Jagged Alliance 3

I just started JA3 recently. And er...Havent been able to stop playing so far. Its also worth noting, i have a girlfriend, a small family and a full time job. 4 days. 50 hours so far. And i USUALLY get bored pretty quickly. Make with that what you will.

Long review incoming!

Jagged Alliance 3 is a very, very good game. Although not technically flawless this is the first game I have played in a long time where I would load it up to play for an hour, and suddenly it was the small hours of the morning and I found myself wondering where the time had gone.

A little bit about the game - stylistically, JA3 is going to feel immediately familiar to anyone who has played a grid based tactical RPG before - XCOM, Wasteland or the earlier Jagged Alliance games for that matter. There is an overworld strategy map on which you move your mercenary squads around, consisting of a large grid, with most of the grid squares able to be entered to explore on foot. Although some complaints have been leveled at the size of these battlefield areas being small, the overworld map itself is pretty big and the game offers a very large potential for exploration. Importantly, each map area feels quite unique, even open grassland or forest areas with no enemies usually have something interesting to see or do. While inevitably you will see some repeating graphical assets a lot of effort has obviously been put into making every part of the game world feel distinctive. Many of the map areas have associated side quests, hidden items to be found and so on, so the sense of exploration is always present and compels you to keep playing. The environments are also nicely varied without feeling unrealistic to the game’s location ‘somewhere in Africa’– there is savanna, mountain highlands, jungles, swamps, coastal areas, islands, cities and towns and so on.

The storyline is interesting and engaging, but what really makes it outstanding is the writing and the characters you meet. NPCs are all very distinctive and memorable and exactly the sort of people you’d expect to encounter in a stereotypical cheesy 90s action movie, from which this game takes much inspiration. The dialogue is excellent and every single character is fully voice acted. You will admittedly hear a few repeating voice actors which is probably inevitable with a smaller budget title like this, but it doesn’t detract too much from the immersion. The whole game has a great sense of humour, there are a ton of pop culture references (early in the game you can ask an NPC why he’s wearing a number 31 football shirt and he informs you he wanted a 13…) and the characters manage to somehow feel believable and relatable while also being completely ridiculous.

Of particular note are the mercenary characters you hire to play as. Mostly based around action movie stereotypes, many of these guys and girls are absolutely hilarious and they are a strong reason to play the game through multiple times. They all have very distinct personalities, abilities, weapon preferences and so on. There is a ton of unique dialogue you’ll only hear if you have certain characters together on a team which is all the more reason to do multiple playthroughs. I defy you to listen to Tex the Japanese cowboy (yes) say ‘it’s like shooting koi in pond’ as he dispatches some enemies and not at least crack a smile. The voice acting is to an impressively good standard but even more impressive is just how much of it there is. You will definitely hear certain lines a lot more commonly than others, but even after 100 hours in game with the same characters I was still hearing them say new things during battle. Even random villagers offer a huge amount of information and will often give you hints about side quests or just spout some funny throwaway line.

Graphically the game is surprisingly good, although mostly viewed from an overhead perspective you can zoom in fairly close and during certain actions the camera will zoom right down to ground level allowing you to see everything in detail. Unlike many games of this type the graphics hold up well even up close, and the particle effects and lighting are also very good. I will say that I did find performance was sometimes not quite as smooth as I might have expected and I did encounter the occasional slowdown, but mostly it holds up well.

Apart from the voice acting, which is a big highlight, the overall sound design is solid. The music is good, the guns and explosions sound satisfyingly chunky, and I believe the gun sounds are accurate – I’m not a firearms expert but they certainly all sound distinctive, rather than just having generic ‘assault rifle’ noises for example you can comfortably tell the difference between the various weapons.

