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Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is Mimimi Games latest title, and their very first self-published game, which gave them tons of artistic freedom into crafting the ultimate Stealth RTS. I've been a huge fan of their games since Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun and they never fail to deliver; Shadow Gambit is no exception.
It's clear as day there the team has passion for the Stealth RTS genre and it shows in every single aspect. The team is always trying to find ways to expand and reinvent the genre with new mechanics and abilities.
Much like other Stealth RTS, the game encourages players to reload their quick saves and try again. What I like about this game is how they made the save system as part of the game's narrative, which is brilliant and exceptionally well executed.

THE GOOD

✅ The story is simple yet very well written. The writing is great and characters ooze personality.
✅ Art direction, soundtrack and voice acting is absolutely top-notch. Completely nailed the atmosphere.
✅ UI is tidy and clean while still being gloomy to fits the whole "cursed pirate" motif.
✅ The skill effects are flashy and super satisfying.
✅ Gameplay is more streamlined, which will make the title more accessible to players who are new to the Stealth RTS genre.
✅ The quality-of-life changes compared to Desperados III are truly a welcome addition. The top view when zooming the furthest out is very handy.
✅ The hub area in the form of the Red Marley is great and adds so much to the narrative and overall feel to the game.
✅ Characters have special optional quests called Crew Tales which help flesh their personality better. There are also story-related missions to further explore their backgrounds.
✅ The whole system to unlock new crewmates feels rewarding and adds strategical planning. You can see their whole skillset before reviving them.
✅ The training ground to learn the mechanics of new crewmates was a brilliant addition.
✅ Players can change the order of crew select members' order at any time.
✅ The Landing Spots and different crew member combinations add tons of replay value.
✅ Meticulously crafted stages with a lot more verticality than previous games.
✅ The accumulated Vigor system (used to upgrade abilities) encourages players to use different characters in missions.
✅ Toya has the coolest crouch / stand-up animation ever.

FEEDBACK & CRITICISM

❌ Performance-wise, the game tanked a bit. I have a relatively decent PC (Ryze 5700G, 32GB RAM, RTX 2060) and installed the game on a SSD, but I was getting some minor stutters and FPS drops (especially when using abilities), and sometimes my GPU temp would get as high as 80C; I've noticed specific portions of the map trigger that issue. I even by lowering graphics quality to the minimum in-game, as well capping FPS and forcing V-Sync on the NVIDIA Control Panel (on top of having V-Sync on in-game too). This was a problem back in the demo that persisted in the final release. I really hope they fix it.
💡 The game is actually a bit easy if you're a veteran of the genre. The supernatural skills make a lot of obstacles and traversal faster and tackling on opponents easier. Enemy AI and placement is not very punishing either; and if you ring the alarm, the enemy patrols will return back to their base after the alert timer is over. I wish there was an option to increase enemy density and making ringing the alarm more punishing.
💡 Given that the you have freedom to choose your party, most missions are designed in ways that they can be cleared with any team combination, which kinda holds back the developers to craft more intricate levels and enemy placement that are tied to specific characters; this is explored in the final level of the game, though.
💡 Would be nice to have more keybind options for "inactive skills", like there is for non-lethal takedown. An example of that is how Afia has a non-lethal version of her Blink, but there are no keybinds for it. Could even be something like holding the keybind for a second to swap between lethal and non-lethal.
❌ Less stages compared to previous games, which makes the game lack a bit variety in scenery. Despite stages being massive and having multiple missions tied to them, said missions are short and focused on specific parts on the map. On top of that, every mission in the same map uses the exact same enemy placement, which can make playing the same map for completing various missions feeling a bit stale.
💡 Given that players can choose their own teams when tackling missions, character interactions are more limited and stakes feel less personal. Also, in the Red Marley, only Afia can talk and banter with other characters. This makes character development feels a bit underwhelming; you can't for instance, talk to Gaëlle using Toya. Characters do appear to have specific banters depending on who is brought to the mission.
💡 One thing I missed in this game is actual treasure hunting, with maps and everything. There was a very specific mission that had that, and wish this was more expanded on.
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Overall, I absolutely loved the game, even with my nitpicks and criticism; I'm really not trying to be harsh on the game, and I hope that if any of the devs see this message, don't take it personally, because you guys really are among of my favorite game dev team ever. A lot of of my criticism regards fundamental design choices that I feel could've been better implemented, but they don't hinder the experience. I know it's a small indie team and they still delivered a fantastic game.
It's great to see Mimimi continuing to give us amazing titles and further experiment with the Stealth RTS genre. I really hope this game sells well and get more content, much like Shadow Tactics had Aiko's Choice and Desperados III had the Baron Missions.