Jagged Alliance 3 from Haemimont Games

[Dickie]

On 50% off sale. Worth buying?

It has a demo on Steam if you want to try it out.

 

[IDtenT]

Thanks, I already bought it.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I've been playing way too much of this game these past couple weeks, so some observations:

Mercenaries, taking what I said and what others have said, I took a look at the character spread for some the skills. There are basically three high end explosives experts, two high end mechanics (I probably missed someone) and three high end medics. Now, this problem isn't really that bad for explosives and medic. You can probably train up explosives fairly easily, since I noticed on my squads that both Barry and Red are at 100. Medic improves way too slowly, but there are only a handful of things you need a high score for.

But mechanical. Mechanical is kind of broken in a bad way. I actually had to look this shit up, but apparently it only improves if you repair for more than a day. That explains why Kalyna, who I've had since the start of the game, still hasn't reached 80. That means, effectively, you have to hire either Livewire, who is just so obnoxious, or Vicki, who is expensive. Was there a third mechanic over 80? I know Steroid has 79, but everyone hates Steroid. There's no 99 stat mechanic either, I noticed. The whole reason why I started this bad boy up was I was feeling like having a team with Static and Spider, two mercenaries this game could have REALLY used, yes, I know there are mods.

I also noticed that other skills improve in odd ways. Wisdom is actually kind of easy to improve, but strength is the real bitch, since you absolutely have to be in melee to do it. I guess you could have your guys take turns punching each other, but that seems excessive when we used to be able to have them lift heavy stuff everywhere. OTOH, I appreciate being able to actually improve health, even if it improves way too easily now.

Quests, I was clearly playing this in the wrong way. You know how in JA2 you could go to the northwestern town first if you wanted? I feel like that's what I did.

So I screwed around between the north landmass and the south landmass for a while, until I was told that the Major was going after Biff. So I lugged it from Fleatown, through the Refugee Camp, to the far end of the map, and defended him against a massive horde of Legion troops. I wasn't expecting the mortars. NPC AI does not know how to handle it, since Biff kept deciding that standing in the middle of the blast was the safest choice. (This also happened when I was freeing the President, one almost just wants to let him die just so I don't have to worry about it)

Spoiler

I have to admit, I wasn't expecting the story to shift so dramatically this soon. Corazon seems like an idiot. Let's hire a mercenary to destabilize the region, whoops, he did it too well. Let's hire another set of mercenaries to take him out, whoops, that failed. Let's hire ANOTHER set of mercs, then kill them before they do anything of note, because...? I know the new group I have to fight is the army, but honestly they just seem like well-equipped mercenaries rather than the actual army. Especially by how eager they are to use chemical weapons.

I've cleared most of the map now, and I'm working on the two quests regarding the sci-fi elements of the game, and man...

Spoiler

So, the Nazi super soldiers, man, this quest feels obnoxious. You can play it all friendly like, and the bastard still basically double-crosses you. You basically have no choice but to go after him, since otherwise his troops keep showing up to kill you for little reason. Man, I'm just trying to stop zombies from taking over the country, why the hell are you shooting me for doing that? Meanwhile, the zombie quest I waited way too long on, since several aspects seem to be showing that I'm taking too long. My two primary teams are about to meet up, so hopefully that'll be solved in time.

 

[Papill0n]

Yes, the way mechanics works is annoying and nonsensical. And there are not enough mechanics to chose from once you're beyond the 1st playthrough. You forgot Magic, but he's expensive. I added GreasyBasil as a playable mechanic to have some more choice.

Various stats are odd. Like how you can have 80+ markmanship but be a really poor shot because of low dexterity. Or how melee seems to largely depend on dexterity (rather than agility). Or how wisdom is usually just perception.

To be honest, the rescue Biff quest doesn't trigger too quickly, but yeah sometimes it's a bit unlucky. There are some mods/cheats that delay such timers for peole who want to play a slow campaign.

The entire Corazon story is utter nonsense and full of bad game design.

Tons of it but off the top of my head:
- Her having loads of PMCs available and n control of Emma at day 1 but waits with the Coup until things start to go wrong?
- Her issuing orders on Snype knowing the Major casually comments on that same "frequency"... (lol what in general about "Snype"??)
- Also that she and various other npcs need to be invincible to prevent the player from just killing them off early.
- How you shoot some enemies to clumps and then they can just "surrender" and sit there unharmed... lol what?
- How lots of weird stuff happens in the world switch. Enemies spawning in hordes out of nowhere and stuff.

The DLC quest is so generic... could have done without it. Same goes for Zombies. Unneccessary.

But yeah we need to be generous considerig the last few Jagged Alliance reboot attempts.

 

[Yosharian]

Once you have a few mines and have the free mercs properly set up defending your bases from the constant harassment, you can just train up all your mercs to be killing machines, and eventually become unstoppable.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I know Steroid has 79, but everyone hates Steroid.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Is there a mod for letting your IMPs have 0 in marksmanship? That's 30 points my dude will never use so might as put it in mechanical or explosives.