Ever since Sunset Riders on the SNES, I have had a thing for games set in the Wild West. Desperados III is a thrilling Wild West adventure that is full of gunfights and cowboy antics, but it also makes you think. This is one of the most fun real-time strategy games I have played in a while…. Even if it did make me reach for my six-shooters on more than one occasion.
How to Download Desperados III
You can download the game from Steam and GOG (check out the demo of the game there as well as the Season Pass and the Deluxe Edition that contains access to three future DLCs and the original game soundtrack) and from the PlayStation Store and Microsoft Store for your PS4 and Xbox One respectively. Click on the Download button at the end of the review. If you like Wild West games, check out the selection we have here.
The Game Review
Despite being the third game in the series, it is actually a prequel. The story features the “origin” story of John Cooper as he and his group of wild bandits causing mayhem across the old west. The campaign is awesome and as a fan of Westerns, I found myself very invested. I really liked the chatter as you played between the characters as this fleshed them as well as the story out.
What we have here with Desperados III is a real-time strategy/tactics game. Some of the missions in this game are very long and it is up to you how you go about them. You can actually complete a mission without actually killing anyone. You can just tie them up and then hide the bodies. Playing the game more stealthily can be fun, but that is not how I went about it.
Instead, I took a more heavy-handed approach. The game has this cool thing called, Showdown Mode, here you can set in motion a bunch of events, un-pause it, and let it all unfold. This is really cool and from making an ambush to having some folks get killed by a falling bell! I loved being creative in the way I would get rid of the people in my way.
There are five playable characters in the game and each one has their own special ability. Knowing when and where to use these abilities is really the key to getting through the missions. The different abilities are a lot of fun to use and they are quite varied too which I liked.
My favorite of the abilities is Isabell’s. She can use “supernatural” powers to make one character do what the other does. So, if you have one guy get shot, he acts like a voodoo doll for another one and they will share the same fate. It is cool, fun to use and a nice twist on the more “realistic” approach the rest of the game has.
Another fun example of using the character’s abilities is having Hector put down a trap. Once the trap is set, you can then have Kate use her feminine ways to lure bad guys into it. There are many different ways you can go about getting through a stage and that is a huge part of what I enjoyed about this game.
Desperados 3 is a very challenging game. I had a lot of fun with this game, but there were times I was getting rather frustrated. You can see the enemy’s field of vision thanks to their sight cones. However, I found many times I would get killed over and over again and have to reload my quicksave. There is a lot of trial and error in some of the missions!
While this can be frustrating. I will admit that when you do finally figure out the way to get past a tough area. You feel like the smartest cowpoke around! This does make the frustrating parts worth it in my opinion. Thankfully the game is fun overall so these parts that do test your patience never really make you want to throw in the towel.
I had a lot of fun with Desperados III. The campaign is truly engrossing stuff and I liked all of the characters. The game looks fantastic as well and they have done a great job in bringing the Wild West to life. You can get the game on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC and it is well worth checking out.
