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Jagged Alliance 3 from Haemimont Games

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
21,280
The main problem with comparing JA2 and JA3 that is very prevalent in this thread is the fact, that people conflate JA2 1.13 and vanilla JA2 into one entity.
Vanilla JA2 was also lacking in the tactical department and had similar problems that JA3 inherited from it. 1.13 pushed JA2 from the dual identity of being a turn based tactics game and a light rpg about action/adventure movies, straight into what turned out to be the best tactical simulation of squad based fights.
JA3 actually embraces the silliness of this action movie design and leans more into this light rpg side of JA3. There are still clearly worse elements in some regards, when comparing to vanilla JA2, but there is a lot of good stuff that it does on it's own.

Everyone looking in JA3 for a build-up on what 1.13 provides will be disappointed.
I wasn't and let the game surprise me and it was a good surprise. That's one of the single player games I had most fun playing in a long time.
Bullshit. I am at start of 1.13 run, it is not much different than vanilla JA2 and already tactical combat is much superior. There is no tutorial island bullshit, endless talking at start, short range engagements, blind and stupid enemies, stupid stealth systems, pod systems, overwatch cheese, blind and deaf enemies on the map that do not come to check out what is happening and so on.
You clearly not played much JA2 nor JA3 enough, your posts are outright retarded. I wonder why I keep reading this drivel. Praising JA2 AI is just outright out of asylum. Atleast JA3 have NATO themed troops with significantly diferent AI, while all enemies in JA2 have exactly same AI, just different color shirts
Ok , I will admit I have not seen this advanced JA3 AI as everyone I watched does the same. Put everyone into stealth, move hilariously close to enemy during day, set up overwatch and then murder them all easily and then do same to next pod on same map. This is why I call AI blind and deaf.
In JA2 1.13 there is no way I can approach enemies inside effective range of my weapons before they also see me. I cannot even see them much before they see me without having one person use binoculars that gives tunnel vision instead of nuxcom 360 vision.
And once combat starts they come from everywhere on the map to murder my guys and there was certainly attacks of 4 or 5 guys at once and from multiple directions. Luckily so far enemies mostly have just pistols so they are forced to rush into range but it is going to get very interesting soon.

I play JA2 1.13 EVERY year, 20-40 hours before I am bored out. Last time was last october. You don't know much about 1.13 and it's problems, you obviously have no idea how JA3 works (oh, you watched streams! Jesus...) but you keep coming to this topic to bash the game that people enjoy. WTF is wrong with you? Unless you played the game meaningful time you can't really criticize it in meaningful way. Like seriously, praising 1.13 AI over JA3? What shit you smoking? JA2 AI is braindead, and it's UNIFORM among all human enemies. Here at least you have factions with different behavior.

And I hope you realize that MOST of things you talk here about is not in base JA2, but features of 1.13? Wait for 1.13 version for this game. You comparing mod to baseline game which is retarded. One is for wide audience, another is for autists. It's like comparing base NUXCOM to Long War. Retarded.

edit: btw, there is autistic Kraut JA 1.13 streamer who composed squad with Nigth-Ops/NVG/Silent weapons mid game and was raping with it relentlessly. So much for "there is no stealth in 1.13" bullshit. I will try to dig for it if I get time (and will)
Yesterday I had a big battle where most of my squad were prone in more open positions to pull enemies in while Fox waited inside a building with two guns for them to get into range to step out and take them out 1 by 1. Except after she did 2 such kills one of the enemies ran around that house and found open window to shoot her from behind.
In another case I was scouting forward with Barry trying to find some enemies for my rooftop shooters and ran into enemy that just moved behind a corner 2 squares next to Barry. After my bad action he got an interrupt and slashed Barry twice and ran behind the corner again to get out of sight.
That is good AI.

Why are you playing JA2 1.13 if it bores you?
It is good you finally found a casual game like JA3 to play.
 

Modron

Arcane
Joined
May 5, 2012
Messages
11,109
Men it is with a heavy heart that I must announce after having explored every single location Calvin Barkmore is indeed nowhere to be found.
 

Darth Roxor

Rattus Iratus
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,879,037
Location
Djibouti
Hesus, this game's UI was made in hell. The hotkeys make no sense and not being able to select specific mercs with the number keys is extremely bothersome.

Merc roster feels pretty poor.

The pod shit is as retarded as ever, as expected, and I'm only 3 sectors in. The one with the nigga dancing on the mine field was particularly grating.

The fact the enemies first all move and only then start shooting (outside pod shit) leads me to believe the AI is probably braindead.

WTF even is this stealth.
 

