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Commandos-Like Desperados III from Mimimi Productions (Shadow Tactics devs) - now with Money for the Vultures DLC

NJClaw

OoOoOoOoOoh
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Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
What a game. I bought it on sale because 49,99€ is a cursed price, but, if the DLCs are as good as the last level, I'll gladly spend 15€ for 3 new missions. I was afraid Shadow Tactics might have been a fluke, but I think they even surpassed themselves with this one. These guys singlehandedly revived one of my favorite genres and don't seem to want to stop making games like these.

Nice! I recall not being able to clear the roof without being spotted. Cool that we each solved it in our own way.
You can stun the entire roof with McCoy's gas vial if you link the faraway enemy to one of those next to the edge. I took a screenshot at the end and it's basically undistinguishable from HansDampf's:

Screenshot-443.png

I'm curious to know if anyone managed to do it without killing 4 enemies with Hector or using McCoy's vial.
 

fantadomat

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What I wouldn't give for these guys to make a commandos sequel. Shame they don't own the IP :negative:
Would love to see a commandos sequel set in the vietnam war,nothing beats killing off squads of kwan cucks and dodging napalm bombs in rat tunnels.
 

fork

Guest
What I wouldn't give for these guys to make a commandos sequel. Shame they don't own the IP :negative:
Would love to see a commandos sequel set in the vietnam war,nothing beats killing off squads of kwan cucks and dodging napalm bombs in rat tunnels.
You wouldn't be playing as the Viet Cong though.
And since they're German, I'm not surprised they aren't interested in the Commandos IP. What a political minefield.
 

fantadomat

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Well commandos setting is pretty boring at this point,won't even bother to read its thread lol. Their games are pretty good,all that they need is side missions and leveling skill three.
 

Silva

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An open progression from a central hub where you pick missions, improve your team (skill tree or not), etc. would be cool as fuck. Like a Xcom but with real-time tactics.

I think nobody ever done that, right?
 

NJClaw

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Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
An open progression from a central hub where you pick missions, improve your team (skill tree or not), etc. would be cool as fuck. Like a Xcom but with real-time tactics.

I think nobody ever done that, right?
Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood sort of does something like that, albeit in a very simple way.
 

adddeed

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An open progression from a central hub where you pick missions, improve your team (skill tree or not), etc. would be cool as fuck. Like a Xcom but with real-time tactics.

I think nobody ever done that, right?
Robin Hood...
You can train your merry men in between missions and also can choose which mission to go to next. But not nearly as in depth as XCOM obviously, but even in its basic form it was a nice change of pace compared to Commandos/Desperados.
 

Antigoon

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An open progression from a central hub where you pick missions, improve your team (skill tree or not), etc. would be cool as fuck. Like a Xcom but with real-time tactics.

I think nobody ever done that, right?
Stargate: Timekeepers would be a good candidate for that structure. Sadly everything they showed so far looks pretty shit and they don't seem to have any ideas besides slapping onto Mimimis recent success.
 

NJClaw

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Stargate: Timekeepers
I didn't know about this. It looks pretty rough:



But honestly, I would play a cheap Mimimi knock-off.

After finishing the base game and DLCs, I tried the first 5 Baron's challenges and, so far, they've all been kind of underwhelming. Untitled Voodoo Mission and Hazards of the Trade have been the most interesting ones (since not being able to use knives/guns changes things a lot), but they're much simpler than what I expected from a "challenge mode". However, I learned that you can kill long coats with just Isabelle without wasting bullets. I can't believe I never thought about it during the main campaign...
 

zool

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Messages
897
I enjoyed playing Desperados III but still find the game inferior to the original Desperados for a few reasons:

- even though Desperados III maps looked good, the hand-drawn isometric-style maps of the original Desperados still remain twenty years later much better-looking than their 3D counterparts.

- the in-engine cutscenes of Desperados III were a far cry from Desperados' awesome 3D cinematics between missions. Those were so satisfying to watch after having won a mission, just like in Westwood's Red Alert.

