Sometimes, you just got to admit you were wrong. And how wrong I was. When Jagged Alliance 3 was first unveiled at the tail end of 2021, Strategy and Wargaming reacted more with “ugh!” than “yay!” – “Again, similarly to what was said about Men of War II, I don’t think Jagged Alliance 3 will ever be able to capture the magic that made the previous games so great when they first came out. The landscape of gaming just isn’t the same anymore, especially when it comes to the turn-based-tactical sub-genre, where there are so many great games out there that JA3 won’t get away without being compared to XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Gears Tactics, Phoenix Point, Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate- Daemon Hunters, Marvel: Midnight Suns and so many other. Can the team behind JA3 differentiate their game enough to make it stand out? By the looks of their 2022 showcase trailer, the answer is firmly negative“-However, after spending more than two dozen hours with the game, it’s fair to say those first impressions were totally wrong, and Jagged Alliance 3 is fantastic. A serviceable meta-layer that’s more tycoon-management/RPG, interwoven with complex turn-based tactical skirmishes creates the basis for one of the year’s best turn-based tactical games.

The country of Grand Chien is a rich, yet underdeveloped nation that was thrown into disarray when the President goes missing at the hands of “The Legion”, the paramilitary group that took control of the country. The President’s family, in a last bid to bring their beloved back, hired a powerful military corporation. As commander of a soon-to-be group of skilled mercenaries, there’s only one job: rescue the President and bring him back to his family. Things, however, are seldom that simple.

Make Every Shot Count

The tactical combat is, hands-down, the best part of the game. It mixes elements from XCOM, Xenonauts, and Phoenix Point into a ver consistent package that works surprisingly well, and best of all, it does come off as overwhelming or convoluted, despite all the mechanics at play.

Here’s how things work: every mission starts with the selected squad of mercs arriving at the location and away from the enemy’s prying eyes. Until one of your units is spotted or you fire, the game plays out in real time. This is great for setting up fighting positions and ambushes, which works given the theme of the game being a bunch of understaffed mercs making do with what they have in the Banana Republic away from conventional supply lines. During my 20 or so hours of playtime with the game, just once have I been able to take down an enemy silently with a knife.

Once the hostilities are on the game is played out on a turn-based tactical on a grid. Movement and actions cost AP, and once a specific character AP is exhausted, you either go on to the next one or end the turn. Usually, each merc has enough AP to move and shoot on the same turn, however, their AP points will be directly correlated with their stats. While someone like your medic might be somewhat nimble and move a lot in a specific turn, while also taking some shots at the enemy, a more heavily armed individual might struggle to keep up the pace and be left behind. It’s important early on to be aware of the strengths and limitations of each and every one of your mercs to make the best decisions. Take Blood, for example- let’s say he can usually move around 10 squares per turn and still have enough AP to take a shot. However, he also has a move and fire ability and a skill that allows him to change locations while chucking knives at the enemy. In the end, by making use of these skills, he can be way more mobile than what might initially appear. This also allows you to set up a ton of combos and flanking maneuvers. Here’s how I put his skills to good use: Early on in the game there’s the possibility to enter a bunker that’s full to the brim with enemy units. However, there’s only a single entrance to enter and leave the bunker. After positioning my mercs around the various objects providing cover around the door, I used the mobility of Blood to jump between the left and right sides of the door while firing and throwing knives, rapidly thinning the enemy resistance and holding fast inside the bunker. Pair that up with so much overwatch you could mistake the game for an underwhelming Blizzard Competitive shooter and it’s a winning strategy with little to no risk unless the enemy tries to rush past your overwatch, and if they do, at least they’ll be taking losses.

