Jagged Alliance 3

... well, maybe not the full 25 years, the game made a hell of a first impression. From the beginning it gives the right JA2 vibes, it is as if one never left (at least for those who successfully forgot about JA Rage, Crossfire and Back In Action). Creating your team is basically the same as it was in the previous game. Some characters don't like each other, so you can't put them together without negative side effects. Others work very well together. The firefights are not ALL too realistic, enemies are still kinda dumb and either don't seem to come out of their position at all or they try to overwhelm the player rather than taking cover depending on the situation. Since I count my bullets in these games and rely mostly on sharp shooters, that suits me really well :) But it might not be for everyone. One who is not into micro management might find the different options a bit overwhelming, all the information about a enemies cover and so on. This gives you the chance to plan every move. But you can also just use burst fire and hope for the best. However, in my opinion that neglects the idea behind the gameplay. Bullets bouncing off walls are nicely implemented. The tactical map shows enemy movements and lets you plan where to move your squad or where you have to increase defenders or - if you think you can't handle it - when to retreat from a sector. Leveling the stats and perks of your mercenaries is nothing exceptional, basically works as expected. While I don't like ALL of the voice actors (some I find rather annoying), they bring a bit mor flavour to the game. Of course I didn't play too far into the campaign yet, I am still looking forward what this country still have to offer. One of the aspects that made JA2 great was the interaction with the civilians, the hillbillies for example, which also gave it a certain role playing effect. I hope to find stuff like that here too, but I'm confident. So far I can recommend this without hesitating.

My daughter and I are having a great time with this game. We both ran out of money on the first play and had to sit down to think about why. We liked the challenge. We did not watch any videos on this since we wanted to figure this out on our own. Diamond mines seemed to be the secret to keeping the money flowing since loot SUCKS in this game. Second play through we are about halfway into the mainland taking out various 'bandits' and having great fun with the tactical challenge. We are at the point where we can maybe afford to start a second squad but decided to stick with one team. THEN we noticed with ALL the extra gangs we were running low on A LOT of ammo. Plenty of parts from scrapping guns filling up space but no gunpowder....not one drop...and no TNT....not one drop. So, we started searching for how to buy an ammo drop from the tablet. Nope. Nothing. Then we do a search on steam and find out that there is no method to buy ammo nor the components to make the ammo through operations. Would love the idea we need to spend the time to craft ammo and pay the salaries. The devs obviously played this game in Admin/Cheat mode to get all the ammo and guns they wanted to test. If they actually played this like designed, they would have noticed they had an issue. Funny thing is, there is a mod for it. We are installing a couple of QoL mods from the Nexusmods site. - Great game with nice tactical challenge with multiple methods to set up defensive positions. - Looks great and the camera works great for 99% of everything. - Maps are a little too small but we get why. - Loot Drops SUCK. It is double-random for the sake of random. Lazy design and devs. Zero excuse. This is SO BAD that is ruins the fun badly. Give us the order option from the tablet and air drop it....just like we contact and order mercs. SAME THING. Simply baffling. - Good thing the devs allowed mod support for this via Lua or this would have been uninstalled.

I was tempted to give it 5 as it does feel true to the spirit of the original Jagged Alliance games and there is some solid tactical gameplay here. But the controls are a bit unintuitive, rather than left click select, right click action in games that are more clear cut, sometimes it's one or the other. And the tutorial is pretty barebones. With time i'm sure it will all feel second nature but I think some aspects here could have been done better. Also, no active pause or percentage hit before lining up a shot though this is probably by design to make the user apply some common sense and give a bit more edge to the combat. I'm ok with it but it probably won't fly with everyone. Still, it is good but I think it's one of those games where a bit of perseverance could go a long way.

in some moments poor optimization, sometimes it can lag, especially with zooms, the graphic design is standard, it does not delight the eye, no chance to hit in the official version, even as a choice, no all JA JA2 JA2.5 mercenaries, the faces of some of our heroes are quite different from the original, the characters always have one outfit, you can't see any changes when we mix their wardrobe, mercenaries always follow a marked path, even if there is a visible mine on it, Shadow is not wearing such a strong and distinctive camouflage as in JA2, no camouflage skill or camouflage kits, stealth mode not working properly, enemies will see you anyway, not very intuitive interface, no possibility to change the camera angle while zooming, inability to switch to turn-based mode at any time when the enemy is in the sector, the ability to turn a mercenary standing still has not been implemented during combat, grenade explosion does not knock down enemies, they take damage while standing still, the game does not have simple mechanics, it is a bit complicated because the dependency system is large and you have to learn it and spend a good few hours on it, small maps, no minimap no tactical break no Bobby's Ray lack of ammunitions