Jagged Alliance 2

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A few years ago, there was this little game called Jagged Alliance. While looking for something different in a computer game a few years ago, I picked it up and was instantly hooked. Billed as “A Strategic Role-Playing Adventure,” it was one of the most compelling small-unit tactical games ever. The game featured great turn-based combat, an intuitive interface, and addictive gameplay that kept me up all night more than once. Unlike other similar games like X-Com, Jagged Alliance’s soldiers had distinct personalities, forcing you to spend almost as much time using your personal relations skills as you did in combat. Its sequel, Deadly Games, added multiplayer support and a powerful mission builder to the mix. The two games had a cult following that was clamoring for more so another game in the series was inevitable.

Or so you would think. The current iteration, Jagged Alliance 2 (JA2), suffered tribulations worthy of a miniseries. Sir-tech, the publisher of the first two games, went out of business but the development team kept going. Loyal fans were kept waiting for what seemed to be an eternity. Without an actual game, a demo was released about a year ago that saw more hacking and tweaking than most games ever have. The game finally found a European publisher but they wouldn’t distribute it in the states. Most JA fans on Usenet started thinking about booking plane tickets to Germany in order to buy the game because that seemed to be the only way to get the game. Finally, Talonsoft announced at this year’s E3 that they would be the North American publishers of Jagged Alliance 2. After all this, the game is finally available. Was it worth the wait ?

To set the scene for you, the island of Arulco is in some serious trouble. The evil Queen Deidranna deposed her husband Enrico Chivaldori and has declared herself ruler for life. A small but devoted rebel underground has been trying to oust the dictator without success for the past ten years. While languishing in exile, Enrico has contacted you to help the rebels take back the country. Fortunately, you don’t have to do it all by yourself. You’ll be relying on an array of mercenaries that you hire from AIM, the Association of International Mercenaries, and the lower-budget hires from MERC, the More Economical Recruiting Center.

When you start up the game, you’ll see your laptop’s interface, complete with web browser. Since you’re a high-tech mercenary, just about everything you’ll do to liberate Arulco from checking your email to hiring and deploying mercs and purchasing supplies will be done from this interface. JA2 also allows you to make your own custom mercenary by taking a web-based personality survey, from attributes and skills right down to choosing his or her own face and voice.

Before you hit the beaches, you need to assemble your team. A link to AIM’s web site allows you to see the mercenaries available for hire. You can compare each character’s skills and attributes and offer contracts to the ones you want. You can choose to hire for a day or a week or two, with longer contracts being a better deal. All the mercenaries are rated in regard to several attributes and may have one or two extra skills, such as Night Ops or Throwing. As they progress through the game, their attributes will increase over time. Fortunately, the mercenaries seem to increase their skills at a much faster rate than in the first two games, which makes it much more feasible that you will keep mercenaries around longer. On the other hand, as their skills go up, so does their price.

Like I said earlier, one of the big draws in the Jagged Alliance series is the personality of the individual mercenaries. Unlike other similar games such as X-Com, where you run through squads of faceless rookies, you can get really attached to the quirky soldiers of fortune in JA2. Most of the characters in the first two games come back for another round, although you can read why some of them have moved on. Most JA veterans will probably spend a great deal of time looking up all the AIM alumni at the “web site” to see what happened to them and why they aren’t in that line of business anymore. (Even other characters from the series appear, like the shady arms dealer Mickey from Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games who appears to have taken up a new line of work…)  

If that isn’t enough, the personalities of the individual mercenaries are about as varied as you can get. Some of them are gung-ho and some are so chicken-hearted you’ll wonder why they got into this line of work in the first place. Some of them can get a little bloodthirsty and disobey your orders, wrecking your finely-crafted strategy. Steroid hates Ivan and Igor because they’re Communists. Lynx and Buzz can’t stand to be around each other because they’ve had a little…history. Needless to say, a good team leader has to have more interpersonal skills than an itchy trigger finger.  

Squad-based combat is at the heart of Jagged Alliance 2. If you remember the combat in Fallout and Fallout 2, you’ll get a pretty good idea about the combat in JA2. You view the battlefield from an isometric perspective and graphics look uncannily similar to the Fallout series. Movement in JA2 is real-time until enemies have been spotted, then switching over to turn based. In a nice change from the first two games, movement can switch back to real time if you go two turns without seeing an enemy, which makes looking for that last opponent a whole lot easier. When in turn-based mode, all actions from firing to moving to crouching take action points that are deducted from the soldier’s total.  

Unfortunately, some of the other quirks of combat in the JA series become evident when you repeatedly encounter opponents with unearthly shooting skills and incredible speed. It gets pretty annoying when your enemies can shoot and hit you repeatedly with pistols that are obviously out of range. Meanwhile, your mercenary with a Marksman skill of 96 could be shooting back and not even get close. In addition, the isometric perspective can make combat a little difficult at times, especially when you think you’re safely behind cover and still get shot repeatedly.  

JA2 parts from its predecessors in that the role-playing element is much more significant. The original game was basically a sector-by-sector conquest, but JA2 is much more quest-based than its predecessor was. Most of the quests are optional and can be done at your leisure while you take over territory, but all are worth you while, either in terms of cash, equipment, or gaining someone’s trust. Like any good role-playing game, this allows for a decent variety of things to do if you’re ready for a change of pace. This also keeps the game from getting too linear since there’s always another strategy you can try next.  

The map of Arulco gives JA2 another strategic level besides man-to man firefights. As you liberate more cities, you’ll start to gain the trust of the people. Towns with mines will start giving you money to keep fighting. Mercenaries will need to train, heal, or rest. The airport can be used to receive supplies from the mainland. Surface-to-air missile sites need to be captured and held to achieve air superiority. All the towns will need local militias to defend themselves. Eventually you will get closer and closer to the capital and to your goal of returning Arulco to the people.  

Because there’s so much to do, it’s good to know that you have a great deal of flexibility with assigning your mercenaries. You can have up to eighteen mercs and unlike the previous games you also have the ability to make several strike teams. That way, someone could be training militia in a town you’ve just conquered, two others can be receiving medical treatment, you could send someone to the airport to pick up a shipment of equipment, and still have a team ready to go out into enemy territory. It all sounds like it could get pretty complicated, but it’s all easy to control from the map interface.

All in all, Jagged Alliance 2 is an outstanding entry in a great strategy series. This game has something that few other games have – atmosphere. Sure, the plot is as old as the hills, but the combination of the quest-driven plot, the edge-of-your seat action, and a crew of headstrong “dogs of war” makes this one of the most unforgettable games you’ll ever play. This sort of turn-based strategy isn’t as popular as the real-time strategy game du jour, but JA2 concentrates on exercising your imagination instead of your mouse-clicking reflex. Sure, there are some quirks with the way the game handles combat and the graphics aren’t exactly cutting edge, but JA2 offers a great deal of exciting gameplay.