Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew

Mimimi really had no business making *another* banger. 😭 My take after finishing the game: * 🎨 The art direction and overall design? Absolute peak. * 🎭 Character interactions and voice acting? Also peak. Everyone has so much personality that I ended up talking to everyone after every mission. * ⏳ The story is solid. I wouldn't call it a masterpiece but the way it plays with time is genuinely fun. Don't worry, no spoilers. Now for my only real complaint... The gameplay loop gets a little repetitive. Mission → back to the ship → talk to Marley → story progresses → another mission → back to the ship → talk to Marley... rinse and repeat. By the end I was like: **Marley:** "We need to talk." **Me:** "I KNOW, I'M ALREADY WALKING THERE." 💀 It wasn't enough to ruin the experience but I definitely felt it during the later chapters. The actual gameplay mechanics are fantastic, every character is fun to use, and experimenting with their abilities never got old. Huge kudos to the entire Mimimi team for delivering another incredible tactical stealth game. Between **Shadow Tactics**, **Desperados III**, and this, they seriously never miss. Sad to know the studio is gone, but they left behind an amazing legacy. ❤️ please come back!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"That's what we do..!" If you love pirates and fantasy from a top-down isometric perspective, where you control up to 3 characters (sometimes 8) across numerous islands and their missions, to take down enemies in specific manners (such as teleporting, luring, sniping, possessing, etc), then Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is for you. Disclaimer: it requires quite a bit of patience (30+hrs worth for main game // 60+hrs to 100% achievements) and puzzle-solving to experience due to strategizing throughout the missions, with the last mission taking over an hour to beat (at least for me), though there are difficulty modifiers in case you want a slightly more streamlined experience. World-wise, the game seems to take place in our world given by the lore of Toya (who hails from Japan) and Gaëlle (who is apparently Breton), and of course the off mention of the Caribbeans and Blackbeard as well, so it's a fantasy world mixed with a bit of reality. The story... I won't say anything regarding it, but the in-game saving system is raveled to it; the devs did an amazing job at tying them together, and the writing is some of the best writing I've ever experienced: from the story itself, to the characters, to the world-building - it's all done so good, and the voice-acting sails it. While playing throughout the game, you'll learn of your crew through their Crew Tales (little moments on the ship between missions) and their exclusive missions where you learn of their past, with some of the moments being bittersweet and even humerus. [hr][/hr] [u] Problems [/u] Like Ghost Rot on a Ghost Ship, Sweet Baby had their hand in the ratlines of Shadow Gambit, starting with the lead protagonist being a Jamaican/Black woman, which wouldn't be a problem, but this game was created during the height of Wokism, so... the ship is also voiced by a woman, the figurehead is voiced by a woman, the antagonist is... you guessed it, and then the 'deity' of the cult - yup... though surprisingly, the crew is equally proportionate when it comes to their sex, UNLESS you unlock Virgilio, adding another to the roster of men, but godspeed on that one... lol. The problems don't stop there though: there's 'Suleidy', who's pretty cool when it comes to skills and story, but her voice kills immersion as it sounds like a black woman that grew up in Chicago or something, which contrasts heavily against the game's world; comparing her to the other voice actors like Afia, it's a night-and-day difference. Then of course, we get some rich daddy issues by one of the characters but luckily it was done in a decent way, so I believe Mimimi had their hand in that one, though as for the other: a possible butch lesbian, who's entire exclusive missions are based around delivering a letter to her presumed female lover, while not a single one of the other crew bring up their past intimate relationships - talk about shoehorning; I have a feeling that's all Sweet Baby's 'baby'. As for gameplay problems, dead enemies are still highlighted red, which makes sense so they aren't lost against the isometric camera angles or distance, allowing the player to easily discern them so they can be hid, but they need to be a different color; moving around the map with the camera and seeing the red makes it look as if you missed an enemy, but fortunately, the player can zoom out to the world map to see if all enemies are dead in the area; changing the color of the highlight based on how they died, such as by "accidents", could fix the issue. The Antagonist is great and all but they seem to never go away, creating a repetition of doing the same thing over-and-over - sometimes literally; that got old and I was just wanting it to end, which isn't a bad thing per-se since it created a great villain, but yeah, it was drawn out in my opinion, especially on that last mission. [hr][/hr] [u] Bugs [/u] Toya's 'Shadow Swap' re-attacks enemies that are knocked out if they are lying in the area-of-attack. Teresa's bolt's icon seeming to stay after being picked up - happened several times. Shadow Mode ghosting from canceling moves. The last mission's second-to-last area: it seems like moving bodies into buildings with Shadow Mode doesn't load two moves, so I had to go into Shadow Mode, pick up the body, then Shadow Mode again to place it into the building. The last mission's last area: I changed my crew order and it removed one of my crew from the eight, where it apparently combined them with another, so I couldn't select them by clicking their windows or key-binding, but luckily I could multi-select outside Shadow Mode; it apparently bled into my prior saves as well, because reloading didn't fix it - a 15 minute reload. In the settings, the key-bind for Crew members goes '1, 2, 4, 5, 3, 6, 7, etc' When Pinkus possesses someone, he's highlighted red which makes him look like the enemy, ironically enough. [hr][/hr] [u] Nitpicks [/u] Can't multi-select while in Shadow Mode. Saving and loading hitches before resuming the game, and if you reload a save prior to the recent one, it hitches even longer, which makes it irritating after multiple times of doing it back-to-back. Pinkus 'Peruse Mind' ability is OP, at least in the respect that there is no timer, and the only weakness is range, which can be circumvented by just taking over another - maybe the indefinability could be attached to the upgrade; secondly, I think higher tiered guards should be suspicious of possessed lower tiered if acting in certain ways, i.e. rubbing shoulders with a Prognosticar. Can't load up more than one skill in Shadow Mode (other than moving bodies), meaning you have to use the one ability, then quickly go back into Shadow Mode to lock in the next - it's especially a problem when it's tight timing. Shadow Mode pathing makes the shortest path to the 'Shadow' as priority, instead of taking the path the player made the 'Shadow' walk; this ends up becoming a problem when you are trying to make intricate moves, which fails and causes the player to move incrementally with 'play/pause' instead, though it's obviously not coded to be that way, but it'd be nice if it was. When pressing backspace during Shadow Mode to cancel all skills/moves, also pulls you out of Shadow Mode. When on an island, opening Logbook should already have the island selected, instead of having to select it myself. Challenges requiring players to not climb ladders, ivies, or swim, go through doors, etc, should have an option to check that before playing the level, which would make it not possible to do those things during the mission; that, or at least tell the player that they screwed up, instead of letting them find out 30 minutes later after beating the mission - I've noticed some challenges do show failure. There needs to be a restart option that uses the same landing spot and crew, instead of taking you back to the missions intro, landing spot, and picking the crew again. After beating a mission, there should be an option to replay it, instead of going back to the Marley and having to go through all them menus again. When an object requires interaction, there shouldn't be the initial interaction then a sub-interaction if there's only one option; especially boggling choice by the devs when the interactions are within guard view-cones, where timing is of the essence. Players should be able to see statistics while currently on mission. [hr][/hr] [u] Tips [/u] Teresa's 'Ashen Judgement' can be used to extend the time of friendlies kills. Suleidy has a fast assassination, so prioritize her for tight timing kills within guard view-cones. Quentin's 'Treasure Rod' can yank keys from pockets. Logbook challenges don't have to be completed on the same save: you can do the challenge, then reload and keep the progress - also seemingly retroactive. You can wait on ladders by clicking on it while climbing. 'Treasure Hunt' missions at night for cleaning up badges. Shiver. Me. Timbers!

