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.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

You forgot Magic, but he's expensive.

That's fair, since most of the Gold mercs are out of your reach until you kind of don't need them anymore. I get what they were going for with that, but it kind of makes everyone in the top tier feel like something you go out of your way to play as, and I say that as someone who frequently got Shadow and Scope on my teams back in JA2. That AIM merc limit was also kind of annoying.

Finished it a couple of weeks ago. I liked the ending, though I kind of messed up getting the evidence. I didn't get the thing from the Major, since I didn't take everywhere out first, and thus Corazon got hit with a lesser conviction than she should have had. I also didn't like how despite pretending to give you different solutions to parts involving the Diesel quest, you keep ending up having to shoot these people. That's counting certain parts of the zombie quest, btw. Since all sci-fi aspects of the game are deeply linked together.

Other observations. I really appreciate the cover system. Both knowing when you're in cover and being able to destroy the lower quality cover. Tying into that, the ability to see precisely where a perfect shot goes is also very helpful. On the other hand, explosives that aren't grenades feel kind of useless. Here they're just fancy grenades. I think with the newer stealth system, you could have made something really cool with them, but no, you just throw them, and anywhere you can throw them will alert whoever it is you're trying to sneakily bomb.

Speaking of stealth, two of the better stealth mercs aren't actually stealth per say. I stumbled on an interesting combo starting up a second playthrough. Fox and Grunty. Fox keeps her AP from her opening attack, so put her and Grunty near some poor schmucks, Fox opens up, and then Grunty gets an automatic attack upon entering combat. It's not game-breaking or anything, but if you do it right, the enemy have two less soldiers right off the bat.

 

[deuxhero]

I've found placed/timed explosives most useful when you're on the defensive in a chokepoint. Not super useful though.

 

[Papill0n]

As soon as the option to hire the legendary mercs from the beginning was there, I tried getting many of them so i could try them out before the merc limit was full. So I regulary get them early in my latest playthroughs. But that forces me to go fast after a few mines because money issues. Magic isn't really worth his money because they botched his special perk (how tf did the end up with second story man for him... how?)

Cover system is kinda weird, Ja2's system was simple, straighforward. So here we gain some AP if we cover behind a wall, if we go prone instead we don't. If we crouch and don't get hit, we don't get AP back either... wtf. It's complete nonsense but I guess it's industry standard nonsense. Similar thing with sidestepping. It would be one thing to fire blindly around a corner and suffer some accuracy penalty. But stepping out of cover in a grid-based game is simply walking one grid away and should be treated logically as such. And it's not like they can interrupt you (unlike Ja2) so what's even the point in the magic sidestep shot?

As for Fox and Grunty, the same is true with Len and Grunty. If we start an attack with Len's special, we'll have grunty do another free attack on top of that. In chokepoints, you can massacre them just like that.

Explosives: Remote are great because they're essentially stronger grenades. The rest is best used to throw somewhere and then explode it by shooting at it. Proximity works at times when placed in anticipation of enemy spawns or patrols while timed... Is nigh useless. Maybe if you suppress, tire and apply whatever sorts of debuffs to enemies or to force them out of a position, but that's very situational.

 

[3 others]

As soon as the option to hire the legendary mercs from the beginning was there, I tried getting many of them so i could try them out before the merc limit was full. So I regulary get them early in my latest playthroughs. But that forces me to go fast after a few mines because money issues. Magic isn't really worth his money because they botched his special perk (how tf did the end up with second story man for him... how?)

The "second story man" comes from his bio text in the original Jagged Alliance where he (along with Jimmy) was a part-time thief who had his apartment staked out by the police and all that. Maybe "2nd story man" is some Canadian euphemism for a cat burglar. The term always confused us when we were kids so it makes so maybe it did the same for the devs too and they went for a literal interpretation.

Even if the perk doesn't really fit Magic's playstyle, I still like the guy. Shame he doesn't get along with Buns.

 

[Yosharian]

> Maybe "2nd story man" is some Canadian euphemism for a cat burglar. The term always confused us when we were kids so it makes so maybe it did the same for the devs too and they went for a literal interpretation.

It does mean that. Don't think it's Canadian though. It's a universal phrase for breaking and entering

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Cover system is kinda weird, Ja2's system was simple, straighforward. So here we gain some AP if we cover behind a wall, if we go prone instead we don't. If we crouch and don't get hit, we don't get AP back either... wtf. It's complete nonsense but I guess it's industry standard nonsense. Similar thing with sidestepping. It would be one thing to fire blindly around a corner and suffer some accuracy penalty. But stepping out of cover in a grid-based game is simply walking one grid away and should be treated logically as such. And it's not like they can interrupt you (unlike Ja2) so what's even the point in the magic sidestep shot?

