Seems like I was wrong about the exp system, but I need to play a bit more to confirm. I saw the progress bar under Experience and a big ass "Level Up" button and naturally assumed the worst.
What can I say, the trauma and butthurt from Back in Action is still strong with me.
If you show me a dolly doll, I can still point to where Shitcomposer has touched me.
After shooting some guys, a progress bar started to fill up under Marksmanship, so there is hope that it's actually Halal.
The big inactive "level up" icon, which leads me to believe that there wll be some points to spend here, or maybe some other choice to be made.
I've yet to levelup, so I can't say what do we get, my bet it's to choose perks and/or points to spend.
Anyways, the system appears to look like this:
There are three stats: Physique (hit points), Coordination (action points), Intelligence (exp gain and morale (sic)).
Then we get 6 skills which form a separate category: Shooting, Medical, Mechanical, Explosion, Melee, Stealth which determines .
On top of that, each char seems to have 4 perks, this is minor stuff like slightly increased vision range, accuracy bonuses when close, reduced AP costs for various stuff etc..
Not terrible, it's obvious they wanted to streamline the JA2 system for modern audiences a bit, I will give them the benefit of the doubt for the moment.
I looked into the hire Mercs tab, it's available after I left the first sector. It teleports new guys right into my squad... which makes little fucking sense, but eh.
First impressions on the roster:
Mostly familiar faces from JA2 as well a few new ones. Since apparently this game is supposed to be a prequel, the guys indeed look like less badass, younger versions of themselves.
Portraits are hit or miss. Some are nice, others are pretty bad (I can see Shadow's fanbase will not be impressed here).
As expected, the writing in the bios and item descriptions oscillates between mediocre and bland. Obviously the kickstarter money wasn't enough to hire a native speaking editor,
and the guy at FC doing the writing is struggling to do so in his second language.
I didn't get much chance to check the voice acting, just a few lines from each guy. It appears that they made an effort to pick guys who sound jsut about right.
Unfortunately (from the limited sample I'd heard) apart from sounding ok, the delivery seems to suffer and the lines feel forced compared to the original lines.
While my initial disgust appears to have settled, the first impression stands - can't shake the feeling that what I got is a chinese knockoff (though it may be slightly reinforced by the fact that the release I got is chinese). It does feel better than the unfortunate previous attempts, but just barely.