In short, this one is a delightful good-bye from MIMIMI studio, the one that raise the quality of Stealth RTT genre into a new level, and yet not enough to keep the flame going. Though the game still has some flaws, but the overall product is absolute worth your time. The GOODS: - A good chunk of colorful character, 8 and possibly more, which can guarantee you a plenty good amount of replays. With the grant achievement that’s bigger than both Shadow Tactic and Desperados combined, you’re gonna get busy for real. - Gameplay is smooth as butter! Characters can pick a best route every time we pick a location. - Instead of different levels, we now have island with its different sections involve with many missions to complete. I like this, it gives you opportunity to explore the whole island, not to mention the chance to discover treasure and Easter eggs, really clever and fit the theme so well. - The side-stories or lore of each characters are mostly fun to experience. Unlike the previous games, this time you get to know the characters better. My favorite is the Sharpshooter’s one. - Good voice-acting and good in-game music. MIMIMI always shine when creating such good atmospheres. The BADS: - Not all character is good. I tend to use some characters more than others, simply because of usefulness. The character design can be so imbalanced. For example, the ship doctor runs fast, kills fast, carry the bodies fast, can climb/swim, and that’s just BASIC STUFF! She can grow bush, lure enemies. And when you upgrade her skill, she get to distract enemy ?!?....Meanwhile, such characters like Treasure Hunter and Shipwright have so little and even weak skills. Even in some special missions that required them, I don’t even need to use them that often. - The BADGE or ACHIVEMENT is nightmare to complete. I get it that the devs wish for players to replay each islands as many as possible. BUT the fact that some badges are so stupid that you have no choices but to repeat the whole progress. ( ♥♥♥♥ THE NO “UNLEASE MEMORIES” BADGES) - Some side-stories can be boring and a waste of time. Not gonna spoil them for you. But know that you get to skip a lot of dialogue just to progress. - The upgrade mechanism could have been done better. I wish MIMIMI can give us options for each upgrade, but I guess they didn’t have the time. - The story is meh…I know I shouldn’t be so hard on this one, since such games like this focus more on the gameplay. BUT since this is their last game, I had hope that MIMIMI can give us a more epic story. SCORE: 8.5/10. Almost perfect

