Desperados 3 Beginner’s Tips: Showdown, Long Coats & More

Releasing on June 16th for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Desperados 3 is a rock-hard RTS that promotes patience and taking things one step at a time. The first game in the series in many years, even those who have played a Desperados game before could probably do with some beginner’s tips.

Desperados 3 is all about biding your time, looking for exploits in enemy patterns and finding windows of opportunity. It’s trial and error by the dictionary definition, meaning that it may not be a game that is for everyone. If you want an RTS that teaches you through failure, though, Desperados 3 might be the perfect choice.

Here’s everything you need to know to get ahead and stay alive in Desperados 3.

 

Study Every Pattern

All enemies have set patterns that only change when you get arouse suspicion, but then they go right on back to exactly what they were doing before. Rather than going steaming into a new area, you really ought to sit there, watch their patrols, see who moves and who doesn’t, and then begin to strategise.

You should be looking at every viewcone to see the view of all enemies to see potential blindspots. Ponchos will never move from their position, so you should try to work around them by dispatching normal enemies and then taking care of them. Alternatively, you can use Kate to look ponchos looks in another direction.

 

Use Footprints and Sound To Your Advantage

In certain levels, the environment seems to want to make your job harder. As well as footprints potentially leading enemies right to your hiding spot, the splashing of water can also bring some bullets hailing down on you in no time.

While these gameplay quirks can be a major nuisance, you should really try to turn them to your benefit. With footprints, you can lead enemies directly into a trap, and splashing noises can be used to make an enemy look one way while you go the other.

It’s all about the Kansas City Shuffle.

 

Make Every Pixel of the Viewcone Count

Viewcomes are life and death in Desperados 3. Stay in them for too long and you will almost certainly discover the “death” part. While it might seem that enemies have every single bit of the screen covered, there’s always some little cranny you can sneak into.

If a viewcome is moving left to right, try to run to a blindspot either side when it starts moving away from the direction you want to move to. You can even get up right next to an enemy, basically in smelling distance, and it won’t matter if their viewcone does not come near you.

 

How To Deal With The Long Coats

The Long Coats are basically mini-bosses in Desperados 3 that have three health bars to deplete and cannot simply be stealth killed from behind. They’re a major pain to factor in with everything else, but there are three main ways of dealing with them:

– You can shoot them to down them and then get a character to go behind them to kill them. Can be a bit finicky in tight corridors and buildings.
– Hector can insta-kill them with his hatchet, though Long Coats are often patrolling around places that Hector cannot always easily access due to his climbing restrictions.
– Use John Cooper to light him up with his two pistols and then use Doc McCoy to finish him off with his sniper pistol. This is probably the least fussy way to kill Long Coats, but it is loud.

 

Use and Abuse Showdown Mode

Showdown Mode should be used as much as possible in Desperados 3. When the game feels unfair or like it’s stacking the deck against, you should be using Showdown to its absolute fullest to overcome any obstacles.

Entering Showdown mode not only stops time, but it also allows you to plan out your next moves ahead of time. For instance, if you want to simultaneously dispatch of multiple enemies at once but a particular enemy is too far away to reach, you can enter Showdown and then incrementally fast forward almost frame by frame until they are in the right position.

Once you’ve executed a big move with multiple characters, don’t forget there’s a cooldown on most abilities, but Showdown allows you to cue your next attack ahead of time and execute it when the opportunity is perfect.

 

Quicksave Even After The Smallest Gain

Progress in Desperados 3 can sometimes feel absolutely painstaking. Even moving from one bush to another feels like it takes a lifetime, margin for error is that small. To counteract this, you should be quicksaving as often as you can.

This means that if you dispatch of an enemy, quicksave. If you sneak past guards, quicksave. If Kate is distracting a guard, quicksave. There’s a reason why the game reminds you over and over to quicksave, and that’s because having to repeat the same small part of a level over and over just breeds irritation.

You get three quicksave slots to refer back to, so don’t be scared to take advantage of each.

 

Don’t Command Multiple Characters At Once

Desperados 3 really doesn’t feel well suited to you selecting all of your characters at once and then moving them as one, because it’s so often the case that one of them will go wandering off in another direction due to the game’s sometimes sloppy pathfinding.

While it may be more of a laborious process, you should instead try to perform actions one by one. Instead of selecting some far off place for a character to make their way to, move characters a few feet at a time to limit the chances of the goofs wandering into viewcones.

There are just a few of the beginner’s tips we have to share for Desperados 3. Be sure to bookmark this page and we’ll have more rootin’ tootin’ knowledge to share before the game releases on June 16th for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

From our Desperados 3 review:

“Featuring a beefy campaign, charming characters, and a daunting yet captivating difficulty, Desperados 3 brings the franchise hooting and hollering back to life — and maybe better than ever.”