Jagged Alliance 3

For core ttRPG and Squad tactics fans I would recommend this game without hesitation. I would say this game qualifies for the tag "criminally overlooked". On the other hand I think I understand why it's been criminally overlooked, it does have some pretty major flaws and problems which I'll comment on below. First the reasons why you should definitely consider playing it:
1. The combat systems are excellent, close to best in class, Interesting, meaty, knife edged, exiting and ultimately very satisfying.
2. Unlike may ttRPGs/Squad Tactics games this one has a pretty interesting story with many twists and turns, plenty of C&C sprinkled with a number of interesting side quests and mysteries to enjoy. This gives you a reason to explore and a reason to go fight people, a context for the excellent combat.
3. You have a large selection of larger than life and sometimes very amusing mercs to choose from and you will meet a number of equally larger than life, sometimes very funny and sometimes despicable NPCs. The game does not take itself too seriously (except regarding the combat and your merc builds and equipment), it's meant to be entertaining and it is. Plenty of laughs after the fighting's done.
4. The main plot quests and many side quests are laid out with stages and clues spread right across the main map and there is minimal hand holding. It the opposite of a Skyrim style "go to map marker, kill A, grab B, deliver it to C" type thing. It's more like "Somethings up somewhere sort of around there, might be interesting, maybe we should take a look". This gives you a good reason to explore and it also gives you lots of options and questions about what you should/shouldn't do next. It also means you will get a lot of surprises.
5. Further to the way the plot and quests are constructed, on a first playthrough it is almost impossible to predict "best outcomes" (whatever you're own idea of a best outcome might be) and there are many alternative outcomes to many of the quests. This leads to replayability.
6. Further to replayability, there is also a wide range of mercs to choose from for your team who have very different characteristics, abilities and personalities. This leads to a wide variety of equally viable playstyles from stealth sniper to full on Rambo and everything in between.
Turning to the games problems and the reasons why I think this game hasn't reached to audience it should have done:
1. The beginning of the game, "tutorial Island" as it's known, is more akin to a baptism of fire than a gentle introduction to game's unusual and unfamiliar mechanics. It is brutally difficult compared to what you will face immediately after completing it. The difficulty of tutorial island associated with these unfamiliar mechanics is significantly increased by your starter mercs being useless at that stage, unable to hit a barn door at 10 paces basically.
I'm sure the devs did this deliberately on the grounds that once you'd figured out how to beat tutorial island you'd be well set to get into the meat of the game. In this I can say they absolutely succeeded. however the problem is the game doesn't tell you that, it just plunges you in at the deep end. I have two friends who own JA3, neither of them have more than 10 hours in it, i.e. they gave up on tutorial island. I understand why.
If you have a crack at JA3 I strongly recommend you power through tutorial island, it will pay off hand over fist. The game provides players with a fantastic safety net of clearly marked auto-saves so you can always recover from any sort of disaster without losing any play time to speak of.
2. Controversially JA3 does not give % chance To Hit numbers. Instead it gives a number vague indicators from which you can evaluate the likely wisdom or otherwise of a shot. Once you learn how of course. For me I found this really hard to deal with on tutorial island, by mid-game I had far less difficulty interpreting it and by end-game I was was completely comfortable with the system (although of course by that time my mercs could hit a mouse on the moon anyway). I recommend you don't stress this and treat it for what it is: a slice of realism designed to teach you to be careful, avoid recklessness and remember to "train hard, fight easy".
3. The economy of this game is weird and extremely difficult to come to terms with. Like Battle Brothers and Wartales etc you have to pay your mercs a substantial daily wage. Unlike BB and Wartales you don't get paid for missions nor can you sell loot (mostly), you only get serious money from capturing and keeping control of diamond mines. This is complicated but the TL;DR of it is for at least half of your first game you will be utterly confused by the game economy and be absolutely terrified of running out of money and facing game over. For good reason, this is actually a genuine possibility,
You salvation lies in understanding that controlling more diamond mines is better than controlling less diamond mines. Simple as that really. Certainly on normal difficulty, so long as you remember that and act accordingly you really won't have any money issues. I had two full teams, including several super-expensive mercs, and still had nearly $3m in the bank by the end of the game.
4. The inventory management system in JA3 is awful. It shoots for realism, a merc can only carry so much in their backpack, you do not have a pack horse to carry a party stash etc, but the problem is this leads to endless messing about with inventory micro-management. In the early game this is immersive and very much part of interesting gameplay. By mid-game and beyond it becomes tedious, repetitive and annoying. It also tends to limit the number of available toys you can play with in combat. Things which are situationally useful, such as explosives and smoke grenades, have to go in favour of weaponry that is always handy to have available. For example a 12-guage shotgun blast in the face is always effective in a tight spot at close quarters no matter what.
5. I said a bove that a big plus in JA3 is that the quests are complicated, mysterious and tend to have stages spread out all over the map that take significant exploration and in some cases require some courage to resolve.
However there is a downside to this in the way it has been implemented. Because the big bads in the game are constantly sending groups to attack your assets and you can't be in two places at once (especially before you can afford to hire a second group of mercs), and because there can be significant distances between the locations of quest stages (and you often don't even know where they are) you can't easily resolve quests one at a time and their resolution tends to get spread over many hours.
The effect of this is that you lose the thread of narrative and therefore can lose engagement with the story lines. IMHO the main culprit for this what passes for the game's journal (called "notes"). It is terse, sometimes deliberately misleading, often opaque. It is very hard sometimes to pick up the thread of a quest narrative and the characters involved and re-engage with it. I think if the devs had put a lot more work into making the journal read more like a story and less like an incomprehensible list of technical quest stage descriptors it would have made JA3 much more accessible and enjoyable to more players.
Anyways, if you like games like Battle Brothers, Wartales, XCOM etc then I highly recommend JA3 for the outstanding squad tactics gameplay alone. The humour, the story lines, the exploration and the characters add even more notwithstanding the issues with some of that.

