Jagged Alliance: Rage

Rage was the last Jagged Alliance spin-off to be released during the long wait between the second and the third game in the series. At the time, many people, myself included, were getting increasingly disillusioned with the future of the franchise. As previous spin-offs had generally been either poor remakes or unsuccessful attempts to ape the style of the great canonical games in the series. Things considered, the expectations from Rage were quite low indeed. So despite an initial interest, I didn't end up giving the game a fair chance when it released. I suspect, not many did. Rage though was unlike these previous attempts. Neither a remake, nor an imitation, instead, it tried a very different approach. Now, that I have finally finished it, it's time to write down a few thoughts.
Let's begin with the most fundamental statement. Rage is not really a Jagged Alliance game. Yes, it is set in the world of Jagged Alliance, 20 years in its future, yes it shares some characters and some of its tactical DNA with Jagged Alliance, but the combination of elements present is completely different. The strategic aspect is effectively removed, only a rudimentary map remains that allows you to select which areas to visit next. The RPG elements are also completely excised. There are no quests, or meaningful NPC interactions. Even the number of mercs that you can initially hire is merely 2. Rage instead tries to replace the missing parts with survival elements. Thirst, disease, inventory management and scarcity are key features now. Areas can only be visited once and the items you can carry are painfully limited, often forcing tough choices. The survival focus reflects in the game's plot too. Prisoners on an island controlled by a tyrannical madman, the goal to escape first and foremost. This creates quite the radically different mix. But is this a bad thing? Not necessarily, no.
The game has a fair few pluses in its arsenal. Tactical combat being perhaps the most important among them. The game's battles are fun to play. There is a proper stealth system present that can help you clear up large portions of the map. Which is absolutely necessary considering how precious few mercs can be fielded and also how purposefully fragile they are, with low health bars and various debilitating conditions that can hinder them further. There are numerous weapons to be found and used. The item scarcity, specifically ammo scarcity, enhances this element as it forces you to not immediately jump to the best weapon available. As the game progresses this becomes less and less of an issue, but even by the very end with some bad RNG luck the very best guns may not be practical to use. Good armour actually provides for extra inventory space, which felt like a very organic way to grow your characters too. Graphically speaking, I totally enjoyed the fact you can see what a merc is wearing and which weapons he is carrying by checking his character model. Finally, there is the titular Rage abilities, special abilities unique to each merc that they can use if they are angry or excited enough. Not all of them were made equal, but they do help make each merc more interesting.
Moving on to negatives now, of which there are plenty. Let's start with a plot that really won't impress anyone. 20 years after the events of the previous game, a few veteran AIM mercs are captured on some island by a megalomaniacal dictator who turns out to be... Elliot. Now if that doesn't scream bad fanfic, I don't know what does. As far as the mercs themselves go, Rage yet again is not like previous spin-offs where they lacked character, no, here each merc is suitably unique alright. Sure they are few in number, but unique. The problem is how the creators chose to evolve the backstories of those returning characters. It's like I'm reading some sadcore, cryfest, unsatisfying misery porn. His nephew died of a drug overdose and he turned into an alcoholic, her husband died and she is all sick with depression, he got cancer and trusts nobody etc. I mean seriously, did you guys have something personal against those characters? To be fair, I did not hate it as much as I initially thought, the characters are at least consistent, but I'm not too pleased with the direction, no. Of course, there are gameplay issues too, such as the atrocious loot system. Most of them though are oversights, like cover sometimes not working as intended, or an overreliance on RNG. Things that could have been easily fixed with patches, had the company not gone the way of the Dodo.
In the end Rage was surprisingly entertaining. This is largely because its tactical combat encounters play well and that's where the overwhelming majority of the game will be spent. Certainly, I do have complaints, the game is not free of irritations and I do question the direction of the plot and characterisations present. But having properly played the game now, I believe its biggest sin is that it wasn't Jagged Alliance 3 at a time when that's all the fans of the series wanted to see. Maybe now that the clamoured for sequel has been released, Rage can be re-evaluated. That certainly was the case for me. I do recommend this game to fans of the series that want to see a different approach, but also to fans of tactical combat games in general.

I felt a bit betrayed to only get 2 characters (eventually grows to 4), from a small selection.
It's also really advisable to take the doctor or the mechanic, so you're down to 1 real character choice.
The actual gameplay is pretty streamlined except when combat is over, you have to manually aim at and click on every lootable corpse or box. This is stupid and wrong. 7,62 High Calibre solved this ages ago! When combat ends, just open a single huge inventory screen of "here's everything on the map".
The artwork is... adequate. I initially started with JA1 and the ancient pixels were just too retro for me. I haven't gone and played the actual 3D JA yet, I just tried E5, 7,62, Marauder, then this (I went from oldest JA to newest JA). I managed to at least finish this one.