Jagged Alliance 2

I started playing this game when it game out as a teenager. I only play such games on the hardest settings with no hints, and last night I finally closed it out with tears streaming from my eyes! Hah, there were breaks over the decades of course. What an adventure. It comes down to taste when your picking greatest turn/squad based strategy games. This is mine. Though! I must say, there are some flaws. Read interviews from the developers\publishers as this game was coming out. They were closing down shop complety.. tragically. There are some epic ironies as they talk about other companies that were similarly doomed... like... Bethesda. This shows in the game. If this game was given more time and love, especially with the story and end game tactics, this would likely be the greatest game of all time. It has 1900's Russian novel vibes - it's hilarious, it's tragic', it's brutal, at times real, at times ridiculous. But! It does fizzle out.. there are no memorable end game interactions, and your characters accuracy seems to get a bit odd in the final stages. All and all, what can I say. This game is legendary, though I do wish the publishers understood they had a pot of gold in their hands. If they had stuck with it, the gaming world would be quite different today.

I am a huge fan of the original Jagged Alliance and tried to get into this game two or three times before but gave up because of a bit of a learning curve to the user interface and also that the game tends to crash on new systems. To fix the compatibility issues, do yourself a favor and download "Jagged Alliance 2 Stracciatella," which is a collection of libraries you feed the files of the game that you download here and then runs it with wonderful compatibility with new systems, including MacOS X, which is what I am playing it on. Lifesaver! Also, once you actually learn the interface and some of the game mechanics (just look up Jagged Alliance 2 fan wiki), this game is an absolute masterpiece and the interface is actually a joy to use. This has quickly become one of my favorite games of all time, the design is simply a work of love, starting from the vision the designer had, to the wonderfully drawn animations, and attentional to detail, the personalities of all the mercs that took a lot of time and creativity. One of the things I love most about how Jagged Alliance was designed was how you run into unique events during the storyline (during the first game, without saying anything too explicitly, the kidnapping, the picking up of delivered crates, the illness etc.), (during this 2nd game there are even more really fun sidebits that have that wonderful Jagged Alliance sense of humor). Can't say enough good things about this :)

My last playthrought was with "Wildfire" 15 years ago, and in my memory the game was very unstable and bugged. To my surprise, this version is very stable, it didn't crash or freeze once in the 50+ hours of my playthrough on Windows 10. Soundtrack and atmosphere are amazing, the graphics are obviously not up to date, but solid and aged better than 3D games of that time. Some fights in the early stages of the game take a bit too long, due to weak marksmanship and no precise weapons, but with high wisdom your soldiers learn very quick. One of the best turn-based tactic games, and still worth playing.

This is an excellent game. Truly immersive combat & strategy RPG. It is hard to point to single or even couple great things about the game. There are so many amazing concepts like strategy view, many...many mechanics, soldiers of fortune are superbly designed in terms of skills and personalities, tactic gameplay is very rewarding, great guns and equipment... I remember I bought the game in 1999 on CD, played so much that finally my disc refused to work. Now I have my copy with GOG and could not be happier about this. Worth every penny.

If you like turn based strategy games, you will not be disappointed - this is probably the best I have ever played. Yes, the graphics are dated now, but this game has personality that more than makes up for it - you get to know your mercs. I put this in my top 5 games of all time!