Jagged Alliance 3 from Haemimont Games

[Ryzer]

This game doesn't add many features compared to JA2 which is a bummer. They added what? Run and Gun, Overwatch, mechanical parts and that's it.
It's a bit sad the budget may have been tight considering the low amount of new features.

 

[Pocgels]

From my experience, merc training seems to be more effective the greater the difference between skills of the tutor and student(s), as well as the student's wisdom. So it can be good to pull somebody from 66 to 70 if there is a perk you want, or bring them up to the level of mechanics where they can start fixing stuff, but early on generally it's a better use of your time to be doing something else.

After you get a lot of mines you could just sit on shipment paths and do merc training, because money starts to become a non-issue about halfway through the game. Training isn't OP because it is too good, but rather the game doesn't push you forward nearly as hard as you get further into it.

 

[Tyranicon]

With mods this game is a solid 8/10 for me. Not as good as JA2 all told, certainly not anywhere near a perfect or even great game.

But much better than expected and in 2023, not releasing a burning pile of shit is almost an accomplishment.

I would say this is on par with Aliens: Dark Descent. Enjoyable games that are a little rough but otherwise good installments in their respective IPs.

 

[Shaki]

I think a lot of the problems of this game, come from replacing good JA2 interrupt mechanic with nuXCOM overwatch shit.

For example, lack of interrupts means you can just run right to enemies faces on your turn and guarantee their deaths by spraying them from close range-> They had to nerf autofire because of that.

The longer I play the more I miss the old interrupts, even in vanilla JA2 the system was great at making up for the stupidity of the AI. If you were dealing with a room full of enemies, you had to get creative and make your entrance from the other side by breaking the wall with explosives, etc. because just opening the door and walking in resulted in x interrupt attacks to your face and guaranteed death, as it should be. Here, there are no interrupts, so you just open the door and walk into a room full of enemies and kill them all in one turn. Being able to just run wherever you want fully safe during your turn is such a massive decline. I think it's the root of most balance problems in JA3.

At least they could have enemies start using overwatch to set up ambushes, to make up for lack of interrupt, because right now a lot of them seem to be scripted to just sit in rooms and wait to be slaughtered, despite being alerted, with only ever placing overwatch on top of your characters, never using it preemptively or to deny certain approaches.

It's especially comical when you have Livewire and you can see enemy guys with her passive skill, just skipping their turns inside a room, never moving until they see you, even if they hear bullets and explosions. It seems to me that enemies scripted to patrol can approach your guys based on sounds/vision of their other teammates, but the ones scripted to stay in place, will stay completely frozen until you walk in their line of sight, no matter what. I had this in a prison map for example, where like 4 guys inside a room just refused to ever move despite me slaughtering everyone in the rooms next to them. If they set up an ambush, ran behind cover and pointed overwatch at the door, that could be cool and realistic, but watching them just sit there doing nothing, until I was kind enough to open the door, run to their faces and shot them to death, was such an unfun moment, idk if I'll be able to even force myself to finish it, probably gonna wait a couple of years for modders to fix it to give it another chance.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

I think a lot of the problems of this game, come from replacing good JA2 interrupt mechanic with nuXCOM overwatch shit.

For example, lack of interrupts means you can just run right to enemies faces on their turn to and guarantee their deaths by spraying them from close range-> They had to nerf autofire because of that.

The longer I play the more I miss the old interrupts, even in vanilla JA2 the system was great at making up for the stupidity of the AI. If you were dealing with a room full of enemies, you had to get creative and make your entrance from the other side by breaking the wall with explosives, etc. because just opening the door and walking in resulted in x interrupt attacks to your face and guaranteed death, as it should be. Here, there are no interrupts, so you just open the door and walk into a room full of enemies and kill them all in one turn. Being able to just run wherever you want fully safe during your turn is such a massive decline. I think it's the root of most balance problems in JA3.

That sounds terrible.

