I just finished JA3 after a long time of on and off play. The game is absolutely brilliant, a fantastic homage to JA 1 and 2 and most importantly, the most playable and best Jagged Alliance yet in the modern era after quite a few unfortunate missteps since… 1999. Is this the best and most playable Jagged Alliance game? Read no further if you want the answer TL/DR: Yep!
In the early days of PC gaming, Jagged Alliance was one of the first CD-ROM games that I remember fanatically playing (the other was Holistic Design’s Hammer of the Gods) and my 486 had only a floppy disk! So, in summer of 1995, when I should have been outside running amok after college, I was sitting crouched over my mom’s PC crammed into the dinning room goofing around on the island of Metavira with Biff, Skitz, Reuban and Ivan. I played this A LOT and realized once I moved out of the house, which was just weeks away, I would not be able to play the game without a CD player, something I wouldn’t be able to afford for months. Hence, I played JA for days straight and was completely enthralled by the game, it’s characters and the silly Metavira island.
Core Gameplay
Given some of you may never have played any Jagged Alliance game, I’m going to start off with the game-play which, while a critical piece of what makes JA3 good, is not the most important part of the game compared to other games in the genre (Xcom for example). Jagged Alliance 3 is essentially a party-based RPG with a substantial strategic layer where you manage your team’s non-combat operations, equipment, finances, read emails (!?) and negotiate contracts. In addition to your main character, you hire mercs into your ‘party’ and travel a large map exploring and destroying as you go. Outside of the strategic view, JA3 is real time while exploring until battles begin at which time it switches to tactical turn based combat. Unlike Xcom, Trouble Shooter, and JA: Deadly Games, your party can walk around the map sectors rather than just going on various combat missions and then sitting at home at base.
For the core combat engine, what JA3 brought to the table is a massive improvement of the tried and true skirmish game mechanics of Xcom: Enemy Unknown from 2012. Stripped down to the bare bones, the 2012 Xcom still managed to deliver and extremely satisfying tactical challenge and has been copied by many other games since (just like the 1994 version was). I feel that the JA3 developers were extremely thoughtful in what the added onto the basic Xcom 2012 set of mechanics and got a delicious mix of JA peanut butter in Xcom’s chocolate. I had a blast with Xcom 2012, but I think JA3 is far better in every way.
Instead of just 2 actions per turn, like Xcom, JA’s mercs have action points that they can spend on movement, reloading, shooting, and lying on the ground, et al. This allows the game to have enormous nuance around conditional effects, fatigue and differentiation between different mercs. Buns for example is an extremely slow mover while having the same level of action points for shooting as Dr. Q, who in contrast can run circles around nearly every other merc (and then karate chop them). Mercs can run, walk, duck and lie down on the ground to take cover. They can hide and sneak around, climb and jump of stuff in addition to weapon actions.
Shooting is based on physics, in contrast to Xcom, and a bullet, bomb, mortar, missile or knife is an actual thing in the game world that lands or hits somewhere, regardless of whether or not it hit it’s target. Like having action points, this engenders massive nuance to the game world, where bystanders are hit, bullets can shoot through cover and people, can hit gas tanks and break windows. Every shot does something, even if it’s just kicking up some dirt or sand or in some cases, causing massive explosions!
The nuanced combat engine is a lot to take in at first, and I was a bit worried it was too much complexity, but once you get rolling an take your time through the first island fights, you will come out of it knowing almost everything you need to know to succeed.
Weapons
I would be remiss in any review of a game like this without mentioning the vast weapon selection. There are a LOT of guns in this game and like 6 different types of grenades. All the weapons are circa-mid 90’s like the other tech, so Uzi’s and MP5’s abound. While you can buy weapons from Bobby Ray’s, there are rare and wonderful weapons to be found /looted off the map (and some come with certain mercs) and you are well rewarded for a bit of searching around in corners of the map board.
Each class of weapon has some special thing it can do to differentiate it from the other weapon classes, for example there are run and gun options with submachine guns and extra aim actions with rifles, heavy machine guns need to be set up to fire and have very different mechanics than all other weapons (much like ‘overwatch all the time’). This is another brilliant nuance to the games systems that really gets you thinking tactically about how to arm mercs and how to run them in the field.
