Its 10 years later and I'm downloading it right now to play it again...
The official review says its boring and you'll be saving and loading constantly... How often you need to load a saved game depends how reckless you are, and I definitely don't find it boring.
I remember rarely using a gun - with 5 (and often less) characters vs a whole town/canyon/whatever full of bandits, stealth is the name of the game.
While it is challenging, it's just the right level of challenging.
So many games now-a-days are so dumbed down and require such little thought - even those that do don't really require intelligence, just experience of how the system works.
An intelligent player could pick up Desperados for the first time, and play it through without having to hit the quick load button once.
(Except maybe the last 1 or 2 missions which are pretty tough!)
I tried the demo to check it works on Windows 7 and it does - perfectly.
Oh that's a good point - I strongly recommend you at least try the demo! Don't let this great game pass you by!
Can't wait for download to finish!