You might have heard about the V.A.T.S. system from a small indie game called Fallout 3. If you don’t, it’s a system that slows the game to a crawl and lets you aim at specific parts of the body. I love me some V.A.T.S. But what I love even more so, is that same system applied to TTGs. Akin to Phoenix Point, Jagged Alliance 3 gives you the possibility to fire at specific parts of the body for different effects. And similar to Xenonauts, you can allocate more AP in order to have more accurate shots. It’s a very interesting and nuanced system that offers tremendous possibilities in the most simple of in-game choices: who to attack. In games like XCOM, the only thing that really matters was the hit percentage prior to firing, in Jagged Alliance this decision is a lot more involved. First, because the game doesn’t even have hit percentages displayed (yes, it is intentional, but there’s already a mod that displays the numbers); and second, because you can’t see the enemy’s hitpoints, but only a small description of their current state (injured, near death, heavily injured, and a couple of other), and with this a lot of decision making comes into play. If an enemy is healthy, it might be worth risking a lot more by going for a highly aimed, high AP-cost headshot. If the enemy is severely damaged, then just a cheap AP burst to the shot will get the job done. In the end, this system allows good players to maximize the use of their AP every turn, and when playing in higher difficulties, the ability to take just one more shot or place one more overwatch means the world between victory and defeat. Unlike Phoenix Point, by joining together two different mechanics, the aimed shot and the aiming location. Jagged Alliance 3 manages to create a system that’s both enjoyable, and deep, and offers a lot of freedom to players.

Jagged Alliance also stands out when it comes to the importance of terrain and positioning, maybe even more so than any other game. Say, for example, Xenonauts or XCOM, where cover is usually a binary thing, meaning that you’re either in cover or without cover (no matter what kind it is). In Jagged Alliance, the cover system is a tiny bit more complex due to the three stances each merc can be in (stand, crouch, prone). Some objects say a waist-high rock will only offer adequate protection if the person standing behind it is either crouching or prone. Enemies also deal with this penalty, and more often than not, they’ll be behind something, but standing, and the aiming reticule that allows for body part selection will inform you that some parts are behind cover. The system is very interesting, but can also be very convoluting from time to time, and in a lot of situations, it can be hard to figure out why certain parts of a body can be shot when the enemy is clearly in cover, and vice-versa. I’m sure there’s some logic to it, it’s just never explained or it’s very easy to figure it out. Despite that, it’s another example of how these already existing systems in other games all come together in Jagged Alliance 3 in order to elevate the tactical experience just a notch above all the rest. And the game is all the better for it.

Just one more thing while we’re discussing positioning: lines of fire and overwatch are highly impacted by the terrain. So if there’s no clear line of fire to the enemy, even if you can see them, you won’t be able to shoot. Weather also plays a role in tactical combat, but in my playtime, it rarely shows up enough to notice. It’ll mainly apply a couple of movement debuffs with sandstorms and increase the possibility of a weapon jamming when it rains. Yes, it makes sense and it’s nice that the developers created these effects, but it doesn’t really add a whole lot and the game wouldn’t be worse without them. Hey, can’t complain either!

Despite all the praises being sung about the tactical combat, there’s one glaring issue: the overwatch mechanic might be a little too powerful, on most occasions. And since missions lack any time limit (and thank God they do), it’s easy to hunker down in a good position and play safe. In fact, that’s exactly how I managed to expel about 15 Legion rebels from a settlement early on in the game. Atop a cliff, overlooking their location, placed a sniper and a medic with an AK raining down fire, all the while Blood and Steroid secured the flanks to prevent any insurgent from sneaking into our backs. For most of the battle, the sniper would pick out enemies with headshots, and the medic, Blood and Steroid would just overwatch specific locations. It wasn’t until the end of the battle, and after quite the slaughter that some stragglers decided to focus their attacks on my right flank, and overwhelm Steroid that was guarding it. But by then it was too late to be effective. I still think that the game does a good job of balancing offensive and defensive styles of play. Some of the abilities discussed earlier lend themselves extremely useful if you’re taking the initiative, and some of the mercs can be downright useless unless they’re on the attack. But still, overwatch is still a bit too easy, and there’s no reason not to use it most of the time, especially if you’re running a heavily armed team with little mobility.