However, it is the gameplay which is where JA3 really shines. There is a huge amount of stuff to do in this game, apart from the main questline there are masses and masses of side quests and tasks to complete, many of which unlock good rewards and affect how the story plays out. The combat remains satisfying due to the variety of environments you’ll fight in, the enemies which get steadily more challenging as the game progresses and the large number of different weapons you can experiment with and modify extensively. The difficulty level is pretty good – there is a decent level of challenge even in low level encounters; the game rewards you for careful planning and punishes you significantly for rushing in to fights unprepared. I will say you need to understand the mechanics of the game to get the most out of it, and I perhaps wouldn’t recommend it to someone who has never played a game of this type before as their introduction to the genre. There are a few big difficulty spikes which can prove a bit frustrating, but also a strong sense of satisfaction when you overcome these. There is an easy/story mode available but you would really not be seeing the game at its best if you played it like that. Alternatively, various difficulty enhancing options are available for those that want a greater challenge.

The quests usually have multiple different methods of completion, and in fact in many cases you can simply attack and kill everybody, but this rarely offers the best outcome in terms of storyline or reward. On my second playthrough I realized I’d missed entire large chunks of the game because I’d chosen to attack someone I probably shouldn’t have, or hadn’t bothered to explore all the dialogue options with an NPC. Your characters’ abilities will also affect what options are available to you so it pays to have a well thought out team with a variety of skills.

No game is perfect of course and JA3 isn’t an exception, but my gripes are mostly minor. Apart from the previously mentioned occasional performance drops, the controls can sometimes be a bit finicky. For example, it’s very easy when moving a character next to a doorway to accidentally click on the door itself and waste all your action points opening or closing it. Toggling between multiple floor levels (e.g. in a building) can be clumsy and even when you’re viewing the correct level your character will sometimes try and move to the level above or below. Objects that are able to be interacted with can sometimes be difficult to click on even with careful camera rotation. Lastly, I did find a couple of side quests were not very well explained in terms of what I actually needed to do – I don’t want the game to hold my hand too much but sometimes the quest log really didn’t offer enough information on what I should be looking for or doing to complete a questline.

None of these problems detracted from my enjoyment of the game however, and the fact that as soon as I finished my first playthrough, which I spent 100 hours on, I immediately started a second one should hopefully speak to the quality of the game. I managed to pick JA3 up on sale but even at full price I’d say it would have been a bargain for the amount of enjoyment I’ve gotten out of it. Recommended!

