Jagged Alliance 2

I tend to get bored easily. I play lots of games in my spare time, so if something doesn't pull me fully in by the end of the first hour, then I bounce right off. At most, I can give something another two hours to really try it's best to wow me, and then I shut it off for good. Sorry, but I got limited time on my hands. Thank god I gave this game the extra two hours. Once you get past the classic older game woes of a clunky interface and modern port issues, Jagged Alliance 2 is a fiendishly deep and engrossing military simulator. Jagged Alliance 2 can really be played however you want. It has one goal (kill the dictator, which instantly ends the game), but that goal can be played in an infinite number of ways. You see, Jagged Alliance 2 is a sandbox game wearing the skin of a turn-based military sim, with all sorts of fun strategies on offer. For example, lets say a local city is under control and I wanna liberate it. Okay, I can go in guns blazing... but that might get my guys killed. So what if I go in under the cover of night, kill most of the enemies stationed there, and then bug out if things get hot? What if I run two squads in a location at the same time, with one team covering the other? What if I use artillery and close-range weapons and sniper rifles and... You get the idea. This is a dizzyingly complex game. Every option creates reactions that spiral out into ways you could never see coming, but make sense. This isn't even touching on the unique, fully voiced and incredibly funny mercenaries you play as! The biggest two problems JA2 has are that it's one, slow as balls, and two, fairly clunky. Enemies, player characters, allies and more all move at a snails pace, making game time long unless you manually speed it up. The U.I. is fairly ugly and cluttered, making it hard to adjust to. The tutorial is also not great- read the manual. Once you get past these issues, JA2 becomes a really fun and rewarding experience.

this game will leave you wanting more but with no others have even come close to this experiance in over tweenty years. Play it now do not miss out!

Even with the recent revival in turn based combat genre, this game is still unique in its complexity and strategy. For instance, with Xcom or Xcom-like, the positions of enemy and the start of battle are randomized and steamlined, along with other features. This is not the case with JA2, there are patrol routes and fixed position guards, etc. In general, you have more control over how you approach a battle, night time stealth raid or day time full on assault. Also, even for newer players, get the 1.13 unofficial version. It's not the vanilla experience, but it offers tons of customization options and make the game smoother to run in newer machine.

Game's great, but when I first started it up, everything was kind of 'lagging,' especially in the battles. I thought it was broken, but it's actually just because the system is old. Go figure. I needed a mod to make it work right on this gen's computers. There's a couple that i saw people talking about in forums, but the one that worked for me was stracciatella - https://ja2-stracciatella.github.io/ - this one is the closest to the vanilla experience, while other mods change things a bunch. Install is pretty straightforward. After that it worked fine with no stuttering. In terms of the game: I had never heard of jagged alliance until recently, it's kind of like a strategy game crossed with the sims lite, since your people need sleep and have stamina, have relations with other mercs, and alot more. Think Xcom, but instead of aliens, your battling corrupt gangsters. It's freaking excellent, brutal, hilarious and action-packed all in one. I guess the reason most games don't go for this level of design is because it's got a bit of a steep learning curve, and some of the systems are a bit complicated. Still, this only adds to the game. Definitely worth a few bucks.

Works out of the box on both Windows 10 and Linux (+lutris). Personally, I always go with the Stracciatella for the improved vanilla experience but if you are looking for much more added stuff, go with the 1.3 instead. Its really one kind of the game, very memorable after all those years.