Durrr, Jagged Alliance 2 combat is HARD

[sqeecoo]

Faceless soldiers in x-com are great, despite the hilarious and unique personalities of the mercs in JA2. This is because you can afford having faceless soldiers die. So while in JA2 if you get 20 mercs killed you've more or less botched up the game, in x-com it's perfectly normal to have dozens of soldiers die if you are not a save-reload whore.

Anyway, JA2 is a incredibly good game, but suffers from the fact that the enemy soldiers just rush you when they spot you, so you can just take up a solid position and wait (not something you can do in x-com). Some scripted entrenched positions, or just an AI with a more static defense mentality would make the game much, much better. When an enemy sniper decides to actually stay put and cover an area, taking him out is quite hard, for instance, especially since your first clue as to where he is is one of your mercs getting shot. Clearing out hostiles from a house if they don't just rush out is also a very nice tactical challenge.

 

[someone else]

Huh? Didn't Unfinished Business have AI campers?

 

[Zhuangzi]

They're both outstanding games, neither of which have ever been equalled. But I will say that after playing JA2 a lot, the combat in XCOM becomes tedious (all that moving around the map looking for enemies - which JA2 does in realtime) and faceless (without unique mercs).

You simply dont get the main point of tactical design in XCom, putting realtime in XCom would be stupid, because the maps were quite small, and making it switch in realtime when no aliens are in sight would remove the better part of suspense. Faceless soldiers is another great thing about XCom, what, JA2 has some 40-50 mercs ? In XCom i had hundreds dynamic personas created by my imagination and gameplay process. You ever read any XCom LPs ? People name their soldiers after their RL friends and such, which gives the game almost a narrative feeling. Unique mercs ? No need.

Anyway, i dont know how can anyone really compare these two games with a straight face.

That's why they're faceless - you've got to flesh out the details yourself. Whereas JA2 had amusing premade characters. I'm not saying JA2 is a better game overall necessarily (although it hasn't aged as much) but simply that I enjoy it more than XCOM these days. On the other hand, I hate having to reload all the time too, which is the good thing about XCOM (expendable troops). [/u]

 

[sqeecoo]

Huh? Didn't Unfinished Business have AI campers?

Didn't play UB

 

[mondblut]

5. If all the infantile humor in the game weren't bad enough, they just *had* to insert sci-fi elements into a WWII historical game.

SS are about as historical as early James Bond flicks. Their plot is basically the same - international evil society manipulating the warring sides, city-blasting giant space lasers, etc. So the bad sci-fi cheese was intentional from the day 1.

 

[someone else]

Somebody do a ironman LP with JA2, Xcom, SilentStorm or something. Again.

 

[BethesdaLove]

They're both outstanding games, neither of which have ever been equalled. But I will say that after playing JA2 a lot, the combat in XCOM becomes tedious (all that moving around the map looking for enemies - which JA2 does in realtime) and faceless (without unique mercs).

...You ever read any XCom LPs ? People name their soldiers after their RL friends and such, which gives the game almost a narrative feeling. Unique mercs ? No need.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Roleplaying

 

[Dyspaire]

Anyway, i dont know how can anyone really compare these two games with a straight face.

You're right. I just tried and couldn't keep from smirking, just a little. :shock:

 

[LCJr.]

The AI is better in UB and Gold. Their general behavior is set in the map editor.

Working off memory it's something like,
Cautious
Aggressive
Cautious Aid
Aggressive Aid
Stationary
Patrol
Seek Enemy

Cautious is the ones that use cover and camp. Aggressive is obviously the ones that charge. Aid means they'll call for help and report your position before doing their thing. I think all the rest set to Aid will try to come and help. Stationary only lets them move like 5 squares away from their start location i.e. gate guards. Patrol will follow a set route of waypoints until alerted. Seek enemy just hangs out until alerted and then charges.

The_scorpion could tell you a lot more.

 

[sqeecoo]

So is there some simple way to set all or most enemies to cautious (Aid)?

 

[denizsi]

The removal of the strategic aspects of JA2 is one reason I'm not looking forward to JA3. (Though it won't be a total amputation--there will still be some strategic considerations in the form of troop movements, etc., as well as some new innovations.)

Last I read, they put those back in, because of the backlash from the fans. I might be wrong. I'm only loosely keeping track of the game. Still, I don't think the game will come anywhere near being an improvement over JA2, as JA2 was a tremendous improvement over JA.

When an enemy sniper decides to actually stay put and cover an area, taking him out is quite hard, for instance, especially since your first clue as to where he is is one of your mercs getting shot. Clearing out hostiles from a house if they don't just rush out is also a very nice tactical challenge.

AI really shines in those moments. It's most frustrating for you but also pleasing as a challenge when AI does unpredictable things, like a sniper who's been camping for turns, suddenly deciding to run up to you and throw a grenade and screw your mercs, or worse, run close enough to empty a mag in burst and kill.

