I agree about the roster. They shot themselves in the foot by shafting MERC the way they did, the AIM premium fee is nonsense which only narrows your early options....
and just to rub it in further, about 1/3 of the roster will be randomly unavailable at the beginning and the already stunted team-building decision tree becomes even smaller.
Another big downer, as far as I am concerned, the game doesn't seem to even have a trading interface.
It's basically all done by manually picking up shit... like some kind of animal, and through dialogue.
And a downer it is, cause no interface means no easy way to unfuck it, unless the modding tools are scary powerful.
[EDIT: And there I go with the wall of text again]
Okay.
How good is it compared to JA2 1.13?
Surely, you know better than to ask this. A lot of people conflate 1.13 and Ja2, but let's just stick with this:
How good is it compared to JA2 vanilla?
This comparison is a tad more favorable, but I may be biased because I actually waited for and played the various abortions that happened to be named similar to Jagged Alliance
which came earlier. Makes JA3 look like a genuine effort. It tries to pay homage to JA2 as well as to tick all the boxes and convince you that it "gets it". IMO it's all very surface level,
because even though you can draw a lot of parallels (X is exactly like San Mona, quest Z is basicelly a re-imagined quest from JA2, etc.)
a lot of the pieces are basically missing - smaller roster, nonexistent economy, no vehicles, no Bobby Rays, no SAM sites.
The game has also turned heavily towards RPGs - lots of branching choices, side-quests, long ass quest chains.
Unfortunately, it is also heavily influenced by EXCUM - for what that's worth it appears to be the current-day standard of building turn based tactical games.
How good is it compared to Firaxis Enemy Unknown
There's loads of baggage coming from this, worst offender IMO is the scramble turn enemies get when they spot you.
Another bad thing is the system has shifted towards more "gamey" or "boardgame-like" traits and special abilities.
A character will no longer collapse because you depleted their stamina bar and needs to recover as per the standard formula for breath recovery based on various stats,
but now gets a "debuff" which will wear off on its own or when removed by a special ability or consumable.
Theoretically, the new system can try and replicate a good chunk of mechanical complexity from JA2, but I personally can't shake
the feeling that it's all just smoke an mirrors. What I'm saying here, the system is probably quite approachable to a player coming from
and familiar with EXCUM, but will let JA2 veterans down because it doesn't feel as organic.
It still compares favorably to the vanilla EXCUM system, with stuff like actual Action Points, working inventories, ballistic simulation,
the less extreme approach to cover also feels better.
Took me some adjusting (and a bunch of mods) before I could give it a proper spin.
At the moment, I've combed through most of the Savannah region and, frankly, I'm beginning to feel worn out.
The turn towards RPG means there's plenty of side activities I'm feeling obligated to follow up on due to completionism,
and a lot of them are tedious, cause you often need a proper character or item on hand.
This probably gets better on subsequent playthroughs... if it actually ever comes to that.
I blame a lot of it on the interface, it makes most things a bother: inventory management, assigning tasks,
all seem to take more clicks than needed, chipping away at you little by little.
At this point, combat already stopped being rewarding, mostly the encounters play out identically and the opponents don't really put up that much of a fight.
I am told this will change soon-ish, but I'm not exactly keen on waiting for the game to get good.
This is also why I said it isn't "rewarding" rather than "challenging." Looting is often disappointing.
I mostly just immediately scrap all the things I get, and if I find valuables... there isn't a lot to spend money on anyway.
I'm toying with the idea of rectifying this problem with a "drop all but 50% of it" mod, but the game balance is so freaking brittle as it is.
A bit of a wall of text, but that's how the game feels for me at the moment: three steps forward, four steps back, and I'm probably being nice here
because of the modding potential.
.