I was thinking in comparison to base JA2's along with JA/JA:DG's system where you felt more like it was guesswork if you were behind cover or not. Though, as you say, there's very much room for improvement.

As for Fox and Grunty, the same is true with Len and Grunty. If we start an attack with Len's special, we'll have grunty do another free attack on top of that. In chokepoints, you can massacre them just like that.

Interesting, with the three of them you might just have a pretty interesting combo. I'd say throw in Mouse for her ability to get out of overwatchs scot-free, but she hates Fox.

Explosives: Remote are great because they're essentially stronger grenades. The rest is best used to throw somewhere and then explode it by shooting at it. Proximity works at times when placed in anticipation of enemy spawns or patrols while timed... Is nigh useless. Maybe if you suppress, tire and apply whatever sorts of debuffs to enemies or to force them out of a position, but that's very situational.

The problem I had with proximity is you have to wait until they're really far away, or they'll hear it, since I was trying to use explosives while sneaking. Timed I found was fine, not great, but enemies didn't really seem like they cared about it. Then again, considering I've seen some enemies take a PETN blast pretty close to the blast, maybe they're right.

> Maybe "2nd story man" is some Canadian euphemism for a cat burglar. The term always confused us when we were kids so it makes so maybe it did the same for the devs too and they went for a literal interpretation.

It does mean that. Don't think it's Canadian though. It's a universal phrase for breaking and entering

Yeah, it's pretty universal, at least in North American English. Dunno about Brits and Australians, but I've seen it in other places. It's used less these days because proper burglars like that have gone away for people who don't mind resorting to violence. (yeah, yeah, yeah, an unnecessary distinction on my part, but how else do you explain it?)

 

[Ghost Of Iron]

It's really a shame this game won't be expanded on, it was a fun experience and I wanted to play at least one more campaign of it. We'll see if modders do anything with it, but given the relative lack of activity on that front I doubt it. Still, it was a great game regardless, and perhaps there's hope for a decent JA4 sometime in the future as a result.

 

[Papill0n]

It's really a shame this game won't be expanded on, it was a fun experience and I wanted to play at least one more campaign of it. We'll see if modders do anything with it, but given the relative lack of activity on that front I doubt it. Still, it was a great game regardless, and perhaps there's hope for a decent JA4 sometime in the future as a result.

There's at least one group of guys who's doing some campaign stuff. I am doing some campaign stuff, too. What is holding us back - for me at least - is the mapping. Ja2 mapping was lightning fast compared to Ja3 mapping. The mod editor in general is very slow. Maybe I should get a better rig. But just for Ja3 modding I won't. Other guys seem to be able to come up with nice maps already though, and there are a few tech wizards, too who can do very creative stuff. But this needs some time and the question is, wll anybody still play Ja3 when some noteworthy campaign stuff comes out or has everyone moved on to the next XCom2 clone.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Should have picked Barry earlier.

 

[Beowulf]

It's really a shame this game won't be expanded on, it was a fun experience and I wanted to play at least one more campaign of it. We'll see if modders do anything with it, but given the relative lack of activity on that front I doubt it. Still, it was a great game regardless, and perhaps there's hope for a decent JA4 sometime in the future as a result.

There's at least one group of guys who's doing some campaign stuff. I am doing some campaign stuff, too. What is holding us back - for me at least - is the mapping. Ja2 mapping was lightning fast compared to Ja3 mapping. The mod editor in general is very slow. Maybe I should get a better rig. But just for Ja3 modding I won't. Other guys seem to be able to come up with nice maps already though, and there are a few tech wizards, too who can do very creative stuff. But this needs some time and the question is, wll anybody still play Ja3 when some noteworthy campaign stuff comes out or has everyone moved on to the next XCom2 clone.

I will play it even years later, so better make it good. Please.
JA3 has some flaws, but it's still miles better tactics game than any XCom clones.

Sure, some of it was just trying different mods and idling, but that's a remarkable achievement for a single player game this days to hold my attention for so long.

 

[Papill0n]

You don't wanna know my hours clocked into it (though I guess it also counts hours spent in mod edtor). Last played 7 January was the before the Extension/DLC?

 

[Beowulf]

Correct, haven't touched the DLC stuff yet.

 

[Papill0n]

In my opinion, the DLC is not a huge deal. Too much clichée even for a JA game. But it can be a challenge, so that's that. I would have hoped for a cooler DLC though :/