by the original Desperados, and with Desperados 3, they've used all those inspirations and experience. John Cooper is shinobi Hayato – one uses a katana, the other a revolver, but both are great at inflicting silent death at a distance with a shuriken/knife. One of them throws a pebble to distract his enemies, the other a coin. The powerful Mugen lured unaware guards with a bottle of sake. In the Wild West his role was taken by Hector Mendoza, who uses Bianca, a giant bear trap, instead of a bottle of alcohol. There are more such correlations, but they almost have no negative impact on the reception of the game.

The very wild west

Playing Desperados 3, I was delighted with the way the creators approached character building. These little people on screen really do have their own personalities, underlined by some nice dialogs. I really appreciated the cast of voice actors – the writing is solid, the delivery great, and they all really seem to match their personas. It's nice just to listen to. All the more so because there are no cut-scenes in the game and everything is showed in isometric perspective.

The German team also did an excellent job at designing the locations. They're very diverse and really pretty, and most importantly, some of them bring about new mechanics. For example, one of the towns is really muddy after a heavy rainfall, so all characters leave deep footprints that make it easier to expose our team. The rules also change during night missions, when the guards are equipped with additional sources of light.

Sometimes we find an unexpected solution to a problem by eavesdropping on the residents of a given location or even the thugs themselves. So it's definitely not worth rushing to get the job done as quickly as possible at all costs. By exploring, we'll learn more, we'll explore the story background and we'll just have a better time. Thanks to all that, it can take up to three hours to complete a single stage. The first time, of course, since – much like in Shadow Tactics – after completing a given stage, we learn all the bonus tasks that can be completed on the second approach.

Active pause and sync

Another fantastic idea is the active pause (it becomes unavailable at higher difficulties) to properly synchronize the actions of our characters. This allows us to eliminate larger clusters of opponents before they can raise the alarm. This is not Mimimi's original solution – the original creators came up with this idea years ago – but the execution here turns out not only efficient, but also very spectacular. When the rather slow pace of the game is suddenly interrupted by a massive shootout, you can really feel a shiver.

Whenever Hector is not involved in the mission, it also becomes necessary to have the characters cooperate tighter to kill the long coats, i.e. elite guards who are immune to all attempts of distraction or luring. It takes a bullet from each of Cooper's Colts and another one from one of the other characters to make these fellers bite the dust.

Sketchy AI

You can't hold much against the gameplay, either. It's rather what you expect from a game like this, and if you've played at least one stealth-based RTS, you'll feel at home here. In case of any doubt, the game explains all the dependencies via simple tutorials. If I absolutely had to take issue with something, it would be the artificial intelligence. In broad terms – it's pretty inconsistent, enemy alertness is sketchy. I was trying to figure out what's the mechanical rule for alerting enemies, but it seems to be living its own life.

The music on the other hand, is absolute master craft. Already the main menu sports a great spaghetti western theme, and it's just as interesting in the game proper. There's a broad range of compositions that reflect the spirit of the location, and when, for example, we finally arrive in New Orleans, there's more jazzy stuff going on – nice. It's also pretty elaborate in technical terms, as the different themes seamlessly blend together along with exploration. Some fine design, right there.

The spectacle

For those familiar with Shadow Tactics, the quality of Desperados 3 should come as no surprise. Both games bring some really high quality – it's definitely above the standard of independent games. The game truly brings what's the best in the genre. There are multiple ways of approaching the tasks, the story is gripping and isn't obvious, the characters are memorable, and the difficulty is balanced perfectly, and rather than demotivate, it encourages repeated attempts of the mission. And that's important, because you'll be reloading the game a lot – it's also something to consider before you buy. However, I confess I was rather taken aback by the sheer quality of this game. Desperados 3 may not be a very original game, but it's completely fine because it perfectly assembles the available building blocks, with each elements working in tune with all the rest. Now, we wish for the equally successful return of the Commandos series.