Late early game through the mid game, my combo was to have a sneaky close combat fighter, a machine gunner and a couple of snipers to tap out anyone that was exposed. If I had enough mercs, I would have a couple of fast sweepers with grenades and the best automatic rifle I could get to finish things off. There were a few guns I found pretty useless in most situations, so even when you get beyond the starting game crap, there are some traps in the weapons you find (maybe they are more optimal with certain mercs?). Do NOT discount pistols in the mid/late game though, as some of them hit really hard and often at close range. Late game you get all the toys so there are oodles of heavy weapons that will AOE enemies who are then ready for the mop up, also due to ‘hardened’ enemies with heavy armor there are tools to hit them with status effects with gas grenades, flashbangs before getting in on a good shooting.
Map design
The strategic map is HUGE. When I finished the tutorial island I was astounded at the size of the overall map and the fact that every single sector has stuff in it to interact with and the variations of terrain are extremely distinct. There are underground caves, deserts, jungle areas, swamps, semi-mountainous regions and cities that have actual buildings with multiple floors (all of which can get blown apart!). Lots of places have little villages or points of interest and even in the most desolate desert regions there will be a burnt out car or truck or cave region to explore. In this you can get totally lost in the game and forget that you need to make cold hard cash to pay Buns to work with Fox! Cash comes from mines, and since they are the center point for most of the non-set piece battles in the game, each of the mine maps are distinct and create varied tactical challenges. Some mines have lots of buildings, others are in deep pits and others are super open with very little in the way of cover. This is critical to the game as you will be fighting over these areas again and again and again.
Strategic movement is pretty easy once you have access to a port or two, but if not, your mercs have to hoof it across some fairly inhospitable regions.
Story
Without any spoilers, you find yourself embroiled in a multi-faction struggle for economic and political control of an area of Western Africa called Grand Chien (big Dog) which is a fantasy mixture of French post-colonial and German post-WW2 gulash filled with all sorts of wacky characters, funny accents and stuff to shoot at. There are nazis, evil pharmaceutical companies, evil mining companies and rogue mercenaries in addition to the inhabitants who are just trying to get through the day without being shot up. The game starts where you have been hired by the President of Grand Chien’s daughter to enact a rescue of the President who has been captured by a mysterious figure.
Along with the main storyline there are countless side quests and some very strange events that happen (not so strange if you played JA2 though) for this rather hapless part of Africa. While the game is an homage of sorts to JA1 and 2, the story is not derivative, despite quite a few easter eggs from the older games.
Characters and the Mercs!
Ahh the JA characters… this is the meat of the JA franchise and why I feel so hollow sometimes with my faceless soldiers from Xcom and other games in the genre that don’t go this far with their character development. This JA has a huge roster of malcontents to deal with, all with tons of dialog, varied skills and specials and unique weapons and traits. Obviously certain mercs hate each other and others end up trying to do each other all the time, some are perfect pairs with tons of mutual dialog with each other. The hiring and firing and managing your team is a huge part of the game and should not be ignored for efficiency, that just wouldn’t be Jagged Alliance now would it? Not to give any spoilers, but if you have never played, you must start out with both Fox and Buns and ride that rollercoaster to the end.
They could have completely screwed the pooch with this part of the game, but it was fantastic– my only small complaint is that they didn’t get the voice actor for Ice quite right…
Challenge Level
JA3 is a challenging game and while the initial island is a bit of a cakewalk, once you get onto the mainland (a must to start making money) the game can start to get very harsh with constant attacks from various factions and the inability to keep up with threats as well as exploration. One thing to note is that you do not have to hold many sectors to make tons of cash, it can be cool to light up most of the map blue for your control, but it is just not needed. Get a mine quick, plan your attack to get your next mine, scout it out, then get it taken. Train militia (Raider is great for this) and then get rolling out.
Synopsis
JA3 is one of the best computer games I’ve played in a long time and is both homage to the older games and pushing the tactical turn based genre forward in terms of core gameplay, unique character/RPG elements and is damn fun to boot. This game blows Xcom away (as it should more than 10 years later). I cannot recommend this one enough.
