Re: Humble Choice May 2025

On 06/05/2025 18:41, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

* Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1545560/Shadow_Gambit_The_Cursed_Crew/
     This one seems to be a cross between a traditional RPG, a
     "Commandos" style stealth game, and "Pirates of the Caribbean".
     Find the cursed artifact that has turned you and your crew
     into undead scalawags. Looks interesting, and the reviews are
     very favorable; I'm a bit less sanguine since those sort of
     stealth-games never really appealed to me, and I'm not a big
     fan of the pirate genre. Still, maybe I'll give it a try.

I wouldn't describe it as an RPG as although you do have character improvements by they are just this is your special ability and you can get the enhanced version of it. There are character stories but these are really just there to give extra content in terms of completing missions.
The best description I'd say is a tactical stealth game with the emphasis on stealth. Unlike I believe Commandos there really isn't an option to fight it out and if you get spotted it's press that reload button.
I really enjoyed it (I've played the first two in the series also) as there's a nice challenge, but not frustrating, in looking at all the view cones, and movement, of the enemy and then working out how you slowly pick it apart. It also has a shadow mode where you can queue up actions for multiple characters and then execute them all at once. The can be really fun.
Unlike the first two I never ended up finishing it for two reasons, The first is they introduced a ship which you do things on and it really isn't intuitive of what you're supposed to be doing so very much nice idea but not such a good implementation.
The big one though, unlike the previous games it reuses maps (islands) over multiple missions just with different enemy placements and mission objectives. The problem I found was that after a while you think not this map again.
I still feel I got my monies worth though with probably twenty hours of enjoyable playtime.
The shame is that on around the release time the developers announced that they were shutting up shop with the reason being they had been doing this for years and the whole keeping everything together, including funding, had taken a toll on them.