Loot and Inventory Management

None of this can be pulled off without the right equipment and the right tools. And Jagged Alliance 3 does a stellar job of making sure that every weapon feels useful, as long as they’re in the right hands, in the right situation. Each soldier has his own size-varied inventory and is able to equip two weapons at a time -imagine something like Diable or Path of Exile- and three armor slots: one for helmets, one for vests, and one more for trousers. How you came to acquire and equip your soldiers is one of the best things in the game. In very simple terms: you have to make do with whatever you find in the jungle. Weapons, ammunition, and equipment can all be found everywhere, from hidden stashes to dead bodies of fallen enemies. This, however, doesn’t mean there’s an overabundance of material to go around.

In fact, it’s quite the opposite. This means that a lot of times, especially early on, you’ll be forced to switch guns and equipment a lot. Not because you found something new, but because there’s just not enough ammo to equip every merc in the team with assault rifles. Heck, there was a time when I had to equip my mercs with akimbo pistols because they had no more ammunition for their main weapons, forcing me to run a wild team of gun-totting wildlings for a couple of weeks. This is rather cool and creates another important layer of strategy to take into consideration while forcing players to experiment with different weapons and tactics early on in the game in order to maximize and make the best use of available material. Usually, I’m not a big fan of these survival elements (remember when you had to buy grenades in the original XCOM?), since most of the time these mechanics are forcefully crammed into the game because some executive thought that was what gamers wanted. I can deal with this in Jagged Alliance 3 because it not only kind of makes sense and fits the theme, but most importantly, it’s also a lot of fun to loot after every battle and see what new toys you’ll uncover.

This equipment scarcity also plays an important role in another gameplay mechanic: weapon durability. Yet again, another mechanic that on paper just sounds plain awful, but when you’re strapped for equipment, it feels very much different when you have to treasure some weapons your squad has grown accustomed to. This system isn’t overcomplicated, because all it’s needed to repair a gun is some weapon parts, and those can be found easily through the map or just by scrapping surplus weapons in the inventory. And since poorly maintained weapons will perform poorly on the field- even jamming in more severe cases- it’s just another small detail that makes sense in the theme of Jagged Alliance 3. To round this topic off, weapons can be improved with attachments that bestow bonus attributes. What’s more surprising, is the amount of equipment available to craft, from extended magazines to grips, longer and shorter barrels, and scopes- I wouldn’t blame you for thinking this was some kind of slimmed-down version of Call of Duty customization screen.

Planning Is Half The Battle

All of this action must be contextualized if it is to make some sense. The game takes place on a “world map” of Grand Chien where you must make every strategic move. In all honesty, this is where the game feels the most boring. It’s not really about making big strategic decisions, it’s more bout choosing what square you want to move your merc squad to and engaging in another fantastical turn-based battle. There are some moving parts on the overworld map, like diamond shipments to ambush and patrols that attack your holdings, but other than that, it’s mostly just a boring game of chess. and the actions are limited to healing your mercs outside of battle, having them rest, and repairing parts like mentioned above. Of course, there’s some exercise in prioritization on what to attack next, but the matter of fact is that it’s that it pales in comparison to the depth offered by the tactical battles. It feels like the developers knew that this was the case, and decided to invest a whole more there.

Things move in real-time and you’ll be spending most of your time just picking out the route for your next target, or resting your mercs because they’re truly exhausted and can no longer hold a weapon in combat. There’s also the option of operating more than one squad at a time, and it’s cool that there’s a possibility of jumping between the real-time strategic map and the tactical battle going on at will. If you don’t care enough to fight the turn-based battles, there’s always the option of auto-resolving them, just in case you’re one of those weird guys that hate having fun.

It will be here that you can access the A.I.M. database and where you can manage the contracts of mercs and hire new ones. There’s some quirky stuff here, like a couple of them refusing to work with one another for some reason, but nothing too special or important enough to care. I just wish there was more guerrilla stuff to do, like assassinations of specific targets, planting traps prior to missions, and conducting raiding operations to capture funds and weapons. As it stands right now, the strategic map is the weakest part of the game and serves merely as a springboard to jump into the fun stuff, and I’m okay with that.

