Please oh humble gods of GOG doth try to secure the rights to distribute this title so it can be free from the wickedness of DRM; and i shall proudly announce in the words of the technically late Phillip J Fry "Shut Up And Take My Money!".

It is a horrible, horrible game. It is not worthy of being on GOG. Not by a long shot. It's not Good. It's not Old. I'd hesitate to call it a Game, but my personal tastes aside, I'll give it that one; It is technically a game.

Had to stop playing in sheer disgust.

Not turn-based.
No destructible environments.
No Custom Mercenary.
No humour in the game.
All available mercs are same-y. Even their portraits. Which are awful, by the way.
Merc backgrounds copy-pasted from JA2, but Traits assigned arbitrarily.
Can't pick and choose a team at the beginning ("No, you suck lol").
Strategic/Overmap element hilariously inadequate.
No real management aspect.
Somehow they managed to make the inventory worse than in JA2 Vanilla.
Can see all opponents on the entire map everywhere at any time.
Worse AI than in Jagged Alliance 2 (they don't even call for backup by radio).
Mobs do not react the sound of gunfire if more than ~20 meters away.
Seriously, what military employs men with armless shirts and fire axes?
Bad controls - After climbing onto a roof, stance resets; After changing weapons, clips are empty.
Purely reactive gameplay - Can only climb onto roofs at ladders; Can only place bombs on designated walls with flashing green icon; cannot cut fences, only pass through pre-cut sections.

This is nothing like Jagged Alliance;
It doesn't look Jagged Alliance.
It doesn't feel Jagged Alliance.
It doesn't play Jagged Alliance.

What a complete steaming turd. The only thing interesting was the way combat could've worked. But as it is, the entire game is basically a proof-of-concept of that combat system, because everything else that is good, this game is not.

Sounds like a Thief 2 to Thief Deadly Shadows-type situation to me. Lots of things about the latter changed from the former, yet still manages to be a decent game in its own right. At least it's not really called JA3.

Except that it's not.

I went into this with zero expectations, not having followed the development of the game, and still came out of it disappointed.

Everything except the graphics are functionally worse than in Jagged Alliance 2, in a very real, literal sense.

We tried to warn them about trying to take a legendary turn-based tactical RPG and convert it to a real time, dumbed down console-styled game but they insisted we JA fans did not know what was best for Jagged Alliance.

I hope the backlash is so severe that no 'twitch gamer' EVER again tries to butcher one of our games. They should stick to their own button-mashing, 'shiny explosions' crap.

Tony

Unfortunately, i have to agree.
It's neither a good remake of JA2 nor a good strategy game and gets average or bad reviews from German magazines, all complaining about the things Luckmann listed.
The developers even removed the cutscenes with Deidranna and Elliot, what the hell were they thinking?

Elliot! YOU IDIOT!

:D

I'm in agreeance as well here. Its technically a horrible game. Even if you slapped a different name on the game. Its bad. Idk how many times I've been half a mile away, and the AI will randomly "Look" in my squad's direction. I can kill a guy with a silenced shot. (one shot one kill) and everyone else around him Immediately knows where it came from. The inability to repair armor is bad, and a tedious, unnecessary money sink. Aside from all that, my men frequently decide that they'd rather eat a few bullets than return fire on an enemy, No amount of clicking, turning on guard mode, etc will convince my merc to fire his/her weapon.

The game has potential, but at its current iteration, it becomes a frustrating mass of load windows due to the wonky mechanics causing random unecessary death. (I'm frequently prone, with a rifle, and get "Unlikely to hit", however bad guy can turn, spot me from half a mile away, and 2 shot my guy with a pistol.) bad, bad game. If you have not purchased it... don't. If you have. I'm sorry.

I see the game as a investment. As when the modders mod the game to be a true JA2 remake, then the fun will begin.

But yea i agree, atm the game is a shambles in its current state.

I don't mind the game and I can overlook the fact that it has 1% of the features in JA2.

The good points it has over JA2 is the more dynamic map, although the JA2 one worked just fine, and the the visual changes to your soldiers and weaponry with upgrades. In every other way JA2 is miles ahead.

There do happen to be a significant number of really bad interface/design issues which would have been picked up in 5 minutes with adequate beta testing. The arming of militia, the akward camera controls, the ridiculous inventory (especially swapping between mercs), the pay once system for mercs, etc etc.

I think it has a lot of potential but should not have been released in its current state. They have already released a few patches, hopefully they will fix these other things too.

It was exactly my feelings when I tried it. And then I installed my old JA2 and apply the mod1.13 and voila a better game than this one. And now instead i feel obliged to play the JA2 again, and I have a ton of work to do:S Oh well let's take grumm :P What I heard was that they don't even liberate the editor so that the fans can mod the game. Jeez.

I don't see how that's even possible. You are expecting way too much out of mods.

I don't see this game even being capable of being a "True JA2 remake" until they release the source code or the rights to the game falls apart (allowing people to crack, hack and reverse-engineer the game).

Jesus fucking christ, you are the worst, smuggest poster ever. Did you hate Quake 3 and Just Cause 2? Seriously, if you're actually complaining about twitch games and explosions please fuck off into space and then have your spacecraft explode and launch you far away from this planet Earth,

Look there is really no need for that rudness and profanity.

I believe that the original post wasn't against twitch games so much as suggesting that twitch games have no place in a traditionally turn based strategy franchise.

On a related note, an open Beta has just ... um opened for Jagged Alliance online, a turn based, Jagged alliance, browser based MMO that I've just heard of and know very little about. Might just check it out now.

Thank you for addressing the above much more diplomatically than I would likely have done.
And yes, I have nothing against 'twitch games' per se, I just do not see them as an 'upgrade' over turn-based game modes(and when applied to strategy and RPG games, a significant DOWNGRADE).