So much promised so little delivered best describes this "Reincarnation" of the Jagged Alliance series.
As an avid player and fan of JA2 I am bitterly disappoint by what I can only describe as budget revamp of a classic game.
This is a total remake so the storyline is essentially the same as JA2. You are tasked with overthrowing a ruthless dictator from a fictional south American country, liberating townships and completing side quests along the way. You are given initial funds to hire your own band of mercenaries with various skills and load outs to fulfil your mission, through the game you are able to capture certain locations that provide a daily income so you can continue hiring more mercenaries and kitting them out as you see fit. you are also tasked with building up a militia for each area reclaimed to repel future incursions.
Now let's get down the "nitty gritty" of why this game is such a disappointment when compared its 13 year old predecessor.
It seems on a thorough play through of the game that a fair few things have been cut which were integral to the playability of previous games. For instance FOW has been totally removed because "It wasn't fun", the ability to create your own custom mercenary was removed because it was "unbalanced" and the ability to play in a turn based mode has been removed.
Now the later is actually not so bad once you get used to it, but the sluggish response of your squad members during fire fights can be extremely frustrating on occasion. What however is extremely frustrating is that half the best content from a dated game has been removed from this new take on JA.
Weapon customisation is almost non existent, the new Militia system is far too time consuming and not very rewarding, the lack of weapon detail "incorrect ammo types" are just some more "Downgrades" from the previous game, a game that was made as mentioned 13 years ago.
The most disappointing thing is a video interview with one the developers from E3 2011 promising all the features that have been mentioned as missing in this review and some. this game is clearly a cheap budget remake which fails to live up to comparison with the old game, far too much has been removed rather than added to this once classic game to make up for what's missing.
This game is certainly worth a look at if you're a fan of the commandos series, but if your looking for a new JA with updated graphics I would recommend you stay away until some major fixes have been made.