Presentation

This leads me straight to my last complaint: the graphics are okay. Don’t get me wrong in here, they’re perfectly okay-ish and do the job fine. In fact, most of the locations are really detailed, and there’s a lot of stuff populating the map. Villages feel like locations people live in, and the colonial mansions are both exuberant and grandiose. Lush forests, open mines, and shanty towns all evoke the idea of a country that’s rich in natural resources but is plagued by socioeconomic problems. Very much like real-world Central America.

Better yet, is that nothing of it is overly exaggerated like say, Just Cause, Far Cry, or Tropico. Unfortunately, that dedication to making the locations look and feel like real-world locations clash tremendously with the cartoony characters, to the point that some disconnect might occur. Say, Steroid, is one of the first mercs to feature on any competent team, and it’s unironically Jon St. John from Duke Nuken. Blood is a knock-off of Rambo, and Fidel is… Fidel. This is not to say that things are necessarily bad or even that egregious, it’s just the fact that the cartoony nature of its characters can clash with how realistic its setting is, especially when the enemies don’t seem to reflect the personality your mercs do, and they end up feeling boring in comparison.

I saw some comments on a couple of websites that its comedic aspect and humor are a bit dated, but I must say that I’ve yet to encounter something someone could consider truly offensive. But given today’s climate in social media, where everyone is offended by everything, it’s no surprise some terminally online loonies might consider this to be in poor taste.

Also, I know the game has a story of some kind, but to be honest I couldn’t tell you a single bit about it, that’s how relevant it is. What I’m trying to say is that the fun is to be had shooting goons, and not listening to their sob stories. But at least the side quests are a fun way to get your hands on some new loot, but we’re not talking Witcher 3-level of side quests here. It’s more of a go there, kill that; come here, have a pistol.

Not everything is perfect, however

Jagged Alliance 3 does a lot of things really well, the tutorial, however, isn’t one of those. In fact, there’s no tutorial to speak of. Just a couple of hits that guide you along, explaining some of the more basic stuff. The hints pop -up whenever you interact with something new that the game hasn’00t told you about. It’s quite a shame if you ask me, because if you’re a new player to the genre, getting up to speed might take a while, and quite a number of mechanics might go under the radar until a couple of hours in. And that can make the game quite frustrating and difficult to get into, especially if you are not familiarised with the genre. And some of the more advanced stuff, like the sneaking aspect of it, go completely unexplained. Even if you’re a veteran, be prepared for some experimentation and some learning and figure it out as you go along. Other than that. Fortunately, the tactical combat UI is decent enough, just make sure you lock in the toolbar on the bottom of the screen, so it doesn’t hide itself every time you need it. Also, use your ALT key to highlight things you can interact with /loot and people you can talk to.

Speaking of things that should be in the game but aren’t or, if they are, I was not able to find them: the enemy field of vision during stealth mode. More often than not, when trying to place my units in ambush positions, they would get spotted at a moment’s notice, even though it seemed that there was no way the enemy could have seen me from where they stood. A line of sign tools akin to those found in the Commandos series or Blades of the Shogun would have been extremely helpful. And to be completely honest, I fail to see why this glaring omission is in a player’s toolkit. In a game that places such importance on ambushing and taking the first shot, the lack of such a useful feature is so strange.

Another strange omission is the minimap. While most of the maps are rather small, they’re visually complex and some maps have quite a lot of buildings and verticality. Locating enemies (that have already been spotted by your units) can be rather troublesome. It’s not a game-breaking missing feature, but it would be a nice, quality-of-life addition.

Conclusion

All things considered, Jagged Alliance 3 is a fantastic return to form, and proof that in competent hands, the turn-based tactical genre can always get better. Finally, after all these years, we can say that Jagged Alliance is no longer a strategy series that had its high point in the mid-90s, and everything that came after is just the result of untalented studios riding the IP to snatch an easy paycheck. Jagged Alliance 3 is not only one of the best games in the series but one of the best games to come out in 2023. I wholeheartedly recommend it, even at the full price of $44.99.

Jagged Alliance 3 is available on Steam and GOG.

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