Jagged Alliance 3

Hey guys.. so the game is kindof good but.. not so often updated on GOG. This is the second time they delay the updates after Steam..

While parts can be buggy or frustrating, you will quickly forgive its faults for the stellar gameplay that keeps your attention even after you save and quit for the night. I had to do a few new games at the beginning and talk with friends before I really knew what direction I wanted to take, but you'll quickly learn all of the systems and settle into a comfortable pace. The music is very good and in a few instances is a reward itself.

It's utterly fantastic! Snarky remarks from insanely unrealistic mercs. Hilariously stereotypical comments from the bad guys. Only issue I've had is the lack of a manual. The tutorial tells me to do things, but I cannot find those things where it said they lay. I'm told to render aid to a merc in sat view. Okay, I'm in sat view. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is there regarding bandaging wounded mercs. I've just been doing it in combat. Other than that it's great. That old timey feel of turn based games is back!

I've not quite beat JA3 yet, but I am right at the end after 45 hours, so I think I'm far along enough to post a review. I've never played the originals, for what it's worth. There's a lot I did like--the core gameplay is very XCOM-like in the best way, but I much prefer the metagame in JA3. The characters are fun, but unfortunately their dialogue quickly gets very repetitive. There's more than a few weird design decisions. Stealth is heavily nerfed--enemies can see pretty far in all directions in all conditions--I suppose to try to make up for how OP it is later in the game. Resources/meds/ammo feel poorly balanced too--you have so little to start with because RNG determines if you can loot an enemy, but things are overabundant towards the end. The realtime bit at the start of each level is awkward, especially compared to e.g. Mutant Year Zero. Some attacks allow you to choose who to shoot, but for some reason some don't. Having to rest, renew contracts, etc. quite so often is a pain, as is the dice roll to be able to mod weapons on top of the parts cost + skills check. I could go on if not for GOG's review character limit. Personally, I didn't mind the lack of a displayed percent chance to hit though. The biggest problem I had was bugs. I only had a couple gamebreaking bugs where I had to load an older save, but there are constant smaller bugs. It's made it a real slog; yet again I'm kicking myself for buying a game right after launch. The performance is mostly pretty good, but there's a few things that would consistently cause it to go sub-20fps (I played it at 4k with a 7600X + 6800 XT, averaging 120fps otherwise if running a little toasty). Hopefully, with some patches or mods (which I haven't tried yet, but it's always great to see support out of the box) the game will improve in time, because I did mostly enjoy my time with it and I'd like to see it improve, but it's just not quite there yet. For now I'd only recommend it on a deep discount.

Unfortunately, it is not a worthy successor to JA2. Small number of weapons, simplified mechanics, simplified character inventory window. You can't increase your militia level through training. Very small number of items from enemies. An enemy gets 2 rounds from an AK47 and still has 90% action points. No online gun store (Bobby Ray in 2) probably to hide the small amount of items in the game. It feels like it's just a base for modifications from players. Maybe in the future it will be worth playing hundreds of hours, but for this moment JA2 is a better, more complex, more detailed game.