ion_flux's Review of Jagged Alliance 2: Wildfire

Jagged Alliance 2

First Released Jun 30, 1999
released

A great game turned into an annoying bugfest.

User Rating: 5.8 | Jagged Alliance 2: Wildfire PC

By ion_flux | Review Date: July 20, 2005

I need to preface this review by saying that I am a huge JA2 fan. Of all the games I've played JA2 is one that I continue to come back to, even though the graphics are several generations out of date, the voice acting is corny, and the combat can be repetitive. It is still one of the best implementations of tactical, turn-based strategy with RPG elements that I know of. That having been said, JA2: Wildfire is ... irritating. The difficulty settings should be re-labeled to read "annoying" at the lowest, to "infuriating" at the highest. It's very common to have your "CIA handler" to start whining about your lack of progress, even before you can get your team members healed up after a fight. Talk about feeling underappreciated. On top of that, the abilities of your opponents are sometimes set so high that reloading saved games becomes part of a necessary strategy. Which means poor design, in other words. However, if the difficulty settings were the only problems, I wouldn't complain so much. The real problem is bugs. This game is really, really buggy. Crashes to desktop due to corrupted maps forced me to restart the game from the beginning several times. Now that the developer, Ideal Games, is no longer working on the project, no patches are forthcoming. So there you have it. A great game turned into an annoying bugfest. You are far better off with any of the excellent fan produced projects such as Deidranna Lives or Urban Chaos. If you love turn-based strategy and JA2, stay away from this game. It will only make you angry.