Jagged Alliance 3
Grand Chien, a nation of rich natural resources and deep political divides, is thrown into chaos when the elected president goes missing and a paramilitary force known as “The Legion” seizes control of the countryside. Now, the President’s family has pulled together all their resources, including an arrangement with the powerful Adonis corporation, to hire a group of skilled mercenaries tasked with finding the President and bringing order back to the country.In Jagged Alliance 3, select from a huge cast of mercenaries all with their own unique personalities, quirks, and backstories. Then go out and explore Grand Chien as you meet new people, earn money, grow your team, and ultimately make your own decisions that will decide the country’s fate.
FEATURES
- Engage in rich, tactical turn-based combat
- Recruit from a large cast of unique mercenaries, including many familiar fan favorites
- Loot, salvage, and customize an arsenal of weaponry and equipment
- Choose from a wide array of special perks to customize your mercs as they level up
- Decide the fate of Grand Chien in an open RPG structure
- Control territory, train the locals, command multiple parties, and defend against enemy forces in an alive, active world
- Experience the campaign with friends in online co-op mode
Steam User 81
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.
Steam User 51
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!
Steam User 38
For years had I loved and replayed the game called "Silent storm"
Jagged Alliance 3, for me, is a new "Silent storm" edition.
And I love it
Same, but polished, game mechanics.
Same voice acting, same perks tree.
Same destructible environment and physics.
Same turn based combat
Similar injury system.
Similar melee and stealth mechanics
Very different gun and ammo design though, they definitely wanted to make every gun useful util the end.
oh well, just call it a "Silent Storm, Mercenaries"
If you liked "Silent Storm" - this IS a game you were waiting for.
Steam User 38
This is the only game that has truly satisfied the thirst that Jagged Alliance 2 left me with. Played it through right after launch (including one restart after 12 hours of gameplay) and loved it. From what I've seen from update logs, the game's gotten better and more balanced with time. The mercs' commenting can get repetitive, and there are other minor gripes. Still, the combat and gameplay, in general, are great fun and can be challenging at times (it also depends on what you are trying to accomplish). Worth your money and time!
Steam User 29
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.
Steam User 32
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!
Steam User 31
Jagged Alliance 3
This was something!
When reviews say, "they don't make games like this anymore," know that they're telling the truth. This is now, without a doubt, one of my favorite turn-based tactical RPGs. The game has an awesome 2000s American action movie style, humor, non-linearity, and lots of other great features. I know the series is old, but I only got to try it now, and I think I'll remain a fan for many years to come.
It's hard to even remember how many absurd and funny situations the game generated throughout our playthrough with a friend. Despite the occasional desynchronization during co-op, I feel like this game has no real downsides. The graphics and locations are excellently done, varied, and each has its own features that directly impact the combat.
Also, if it weren’t for my friend, the save-scumming stickler, I think President La Fontaine is canonically supposed to die - it’s almost impossible to save him at the end without save-scumming. Besides, the last level is just swarming with enemies, and it was agonizingly tough to get through, but hey, that’s what a final level is supposed to be like, as my buddy said.
If you haven’t tried the game yet, grab a friend and go play Jagged Alliance 3! I think it’s on par with Divinity and definitely worth your time to complete!