Jagged Alliance

The legend of strategy titles is here! I am beyond happy about this. Jagged Alliance is by far the greatest strategy game I have ever played. Great job GOG!

amazing

Top game

A sense of whats to come with 1999's jagged alliance 2. All the personalities are there, and a difficult yet rewarding combat system

There is a really good game here, but it is badly let down by some shonky mechanics and poor design choices. Cover mechanics are pretty much hit & miss as the npc goons have a almost supernatural ability to shoot through it at times. They are also far better shots than your mercs and seem to have better equipment - until they die of course and when you loot their bodies you find the goon who had been blazing away at you all day only had a knife on him. Your mercs seem to have it in for tree's bushes and walls. even if they are in close range to a goon, they seem more willing to blast the crap out of a nearby bush or tree trunk. This coupled with their poor accuracy led to so many reloads of gunfights, I once spent almost 30 mins loading a reloading a single round of combat - I really should not have to do that. The fog of war aspect to the game - can also be hugely frustrating when you use precious time chasing down that one enemy that has eluded you - and time is of the essence in this game. You can't afford to faff around in this world as being caught in enemy territory after dark is usually fatal for the entire team. In fact I would go as far as saying that the time element looms so large over the game, it can hamper your progress - spend to long in clearing out one sector, may mean not being able to take a key objective in another sector. This forces you to make the unpalatable decision of aborting that entire days mission and replaying it from scratch. Something I had to do on 4 occasions. In the end the sheer frustration of battling the games limitations and design choices along with the enemy mercs led me to conclude that there is a reason this game is not as strongly supported by the on-line community as JA2 is. The game is simply too basic. The tactical elements are fun as are the strategic elements of managing the teams and sectors you control. But that's not enough to overcome the weaknesses in other parts of the game. My advice to anyone who reads this, is to opt for JA2 instead - which is what I should have done myself.