Jagged Alliance Remake

[Bletchley_Geek]

Man, the Steam reviews are brutal. Some of that could easily be JA2 fanbois -- which is understandable, why not just update JA2 please after what feels like 20 years  -- but some of the complaints seem objective (design and graphic problems).

Jason, disregard any review with less than 4 hours of playtime. Some of the stuff people is writing is wildly inaccurate :)

As Kyz, I am not impressed and I kind of have mixed feelings about the whole thing. Let me share some thoughts below (by the way, I was a KS backer):

The Good

• The tactical combat is very good. I do like how they have mixed the elements of the original with a modern UI that doesn't get in the way of things and more "modern" concepts, like the very XCOM-like cover system (but deeper than the one in XCOM).
• The interrupt system is much better - to my taste - than the one in the original.
• The I.M.P. is back.
• The game architecture is ready for some heavy modding (with the proviso below) both in terms of customizing assets and world reactivity (there's a substantial LUA interface for scripting quests and other stuff).

The Meh

• The world feels a bit lifeless and shows very little reactivity and interactivity. The original JA's weren't precisely very reactive, but this one feels a bit like talking to a brick in that respect (NPCs always stand on the same place, even when there's a thick firefight around, you can't open/close doors, little details that give a bit more of credibility and immersion to the game).
• The starting selection of mercs feels a bit limited. However, you can "unlock" more mercs as you walk across them during your travels.
• The possibility of fighting alongside the militia isn't in the game.
• The strategic layer is a bit bare. Indeed, this one is set in the early 1980s so no ordering of weapons over the Internet etc. But I would have appreciated a suitable replacement (like some sort of mock brochure or something to order your stuff).

The Bad

• The story in JA or JA2 was at the level of perhaps the best episodes in the A-Team series (nothing amazing but decent and providing some fun and entertainment). The story here feels a bit like those filler A-Team episodes right before the end of the season, with a dash of those convoluted things we ESL do sometimes with English sentence structure.
• The modding support promised didn't make it for the deadline they set themselves for the game. I am not amused by that, because that was probably the most important reason I backed this up on KS.
• Wounds dressing in the field recover health instantly "sometimes" and "sometimes" they require to have a merc in the squad with a med kit designated as a "Doctor". This is a bit confusing, and I reckon they didn't devote much time thinking the whole thing over.
• A number of miscellaneous promised features like weapon attachments, didn't make it for the deadline and have been promised to be added in some future free DLC to be released in the next few weeks.
• Mercs don't have "personality" traits, or doesn't seem like they do. Which is a shame, as it was what gave some character to JA2 and sometimes created some unexpected crises which were at the same time a pain in the arse and fun to manage.

I haven't seen much of the AI, but they're not bloody idiots. If you hole up in a house, they'll be reluctant to come into the house forming a neat queue at the door as in JA2. Seems that the initial sectors are meant to be sort of a "safe haven" providing some minimum income, and not too challenging. Some the twitch.tv streams by Shanga from the Bear Pit show that the AI can put up a more than decent challenge (flanking, taking advantage of the range of their weapons, etc.).

So mixed feelings, really. I'll wait until they release the modding tools and that free DLC before writing my Steam review. And I would advise people to buy in only if they're suckers for turn-based tactical strategy games.

[Bletchley_Geek]

Damn this weird browser on my phone!

[KyzBP]

BG broke it down much better than I did.  Right now the game just doesn't feel like it has any personality, which was something JA2 gave you almost instantly.  It certainly has the potential to get better though.

[BanzaiCat]

Reminds me of Brigade E5: New Jagged Union. I was supposed to review that for WG back in the day and within minutes of meeting a character named "Mayonnaise," I was done with it.

[Bletchley_Geek]

Reminds me of Brigade E5: New Jagged Union. I was supposed to review that for WG back in the day and within minutes of meeting a character named "Mayonnaise," I was done with it.

Yeah, there's a bit of misunderstood absurdist humour, which is the hardest thing to translate. In E5 it seems to me that somebody translated literally something that was genuinely funny in Russian. Back in Action was a German production - the closest to funny I ever got there was an NPC line similar to "You girlie mann, DIE! ". And with this one I don't know, looks to me like the result of a night hanging out with mates, eating too much pizza, too much beer and watching twice or three times those hilariously bad movies with Franco Nero playing the white ninja.

[BanzaiCat]

^ Ha! Though I quite enjoyed Sho Kosugi myself. Michael Dudikoff was good for a laugh or two also in his terrible American Ninja movies.