Jagged Alliance 3 Review – Finally a worthy return

The Jagged Alliance series is long past its heyday. Most of their representatives, released in recent years, did not cost much, and maybe we still have too decent. However, now this brand wants to return to the spotlight again through Jagged Alliance 3, which should be a real successor to its predecessors. How things are with this thing, we will tell in the following paragraphs of our review.

• Platform: PC (review)
• Publication date: 07/14/2023
• Manufacturer: Hamimont Games
• Genre: Strategy
• Czech localization: No
• Multiplayer: Yes (collaboration)
• Data to download: 14.6 GB
• Game time: 30+ hours
• Price: from 1078 CZK (Steam)

Jagged Alliance 3’s plot sends you to a troubled island

The Jagged Alliance brand has always parodied old action movies. Therefore, the plot very often took place in tropical places, where you had to clean up a bit with mischievous dictators. So the man had his Expendables on hand to work with the common people and save them. The storytelling of Jagged Alliance 3 offers players a popular format, so that you will go to the tropics again. However, this time the time has come not to overthrow the sinister dictatorship, but to save the president and his family, who have been removed from power by the Legion terrorist organization. It all started with a phone call from the president’s daughter, Emma, ​​asking for help to get better, and honestly, who’s better than your group, right?

The story of Jagged Alliance 3 itself is built on relatively clichéd foundations that don’t offend, but aren’t particularly inspiring either. Simply put, this is a narrative that we have already seen many times. A certain form of superstructure is the presence of elections here. The island republic of Grand Chien is big enough to give your boys and girls the power to make all sorts of tough decisions. Sometimes it will only be a simple choice, but sometimes it also happens that a simple “yes” or “no” will not be enough to succeed, but you will also have to use the leadership qualities of your characters to help you take a closer look at the situation. the essence of the problem and, for example, offer solace to a woman with a kidnapped husband. So when you succeed in persuasion. If you fail, you are just out of luck.

Shaping the fate of Grand Chien Island is definitely not easy. Sometimes elections are a really difficult discipline, and, frankly, the right decision at first glance does not always lead to a positive result. The island itself is not an open world, but a space divided into a series of interconnected maps that you navigate and solve various tasks. The idea of ​​the plot is actually quite simple, as soon as you leave, the struggle for your life begins for you, within which you slowly clear the starting position, and then other places from representatives of the Legion faction. .

However, the game world lives here, so you also protect the acquired positions from possible intruders and try to save the resources and people needed for further expansion. The handling of individual destinations can’t deny the fact that these are indeed intricately designed battlefields, offering the player a wide range of options to overcome difficulties in Jagged Alliance 3. As with commandos, there is also the ability to deal with enemies without attracting much attention, which is often helpful.

Life is a struggle in Jagged Alliance 3

Most of the time, your heroes don’t face the same number of opponents, but different strengths, eliminating which simply pays off if you get fully noticed as late as possible. But as soon as the exposure does occur, the combat phase begins, which is purely turn-based, so you can’t count on any big game for sure. Although the question is how you look at it. The turn-based format has the potential to offer elements in this game to really loosen up and show your enemies that cornering you wasn’t the smartest idea they could have in their oak sticks. Yes, there are a lot of explosives.

However, they are not the main tool, although you can definitely win decently with them. The main toy with which you have to work is firearms, the assortment of which, in short, is very diverse. You can get your hands on light machine guns, assault rifles, pistols, shotguns, or your favorite sniper gear. You can count on both current technology and not quite the youngest. But when it shoots, it can always be used to shoot. Where exactly your fired projectile flies is really up to you. You can aim at the enemy’s head, arms, chest, crotch, or legs. Each of the body parts of the enemy has a different effect on the functioning of its owner.

You can increase your hit chances by spending more Action Points, which you use during combat to move, upgrade ammo, or pick equipment from dead bodies. However, as is often the case in these games, even the best shooter in Jagged Alliance 3 may not hit the target with all his efforts. Chance is sometimes a beautiful monster. Fortunately, you can actively work with the heroes and thus slowly turn them into deadly machines. Each character is essentially unique, with whom you then work within well-defined rules, determined primarily by the aspects in which a given mercenary excels.

In practice, this means that, for example, the Steroid that evokes memories of Duke Nukem is a power-oriented character. Therefore, it is easy to improve his strength specializations, while the mechanic Kalin can turn into a very decent shooter with the right guidance. Along the way, everyone not only develops within their abilities, but also builds relationships with each other and improves, including in battles and performing certain actions. Every mercenary needs money, medicine and ammunition to survive. You get it all during operations on the island, which is the perfect setting for wild gunfights as well as quiet action. Jagged Alliance 3’s cast of characters consists primarily of legendary characters from the series.

When it comes to the difficulty of the battles that you have to go through with your mercenary groups during the game, it is relatively high, at least in my opinion. Most of the time you run into difficulties that bet that the real strength lies in the number of weapons. Sometimes the AI ​​does a decent job in fights, but it doesn’t always know what to do during its turns. However, for the most part, at least in my opinion, it performed relatively well with the resources available. She tried to surround the group, actively destroyed the environment, and when the opportunity arose, she even launched into a wilder attack. It could have been better, but there is certainly no place for unnecessary criticism in this case.

Jagged Alliance 3 doesn’t put the series to shame

The island empire of Grand Chien became my temporary home for several dozen hours in Jagged Alliance 3, which needed to be cleared of a strange organization full of deranged magors who wanted my team dead. The story didn’t appeal to me much, but what the game lacked in that regard, it made up for in moments when it came to tactical battles full of tricky moves where tactics and luck determined my fate. The character development was fluid, but by no means difficult.

I was most interested in handling the game world with destructible environments. The main problem, on the contrary, has become a certain degree of stereotype associated with the fact that you often encounter fairly similar groups of enemies. This drawback slightly reduces the ability to train locals and complete battles automatically, but in this case you will incur unnecessary losses. However, despite this shortcoming, I have no problem recommending Jagged Alliance 3 to all fans of this series.