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I can play it all day.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: May 26, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I first got the demo from PC Gamer and played it over and over. I finally got the game form Amazon. One of my all time favorites.

This game is going to kick me out of law school

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: March 08, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Stress is building up...but I don't care. These mercs are keeping me true to what actually matters: Denial of reality! Seriously, if you liked "JA" or "JA Deadly Games", then you will adore this game. Be sure you have a computer that can run it at max performance, because otherwise the action is intolerable. There are a lot of new weapons, some cool mercs (with lots of good jokes), and only a slightly annoying plot line.

The hours just flow through your fingers like sand

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: March 21, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Having solved the first JA and playing JA Deadly Games a lot, I could'nt wait 'till JA2 came out. Well, the wait was worth it, to say the least. I'm a big first person shooter fan and games of this type never interested me until JA. You gotta' try JA2; it may not be first person, but, it really takes tacktics to kick some slime-ball butt. You won't be dissappointed with this game. When you can, hire Ivan, majic, shadow, Wolf or Scope. They will rock your sniping world. Famous quotes: 1. Ivan "Bye Bye" 2. Wolf "I'm Cryin'" 3. Majic "Got me a snapper head" 4. Fidel "Leave me alone, I busy"

works on many levels

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: September 01, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I will stick to the point with this review; this game is excellent and is one of my favourite gaming experiences along with Outcast and the Fallouts. The graphics are dated, but they never dissuaded me from liking the game. The fights (although they may be long) are exciting and fun, and the depth of the game is on par with Fallout 2 (maybe not quite as deep).

The story is a basic but perfectly fine affair, and the level of humour throughout the game make it even more playable. Get it now.

Extremely detailed but lacks soul

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 12
Date: December 11, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Let me be the first to say the mechanics are there. There is so much detail to the game it hurts. It's got elements of RPGs and strategy mixed in with tactical combat. The tactical combat engine is ridiculously detailed. No other game comes close. It could have been a great game.

But the problem is, it's not fun unless you have a lot of time and like tedious details. After a while your strategy will be the same all the time for the most part. You'll spend most of your time on LOGISTICS -- getting ammo and medical supplies from place to place, redoing your inventory, deciding who gets what gun, filling up clips, etc, etc. (...).

Next, the tactical combat engine is so complex that the computer AI cannot handle it. So to balance it out the designers have the bad guys have much better aim that any of your characters. It's stupid and it takes away the fun of it all. What's the point of having your characters be all realistic if the computer is going to be a bunch of cartoon super heroes?

Here's an example of why this game has been erased off my hard drive. It's midnight, I have class tomorrow somewhat early so I want to call it a night. There's one guy left in the level, I can't find him. I take 4 mercs on a search party for him. All of a sudden a shot comes out of nowhere, hits my custom merc (the best one -- your self-modelled merc) and he's mortally wounded. If he gets hit again or doesn't get medical attention QUICK, he'll die. Plus he's receiving permanent damage as he bleeds to death so this is a lose-lose situation no matter what. I haven't saved in a while because IF YOU SAVE A LOT YOU GET LESS STUFF OFF THE DEAD BODIES. The game punishes you for saving. Now, the sniper is protected on two sides by a neck-high cement wall with bushes and trees on his other side -- he's camping in a great position.

Now, what to do? Well I tried everything. Smoke grenades to cover the wounded guy, charging the sniper, coming in at all different angles. Result is the same -- at least one guy dies no matter what. I charge the wall, jump over it and lay into the guy at point blank range with a burst of .45 rounds from my Uzi. Not ONE point of damage. Not ONE. The sniper turns and blows my guy's head off. Okay next turn. Uzi lays down cover fire while my other merc hauls butt into position. He's about 15 yards from the cement wall when he fires his grenade launcher at the wall. The grenade fires at a 90 degree angle from where I wanted shoot and hits a building 20 yards away. The guy firing was an ex-Ranger with 94 marksmanship so I don't think that was the problem. Oh did I mention the sniper stood up and shot said Ranger in the head after this? After about 45 minutes of this (...), this game was off my hard drive. I'm not having much fun anyway and this is the last straw.

Games are supposed to be fun. Realism can be fun, but this isn't realistic! It's just frustrating and tedious. Overall the game had some good design but it just lacks the fun factor.

A great game, but difficult for the 'casual gamer'

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: February 01, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game about three weeks ago and have been playing it basically non-stop ever since. I've played lots of tactical squad games like this such as the XCOM series and "Soldiers At War." I've never played any of the Jagged Alliance games until now however.

