Review JA2 gets heaps of love at GameBoomers

Tags: Jagged Alliance 2

<A href="http://www.gameboomers.com/">GameBoomers</A> proves it's never too late with their <A href="http://www.gameboomers.com/reviews/Jj/JA2bydrizzt.htm">review</a> of the classic <A href="Http://www.jaggedalliance2.com">Jagged Alliance 2</a>. It scores a lofty <b>95%</b> rating, even from a guy who calls himself <i>Drizzt</i>. Everybody loves it. Here's a clip:
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<blockquote>As in all RPG’s, you naturally create your own character, but it is done in a different way here. It all starts out with you receiving an email from a company that run “personal tests”, and from there on (for a small fee), you create your own, personal made-character. At first, it looks normal, with determining portrait, soundset and distributing skill points, but after that, you have to go through 10-15 questions of how you would react in different situations. This affects your characters psychological state of mind. Seriously, can you see yourself being entirely calm during a firefight if you answered the question regarding the “You hear a burglar in your house. What do you do?” with the option “Pick out your guns from under your pillow, kick the door out of its hinges and go blasting downstairs while shouting ‘Come get some, tough guy!’”. Eh, can you?</blockquote>
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I'd forgotten that bit. I really need to get back in touch with this game.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.gengamers.com">GenGamers</A>

 

Well, it's fun the first few times, then you just want to get the damned thing over with and give me my friendly Night-Ops/Autoweapons merc already.

 

IIRC, it's something along the lines of shooting holes through the floor, not running downstairs.

I was just playing it the other day, attempting to solo through the game on Expert.

 

That's right, you blow holes in the floor.

Solo isn't very fun for me, I'd rather take a crippled team to combat. Shank, Flo, and my engineer Merc. Maybe Hitman, just to bail me out.

 

Heh, I'm making an assault on the capitol with 13 mercs and it still isn't enough.

 

Midway through the game I found that my large team couldn't go in and clear a town in the day with getting blown away. I then tried my night-ops character with camo, night-vision, and a silenced Mac-10 sneaking through the town. I would circle around the edges of the sectors and switch sectors if I had to run, I cleared out many enemies and went in for clean up the next morning.

True, I would have liked a direct system the second time around.

 

I've got the 3 full squads happening at the moment, including a dedicated night ops squad, a heavy weapons with some night ops squad, and a backup team, but I'm stalled in Meduna at the moment by that bloody bloodcat and rocket rifle infested house.

I swear I'm going to finish the game one of these days. I just need about half a dozen extra LAWs first, for all the tanks I expect to encounter.

 

I love JA2. It really is a sleeper, the fact that people are doing review on it now and saying they love it considering how dated it is, is just a testament to how great the game is. It would really be nice to put a new JA game with a modern engine together.

 

A JA game with a modified Silent Storm engine would just flat out rock. I loved the original JA when I played it back in the mid 90's and JA2 definitely did it justice, that's for sure. It's one of those games to be held up there with the likes of XCom, Masters Of Magic, and Age Of Wonders 2. Games that will forever be in my library.

 

*Spoilers, maybe, I dunno*

I had lots of fun with that sector. I had four mercs with machine guns, strategically placed outside the room where most of the enemy soldiers were, and my other two mercs knocked the wall down with LAW's. Then I finished them off with my machine gunners. After that, it was a matter of mopping up the bloodcats and five or six remaining soldiers who were scattered around.

Of course, that was on normal difficulty, so I don't know how useful that is.

Aren't there a veritable assload of LAWs in that prison facility directly east of the Bloodcat house? I remember picking up at least a dozen.

 

I've picked a few LAWs here and there, but I needed about 4 or 5 to take care of various tanks I encountered. You'd think Gus (yes, I hired him, and pretty much every other top of the line merc available) would be able to do the job with just one, but nooo...

 

I prefer mortars, personally. By that point in the game you should be able to buy quite a few from Bobby Ray's, and failing that, at the guy in San Mona or whatever the town's called.

 

I finally bought another copy ($7 at EB) to replace the one I gave a friend years ago, and now I realized that I've completely forgotten how great this game is. Extremely addictive.