Jagged Alliance 2

One of the top five greates game ever created.

Once JA2 was one of my favourite games. A genre defining classic. The personalities of the mercs are unforgettable and the personality mechanic has not been matched by any other game to date. The rpg mechanics and the funny details are still great. But after playing Battle Brothers I can no more recommend this game for the tactical gameplay. The chance to hit calculation is obscure, how the line of sight works, how aiming is affected by all circumstances (like cover, stance, weapon condition, skills, mood...) Fighting alongside the militia is boring since the militia a.i. takes very long and is often running back and forth. The interrupt mechanic combined with enemies camping leading to frustration. The game is also very weapon drop dependent. As a result the game feels more like a game of luck than a tactical game. Even a simplified XCom is more tactical. JA2 also does not run flawless on win10 even with the stratiatella patch. Battle Brothers fails on the strategic part and as an RPG but has a superior tactical gameplay.

This is the mother of all turn-based tactics games, and the one all strive to be. Unfortunately, it's been a decade and a half since it was released, and the game simply doesn't feel as good as it has before. My biggest problem is that there is no way to alt-tab out of the window without becoming unable to go back to the game.

I have to say this game draws you in first from a purely technical perspective. The strategic side of things immerses you and the tactical perspective provides nail-biting action as you watch your painstakingly trained mercs go up against the enemy. Now for the negatives. First of all you need to read the manual, all the way through, trust me. The game provides little to no tutorial help if you aren't used to turn based combat. I found myself playing this game for hours, but after a while I realised this was because it took me so damn long to work out what everything did and how to work it! I also thought the game is unnecessarily, even punishingly hard. There might already be grumbles from other reviews but this game never lets you catch a break in combat even on novice mode. Save every time you get onto a new map, you will need to. At first I thought this was good, it really tests you straight out of the gate. Then gradually I came to find the cliff-like learning curve frustrating, so often even the best laid plan will require more than a bit of luck to see you through safely - the alternative is going through mercs like they're going out of fashion. This sounds good, but in reality every single little skirmish could result in catastrophic casualties, leaving you totally unprepared for the next phase in the game. I'm sure that's not good design, when a player is terrified of the primary combat element in the game! The game draws you back again and again, but I'm not sure that is so much about the inherent structure or gameplay as much as player competitiveness. You want to succeed but about two thirds of the time you will fail. Otherwise a solid and sometimes amusing storyline and an empire-building dynamic in the game help push things along, with lots of stopping while you save before attempting to attack that tiny farm or hamlet!

I love this game indeed but the problem I have with it is it wont load any of the files a save on it does anyone else have this problem and if so can it be fixed?