It's fun and good. There's quite a bit to do and plenty of hours of gameplay to be had. If you like Commandos, Shadow Tactics, or Desperados, you'll probably like this. That said there were a couple of annoyances I have to point out because I just find them so odd. 1. Quick saving has a long, tedious animation. I found it quite intrusive for a game like this where you need to spam save. It really hampered my enjoyment of the game. If I were giving a rating I would deduct at least a full point because of this. Just one of those, "how do you play this for 5 minutes and not realize how annoying this is?" decisions. 2. As far as I can tell, you can't assign permanent hot keys to each member. There are eight crew members, but you only get to take up to 3 on a mission. When you load out, you can assign them to hot keys 1,2,3. But that means those 3 keys will be responsible for eight different people. So sometimes 1 is Afia, sometimes it's someone else, etc. I eventually got somewhat used to it, but I would still often accidentally select the wrong character. I much preferred the Shadow Tactics system where 1 = always Hayato, 2 = always Yuki, etc.

你们嘴太严了。 我还以为demo版存档炸cpu炸主板的bug修复了。 半个小时强制断电三次，不敢碰了。

Çıktığı yıldan itibaren dikkatimi çekmiş olan oyunlardan birisini sonunda oynama fırsatı buldum. Açıkçası biraz arada kaldığım bir oyun oldu. Sebeplerinden birisi ben bu türe dayalı ilk kez oyun oynuyorum. Başlangıç için iyi bir oyun olmadığını görebildim. Belki Desperados ile başlasam bu oyuna daha çabuk ısınır ve sevebilirdim. Karakter tasarımları oyunun en güçlü yönü. Bu sayede oyunun taktikselliği artıyor kesinlikle. Hepsinin kullanışlı olduğunu söyleyebilirim. Mapler ise sizi düşünmeye itecek şekilde tasarlanmış fakat oyunda görev çeşitliliği için aynı mapte 3 defa falan oynamanız gerekiyor bence bu biraz çeşitliliği öldüren unsur olmuş. Benim oyuna olan heyecanımı düşüren bir unsur oldu en azından. Oyunda gelişme hissi çok kötü. 3 kısımdan oluşan bir oyunda 2. kısmı bitirdim daha sadece bir kere seviye atlatabildim o da bir karakter için. Çok garip geldi bana. Çoğunluğu rahatsız etmeyebilir fakat bir oyunda diyalogları ilerletme seçeneği yerine komple atlama seçeneği sunmak saçmalık. Bazı diyaloglar gereksiz uzun olduğu için önden okuyup atlamak bir seçenek olmalıydı. Bu da benim için oyuna karşı ilgimi azaltan bir unsur oldu çünkü bazı diyaloglar çok cringe. Her neyse 10. saatin ardından oyun bana çok yavan gelmeye başladı bu nedenle bitiremeyeceğime karar verdim. Türe aşina olmayan kişilere hiç tavsiye etmiyorum, keşke almasaydım dediğim bir oyun oldu.

非常好玩，非常推荐。 跟前几部作品不同（是的前几部我都玩了），这一部是超现实、超能力设定的即时战略游戏。每个角色都有超能力。一开始玩还有点云里雾里，怎么都变得这么强了；而且有些人物的能力有点重复，只是微调。但越到后面越发现，每个人物的技能原来“还可以这么使用”，或者“这两个还能这样配合”。真是非常有趣。整体的剧情也还不错，把“存档”这个功能变成一个穿越时空的超能力，这种游戏玩法和剧情的融合做得真的不错。 遗憾就是，整体的地图少了很多，重复性有点高。不少关卡其实都是逼着玩家回到过去的旧的地图再重新打一遍，连敌人站位、敌人能力都没改变。还是有点可惜。可能更多的精力都花在角色能力设计上了。此外，船上的小故事，也有点无聊，我是为了潜行战斗买的游戏，不是来过家家的呀。游戏越到后面，所需要的精力、通关时间就越长，最后大结局还加入了强制刷回起点的机制，是有点偷懒了啊。 但是，正如我开头所说， 这部作品整体来说真的是非常好玩。没有代餐。瑕不掩瑜。 mimimi再见。希望以后有机会再见到你们。

It's a decent stealth strategy game. Gets pretty repetitive pretty fast though, with very little enemy variety. Still, it was fun for the time I played it, so can recommend it on a sale if you like the genre.

Recommend.... however It's a fantastic game, but I can't get past a couple things that bother me. One, the camera controls and how the mouse is used. It's not intuitive or like other games at all. To rotate the camera, the ONLY way is to hold the alt button while moving the mouse left to right. And to me, the camera rotates in the opposite way that I feel it should (that part may just be a setting, but I have not found it yet). However, the alt button method in general without having something else like Q and E or Z and X, or something with just the mouse is not good for me. I am a huge fan of playing games like this with only the mouse. The second thing that really bothers me is having to long click to "use" things. That should be a right click, not a long click. Games that make you long click on things you have to do fairly frequently to me lose their fun to me very quickly.

Not as good as their other games. I really enjoyed Shadow tactics and Desperados III. This one started out okay but it got kind of repetitive after awhile and you have to play the same maps a couple times.