Shadow Tactics and Desperados III are basically the same game. They are both top-down stealth games much like the Space Marshals trilogy, however, they focus more on the tactical and real time elements. Instead of just one character, you have five to play as simultaneously and each one has a different skill set. Each level has a goal that you must reach and the enemies in the game raise alarm upon sight of a player character, so discretion and timing are the keys to success. The characters can lure enemies with noise, use ranged attacks to kill from a distance, and set traps for patrols to walk over. To keep the levels interesting, you don't always have access to every character each level so you must accommodate your plans accordingly.
If this sounds familiar to you, that is because these games are a spiritual successor of a series called Commandos which features similar gameplay (I plan on playing some of those one day and writing down my feelings about them). If you have fond memories of playing those games, then stop reading this review and just purchase Shadow Tactics and Desperados III right now.
As for the finer details of the games, each character is uniquely identified by their gender, age, occupation, personality, voice, skills, and an in-game color that is both on their costume and on their profile (i.e. Cooper is identified with the color blue in Desperados III). This helps the player to easily distinguish the characters from each other and allows players to better recall which character is assigned to which hotkey due to many associative traits.
The story in each game is good but not particularly special, which I am absolutely willing to forgive since everything else is so well done. There are twists in each story that I don't see coming and help keep me interested.
The action programming is quite polished. I can easily redirect characters on the fly, even in the middle of an animation. The animations themselves also smoothly transition from one to the other and almost reach a Smash Bros. level of fluidity, which is impressive for such a small game.
If I were to complain about anything, it's that these games are in desperate need of a Steam Workshop support. It's on Unity so the workflow should be familiar to a lot of people and the assets seem modular enough, the only variable remaining is if Mimimi has the time or money to go forth with a level editor or official mod support.
In summary, these games are well worth checking out and I sunk at least 45 hours into each of them. Well worth the price and full of great game design!
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