Disclaimer:
As someone that loves JA as well as JA2 (Wildfire) this review should be read with a certain grain of salt. For context JA2 is still easily in my top 5 all time favorite single player games while JA3 makes it barely into the top 50.
TL;DR:
Somehow this game succeeds in the deliverance of the Jagged Alliance feeling despite it's absurd list of issues. It did take time and a few Mods though. JA3 still needs a ton of QoL improvements and bug fixes. The entire interface is terrible. Certain design decisions are hard to swallow. Simply put: It does so many things way worse than JA2 (Wildfire) did 20-25 years ago, especially in presenting (or rather hiding) valuable information and combines this with inadequate controls.
Starting with the few but impactful positive aspects:
Pros:
Visually it looks good and the art style is very fitting
Music is really good
Delivers the Jagged Alliance feeling - takes time and Mods though
Quest log and marker on map for quests
Multiple squads to progress on multiple parts of the map simultaneously is still a thing
Perk and trait system allows for diversity
Events are only triggered due to your progress. Hence the game provides you the freedom to take your time
Save scumming is possible but not always necessary. Getting hit can potentially increase your Mercs health. Once again this allows for various playstyles.
Cons:
This section is surprisingly long which is why I separated it logically
Questionable design choices
Zoom level is way too close and doesn't provide a proper map overview -> Mod
Your main resource is weapon parts with which you do a variety of things:
Modification of weapon
Repair gear
Craft ammo + explosives
Once attached weapon mods can not be removed from weapons, so you can't attach them to other weapons afterwards
Item's can't be sold but only dismantled for weapon parts
Training of attributes is different in comparison to JA2:
Travel overweight to gain strength? - No! There is no weight system
Kick doors or boxes to gain strength? - No!
Heal enemies to gain medical skill? - No!
Plant + disarm TNT to gain explosives skill? Not really
Can't specify which Mercs should perform a certain modification since the Mercs with the highest relative skills within in this sector is used.
While it remains possible to train multiple Mercs at once, only one attribute can be selected per sector.
The inventory management in my opinion is by far the most frustrating thing in this game - Mods help only partially
Inventory size of Mercs depend on their strength level and isn't big even at max strength. Equipping various types of grenades to one Merc remains a challenge
Squad stash
The squad shares one stash for the ammo, medicine, weapon parts, crafting mats and can access it automatically on a per sector basis. No micro management of ammo but even worse: Every single time a member of a squad is moved to another squad the squad stash is separated kinda randomly
New squad that doesn't make use a particular caliber, may get all the ammo for it and leaves the other squad none
Same for weapon parts and medical supplies. A Merc crafting ammo, repairing gear or healing may loose the supplies to do so
Mercs with 90+ mechanic skills will fail frequently to mod guns. Failure results in a loss of parts and weapon durability
Sectors are small, one dimensional and require hardly any strategical approach
An enemy spotted you? Be warned! They are going to scream and shoot to alert everybody in the sector about your presence. Unfortunate for them that nobody gives a dam* unless they are literally right next to them. Everything beyond 10 meters ignores noises
Sadly modified sniper rifles are way too overpowered and make everything else kinda obsolete unless you are on the "Lone Wolf" archivement
Locals are framed as stupid fairly often which leaves an unnecessarily racist impression
Missing QoL
General issues
Can't sort sector stash
No smart combine or split functionality for the sector stash
Can't split stacks with full inventory - I'd prefer an auto drop to sector stash
Possible to select next target via key, but not the previous one. The "next" target may very well be across the entire map with 5 buildings of cover in between instead of an enemy right next to you.
Can't manually zoom in the timeline of upcoming events You have squads moving around? Well you won't be able to see further into the future than one day. But what if all squads are stationary? Lucky you, feel free to enjoy this forecast of events for the upcoming two weeks!
Assigned actions aren't visually displayed properly in the sat view until you start the time lapse
Even when no enemies are around you can't transfer items between distant Mercs within sector or via the satellite view. Therefore open map, hand items from Merc A to Merc B into reenter the sector
Can't add custom notes, which would be useful to note open skill checks within sectors
Saving is not possible during a death animation. You better make sure your quick save did actually get registered before you continue with your potentially risky next action
Unclear description of perks. F.e. Is the entire squad or only that one Merc affected?
Landmines are not lava
Neither the game nor the Mercs stop when a landmine is detected -> Mod
Your Mercs don't adjust their pathing according to spottet landmines ... boom
Interface issues
Secondary slots are not permanently visible
Gear isn't shown at all in list of Mercs
Quest log overview and usability
Amount of militia not properly shown
Unable to move militia into a adjacent sector
Travel time not displayed on the route itself
Can't check stats of Merc while in training menu. Close two windows, hover over the Merc, see what stats they should train, get back those two menues to start the training
Be prepared to shoot and get shot through multiple objects without any impact on the trajectory
How likely is a shot to land? Donno -> Mods
How likely is an enemy going to spot you? Donno -> Mods
When are my Mercs going to be tired? Donno -> Mods
List of applicable task may require scrolling
Weapon stats differ depending on view
Keyboard Controls
Can Developers please rediscover the amount of keys a keyboard has? I am so f***ing sick of games restricting the interface and usability to make them viable for controller. Multiple klicks for one action, multiple actions bound to a single key, features being unbindable to keys, ...
Example list of missing keybinds for selection
Previous Merc/Squad
Merc/Squad number x
Next Squad
This is true for both the sector as well as the world view
Mentionable Bugs
Alt tab freezes the entire graphics driver. Requires PC restart: UPDATE: It seems like this was fixed
On a multi monitor setup the mouse the mouse is not caught within game window which disables panning by mouse. Combine this with the previous bug to rage
Reloading a save file often selects a different Merc/Squad than the one you had selected in the moment of save. Inconvenience for save scummers
Crash frequency in range of every 30h to every 2h. Based on number of items (in one sector) as well as number of save files. Can't delete multiple save files at once

