As I promised a while back, I enjoyed Shadow Tactics so much that I decided then and there that I would play the Western-themed but similar genre game by the same developer. It took a while but here we are. This title pretty much offers the exact same type of gameplay and I unfortunately discovered that I don’t really like the Western-theme much after this being the second such game I’ve played this month. The guns do indeed make this more action-oriented if you want but it still feels more satisfying to be stealthy so this felt like more of the same for me. Eventually I warmed up to it enough to be just as engrossed by the more complex levels but I still prefer the earlier game more and I had no desire to replay levels for the sake of grinding stars and achievements.

This is of course the third game of the franchise and as I’ve never played any of the previous entries, I have no prior attachment to its characters. It seems to be a prequel which explains how the team got put together so that worked out well for me. The story is centered around protagonist John Cooper seeking revenge against the man who killed his father when he was a child. By the time Cooper catches up, Frank is working as the chief enforcer of DeVitt, the tycoon who owns a large and powerful company. This way, DeVitt’s enemies are Cooper’s friends, and they include other playable characters Kate O’Hara whose family’s ranch is being taken over; Doctor McCoy, a mercenary who formerly worked for DeVitt but turned against him; and Isabelle Moreau who fights to free the company’s slaves. Also included is Hector who has been Cooper’s friend since he was a boy. Somehow even though Devitt’s actions are illegal, he is above the law so it’s up to the team to act against him even if that involves fighting a small army of his men. The missions include defending the O’Hara ranch, travelling to New Orleans to search for Frank, being inevitably captured and then escaping and so on to final showdowns. It’s all pretty standard fare and being all about revenge fits the Western theme but feels less interesting to me than Shadow Tactics which at least is about the fate of the nation. I also disliked how everything is so Cooper-centered so the backstories of the other characters are poorly developed.

As before, the characters all have their own unique abilities but they’re mostly similar ones from Shadow Tactics so there is a feeling of the gameplay here being more of the same. The enemies here are more or less the same as well, so you have the normal mooks, the ones who can’t be lured away and the elite ones who most of your characters are unable to defeat one-on-one. The one exception is Isabelle Moreau, the voodoo practitioner. Her abilities are totally unlike those of the others and I have to admit the game only really grew on me after you get to control her. Her signature ability is to mind control enemies which does exactly what it says. I ended up rarely using it however and much prefer her ability to link any two enemies together so that what happens to one happens to the other. This of course includes dying and being knocked out. This makes her so handy at cracking situations where you have multiple guards all keeping watch over one another. With the help of only one other character, you can also use her to take out those three-man patrols that appear in later levels. It’s so much fun to figure how possible ways to use it especially since there is no distance limit to how far the two enemies can be from one another.

You can go loud and go in guns blazing at any time. This raises the alarm and summons more guards onto the level but the game doesn’t seem to penalize you in any other way. I’m sure that speedrun strategies will use guns as it makes solving the map so much faster. I prefer being stealthy the whole time. Isabelle’s mind control ability certainly guarantees that every enemy, no matter how heavily guarded the position, can be taken out from stealth. It takes much more time and patience but I enjoy cracking the whole level like a puzzle and even taking out the bonus bounty targets. I note that there is a fair bit of replayability as well as quite a few levels offer you a choice between two paths to take. Not choosing a path means there’s no need at all to venture into that part of the map, making it ripe to replay at a later date.

Unfortunately due to this being more of the same and because I’m not fond of the story at all, I could never like this as much as Shadow Tactics. In that earlier game I made more of an effort to replay some portions for the sake of stars, its version of achievements. This time around I was annoyed enough that you don’t get to see the conditions for earning them before you complete the level once that I didn’t bother. I will admit that the final challenge at the end of the game is fantastic and makes for a unique kind of boss battle. Plus I think that the graphics here are better and it is great how they work in so many cool locations into the levels including a bridge and a mine. Overall though this still felt too much like the previous game to me and the story and the characters never stopped aggravating me. For example the story never properly addresses why McCoy comes back and how come a US Marshal needs to have Cooper and his gang bring a criminal to justice when he should be the law?

I’m still not quite done with the genre I think. I have Partisans 1941 on my wishlist which was made by a different studio which I hope would make it play significantly differently from the ones made by Minimi Games. But it will be a while before I get around to it.