Sunri

Liturgist
Joined
Apr 16, 2020
Messages
2,902
Location
Poland
This game could be cool with warhammer conversion you lead team of space marines change all negroes to orcs coraze = eldar military guy = some chaos lord damm i fell like a genius right now no kapp
 

Twiglard

Poland Stronk
Patron
Staff Member
Joined
Aug 6, 2014
Messages
7,509
Location
Poland
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut
Quick questions:

How good is it compared to JA2 vanilla?

How good is it compared to JA2 1.13?
 

spectre

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2008
Messages
5,602
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]

Quick questions:
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.
 
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Ladonna

Arcane
Joined
Aug 27, 2006
Messages
11,304
oh wow this game doesn't have Cliff

DECLINE

Seriously?

Lucky I didn't buy it, otherwise I would have to "return to sender"

(Seriously, I will probably get it soon. Sounds like one of the only higher budget games I would be interested in for ages. But no Cliff is decline).

Anyone else of note missing?
 

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
Patron
Joined
Oct 3, 2015
Messages
13,102
thorbuns.png
:martini:
 
Last edited:

Abu Antar

Turn-based Poster
Patron
Joined
Jan 19, 2014
Messages
14,185
Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Quick questions:

How good is it compared to JA2 vanilla?

How good is it compared to JA2 1.13?
As someone who likes JA3, and will likely replay it, the game is not really on the level of either JA, JA2, or JA 1.13.

Still, it is not shit, in my opinion. The most annoying thing is what happens at the start of combat, where when the enemy sees you, they will go into cover. Another issue is that there are many small maps. People have said that sniper rifles are OP, and they are. I only use one sniper, though. My personal biggest pet peeve is that I can not choose to go into turn-based mode at will.
 

Beowulf

Arcane
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
2,026
Quick questions:

How good is it compared to JA2 vanilla?

How good is it compared to JA2 1.13?
As someone who likes JA3, and will likely replay it, the game is not really on the level of either JA, JA2, or JA 1.13.

Still, it is not shit, in my opinion. The most annoying thing is what happens at the start of combat, where when the enemy sees you, they will go into cover. Another issue is that there are many small maps. People have said that sniper rifles are OP, and they are. I only use one sniper, though. My personal biggest pet peeve is that I can not choose to go into turn-based mode at will.

It's far from shit. You highlighted the biggest issues that this game has. Snipers were OP in JA games anyway, you could just go prone and crawl to some rock or tree for cover to take the first shot.
Unfortunately the real time sneak mode and the scramble turn mechanic makes any other kind of stealth very inconsistent and hard to pull off. The issue is further compounded by the general UI clunkiness (e.g. you have to wait for certain animations to finish before you can do anything with another merc). It's nice that they tried to somehow solve the problem with perfect first turn on the player side, but it just doesn't work that well.
I also learnt to live with what the game throws at me regarding loot and it is a nice challenge, as you can't constantly use the same OP gun modified in exactly the same way for optimal performance. You have to sort of live off the land in a way, but I wouldn't mind a better trading interface and the ability to purchase at least some utility items.
Small maps are mostly for sectors that you travel through, the majority of important areas are decent to big.
Besides that the game has a lot going for it, including the visuals and the soundtrack. People shitting on it are either retarded, or doing it just for the sake of codex's leitmotiv.
 

Nortar

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Sep 5, 2017
Messages
1,485
Pathfinder: Wrath
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.

I think this is their way exactly to make player's team-building decisions more dynamic.
Otherwise it's too easy to fall into running the same "fotm meta" every time and never seeing different mercs.
Already it's hard for me to imagine starting a run without Barry and Livewire.

The GOLD subscription (other then being an obvious joke p2w refference) serves the same reason.
I don't know what triggered it, most probably it just based on time, but at one point I got an email infoming me that I was granted access to the legendary mercs without the sub fee.

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.

As for inventory management I agree that it's pretty shit sadly.
But at least you don't have to trade via dialog, just drop everything into sector stash and take it from there.
You don't even have to loot anything out of containers, as long as you've seen it, it's availabe in stash.

Oh, and a random pic from my playthrough:
aDDHpfw.png
 

Sunri

Liturgist
Joined
Apr 16, 2020
Messages
2,902
Location
Poland
So i finished vanilla ja 2 and now installed 1.13 i didnt change any values in the ini editor but after capturing Drassen I'm getting literary swarmed by basic goons 10/20 guys every few minutes i feel like I'm fighting some zerg rush is that normal?
 

Fargus

Arcane
Joined
Apr 2, 2012
Messages
3,866
Location
Mosqueow
So i finished vanilla ja 2 and now installed 1.13 i didnt change any values in the ini editor but after capturing Drassen I'm getting literary swarmed by basic goons 10/20 guys every few minutes i feel like I'm fighting some zerg rush is that normal?

