Desperados III Review

Desperados III is a game which is available on the PS4, Xbox One and PC. The game is in the real time tactics genre that comes developed by Minimi Games and published by THQ Nordic.

The Story

In this game you will be taken to the world of the 1870’s and play as John Cooper as he travels through the USA and Mexico on a quest for revenge. Along the way, John will meet a variety of other characters such as Kate O’Hara, Arthur “Doc” McCoy, Hector Mendoza and Isabella Moreau. Each of these characters has a little bit of a background and each help John along the way, they are also all playable.

The story in this game isn’t too bad, it’s basically a simple revenge story about a group of people trying to get to a certain location in order to get that revenge. I don’t want to spoil where they are going, but along the way there are countless enemies and people blocking their path. Much of the story does help to lean towards the stealth aspects of the gameplay, but things move along fairly quickly. Some of the dialogue is a bit funny, with the odd joke here and there for the player.

I quite liked listening to the banter of the characters and this became the kind of game I would play every so often when I just wanted to chill out. It’s not too intense and for a revenge story, it’s pretty light hearted.

The Gameplay

The gameplay in this is something quite different to the games I would often usually play. I’ve never really played a real time tactics game before and at first I was thinking it would be a little like some of the missions in Starcraft, but it’s more like a mix between Starcraft and Xcom II. As a player you will view all the maps from a top down angle and you’ll have to point and click to get your character moving through each of the levels. You will have weapons such as a gun, but it creates noise so you don’t want to use it too much as it will attract attention and get you killed.

The gameplay’s main objective for much of the levels is to have you and any character you are with get through the level alive. You will want to stealth your way through there and there will be obstacles to overcome. You’ll have to sneak past enemies, knock some out, shoot some or create traps, plus much more.

There is an intersting gameplay mechanic in there known as the showdown mode which will allow you to play out multiple moves at once, which is used when you reach impossible to pass areas of the game. When executed well, it was fun. But for me, I found the controls to be a little too diffcult or not so fluid and I kept messing it up and having to start the sequence again. It was a little frustrating to be honest.

As a game that is available on consoles and PC, it looks nice and all. But I often thought that with the way it was structured with you basically pointing and clicking where your characters should walk all the time, I often thought that Desperados III would make a great mobile game, it would be so much easier to play this on my iPad.

The Music & Graphics

The music is the best part of this game. The songs in this game really bring you into the world of the old west. As soon as I heard it playing, I just always felt ready to take a deep dive into the real time tactics gameplay. The voice acting was also nice and in general the tone and feel of it all was quite relaxing. Like I said before, Desperados III is nice game to play if you want to just chill out for a while.

The graphics are pretty good, for something of this genre I don’t have much to compare it to. But if I was to compare it to StarCraft or Xcom I’d say the graphics are decent. If you are playing on PC, you will want to adjust your rendering setting to make it nice and sharp. When I first booted the game it was a blurry mess, so you will want to play around with the graphics settings a bit to make it look good. Overall I’d say the graphics are just okay.

Overall

Desperados III was the type of game I would play when I just wanted to chill out and didn’t want something too intense. The story is fairly light hearted and funny. The music is well done and gets you in the mood for the world of the old west, but the graphics are just kind of average. I would have liked to have got to play this on an iPad because I think the point and click nature of it would be a lot easier to play. Some of the elements of the gameplay such as as the showdown mode were difficult to execute and I often found it frustrating.