Jagged Alliance

Bushes and trees are often so dense that it is often hard to see where mercs can walk, hide or shoot. It often ends with mercs shooting trees or bushes instead of the enemies, Movement points are so few, that there is often no real alternative to stay in cover and shoot, since the next good cover is too far away and there is usually no indication if any other position might enhance the position. The user interface is strange, the inventory management bad, But the game has it's unique personalities which are better than in any other game franchise and it's fundament for tactial combat which is perfected in JA2. The strategic element (sector handling) adds a more depth to the game, which is absent in JA Deadly Games. But ultimately the tactial part in this game depends often more on luck than on skills. Which leads to a lot frustration. Play and replay JA2, but forget about this game.

If there is 1 thing a game should do, this one does it. A marvel created in the golden age of computer games.

For a more in-depth video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWRtLk2fWbI I love this and its sequel to bits, they are excellent installments of turn-based-tactics. But in all honesty, I can't give this more than 4 stars. For one, Jagged Alliance 2 exists and is superior in every conceivable way. JA's only plus is that the Deadly Games expansion comes with a random campaign generator, but otherwise it's a fairly simplistic version of what the sequel provides. It also has the quirks of a game released in 1994, such as very opaque information given to the player. For instance, weapons and equipment offer no information as to what they provide in terms of stats. It's impossible to compare two guns at a glance despite them having fixed mathematical values that the community compiled into comprehensive guides. This was more or less the norm in 1994, but in my 30s things like this lose their charm and turn into an annoyance. If you ever debate between getting this one or the version on Steam (why?), know that GOG's Gold edition has its latest official patch. In case you want some further improvements, the unofficial 1.15 patch can be found in GOG's forums.

$0.89 on Black Friday special. Many hours were spent on this when it first came out and it's great to revisit this classic. Graphic-wise, it's a game from 1994, so keep your expectations low. Gameplay-wise, it's still a fun and strategic game to pick up for a quick 30min day session or for a few hours, doing multiple days of the campaign. Tip: When you are done for the day or are waiting for guards to travel between sectors, , press 'C' to compress time, it probably mentions that in the manual somewhere, but who reads that...

GOG does not provide dosbox configurations for systems other than windows (despite dosbox as an emulator being cross-plattform). Why, I don't know, some users on the forums speculate it might have something to do with licensing as publishing rights can be platform dependant. However, this should not stop you from being able to run JA on Linux or Mac. Just follow these steps: - brew install dosbox (in terminal) => installs dosbox and adds it to PATH. If you are on Linux, use the package manager of your distro. - brew install --cask wine-devel (in terminal) => installs wine windows emulator. Again, if on Linux, use your your distros's package manager instead of homebrew. I am using devel instead of staging because the current staging version (August 2023) has some bugs with other games. - download setup_jagged_alliance_1.13_(28044).exe from gog - execute the downloaded setup-exe with wine (on Mac, rightclick > open with > Wine Devel.app) - Wine will create a c: drive with typical windows filesystem folders like "Program Files" in the destination of your choice. I suggest you create a shortcut to the emulated c-drive to access it quickly. In that fake c:-drive will also be a folder "GOG Games" containing the folder with installed "Jagged Alliance" files. Inside this folder, - open dosboxja_single.conf with a text-editor and starting from imgmount, modify the next lines like this: imgmount d JA1.gog -t iso -fs iso c: cls cd JAGGED~1 JA.EXE exit - navigate to the "Jagged Alliance" folder in terminal. On a mac you can type "cd " and drag-and-drop the "Jagged Alliance" folder into the terminal window to auto-complete. As a Linux-user, you should be familiar with CLI :P - dosbox -conf dosboxja.conf -conf dosboxja_single.conf (in terminal) => execute dosbox with the modified configuration inside the "Jagged Alliance" folder. - play the game PS: kudos to fmartins from gog forums for the dosboxja_single.conf fix