JA is way ahead of its time

User Rating: 8.5 | Jagged Alliance PC
Jagged Alliance is way ahead of its time. With decent graphics fantastic sound huge amounts of personality and a dark sense of humor it knocks over every other squad based strategy game of the era and kicks it around.

JA revolves around a species of trees; known as Fallow Trees, whose sap holds the key to curing the world’s disease. They exist only on a tropical island known as Metavira, and do not reproduce A group of scientists were researching how to purify the sap of these trees to sell to hospitals and the like. One of the scientists, Lucas Santino, convinced the boss to let him have his own research facility on the other side of the island. Of course the result is that Lucas hired a bunch of thugs and started killing workers and sabotaging the machinery in an effort to have all the trees for himself.

The other scientist on the island then hired you, a person with ties to AIM, the Association of International Mercenaries. You will hire these men and women and attempt the take Metavira back one sector at a time.

The graphics are as good as can be expected for 1994. The game is played from a top down 2D perspective. As you’d expect most game elements are badly pixilated. That is compared to faces. Mercs look very different with realistic and human looking faces. There are even details like grimacing when injured and eyes being half closed when critically injured. Animations look fine from walking, aiming a gun or collapsing and dying. There is no blood but when somebody dies they fade to a skeleton which then fades away, as well as their portrait turning to a skull. It’s nice and clear and its easy to tell what everything is.

The sounds are excellent for the time. Gunshots and explosions are clear and realistic and there is a lot of voice work with people screaming when shot comment when they kill a bad guy and generally acknowledging you orders with speech. It can be a little muffed but the acting is great and it adds loads to the game. Guns sounds noticeably different and its easy to tell what somebody is armed with, with rifles generally being lower pitched and a shotgun having an audible Click-Click as the next shell is chambered. The music is MIDI but still good with a tense tune went your not in combat a cool battle tune when you’re engaging and they just all feel appropriate and not at all annoying like so many MIDIs are.

The gameplay is both tense and a lot of fun. Jagged Alliance is a turn based strategy game between squads of heavily armed forces. Each merc has a set amount of AP or action points to spend moving, shooting using items etc. The amount is determined by his agility how much health he has, open wounds and other factors. Each side involved moves all their troops then the enemies move theirs rather than individual turns.

This leads to very tactical battles trying to make the most of your AP as well as trying to stay somewhat out of danger. JA is also realistic. When a merc is shot there a chance he will start bleeding and losing health every turn depending on how wounded he is. If bleeding is not bandaged the blood loss will continue until eventually he will collapse immobile and dying to the ground. From there the merc is helpless and if you do not get a medic to them ASAP they will die. Mercs can only take a few bullets without amour and being shot will decimate their stamina (and thus APs). This lead to wounded people moving extremely slowly and shooting like crap as you’d expect in real life. Stamina is also simulated with mercs from cooler climates needing to drink more and activities like swimming or walking with a lot of items and trying to force boxes open will cost stamina. When stamina is empty they will fall temporally stunned to the ground and helpless for a time. Cover plays an important role in JA with enemies making good use of it and as times it can be pivotal to assault an area from cover maybe first tossing a nice tear gas grenade.

Another thing as mentioned before that makes the gameplay so fun is the mercs personalities. There’s Fox the slut medic who cant shoot for beans, hates you if you fire her and sounds like a porn star, Skitz the deranged psycho who kills people (enemy or ally) he doesn’t like and is only in AIM because he is an explosives expert and most people of that leaning are at least somewhat insane anyway, Marty “Kaboom” Moffat who had a bomb go off right in his face and forgets orders and as such requires a babysitter more than a commander and “unusually ruthless” Reuben who is best described by the game’s quote “On infinite probation Reuben is called ruthless because he wiped out his entire family with a cordless hedge trimmer and unusually ruthless because he recharged the alliance twice before he was finished!” That’s all that needs to be said. There are also the usual hard ass soldiers and Special Forces guys that cost loads but are extremely good at what they do. If you hire a merc somebody on your team hates one of them may leave or even kill them object of their hatred. They also care about some people and if you didn’t send them back for a decent burial they may flat out refuse to work for you. It just goes on and on.

JA is also an extremely hard and long game. It will take days and days to finish this if indeed you can, because its an extreme challenge.

Unfortunately JA seems to cheat a bit when to comes to gunplay. In an extended gunfight it just seems that eventually enemies will start pulling off ridiculous shots from miles away and that your mercs can’t hit a barn. This seems to happen if you spend ages just exchanging shots with an enemy and nobody is dying. It van also get boring with your trying to find the enemy in turn based combat when your laden with APs It takes age to move everyone. The game could have done with more voice work too as there is only one acknowledgement for each merc.

All up Jagged Alliance is a good squad based shooter with many good ideas and great character. Only minor gameplay flaws stop it from being perfect.