As someone who has played a lot of X-COM and related turn based tactical strategy games, I love this game! It is fairly different, but well done and there is much more story line choices and dialog between the characters here than there is in the X-COM games where that isn't such a big part of that game's experience. The characters are interesting and funny, and the choices you make are interesting. It's fun deciding how to gear out your characters and what areas of the map to take over in which order. I have been having a ton of fun with the base game itself and if I get done with that and bored there are a lot of mods. Great game and provides a lot of value and fun. Only bad thing to say, watch the clock if playing late into the night, it is easy to stay up too late with this game!

Finally a good Jagged Alliance game. Does lack some of the depth of JA2, but the core gameplay is fun, has a good amount of challenge, and continuous updates and modding help to give it a longevity. With so many franchise releasing half-baked and under-developed sequels its nice to have a game that returns to what made the old games great.

The short answer? We finally have a GOOD Jagged Alliance since JA2. JA3 is DESERVING of the numeral because it EARNED it. The devs clearly understand and love the JA franchise like most of us do and listened actively to community feedback. Worth your money and your time but there's a couple of trade-offs in bringing a good, modern JA game to life.
JA3 sees the return of a lot of your favorite mercs (and some worthwhile additions to the roster) and fun inter-party banter between particular mercs (Hitman, Raven, and Raider have some decent interplay though that's the only 3-person set-up I've discovered so far) and shuffling up some things with a perk system as well as giving every merc their own unique perk that can range from underwhelming to almost indispensable (looking at you, Livewire, Barry, and a few others). Mercs also have some particulars about them (some will refuse to part with a specific item from their inventory- the good news is that might be a lockpick that restores durability over time or on the other hand a teddy bear that just takes up space).
Perhaps the most contentious issue is the change (which can be easily rectified by workshop support) that you are not given a percentage chance of making a shot but rather making a judgment call based on various conditions (range, cover, elevation etc) of how much AP you want to sink into a shot and if you need to burn max AP on each shot you have to land it (workshop mods exist to both restore the percentage chance visibility or list a more information to help make you more confident in choosing to take the shot or not). The game is balanced around obfuscating the exact percentage so your experience may change if you elect to use the mod or not (I did, and I feel I didn't have a lesser time for it).
There is, in fact, a lot of mod content out there for the game to more finely tune the challenge you want in your game. Quite often it feels very much like overwatch is a smarter choice (with the ability to take perks to allow more shots, more accuracy, critical hits) but it's never a bad idea to keep someone covering your ass (though you DO need to take into account the risk of hitting allies in the cone of fire if they're not in a lower stance than you are firing from- there are mods that make overwatch fail to trigger if an ally would be shot in the process if you prefer) and many weapons can be modified to make the most out of being dedicated to overwatch in reducing AP costs and increasing accuracy as well as affecting cone of fire.
Gone is the need to carry specific types of magazines (and keep them topped off) as well as ammunition in independent inventories and while I did miss the need to consider the worth of a strategic reload or the tension that came from reloading to find you had 3 rounds in your last mag I can understand it perhaps being more of a chore for newer players. I can say it's VERY nice to have the ability to have room for more items in general (you are not restricted to items by small or large slots, you instead have an inventory with space dictated by a characters strength). Wisdom is still a very high-tier stat as it affects the gain of skill during instruction and it can make some low-WIS mercs feel stunted (I will never remove Kalyna from my main team no matter how bad her wisdom is!) and teaching is still a very valuable time investment to keep your teams sharp (or at least able to use a grenade with proficiency) or able to repair/modify gear in the field. Skill books/magazines can be found (or, rarely, purchased) to increase stats to help boost lower-WIS mercs though you would probably want to focus purely on one (and her name is Kalyna)