For the XCom vs JA discussion:

Anyway, i dont know how can anyone really compare these two games with a straight face.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Roleplaying

Irrelevant. e-LARPing is using built-in active game features to pretend to be doing something meaningful. Like walking and jumping all over the map and fantasizing that you're a ninja cartographer. Fantasizing on passive elements which are purposefuly left vague isn't even close to e-LARPing. Otherwise, we'd need to put Oblivion and ASCII roguelikes into the same pot, which I don't. If you do, I won't be surprised, though.

 

[LCJr.]

So is there some simple way to set all or most enemies to cautious (Aid)?

Not that I'm aware of. You'd have to edit each map by hand unless you could find someone to write a program to edit that specific part of the map file.

 

[Sodomy]

3. They appear very early in the game.

To be fair, that's actually incredibly variable. My first playthrough, I didn't get them until the third to last mission.

 

[elander_]

Don't know how BL was capable of using the chicken-shit technique as an exploit. The first thing i tried to test the game was to hide inside a building and wait for enemies to enter and try to take them all this way. It didn't work and i recall being very happy with the game for this reason. The problem was that not all enemies will come running. They just stand there waiting so you can't clean the map unless you go after them. Second enemies may come in by the dozens and then you waste all your interrupts and action points and they end up killing you. Third they throw gas grenades and other types of grenades. I played with the fans made patch and tweaked the options so this may be the reason.

 

[Zhuangzi]

Sometimes they will all come though, even in 1.13. When I started playing 1.13, there was this ridiculous sector early on when you get attacked by 60+ enemies, most of them veterans. Well, there's no way to beat that except to hole up in a building and rely on interrupts. I think it was Drassen mine and I hid in the mine office. I've always thought the interrupt system was a like too exploitable, and in this mission I was able to kill well over 60 enemies without losing a troop. If they stop coming, you creep outside and fire off a few shots, then run back.

I won't pretend I could do this on iron-man though. :shock:

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

I played JA2 for the first time a few years ago. It almost brought a tear to my eye, since I realised it's the best game ever made, and I had skipped it because I thought it was something like Commandos (I haven't played UFO, either, because originally I never heard of it and now I can't get it to work). Maybe the fact that both Chaos Gate and Fallout : Tactics, which were generally reviewed as being like JA, but worse, and I loved both of them, should have tipped me off. I hadn't even known that gaming has declined so much, I had just thought that good stuff like this wasn't invented yet. Hairy balls of the gods, how much has gaming declined.

Now playing JA2 OST. I don't know why, but I like this style of music much more than that orchestrated movie-soundtrack stuff new games mostly have.

2008 was such an awful game year. World of Goo is great, I hope that King's Bounty is great, In Nomine was a good "expansion" to EU3 (well, I suppose including IN kind of should make me include TWEE, too. At least that patch was free.), and the rest is just average at best, unless I'm forgetting something. It ended fittingly with me having to open a toilet clogged with shit and garbage at the last few hours of 2008.

 

[spectre]

(I haven't played UFO, either, because originally I never heard of it and now I can't get it to work).

Dunno about Vista, but If you aren't beyond that, there are Windows versions on the various abandonware sites (coming from various gold editions) which run just fine under XP.
Just make sure to maintain the usual precautions - save often, as the biatch likes to crash in the beginning of certain missions.
Just play it. Both Enemy Unknown and Terror from the Deep have a charm of their own.

 

[Lightknight]

in JA2 if you get 20 mercs killed you've more or less botched up the game

You know, after playing through pretty much every Fire Emblem there is - i dont really care if they die, as long as there is someone left - the game is on.

 

[spectre]

Well, it is a kind of hint that you're doing something wrong, if you get 20 mercs killed in ja2.

 

[Lightknight]

How so ? Is constant S/L better ? Unless the game becomes literally unwinnable - there is nothing you are doing wrong.

 

[someone else]

How so ? Is constant S/L better ? Unless the game becomes literally unwinnable - there is nothing you are doing wrong.

He is saying that if you lose 20 mercs in JA2, you are playing badly.

 

[Lightknight]

And i ask whats the definition of "playing badly".
The only thing i can come up with - you're playing badly if you're forced to reload your save. Anything else does not qualify.

 

[someone else]

And i ask whats the definition of "playing badly".
The only thing i can come up with - you're playing badly if you're forced to reload your save. Anything else does not qualify.

I think most people here will agree that playing badly = you suck at playing.

Of course you can be different where your defination of playing badly = losing the game.

 

[Castanova]

In Prince of Persia, no one is a bad player.

 

[Lightknight]

playing badly = you suck at playing.

Playing bad = bad playing ? Seriously ?
This is DEEP.