Jagged Alliance 2

First off your characters will have a very limited amount of the Action Points --- the points needed to do anything during battle --- walking, running, crouching, shooting, reloading etc. etc. etc. --- this will make even the most basic goals take 15.6 hours --- simple goals such as killing even one enemy. This dynamic makes it quite difficult to get close enough to an enemy to actually hit him, let alone kill him. This, no doubt, helps create the challenge and strategy in the game that folks seem to like --- well, most folks anyway. But, really, it might have been reasonable to allow a little Action Point leeway on some tasks --- tasks such as reloading and crouching for example --- just to quicken things up a little if nothing else. Sound like nitpicking? Maybe, but it will get kind of old after a while be forced to take 229 Action Point replenishing turns to get near enough to actually fight an enemy --- then start the process all over for the next one. Which brings up another criticism --- even on the novice/easiest setting --- even with a super high priced character geared to be a sharpshooting-marksman-superstar --- a 98 rated marksman --- even at point blank range --- he will sometimes miss his target --- and almost never kills him in one or even two shots --- WTF? Meanwhile, these "easy setting" enemys will hit and hit you like it's going out of style --- even at fairly long range --- even when you are prone and appear to be safely behind cover. This fairness problem when combined with the Action Point issue can make for a frustrating or at least tedious gaming session. Of course, getting hit will necessitate the need for healing --- which is also a bit needlessly and painfully contrived for a game of this nature. Other problems are mostly minor and due mainly to the age of the game these can be overlooked fairly easily. To sum it up, strategy is a good thing --- and very satisfying when a difficult goal is achieved --- but, fairness, fun, and playability are also good things --- and little better balance between these things would have made this game much better. As it is, be fairly warned that it's not for everyone.

... it crashes every 15 minutes.

The game certainly shows potential, but I didn't get far enough to really find out if that's realised. The inability of dragging and selecting multiple units to get all of them over to the next sector was just too much of a pain to deal with. I've got enough of a game library to not be able to justify wasting time figuring out how I'm supposed to get everyone from one sector to the next, and I'd rather spend the time on a game which the devs got the basic stuff like that figured out.

The game has a 'speech' button in the options menu to turn off listening to strong language. And it warns before purchase that it contains strong language, so I'm not complaining about being deceived. I can tolerate any four-letter cussing but will not tolerate using God's name in vain. In this case, it was flippantly saying 'Jesus Christ' near the start of the game. Lousy programming choice. Also, when moving the mouse to the edge of the screen to view an adjacent area, the movement is very fast--jerky, not pleasant at all. There is no control for this. A built-in keyboard assignment does not exist (although the manual does a good job of putting all key press descriptions together at the end) and re-assigning keys isn't possible. Since I didn't go past probably an hour of play, I can make no comment on general gameplay except that I did enjoy the character set up for initial combat.