- Desperados III tried too much to be cinematic and grimdark in its story and dialogues, thereby losing that lighter and funnier "Spellbound touch" to dialogues which made characters endearing and the story feel like an adventure.

- finally, the biggest problem with Desperados III was the choice of setting: Wild West had already been done to perfection by the original Desperados, so there was no need to make another Commandos-type game set in the Wild West. Shadow Tactics Blades of the Shogun didn't suffer from that bad choice of setting and so was much more enjoyable imo.


On the other hand, Desperados III plays smoother and has a better interface but that doesn't make up for all the weaknesses listed above compared to the original.


Of course, rose-tinted glasses and all that but I did replay the original Desperados two years ago and found it was still awesome, so it's not just childhood memories.
 
Last edited:

GloomFrost

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I enjoyed playing Desperados III but still find the game inferior to the original Desperados for a few reasons:

- even though Desperados III maps looked good, the hand-drawn isometric-style maps of the original Desperados still remain twenty years later much better-looking than their 3D counterparts.

- the in-engine cutscenes of Desperados III were a far cry from Desperados' awesome 3D cinematics between missions. Those were so satisfying to watch after having won a mission, just like in Westwood's Red Alert.

- Desperados III tried too much to be cinematic and grimdark in its story and dialogues, thereby losing that lighter and funnier "Spellbound touch" to dialogues which made characters endearing and the story feel like an adventure.

- finally, the biggest problem with Desperados III was the choice of setting: Wild West had already been done to perfection by the original Desperados, so there was no need to make another Commandos-type game set in the Wild West. Shadow Tactics Blades of the Shogun didn't suffer from that bad choice of setting and so was much more enjoyable imo.


On the other hand, Desperados III plays smoother and has a better interface but that doesn't make up for all the weaknesses listed above compared to the original.


Of course, rose-tinted glasses and all that but I did replay the original Desperados two years ago and found it was still awesome, so it's not just childhood memories.
Also don't forget that D3 has 3 types of enemies. 3!!!! Honestly 3 types for a 30 hours plus game. And those 3 types are practically the same ones from Shogun. That is just lazy and a huge decline compared to the D1. Then we got our compulsory dose of "strong independent" lesbian cowgirls and black cowboys. Not a massive problem but yeah considering the time period it really is out of place. And finally gameplay wise D1 was just simply more complex with a lot of fun staff like jumping on horses from balconies, sabotaging horse saddles so enemies would fall when they they tried getting on them or lighting gunpowder using Kate's mirror. Having said that D3 is still by far one the best games to come out in years.
 

Goral

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Yep:
I've finished the game on Desperado difficulty and enjoyed it quite a lot so I recommend it to all Commandos/Desperados fans. I think it's even better than Shadow Tactics since it improved in some areas plus it added the replay function and even more detailed statistics. With that said it's still much worse than Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive.

The good:

+ Interesting missions that most of the time have at least two ways to approach (although these two ways don't matter that much, it's just a virtual choice where we decide which half of enemies should we defeat).
+ Per my suggestion characters have now more unique abilities and they don't overlap as much as in ST.
+ The game is quite challenging on Desperado difficulty but lower difficulties are just too easy (playing anything other than Hard or Desperados is just pointless IMO).
+ We can now gang up on samurais long coats and even KO them so pacifist run are possible (with the exception of some key characters).

