Commandos-Like Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew - ghost pirates stealth strategy from Mimimi Games

[Üstad]

Do DLC characters get upgrades somehow, like when we finish their respective missions?

 

[lukaszek]

Compared to Shadow Tactics

how does it compare in general? does it reach the phase of shadow tactic when late missions are more like peeling the onion, spending hours slowly removing guards around to finally get into the target in the center?

 

[spectre]

Compared to Shadow Tactics

how does it compare in general? does it reach the phase of shadow tactic when late missions are more like peeling the onion, spending hours slowly removing guards around to finally get into the target in the center?

Well, peeling the onion is pretty much the point of this genre, no?
IMO It's not as absurd as the last mission in shadow tictacs (that one was a slog, unless you went for a secret shortcut to nail the bad guy), near the end, the puzzles tend to rely on
setting up a near-perfect simultaneous takedown through active pause and using all the available characters. It's like the final mission from Desperados 3, but dialed up,
because of the "soul-linked" enemies who can stay in different places but stil need to be taken out at the same time. The devs use them a lot near the end, in all the possible and absurd configurations.

 

[Üstad]

Compared to Shadow Tactics

how does it compare in general? does it reach the phase of shadow tactic when late missions are more like peeling the onion, spending hours slowly removing guards around to finally get into the target in the center?

Well, peeling the onion is pretty much the point of this genre, no?
IMO It's not as absurd as the last mission in shadow tictacs (that one was a slog, unless you went for a secret shortcut to nail the bad guy), near the end, the puzzles tend to rely on
setting up a near-perfect simultaneous takedown through active pause and using all the available characters. It's like the final mission from Desperados 3, but dialed up,
because of the "soul-linked" enemies who can stay in different places but stil need to be taken out at the same time. The devs use them a lot near the end, in all the possible and absurd configurations.

Shadow Tactics ignoring the earliest missions were hard. In Shadow Gambit I don't remember ever being stuck. The games balance is just shit due to lazy map design without taking character strengths into account which gives this shallow sandbox feeling.

 

[spectre]

In Shadow Gambit I don't remember ever being stuck. The games balance is just shit due to lazy map design without taking character strengths into account which gives this shallow sandbox feeling.

Yea, they needed to balance the missions so that they're doable with any lineup (perhaps even solo? I think I've seen some of those on yewtube).
Some of the abilities are pretty much broken, like the "use anywhere, on-demand, portable cover which also conveniently eats corpses."

To each his own, I guess, cause I rather enjoyed this flow and found that it's a good excuse to increase the difficulty or use some less obvious crew choices.
Using the same perfect lineup for every mission would probably burn me out really fast.

I think the goal was to make players sperg less over getting a perfect execution and just cause some mayhem. It's good fun when you just rattle the bushes and see what falls down.
Of course, this takes some adjustment for the die-hard commandos crowd (myself included) who are trained to consider tripping an alarm as mission over.

 

[Üstad]

In Shadow Gambit I don't remember ever being stuck. The games balance is just shit due to lazy map design without taking character strengths into account which gives this shallow sandbox feeling.

Yea, they needed to balance the missions so that they're doable with any lineup (perhaps even solo? I think I've seen some of those on yewtube).
Some of the abilities are pretty much broken, like the "use anywhere, on-demand, portable cover which also conveniently eats corpses."

To each his own, I guess, cause I rather enjoyed this flow and found that it's a good excuse to increase the difficulty or use some less obvious crew choices.
Using the same perfect lineup for every mission would probably burn me out really fast.

I think the goal was to make players sperg less over getting a perfect execution and just cause some mayhem. It's good fun when you just rattle the bushes and see what falls down.
Of course, this takes some adjustment for the die-hard commandos crowd (myself included) who are trained to consider tripping an alarm as mission over.

Since you said it, triggering alarms is not even an issue, in fact sometimes even desirable to cause distraction. Compare that with Shadow Tactics, extra guards make everything more unpredictable and hard to solve puzzle.