Personally, I find this game a tad difficult for the casual gamer. It is incredibly fun, incredibly complex and detailed, and incredibly well made. However it can be incredibly difficult. As the reviewer from Gamespot says, the difficulty ramps up exponentially at the end, even on "Novice" level.

Maybe I'm just being a crybaby. :-) But really, this is an awesome game. You will really need to learn proper 'tactics' and ways of fighting Jagged Alliance battles to win though. Deidrianna's troops will give you no breaks, except if its the head of your troops!

turn-based strategy strikes back!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: December 25, 1999
Author: Amazon User

Thank God this game finally came out. After playing the three-level demo for a full year I was almost getting sick of it. That said, the full version of JA2 lived up to my expectations and then some. The variety and quality of the mercs is outstanding (I still reload the game whenever any of them gets killed). There is a huge selection of weapons from the Glock 9 to the AKM to the LAW rocket launcher to keep things interesting, and the battle interface expands on the brilliant simplicity of X-COM. Replay value is better than any game I`ve played besides Fallout, with loads of secret quests, mercs, and locations. A few minor gripes: The "Create-a Merc" feature could have been better implemented; it`s more or less a case of building a custom merc from readymade portraits and sound file groups, and a wider variety of locations instead of the same rundown, nondescript towns would have been nice, plus the game has a tendency (at least on my rig), to crash a lot. Still, these minor setbacks don`t keep me from playing at least 1 1/2 hours a day and enjoying it the whole time.

Editorial Reviews Missed some Key Points

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 13
Date: July 17, 2000
Author: Amazon User

As a fan of the X-Com games and Shadow Watch, I was really looking forward to this game. Based on the Editorial Reviews on this site, I was expecting somethiing in a similar vein.

Unfortunately, there are some subtle problems with this game that make it vastly inferior to the previously mentioned titles, and cause the game play to be rather slow and frustrating.

Problems with the tactical level:

#1. Extremely long fights: Most of the weapons in this game are frustratingly innacurate and don't do much damage. As a result, fights go on and on and on and on and on and . . well, you get the idea. In X-Com and Shadow Watch, fire fights tend to be relatively quick and decisive. If a bad guy steps out in front of you without cover, he goes down. In this game though, he can stand right in front of you at a range of three or four spaces and it will still take a few turns to kill him. You shoot and miss, and shoot and miss and so on. And then when you finally do hit the guy, it takes five or six shots to take him down. Your mouse hand will get sore from all the point and clicking. Both the accuracy and the lethality of all the weapons in the game should be about doubled or trippled, which would lead to shorter, more decisive engagements. 2. Computer controlled characters have a huge advantage in accuracy: This is a weird glitch that becomes really obvious from about the second fight onwards. All computer controlled units are roughly two to three times as accurate as your (supposedly elite) mercenary units. What does this mean? A couple of examples: a.) One of your mercenaries (with a high accuracy rating) is lying on the ground, firing at an opponent lying on the ground, with no intervening cover. The computer controlled character will hit you about four times for every time you hit him. b. You have a unit which has carfully positioned itself crouching behind a tree for cover, shooting at a computer unit standing in the open. You will hit each other with about the same frequency.

While over all game balance is preserved by the fact that your mercs can just take so damn much damage, it still makes game play awefully frustrating. Here you are, knocking yourself out to find good covered positions to protect your guys, and the computer still hits them easily, while you're missing its guys that are out in the open. The problem becomes even more annoying once you start training local militia to protect your villages. Being computer controlled, the local militia also benefit from this huge increase in accuracy, which means that they completely outclass the mercenaries who trained them. Which makes you wonder why they needed your mercenaries to come liberate them in the first place.

Problems with the Strategic Level:

Unbalance Economy: Simply put, the amount of money running around in the game doesn't balance out against the cost of most items. Local Militia, for example, can be trained for $750, a sum so small by comparison to what your mines are turning out that it doesn't even enter into your strategic thinking. Similarly, the rewards for completing quests in the game are ludicrously small wnen compared to your income. What do you say to a major NPC who is trying to get you to do some major quest by offering you 20K dollars. "Hello, I make more than that in a single day of mining. Why should I bother?". The numbers on a lot of this stuff need to be adjusted. 2. A preponderence of innefectual hand guns: For some reason, most of the mercs that you can afford at the start of the game come equipped with hand guns rahter than assault rifles. Excuse me? A professional merc who's going to airdrop into the middle of a civil war with only a pistol? This is particularly ludicrous when you realize how innefectual handguns are in this game. Even at close range, an NPC is likely to die of old age long before you ever manage to finish him off with a .38 revolver. Adding to this problem is the fact that you can't buy rifles. Oh sure, the nice mail order company that you do business with will send you ammo, but not big guns, grenades, night vision goggles, or any of the really cool stuff that you want to play with. To get that stuff, you have to ever so slowly find it off the bodies of dead enemies. In the course of 15 hours of play, I managed to find only two rifles. Unfortunately, they were of a calliber that I couldn't buy ammo for. Arrg. Why can't you just buy decent armaments in this game?