 

[Surf Solar]

After playing it a bit again, I really can't understand how people find this is a worthy successor to JA2.

- 3d instead of prerendered 2d sprites
- cringy zoomer art style
- soulless "minimalistic" UI design
- no bobby ray
- no skyrider
- why do mercs have "individual" perks?
- mess of an inventory while simultaneously dumbing down individual gear slots (no helmet+gasmask etc)
- no fixed camera
- pseudo xcom pod mechanics on first turn
- "magic" like "abilities" per turn instead of simply shooting
- cringy voice acting
- zoomer reddit tier dialogue
- "cinematic" killcams/aim cams



Why again are people enjoying this?

 

[Abu Antar]

Because not everyone likes what you like?

 

[ArchAngel]

After playing it a bit again, I really can't understand how people find this is a worthy successor to JA2.

- 3d instead of prerendered 2d sprites
- cringy zoomer art style
- soulless "minimalistic" UI design
- no bobby ray
- no skyrider
- why do mercs have "individual" perks?
- mess of an inventory while simultaneously dumbing down individual gear slots (no helmet+gasmask etc)
- no fixed camera
- pseudo xcom pod mechanics on first turn
- "magic" like "abilities" per turn instead of simply shooting
- cringy voice acting
- zoomer reddit tier dialogue
- "cinematic" killcams/aim cams



Why again are people enjoying this?

Because people enjoy nuXcom too much.

 

[Raghar]

After playing it a bit again, I really can't understand how people find this is a worthy successor to JA2.

- 3d instead of prerendered 2d sprites
- soulless "minimalistic" UI design
- why do mercs have "individual" perks?
- no fixed camera
- "magic" like "abilities" per turn instead of simply shooting
- cringy voice acting
- zoomer reddit tier dialogue
- "cinematic" killcams/aim cams

Isn't this rather positive?
Combination of rather distant first mine, and lack of ways to get ammo and repair parts early makes things feel weird. Considering the rather low income from mine in comparison to JA2. And there is something amiss. On the other hand, if you play solo, you have plenty of money.

 

[Strange Fellow]

It's cool that you want to play JA2. Go play JA2. It has Bobby Ray's and Skyrider in it, unlike all other Jagged Alliance games. It also looks almost exactly like JA2.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Imagine complaining that the mercs are too diverse lol.

 

[Surf Solar]

Imagine complaining that the mercs are too diverse lol.

"Diverse"

But! Merc X creates item Y each 2 weeks.
Another one creates an item ABC all 2 days. Isn't that diverse? It's gamey as fuck.

 

[cpmartins]

Imagine complaining that the mercs are too diverse lol.

"Diverse"

But! Merc X creates item Y each 2 weeks.
Another one creates an item ABC all 2 days. Isn't that diverse? It's gamey as fuck.

Can you name a third one that does that? I know one, Barry Unger. Name the others.

 

[Abu Antar]

Bobby's Flea market is being worked on by some dude.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007527450&searchtext=bobby

 

[Surf Solar]

Imagine complaining that the mercs are too diverse lol.

"Diverse"

But! Merc X creates item Y each 2 weeks.
Another one creates an item ABC all 2 days. Isn't that diverse? It's gamey as fuck.

Can you name a third one that does that? I know one, Barry Unger. Name the others.

"Ignores Enemy Overwatch when moving"

"Sets their Overwatch move in a circle around them rather than a cone."(?????)

"Special ranged attack that bypasses enemy armour." (so this one is a super hero dragon ball character?)

"Throws two grenades at once." (wat)

"This merc produces one herbal medicine every 48 hours in-game." (medic barry producing stuff up from his ass)

"Special attack that shoots at a nearby enemy at the start of combat with a handgun." (special attack huh)



And so on. Yeah, totally like Jagged Alliance.

 

[cpmartins]

Imagine complaining that the mercs are too diverse lol.