The bad:
- Plot is beyond retarded and characters are atrocious. It could work if it was a parody of another revenge plot but it's dead serious and characters act like stupid kids. This was one thing that put me off the most.
- Like in ST some missions are just too long, the game would be more enjoyable if there were more missions but with smaller maps IMO. Some missions are actually split in half for that reason so it is a slight improvement when compared to ST but all in all besides some very specific moments the rest is just a copy of our previous tactics and we're slowly advancing defeating enemy after enemy. IMO if instead of 100 enemies we would have to face half of them the gameplay would be improved. There are enemies that we can sneak past of course but on my first try I didn't want to risk being cut off at some point so I've usually killed everyone in my path. Either way, civilians were almost always against us so it was easier to KO them and the map was crawling with enemies even in cities. Quality over quantity would go a long way.
- Cooper was nerfed (in Desperados he could fire 3 shots almost instantly plus everyone could shoot from around the corner and hide instantly) and not in a good way. Which is a bad thing in my book because he was the coolest character in any tactics game but here they've made him a retard. On the other hand both Kate and nigger woman are OP so I don't understand this decision. After all there are challenges in which we can't use firearms or we can use only certain characters so it's not like the game would become easier. Anyway, in general characters resemble ST characters a bit too much (only they're much more retarded).
- We couldn't ride horses or cut the saddles, we could only use them for KO which could be used very rarely even if we used bait.
- Like in ST from the very start we can see all the opponents. having more varied adversaries (at least as much as in Desperados) would improve the game a lot.

The ugly:
  • Have I mentioned appalling plot? Yeah, it's that ugly.
  • Pathfinding is annoying and often I couldn't use the quick action feature because characters were going the long way instead of the shortest ones.
  • Quick action didn't work as well as in Desperados (sic!). Yes, a 20 year old game original feature worked better than its contemporary implementation.
All in all I rate the game 8/10 (ignoring the plot, it's not why I play such games after all). In the end I very rarely used firearms and by far most of my kills were with knife. I've also barely used mind control or sniping ability always preserving it till the very end (in the last mission part 2 it couldn't be used anyway).

SB7M3eN.jpg
In Desperados 3 they've added too many stupidities (like that giant bear trap) while not including really cool ideas from the original game, e.g. possibility of riding horses and using them against the enemies (we could cut their saddles, scare them with a snake so they would throw rider, etc.), letting us shoot from the corner, having that watch with melody (instead of a coin which wouldn't be heard most of the time, there was no concrete then so you would have to throw it against a wall or a box or something), etc.

Most of the things I've said regarding ST still stand in D3: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...oney-for-the-vultures-dlc.123475/post-5756224
 

-M-

Educated
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Jul 2, 2022
Messages
113
:3.5/5:

Recently finished this and while it has some nice quality of life improvements from Shadow Tactics, it started to wear out it's welcome by the time the third act started. As everyone and their mother has already stated, only having three enemy types really stifles the gameplay. Once you realize that you can use tied up enemies as a working lure for ponchos and long coats, it not only nullifies a good portion of your characters' skills, but it starts to feel like there's only a single enemy type. By the time you start hitting missions with 100+ enemies it can become rather tiresome. They did add dogs but they're so underutilized and underwhelming they're hardly worth mentioning.

The "choice" of objectives in a lot of the missions is non-impactful as you'll still face roughly the same enemies. It's more akin to choosing between neon or pastel colors when trying to solve a Rubik's Cube. I'd rather have a single path with more creative encounters than a choice between two identical slices of pie.

It's a shame the encounters become so unmemorable. In Commandos you had enemy squads that were too large to take on without a vehicle or turret so you'd have to sneak past. That's never the case here where you're pushed to methodically eliminate the enemy one by one until the area is clear. That's fine for the majority of the game, but the formula is never mixed and becomes stale.

The writing could have used a little more grounding, but it's fine. Shadow Tactics had the decency to take place during a war which works a lot better than facing off against 1000+ hired guards in a railroad company and Frank's gang.

One final nitpick I have is I hate how enemies just disappear if you stash them in a bush. There's already a system for enemy sight where they can't see unless they actually walk into the bush so use it. Hated this in Shadow Tactics as well.

I've been focusing on the negatives but the game still has a solid foundation thanks to predecessors like Commandos and is worthwhile to play, even if it's not the leap I was hoping for from Shadow Tactics.
 

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