Jagged Alliance 2: Wildfire

Having had this game for just a few days it is one of the hardest turn based combat games I have ever played. Yes the dialogue is funky and the fact that the top two guys are now Euro based "boring background" badass dudes is overstated. I like the fact that guns now pack a bigger punch on BOTH SIDES of the game. However I don't care for the fact that the bad guys know exactly where you are at all times. I spread my team out on several occasions without firing a shot only to have no less than 3 bad guys show up in a circle around my team members and summarily execute them. Also don't trust the pre-combat counter that shows how many bad guys are in an area. I just sent a 6 person team into an area that said 11...in JA2 and JA2UB this was possible...anyway before my last Merc got blown away my team had stacked 32 bodies up in front of them with at least 5 more coming in for the kill while my character bled to death. Now what I do like is the increased team size making you able to have up to 10 Mercs in a squad, new and revised weapons and sounds and revamped maps. All of these things improve upon the fact that JA2 was a great game and this one is even better. Nice work overall. As a side note Cheat codes will activate but will not work with this game installed on Windows7 Ultimate 64bit. That is the only thing that I can think of which might be causing a problem and my install is running in Compatibility mode for WinXP and one of the SP's.

This version of Jagged Alliance 2 is a buggy mess, do not reccomed. The core game however is superb, it's just an unplayable edition

I loved the first Jagged Alliance 2. When I played it, an enemy was in the water. I wounded him, he fell and the game crashed. I had to figure out a way to eliminate him and not get my boys hurt. This game has swimming and drowning, so that is not a problem here. It is the same Elliot-slapping good story, but the fights are more obviously puzzles than they were in Jagged Alliance 2. Not a game breaker, but a definite ouch.

After playing a ton of hours in the classic Jagged Alliance 2, Wildfire was a really needed fresh wind for me

First of all, we can ignore the drama of 1.13 vs Wildfire 6. While you can get the maps for 1.13 Jagged Alliance 2 gold gog modded install, the Wildfire 6 commercial release here has more additional options such as npcs in farm tiles, mined defense of sam sites and other installations, and generally more interesting AI for night missions and daylight flanking. I think it is worth collecting both at this time of 2023-2024. The new AIM npcs have been tweaked to be more tactically useful. While one might dislike the personalities, many of the "lost mercs" are actually at Merc, like hitman and scope. Since merc is very affordable or gamable, you can refuse to pay for a long time, this is good for new games where economy is tight. San Mona still has the slightly buggy mma fights of 5k per profit, 3 fights every 2-3 nights. Mercs are higher cost, but other mercs like ira now have ambi/auto weapons, one of the op builds an IMP/custom merc normally has to take. Dimitry has higher wisdom too, so he learns faster than maddog. I have 40 in game days. PIcking single day options for the higher end mercs. My suggestionhire shadow and others for their weapons, then take chitzena within a day. Miguel used to say take Drassen, so I understand the new VA. The tactics are the strong point. Night time flanks, the AI no longer runs to noises and lights. They refuse to go into the light. They hide more when outnumbered, but you can still do a distraction and pull their attention away. Very nice night ops gameplay. Arguably better than 1.13 AI. All in all, worth the 1-2 dollars or even 5. I love tactical fights btw. The scope rebalances are nice. Novice is very easy on the strategic side, but still akin to expert on the tactical side as others mentioned. THey are much more accurate, even the blue shirt/red shirt newbies. My militia is blue, the enemy should be red, come on red vs blue people! The blackshirts defend the same sites, challenging, but still killable on night ops.