"Diverse"

But! Merc X creates item Y each 2 weeks.
Another one creates an item ABC all 2 days. Isn't that diverse? It's gamey as fuck.

Can you name a third one that does that? I know one, Barry Unger. Name the others.

"Ignores Enemy Overwatch when moving"

"Sets their Overwatch move in a circle around them rather than a cone."(?????)

"Special ranged attack that bypasses enemy armour." (so this one is a super hero dragon ball character?)

"Throws two grenades at once." (wat)

"This merc produces one herbal medicine every 48 hours in-game." (medic barry producing stuff up from his ass)

"Special attack that shoots at a nearby enemy at the start of combat with a handgun." (special attack huh)



And so on. Yeah, totally like Jagged Alliance.

Oh, ok. So you can't.

 

[Strange Fellow]

I was expecting those things to bother me a lot more than they do. When the underlying systems are solid, it doesn't have the same negative impact as when the superpowers are all there is.

 

[Surf Solar]

After playing it a bit again, I really can't understand how people find this is a worthy successor to JA2.

- 3d instead of prerendered 2d sprites
- soulless "minimalistic" UI design
- why do mercs have "individual" perks?
- no fixed camera
- "magic" like "abilities" per turn instead of simply shooting
- cringy voice acting
- zoomer reddit tier dialogue
- "cinematic" killcams/aim cams

Isn't this rather positive?
Combination of rather distant first mine, and lack of ways to get ammo and repair parts early makes things feel weird. Considering the rather low income from mine in comparison to JA2. And there is something amiss. On the other hand, if you play solo, you have plenty of money.

Nothing in this list is positive to me.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

"Reveal fog of war w/ Intel" = video gamey nonsense

^serious hardcore tacticool simulashun

 

[Surf Solar]

When was the last time you read someone was longing for a JA(1) revival? No one, yet, thousands still play 1.13, even straciatella, retard.

I am not even saying JA3 is a bad game, it isn't. It simply isn't a good successor to JA2, which it CLEARLY APES in 80% of its mechanics.

 

[cpmartins]

When was the last time you read someone was longing for a JA(1) revival? No one, yet, thousands still play 1.13, even straciatella, retard.

I am not even saying JA3 is a bad game, it isn't. It simply isn't a good successor to JA2, which it CLEARLY APES in 80% of its mechanics.

Yeah but nobody except you gives a fucking shit.
And you're preaching to the choir. One of my first posts in the thread was how this wasn't JA. It's still quite good and worth the time if you like tactical simulations.

 

[ArchAngel]

It's cool that you want to play JA2. Go play JA2. It has Bobby Ray's and Skyrider in it, unlike all other Jagged Alliance games. It also looks almost exactly like JA2.

I just bought JA2 on GoG and downloaded 1.13 mod. Going to play a real tactical game.
I got no idea what I am doing with this mod, I will not touch any of the default settings and how I do not get raped in my first run. I am not using AI mod, just base 1.13.

 

[cpmartins]

It's cool that you want to play JA2. Go play JA2. It has Bobby Ray's and Skyrider in it, unlike all other Jagged Alliance games. It also looks almost exactly like JA2.

I just bought JA2 on GoG and downloaded 1.13 mod. Going to play a real tactical game.

Remember to crawl in your belly while Shadow scouts ahead, also crawling in his belly!

 

[ArchAngel]

Any recommendations for initial game settings? What is this new chance to hit system or improved interrupt system?

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Isn't this rather positive?

It's not even a matter of positives and negatives, as much as the fact that half of that list is completely delirious shit with hardly any factual, objective meaning behind.

For one, Imagine being autistic and nostalgic to the point that in 2023 -not the year after the Voodo 3Dfx debuted, mind it- you are still crying about the loss of "nice 2D sprites" and how a tactical simulation is using 3D rendering instead.
Or about not having "a fixed camera" (which would benefit... what aspect of the game, again?)