 

[spectre]

Yep, sometimes it's just easier to pick out guards when they fuck off to some corner in search mode. Part of me still considers it "cheaty," but it's fun to check the banter, or y'know, to break the monotony
when you're doing the same island for the third time.

Not sure it it was the right call to go sandbox with this genre, but good for them they tried. The character missions were rather well done, so I might revisit the game to play the rest of them, but as with the rest of the games in the genre, the main story has worn me out after the main story and I need to take a long break before another round.

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

Finished the main story, just bought the DLC as well. Didn't beat Desperados 3 for me, but it was a fun time. The more sandboxy approach had potential to be just as amazing in its own ways(and arguably would have seen Mimimi eventually hitting it bigger in the long haul). In particular considering that they've outed themselves as actually pretty systems driven / Imm Sim-ish fans before already, and see how that fared out for Zelda and BG3.

I don't think it was quite there yet. Reasons:

- The islands are open -- but just "reset" every time you re-visit them, including all guard patrols
- Same -- but in particular early on there is a surprising lack of mission variety. E.g. "find the black pearl, soul energy" (played in German, so don't know the translation).
- Every island may have multiple entry paths -- but you'll mostly just dock on the spot nearest to your objective, unless you are artificially trying to make the mission longer/harder or are hunting for achievements.

But the open crew selection allows for some hilarious combos. One of which quite over-powered. Such as: Upgraded Teresa (anybody can pick up her bolts to return) + Pinkus (possession of enemies) = sniper infiltration squad of death. Possess an enemy with Pinkus, walk into enemy camp, let Teresa snipe, let Pinkus return her bolts. Sure, every time she downs an enemy, the alarm is being triggered. But even that is to your advantage. Pinkus when possessing only has a limited range he can move the possessed guard. However, when an alarm rings, he has to follow inquisition order. E.g. he joins the alarmed state and starts searching. In doing so, he moves beyond his limited possession range, thus being able to pick up bolts not within his range and return them to Teresa...

Mimimi Mo had also talked about about how they'd like to make the environment more interactive. But alas, this is the end, my friend. Looking forward to playing the DLC, and that's saying something considering the somewhat more repetitive mission nature compared to Desperados 3. Gonna try if you can do a couple more things with Pinkus, considering that he also gets the enemy ability when possessing them. Haven't much toyed with that yet. Oh, and Quentin and Gaelle are still underused by me also. There's two new characters in the DLC too..

 

[Üstad]

Finished the main story, just bought the DLC as well. Didn't beat Desperados 3 for me, but it was a fun time. The more sandboxy approach had potential to be just as amazing in its own ways(and arguably would have seen Mimimi eventually hitting it bigger in the long haul). In particular considering that they've outed themselves as actually pretty systems driven / Imm Sim-ish fans before already, and see how that fared out for Zelda and BG3.

I don't think it was quite there yet. Reasons:

- The islands are open -- but just "reset" every time you re-visit them, including all guard patrols
- Same -- but in particular early on there is a surprising lack of mission variety. E.g. "find the black pearl, soul energy" (played in German, so don't know the translation).
- Every island may have multiple entry paths -- but you'll mostly just dock on the spot nearest to your objective, unless you are artificially trying to make the mission longer/harder or are hunting for achievements.

But the open crew selection allows for some hilarious combos. One of which quite over-powered. Such as: Upgraded Teresa (anybody can pick up her bolts to return) + Pinkus (possession of enemies) = sniper infiltration squad of death. Possess an enemy with Pinkus, walk into enemy camp, let Teresa snipe, let Pinkus return her bolts. Sure, every time she downs an enemy, the alarm is being triggered. But even that is to your advantage. Pinkus when possessing only has a limited range he can move the possessed guard. However, when an alarm rings, he has to follow inquisition order. E.g. he joins the alarmed state and starts searching. In doing so, he moves beyond his limited possession range, thus being able to pick up bolts not within his range and return them to Teresa...