Drassen counter attack. Most people love it some much they disable it the moment they reinstall 1.13.
 

Krivol

Magister
Joined
Apr 21, 2012
Messages
2,181
Location
Potatoland aka Prussia
So i finished vanilla ja 2 and now installed 1.13 i didnt change any values in the ini editor but after capturing Drassen I'm getting literary swarmed by basic goons 10/20 guys every few minutes i feel like I'm fighting some zerg rush is that normal?

Drassen counter attack. Most people love it some much they disable it the moment they reinstall 1.13.
Yep, and it's easy to be turned off (via ini editor).

I sometimes play with it, sometimes without it. The problem is Dressen is - according to the story - the first place to visit and conquer, and usually you have weak goons facing gazillions of enemies. You can chees through it (hide in a bar and kill every enemy entering the place) or try some guerilla tactics (night attack to re-conquer mine sector, few attacks - kill 5, retreat, repeat). Anyway, after that battle you will have more stuff you can use, some nice attachments, and if you found Shank already, you can drive all weapons to San Mona and sell it for 10k (trader has 10k, so you can only earn that much in 1 transaction).

BTW San Mona is a great place to start the game - you can sell loot you found in the wilderness (10k), win prizefights (15k - Dr Q or marble balls recommended), steal money from Kingpin's stash (25k), do the leather shop quest (10k? - I don't remember) and kill Kingpin (doable with some M14s - another 20k and great Steyr for the beginning). Then you can attack Drassen with Ivan, Reaper, Magic or whoever you want :P .
 

Sunri

Liturgist
Joined
Apr 16, 2020
Messages
2,902
Location
Poland
So i finished vanilla ja 2 and now installed 1.13 i didnt change any values in the ini editor but after capturing Drassen I'm getting literary swarmed by basic goons 10/20 guys every few minutes i feel like I'm fighting some zerg rush is that normal?

Drassen counter attack. Most people love it some much they disable it the moment they reinstall 1.13.
There are so many enemies that they literally shot each other in the back they went overboard af
yuSLAZK.png


wCcAXVZ.png
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
21,280
So i finished vanilla ja 2 and now installed 1.13 i didnt change any values in the ini editor but after capturing Drassen I'm getting literary swarmed by basic goons 10/20 guys every few minutes i feel like I'm fighting some zerg rush is that normal?

Drassen counter attack. Most people love it some much they disable it the moment they reinstall 1.13.
Yea, I read about it being stupid so I turned it off for my 1st play.
I also turned off reinforcements coming from neighboring sectors during combat because it turns cities into one big battle and 2 tiny stupid ones. From what I read it also lets your Militia always win attacks by soldiers as enemy squads cannot fight with all the reinforcements that come along with militia in that sector.
 

Sunri

Liturgist
Joined
Apr 16, 2020
Messages
2,902
Location
Poland
So i finished vanilla ja 2 and now installed 1.13 i didnt change any values in the ini editor but after capturing Drassen I'm getting literary swarmed by basic goons 10/20 guys every few minutes i feel like I'm fighting some zerg rush is that normal?

Drassen counter attack. Most people love it some much they disable it the moment they reinstall 1.13.
Yea, I read about it being stupid so I turned it off for my 1st play.
I also turned off reinforcements coming from neighboring sectors during combat because it turns cities into one big battle and 2 tiny stupid ones. From what I read it also lets your Militia always win attacks by soldiers as enemy squads cannot fight with all the reinforcements that come along with militia in that sector.
Yea after i recruited 20x militia in 3 sectors it's over because if they attack they will fight 40 guys at once or 60 if they move to the middle one
 

Darth Roxor

Rattus Iratus
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,879,037
Location
Djibouti
- Hory shit dis thing has effin free inventory access in combat, everyone plz stop shooting while I grab a soda and change my howitzer for an assault cannon.

- Dude moves one square in combat. Ding! +1 agility!

- Evil nigga decides to just run right past my 4 entrenched dudes and stand completely in the open.

- Evil nigga runs up, shoots me once. Then moves 1 square, shoots again. Then does the same thing two more times.

- I sneak up on a bunch of niggas. Shank one, they get SUSPICIOUZ. Shoot another. ZUMG enemy nigga SAW SOMEONE DIE!!!! All five enemy niggas now scatter into cover for free while two of my dudes are already out of AP after having moved. WHO FUCKING DESIGNED THIS.


GREAT GAME YOU HAVE HERE ASSHOLES, GOOD THAT THEY RELEASED A DEMO

Also,

image.png


'from Boreale for completing their special assignment'

welcome to 2023, where $CHARACTER_SEX$ is too complex of a fucking variable
(SORRY I FORGOT the characters here are genderless)
 

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