Overall, I would have to encourage people to buy all the X-Com games and Shadow Watch before buying this one. And even then, I would replay the former titles again before sending buying this one. Firefights in Jagged Alliance are needlessly long and indecisive, there is little variation between combat locations and opponents, and there is a lot of built in frustration in the fact that your units are so vastly inferior to those controlled by the computer. This is a game with a lot of subtle problems that should have been caught in the beta testing.

A game that should be in every hardcore collection

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game is a masterpiece that has everything you could want except for muti-player( which is made up for by the fact you can play it so many ways). The graphics are alright but as long as you can see graphics don't matter, although i think the head blowning off animation is great. The sound is great with pops, explosions, groans and most of all the mercenaries themselves who can be pretty funny(Da ting say dere be bad guys, i hope it be right:)). The interface is pretty streamline with most functions controled by the mouse with some usefull hot keys. Now to the strong point of the game, The gameplay which is awesome. First you can make your own merc who can be almost everthing you want him to be then you hire some more mercs from AIM.com(you use a "Laptop" to purchase weapons, hire mercs and receive e-mail) then you fly your team into arulco where at first you are in real-time mode and can move freely but once you spot an enemie you go to turn based mode where everything you do cost AP or Action Points, in turn-based combat you can snipe the enemy making careful shots which cost more AP but are more likely to hit, sneak up on enemies and use a silensed gun or knife to kill the enemie silently or you could going in guns blazing which is not reccomended. Finally there are lots of toys to play with ranging from the lowly Colt 45. to the all powerfull Dragunov sniper rifle to TNT to C4 and you can combind stuff with other stuff and put things like a sniper scope, bipod or laserscope to the gun to increase the range or accuracy. Over all i would reccomend this too any gamer who can get past the fact that it is hard as hell to beat.

Great story, great gameplay, great game.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: April 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Arulco is a tiny South American country that runs under the unique system of a democatic Monarchy...a family rules the throne, but every 10 years elections are held to assert their legitimacy. Enrico Chivaldori, trying to keep his family in power, took a wife, Deidranna Reitman, in order to boost his popularity as a candidate. Then everything began to tumble...
Deidranna killed Chivaldori's father and framed him through a large amount of circumstantial evidence. She turned him over to his political enemy, Miguel Cordona, in the hopes that Cordona would kill him, instead, they helped him flee. Deidranna has since turned the peaceful country of Arulco into a destitute land ruled by the whim of a rutheless dictator, acts of genocide are common, and anyone not of value of swiftly removed from the population...Now it is time to remove her.
A shadowy figure...you...meets with exiled Enrico Chivaldori in the Czech Republic, he explains what he wants you to do: build an army out of mercenaries, and topple Deidranna's regime.

This shows how rich and deep the story is, but it would be irrelevant if the gameplay wasn't good. Thankfully, the game play is brilliant. Using an ingenious laptop interface, you take the money given to you by Chivaldori and hire the best mercenaries you can. You figh from town to town and in the rural areas, killing Deidranna's forces with firepower and tactics. This is no mere "shoot-em-up," the player must train militas, guard mines, take down SAM sites to clear the skies, make sure your mercs interact well, train your mercs,talk to characters, some of whom can be recruited to your cause, some of whom will attempt to kill you.
But you also get to take on Deidranna's forces with over 25 weapons and other items. There will be weapons you haven't seen and creatures native to Arulco (more so if you choose the Sci-Fi) option. Combat is great fun, and there is a lot of it. Moreover, the game is completely non-linear, so if you wish to make a run on the Capital City of Meduna and Deidranna herself only 2 hours into the game, by all means do so, just dont worry if you're sent back in a body bag.

I can't reccomend this game highly enough...it has funny, interesting characters, outstanding gameplay, and a story that the game adheres to throughout the game, something that few games can claim credit to. Buy it, buy it now.

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