What a game. Wow. It feels like the middle-ground between X-COM and Fallout 1/2, only in the very underutilized setting of (a fictionalized) Africa. I had never played a Jagged Alliance game before, and the initial learning curve of a combination between RTwP strategy and turn-based combat in a 3D setting took quite a few hours to get used to. When things finally clicked, this just became an incredible joy to play.
Proper battle planning quite meaningfully alters outcomes, turning impossible battles into manageable ones. The management of economy, equipment, militia and squads feels rewarding. Map navigation and encounters in different sectors feel like a straight up homage to classic Fallout style, with non-linear storytelling and pop culture references.
I highly recommend grabbing two essential mods from the Steam Workshop which really help the game become more fun: "Descriptive Chance to Hit" by Lobo and "Audaki’s UI Enhancements" by Lucjan.

I love this game. It's not Xcom, but it's a very good replacement to scratch that itch.

Weirdly, I like that it doesn't feel completely balanced. There are strategies and combinations that will allow you to succeed a tough mission, and it doesn't feel quite like cheezing the game.

A fair warning : the onboarding is old school (like CIV 2 and that kind of stuff). Meaning you will have to read the game mechanics in the help section to get by. Because of this it's possible that you might start your first game, learn it on the fly as the tutorial is text based and not super helpful, and then be compelled to restart from the beginning as you know you'll have a much easier playthrough. If you do this, get as far as you can, even if you think your team is doomed. The game mecanics will keep revealing themselves and you won't be caught off guard.

just finished the campaign. absolutely loved this game. yes, JA2 is still superior and a timeless masterpiece, but JA3 still captured me throughout the campaign in a way I wasn't expecting. the setting is the weakest aspect, gran chien doesn't really feel very lived in like alruco and is more of an excuse for wacky mercenary adventures - they're still fun, but part of JA is balancing the gritty horrors of war with the colorful weirdos you hire. but that's about the worst I can say, everything else was very, very enjoyable. the gameplay is right on the perfect level of tactical depth and accessibility with plenty of options to really leverage good planning into an advantage. there are some clunky elements in the UI but for the vast majority of the time, it works well enough. now man I gotta make a note for the mercs themselves. the series is best known for absurd level of care and resources dedicated to bringing them to life and this game didn't hold back either; I've got so many quotes and callouts stuck in my head I'll probably keep blurting them out for years to come. by the ending, when everyone says their last goodbyes, that ♥♥♥♥ hit me like a brick, you really get attached to them. their banter, unique dialogue, abilities - everything masterfully written and acted in a way that really brings the characters to life and you just want the adventure to keep on going to hear more of what they have to say. anyway, I had an absolute blast playing this game, and I'm gonna miss it. play jagged alliance 3, you won't regret it.

for whoever read this rating and struggling whether to buy this game or not. If you like Xcom2 type of gameplay, you'll love this game.

Peak Tactical Grid Fighter. I think the whole combat system is superior even compared to the best in the genre. This should get at least the fame X-COM has, and i love X-COM

For those nostalgic for JA2, it's a game that delivers (unlike the farces that were previously released under the name Jagged Alliance).
It's very interesting how there are mysteries and useful things all over the map; it reminded me a lot of F10 Farm or Tixa. And depending on what you're doing, there are people you can recruit. I miss you, Dimitri, although you always forgot, you forgot again. But not you, Elliot.
For those who didn't know JA2, it's a fairly fast-paced turn-based strategy game with a dose of humor and classic references (there's a civilian who's no longer a soldier because he got hit by an arrow, you know where).
The Workshop adds a lot of useful content and modifications (the developers even published a mod to view aiming accuracy statistics, although I recommend avoiding it).