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).