Mimimi Mo had also talked about about how they'd like to make the environment more interactive. But alas, this is the end, my friend. Looking forward to playing the DLC, and that's saying something considering the somewhat more repetitive mission nature compared to Desperados 3. Gonna try if you can do a couple more things with Pinkus, considering that he also gets the enemy ability when possessing them. Haven't much toyed with that yet. Oh, and Quentin and Gaelle are still underused by me also. There's two new characters in the DLC too..

The game just shows handcrafted and special design for respective missions is just way better than the sandbox approach. By the way, the reason missions have several docking points is because of lazy design. By keeping the same island (same patrol and everything) and putting the objective somewhere else is supposed to pass as a new, different mission. Even though pretty much everyone complains about the repetitiveness.

Also there is a tactic I use since Shadow Tactics, if you throw a corpse or knocked out soldier to an enemy vision they'll investigate, even if they're one of those types that don't leave their position and deviate from their patrol paths. It's just you need to take them out before they sound the alarm, which they need to be close to the body. In this game the cannon lady does a good job at this, as she can launch bodies from great distance. A rather unorthodox tactic, just in case you want to play again with different approaches.

 

[zool]

I still can't believe that in a few years, we went from that ultra monocled main menu art of Shadow Tactics to this graphical horror show.

 

[spectre]

Also there is a tactic I use since Shadow Tactics, if you throw a corpse or knocked out soldier to an enemy vision they'll investigate, even if they're one of those types that don't leave their position and deviate from their patrol paths.

Yeah, they never bothered to "fix" this one, it seems. Would be super easy, just add another guard which raises the alarm every time.
At this point, I'm beginning to wonder if it's not trying to pay homage to beyond the call of duty,
but I can't remember for the life of me what was the AI behavior on spotting handcuffed soldiers (only that you could "puppet" them).

I consider this one a last-ditch non-cheat method when I grow tired of a mission and absolutely can't be bothered to cleanly solve the given arrangement. Still an exploit.
Though with sandbox games, exploits aren't a bad thing, as long as its fun. And canoness is stupid fun.

 

[Üstad]

I still can't believe that in a few years, we went from that ultra monocled main menu art of Shadow Tactics to this graphical horror show.

I think the game hired tasteless idiots to advise them just to get “BMVI” (German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure) support. I don't know if their previous games supported by German government, but if they're not that would explain so many things. Including shutting down the company despite not going bankrupt, maybe they were horrified due to political aspect of funding and lost their passion. Or maybe I'm just overthinking.

 

[spectre]

Overthinking, most likely. It's germen we're talking about. They were told the requirements and followed them.
They already showed "proper leanings" in Desperados 3, even though (from what I read) they've only got the BMVI grants for project susskartoffel (SG).

Though when it comes to the decision to close shop, I think this one was actually quite professional. Very good for the employees, nothing worse than having
a "keep going, we'll think of something" kind of management in situations like this. It's fucking abusive if you're trying to earn some kind of living.

I also think they've milked the genre for what it was worth. From what I've seen, their management was pretty risk averse and keen on iterative design.
They probably thought it's the only type of game they could confidently be making with reasonable confidence and I think people were pretty much saturated
by the time SG launched.

 

[Zombra]

I started playing Yuki's Wish. I like it so far, story is as good as it needs to be, and Yuki's abilities are fun. The thing that threw me off was the voice acting - I'm like, "Why did they change her into a whimsical British school girl?" Turns out they didn't change anything from Shadow Tactics; the voice talent is the same person as before .... from the English version. I played ST with Japanese dialogue - but there is no Japanese audio available here. If I'd thought about it for 2 seconds I would have realized that I'm playing SG in English so of course they would use the English voice for Yuki. Anyway, even though it was my own dumb assumption, I'm still disappointed.

 

[motherfucker]