Militia management is significantly easier (though I thoroughly wish you could elect to arm them from your own arsenal rather than them having their own dedicated weapons and gear) and perhaps slightly less important than in JA2 but you still need to keep your militia in key locations to prevent loss of valuable resources (both income and places to repair/craft or even let your mercs have a day to unwind). Militia is also reduced in size (but enemy squads are similarly done).
Overall, the fights are in much smaller scale but they're still fun. JA2 maps were certainly very large and that was a part of the tension (but it could also be frustrating trying to find the one guy prone behind a door in the corner of the map). While JA2 had a lot of large maps there were also a lot of maps that were basically just a generic road through a forest or swamp (and there are some of those, here) so while grand scale fights are not so present you are allowed a tighter focus on ballistics and cover mechanics (including just blasting open walls or other cover or literally removing the floor from under enemies in a building (which leaves them to suffer the damage of the fall).
The world has some memorable characters (and one or two you may remember) and a lot more to do in terms of sidequests. Gun variety is appreciable though not quite as varied as JA2 (or, at least, statistically don't seem to have as much variance) and being able to craft modifications of more varied types can certainly help a lot (and turn an AR into something of a DMR or make it prime for more accurate, frequent overwatch shots). Not every weapon can be as flexible as others and there is consderation needed for how many people are utilizing the same type of ammunition but the 'shared stash' you have among your mercs for ammunition can eliminate some of the former needs to consider how much ammunition you carry as it is now, effectively, weightless.
Stealth is more viable if you want to play that way. A melee and stealth focused team can be devastating thanks to some mercs specific perks (Blood, for example, can move between two positions and hurl knives along the way at any enemy within range from his unique set of endless knives- but they can't be sharpened or weighted to affect them like regular knives). Given the smaller quarters you fight in pistols and shotguns can actually be pretty well used if you close the distance on enemies and the Grit system (effectively, temp HP) can make a melee fighter less of a liability for operating in their chosen combat style (I'd still suggest giving them some kind of firearm but decide for yourself) but I am, admittedly, someone who much prefers to out range and snipe the enemy in terms of playstyle.
A morale system is in place that can be affected by combat (with perks that can increase it's chance to increase and traits characters can have to help try to prevent the loss of morale or some with traits that have a chance to negate it) that can increase from landing impressive shots or taking out multiple enemies and other such things but can also be lowered by mercs taking heavy damage or tired from long journeys on foot.
To avoid going any longer? This feels like a worthy successor to Jagged Alliance 2 and we can all sweep the less-than-great games between them under the rug and pretend they don't exist, now. It's worth full retail price, easily AND has a demo you can try (and it seems to be rare that games keep demos available once they fully release, now). Just keep in mind this is set circa 2000 and also comes from a game that leaned into the cheesy action movie tropes already. Some characters might seem like a bit much buuuuut you can probably shut them up with a mod. The devs actively listened to the community both in development and after release and did a fantastic job implementing community suggestions.

I think that is a proud successor of Jagged Alliance 2.

The only problem is that the development is abandoned since version 1.5.1 (february 2024) and some secondary areas of the game are clearly unpolished (specially the inventory can be a headache) but the game itself is stable, the main areas of gameplay are really strong, the visuals and sounds are very artistic and you can see a lot of care on them and very few bugs and glitches can be seen, and in almost every case, are cosmetic.

If you want to have a playgame that remember the JA2 with today graphics you need to make intensive use of mods (the community is small, but there are some masterpieces in the workshop as well in nexusmods.

Will be great if Haemimont Games take some ideas from the mod scene and implement it in the game (some mod improvements in the early versions were added as game features).

Anyway, unpolished videogames are usual since yearswhere the studios changed to be leaded by white collars and not by the vocational developers.

This game give me lot of hours of fun, and is a very good value for your money, even without discount.