Desperados III Review

After many years of the last release of the series in 2006, it’s finally time to get the new part, and fortunately, the developer of this game is currently considered the best in the type of games. It is the German studio Mimimi games, The development team of this studio is an expert in strategy games, and it was the one who developed “Shadow Tactics” (originally inspired by Desperados) which received very positive reviews from critics and gamers.

Desperados is a real-time tactical stealth game with an overhead camera (real-time strategy) set in the wild west era. John Cooper sets off on an epic journey through the United States and Mexico in the 1970s, and John Cooper (the story hero) will have to take responsibility for mistakes made in the past in his quest for salvation and meets his allies that were the runaway bride Kate, Dr. Arthur McCoy “Doc”, and the big Mexican Hunter Hector, and the mysterious lady from New Orleans Isabelle. They will try to make their way from the mountains of Colorado to the heart of Louisiana, and then finally to New Mexico, where Cooper will face his past. New players of this series will have no problems with the story because this part takes place before the first part events.

The gameplay system is very similar to “Shadow Tactics”, where you have to hide and infiltrate between enemies to preform your assassinations or try to make your way between them without getting caught, enemies have a specific field of vision that you have to avoid if you don’t want to alarm them, hiding in the grass is one of the most important means in this game to hide from enemies, and you can distract them in many different ways depending on the character you’re playing with, and also your steps and actions make sounds and appear as a circular wave around the character. There is an option to stop time and try testing a certain path to go through without being detected by enemies, but during combats or when you are detected time will not stop.

Just like Hitman games, there are many things in the environment that help you get rid of the main targets such as poisoning a drink, bringing down a wooden building on someone, or provoking a bull to kill an enemy and make it appear like an accident without being exposed. There are many means to complete the levels in different ways, and this encourages replaying the levels more than once without getting bored. A nice addition to the game is that you will see the map at the end of each level with all your steps and the path you went through during the whole level as a quick recap of how you finished the mission, and it can be saved and shared with your friends. You can also change the difficulty settings, for example, you can change the speed of the enemies noticing you, or modify the player’s health rate or the number of enemies on the map.

Each of the five characters has its special skills and strengths, the leader of the group Cooper can kill quietly with his knife at near Range, or throw it at the enemy from long range, or shoot the enemies with his revolver guns, his distraction tool is to coin that he throws to attract the attention of enemies, and for Hector, he holds a huge trap that can be placed on the ground, and he can kill the toughest opponents with his powerful axe, his distraction tool is whistling to lure enemies towards him. Dr McCoy likes to use chemistry tools such as his dispersal tool and the gas he puts in a bag for enemies to open and temporarily go blind, as well as poison darts, and he has a custom long-range gun.

Kate can move around the enemies freely by disguising herself in clothes that do not raise doubts and has many ways to distract enemies, such as a perfume that affects the vision of enemies, or by flirting with anyone and giving other characters a chance to pass by quietly. The last character Isabella, has the best skills among the five characters in my opinion, and that is using supernatural powers with mysterious herbs and black magic to control enemies and make them kill each other, and the distraction tool is her cat Stella.

I have Choose the medium difficulty during my gameplay, and however this level offers a great challenge, the artificial intelligence is excellent and the guards are always watching each other, which causes difficulty in killing someone. You will die a lot in each level, so the best thing is to watch the movement of enemies and study the map slowly to come up with the best ways to overcome obstacles, and fortunately, the save system is free, you can save anywhere in the level, and there is a time counter in the center of the screen to remind you of your last save, and that will help you a lot in avoiding restarting from the beginning.

For the visuals, the game have beautiful graphics and details and offers a diverse environment for the Wild West, The level designs is excellent and you won’t see a character in an irrational place on the map, and there are many ways to complete your missions and use the environment to get rid of the targets.

Desperados offer outstanding voice acting performance for the main characters, excellent performances with the same gameplay engine, and many varied conversations between the characters during missions, but I found the voice acting of the enemies annoying due to their repetition and similar voices. The game has many great soundtracks varied across the levels of the story, and each area has its own melodies, and some of them seem to come from Clint Eastwood movies directly, and since I am a fan of this kind of music I consider the soundtracks one of the strengths of this game. The duration of the game is about 25 hours, and it can be increased if you consider replaying the levels to get the highest points and scores.