Shadow Gambit was the first of Mimimi's Stealth-Tactics games I ve played and while it definitely has its moments, I did not stick with it in the end.
To get some of the smaller stuff out of the way - Shadow Gambit's character designs are really strong (love the MC with her sword stored in her chest), supported by gorgeous animations, it is wasted on a story that is extremely wordy without every being interesting or even charming, all of your crew members are very one-note stereotype, and the main conflict did not pull me in enough to care about paragraph's worth of pirate ship lore.
But thats now what I was looking for here anyway, I was looking for great stealth gameplay. Why that didnt fully work for me had a lot to do with the fact that Shadow Gambit is a stealth game with a pause function (during which you can perfectly "premove" your characters and their abilities for them to execute when you unpause) and perfect information (there is no fog of war, patrols are set in stone, line of sights clearly communicated, etc.) which meant that all of the challenge lies in the planning of your moves, not in the execution.
Which in turn meant for me that every situation is only fun to encounter once.
The first time I kill three guards at once by perfectly positioning my crew is cool. The second time is routine. The first time I combine the Anchor pulling an enemy's body into the ground without leaving a trace with the golden hook pulling my crewmate back into a bush, creating a perfect crime, no body, no witnesses, it felt amazing. The second time around it was just a thing I knew how to do.
This puts an unsustainable amount of pressure on the Level design to constantly provide me new situations to solve. No game could keep that pace up, and while Shadow Gambit's attempt is valiant, it ultimately could not keep me hooked.
To get some of the smaller stuff out of the way - Shadow Gambit's character designs are really strong (love the MC with her sword stored in her chest), supported by gorgeous animations, it is wasted on a story that is extremely wordy without every being interesting or even charming, all of your crew members are very one-note stereotype, and the main conflict did not pull me in enough to care about paragraph's worth of pirate ship lore.
But thats now what I was looking for here anyway, I was looking for great stealth gameplay. Why that didnt fully work for me had a lot to do with the fact that Shadow Gambit is a stealth game with a pause function (during which you can perfectly "premove" your characters and their abilities for them to execute when you unpause) and perfect information (there is no fog of war, patrols are set in stone, line of sights clearly communicated, etc.) which meant that all of the challenge lies in the planning of your moves, not in the execution.
Which in turn meant for me that every situation is only fun to encounter once.
The first time I kill three guards at once by perfectly positioning my crew is cool. The second time is routine. The first time I combine the Anchor pulling an enemy's body into the ground without leaving a trace with the golden hook pulling my crewmate back into a bush, creating a perfect crime, no body, no witnesses, it felt amazing. The second time around it was just a thing I knew how to do.
This puts an unsustainable amount of pressure on the Level design to constantly provide me new situations to solve. No game could keep that pace up, and while Shadow Gambit's attempt is valiant, it ultimately could not keep me hooked.