Upon first entering into the world of jagged alliance, one soon realizes that there is much to be learnt about the game. Every decision that you make is going to either reward or hurt you later. This is the one thing that must stands out about this game, the top/over head perspective, almost in law of X-com. Fans of the X-com genre will be happy to find that like in X-com they will find themselves manning a party that they get to out fit themselves, this one thing that is better in JA is the fact that every mercenary that you choose had his/her past, and with it an identity.
This came as quite the surprise to me when I found my team arguing amongst each other. This can make the mission to take back control of the island of Metavira quite entertaining. The turn based combat can get tedious, but thankfully it only turns on around the baddies. My first initial reaction starting up isn't quite what it was leaving the game, to say the least it does get frustrating getting shot at and not knowing where the shots are coming from, especially if your mercenaries can't detect who's shooting. One of the best aspects, for replay value is that the combinations of weapons and mercenaries ed in are variety, then to try and beat the game under different
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skill levels is also sweet. As a frequent player, I also wish to point out that the sequel is much better in how missions are played out and the story line is a little less flaky. Another sweet aspect in the Rpg settings, even after each difficulty setting the game gets more entertaining as you improve your mercenaries setting up for the desire to keep them alive. There's noting more frustrating then having one of your characters hit a landmine and then come under enemy fire while your other mercenaries are too far away to give cover fire, but that's gorilla’s war fare for you.
For the extremist I recommend trying to get through the game with three mercenaries throughout, an achievement, thought tough, can become every rewarding come the very end. So Out of a hundred percentage rating, I'm going to give JA a 93. Highly recommended on the accounts that I still am playing this game on my original disks.
