One of the very first things you notice about Desperados III is the freedom to experiment with your plans. It is a perfect tactics game that allows you to innovate with plans. However, when such plans go south, you can hit the reset button and start all afresh. That gives you all the room to engage in daring adventures, putting aside every restriction of fear and overly carefulness.

The game encourages quick-saving so much that you’d likely spend every minute doing so. It’s imperative, though, because you can start from that point anytime your plans don’t work. Also, the army of thugs and unscrupulous elements unrestrained in dealing you a deadly blow is enough to force you to do that.

A Storyline of Revenge

In Desperados III, you’re one John Cooper desperate to bring a notorious enemy, Frank, down. His entire life is consumed with that, and the story hardly takes another turn. Even the other interwoven stories that find a way into the plotline are about the allies John brings together to help his cause. Together with his friends, he forms a formidable gang to take on the array of enemies on the way to his goal.

John’s revenge mission requires intelligence, perfect planning, and an array of skills. Thankfully, each member of his gang brings something unique and powerful to the table.  He is a top-notch gunslinger; Kate is a terrific rancher; McCoy has unrivaled shooting skills; Isabelle flows with magic like a river with water, and Hector is a hardened mercenary. Together, they forge in the enthralling revenge journey characterized by engaging conversations between characters. So, your gang isn’t made of robot-like fighters but characters with personalities and quirks. Characters grow, relationships are deepened, and bonds are strengthened.

Strategy Games That Draw On Your Brilliance And Wits

Desperados III is replete with missions that vary from level to level. Most of your time will be spent thinking, watching the enemies, and putting your plans together. The enemies are everywhere on the map at every level, and you had better not slip. Clicking on the enemy will reveal information to help you evade their sight. It can become very complicated as one enemy is linked to another, and it does take some patience to pull through.

While spending several minutes just observing can be tiring, it pays off in the end. If you’re able to absorb enough information about the enemies, you can better prepare your tactics for the next move. At different levels, the enemies are different. So you need different strategies for each set of enemies. However, you can easily predict the action of the bad guys by looking at their type. For example, John Cooper can distract a thug with a toss coin to allow another member of the team to run through. Also, Isabelle can link two guards together so a bullet to one can kill both.

However, it’s difficult to master everything about these levels without leaving something behind. Every level has a fine architecture, with interconnecting parts that can conceal so much. Eventually, these details you don’t factor into your plans could run your strategy to the ground. For example, a thug could go ahead of your plans to see your gang member’s footprint, thereby frustrating your plan of stealth. 

While you have the option to salvage your plans when there’s a slip, it often ends up as a waste of time. The best option, always, is to quick-load and start from where you stopped. That’s exactly why Desperados III makes a big deal of the quick-save and quick-load options. There’s so much liberation that comes with being able to test different waters and discover the one you can walk on.

Unlimited Retries Till You Succeed

There’s no limit to the number of times you can fail and try again. What this does for you is that it improves your strategy at every attempt. With time, you discover the strategy that works, and that’s a good thing for gameplay.

As you move from one mission to another, they get lengthier, more challenging, and of course, more complicating. But the lessons from the previous missions are there to help. Besides, the new factors that make each mission different also add to the thrill that continuously builds up throughout the game. The ladder is so brilliantly designed that when you get to the last mission, you have an impossible-looking encounter that calls to question all the lessons you’ve garnered right from the first mission.

Then and there, you’ll appreciate all the strategies you had to develop to deal with the new elements that sprung up every mission. If you’re able to complete the last mission, that’s not the final curtain. You can go again, but this time around, with tricky tasks enveloped in gameplay. Maybe you’ll have to drop your firearms in a mission that you previously depended on such to scale through. However, these new challenges come with badges as rewards. There’s no harm in trying to get some of those.

In addition to the main missions, Desperados III feature extra missions that are different both in objective and challenges. To be honest, these side missions are so satisfying you can argue they beat the main missions, hands-down. I particularly enjoyed playing them.

Final Words

Desperados III is an enjoyable stealth tactics game, to say the least. It employs your tactical genius from one mission to another and culminates in a terrific showdown. The game’s quick-save and quick-load mechanic takes it to a completely different level. You have all the freedom in the world to try out different plans and strategies. When they don’t work, you simply embrace the quick-load option, and then you can try again. Without any doubt, Desperados III makes for a good play – any time, any day.