Jagged Alliance 2

This game really shows its age via horrible controls. The online help only covers some of the controls. The manual covers more of the controls. But there are controls I only discovered by pressing every key on the keyboard. Also, there are basic actions the manual and online help do not cover. Like how to use a medical kit on an injured merc on the Tactical screen (had to Google to find the answer). Another example is where my mercs were traveling on the Map screen. They had an encounter and one of the mercs was injured. So naturally I wanted to use a medical kit on him. I literally spent an hour trying to figure out how to apply a medical kit on the Map screen (or how to get back to the Tactical screen since I knew how to apply a medical kit there). The merc kept dying and I had to keep reloading. I never did figure out how to apply a medical kit from the Map screen or how to get back to the Tactical screen while traveling on the Map. Regarding gameplay, it's very tedious and boring. Double-clicking to run, only worked about half the time. So, I spent a lot of time waiting for the mercs to leisurely get to where they were going. I get older games are slower paced than more recent games. I've played and enjoyed classics like Fallout, Fallout 2, Arcanum, Divine Divinity. Septerra Core, Siege of Avalon. But Jagged Alliance 2 is a big snooze-fest. I've had this game for over and year, and during that time I've tried several times to learn to enjoy this game. Finally after the eighth try, I uninstalled it and gave up. I appreciate that this game has a lot of strategic depth, but its ancient and poorly documented controls combined with boring gameplay just ruined what I hoped would be a fun game.

Settings: Expert, Sci-Fi, Iron man Pros: ++ the mercenaries & their interaction are awesome, there is quite a bit if dialogue + in-game cutscenes with Deidranna (the final boss) are pretty cool + it has elements of role playing games such as stats/stat improvement & quests Cons: -- PRNG. The strength of your mercenaries is INCREDIBLY item dependent. You can hore mercs like Lynx and Scope with 99 marksmanship (ability to hit targets) right from the start (100 being max). Not only that, they are also affordable! So all they need is a good gun and that's basically it. With a bit of luck one merc with a good gun can take out 10-15 enemies without being hit. But you need that gun (you can't buy one until later in the game). And the PRNG is used EVERYWHERE. Enemy placement in a sector, enemy movement, the weapons they carry, whether or not you hit, how much damage you do (can range from 4-50, same gun, same guy). It is so incredibly frustrating to play because of it. - broken game mechanics. Basically if your guys are grouped and just one enemy has a mortar, you can reload. The weapon has a range of god-knows-what, they always seem to hit and do MASSIVE damage so all is takes for them is to know your location and even if they can't see you, they can still kill you. The same is true in a way for grenades. Then there is this beauty of a game mechanic called "interrupt". It means that you surprise someone and shoot him before he/she can do anything about it. While you want to abuse this as much as possible it is incredibly frustrating when being used against you. Sometimes you'll clear out a sector, beat 14 of 15 enemies and the last guy hides in a fucking corner and as soon as you find him, he gets the interrupt and kills one of your guys. - the stats (Agility and so on) are more or less useless and it takes WAY to long to increase them so you'll be playing with your base stats mostly. Notice though that the gog version is 1.12, not 1.13. Best of luck (you'll need it)

considered one of the best crpg ever by many "crpg veterans" but the game is actually pretty average. yes you have tons of options during combat but these are totally wasted by the braindead AI. and in the end, you end up fighting by using the SAME tactic most every fights (at least like 80% of them). besides, the game is not hard enough and most options are not even worth using. but for some weird reason, crpg veterans tend to believe they're playing the hardest games ever made lol. JA2 is not hard at all, it is extremely tedious tho, but not hard. this game somewhat reminded of TOEE, which also had a FANTASTIC combat system but totally wasted by the repetitive encounter design and the lack of difficulty during MOST fights. so in the end, what's the point making a game with so many options? just to show how good you are at coding? also, let me remind you the favorite "crpg veterans" line: less is more. you don't need that many options in order if you wanna play some better tactical crpgs with smarter AI and some meaningful difficulty you should try: dungeon rats or knights of the chalice 1 and 2. the 3 actual best tactical crpgs out there.

Do not buy the GoG version; it is an unplayable mess of flashing screens and distorted resolution.

If you enjoy punching yourself in the private parts, then THIS is the game for you. Not only will you need to find a patch to run it, you'll be burdened with all the buggy random goodness a crap a 90's somewhat-rpg tactical combat game can provide. Fallout Tactics was better than this BY FAR. I ran the 1.12 version from a recompile of the binary I downloaded off of Github. Most people use the unofficial 1.13 patch which is not playing the game they're downloading here or playing the game as it was intended. Thus most people will rate it higher with the patch. Gameplay is very repetitive, especially toward the end where save-scumming is practically required. Combat is incredibly buggy and random. NPCs will sometimes decide to never hit or always hit or shoot 3 times instead of 2 or not appear and be invisible. So much horseshit a horse could shit it could shit horse shit shit. While combat game play is not one of them, there are a lot of positives with this game. The story and details to plots and characters are incredibly well done. While not truly and RP in RPG, it is somewhat. Calling this game an RPG is stretching the meaning a bit. This is a tactical combat game mostly. Over the decades I have tried numerous times to finish this game. This latest is the furthest I've ever gotten. I cleared and militia'd all of the towns, started my run on the final town and ran out of explosives for tanks. Over the years it has brought me back because of it's story, interesting characters, and attention to detail but no more. The combat game play is so bad and random that skills seem to either everything or nothing and that causes combats to be not fun and you just end of screaming "BULLSHIT!" and "WHAT?!" at the screen. Don't buy this. Wait for a remaster or something. Most reviews here are rose-colored nostalgia glass reviews. Or better yet, buy a better game like Fallout or Fallout 2, which IS an RPG and has these details and better gameplay.