Jagged Alliance 3 is out after more than two decades since JA2. Read on to find out if the tactical gameplay makes up for the long wait.
Jagged Alliance 3 Review and Score Explanation
Jagged Alliance 3 Score Explanation
| Overall | It's not often that a game lives up to the reputation of its legendary franchise, but Jagged Alliance 3 is one of the few that has done exactly just that. It successfully captures the essence and nostalgic feel of the older games while making some welcome improvements to the mechanics, like inventory management, aiming, and movement. Of course, there are still a few missing features that fans might have hoped for, such as the ability to purchase guns from Billy Ray’s website. But hopefully, future patches or user-made mods will bring back these beloved elements to fully complete the experience. |
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| Story | Jagged Alliance 3 takes a satirical approach to the action movies of the early 1990s and 2000s. Set in the war-ravaged and vaguely West African/Caribbean country of Grand Chien, your mercenaries are tasked with taking down a ruthless warlord. But that's just scratching the surface of the game's appeal. The true brilliance lies in the intricate interactions between the dozens of recruitable mercs and taking part in the meaningful side-quests for the locals. Every decision you make reverberates through the game’s world, be it eliminating an NPC or investigating a series of suspicious farms in the middle of nowhere. This creates a sense of impact and consequence, truly investing you into the story. |
| Gameplay | Jagged Alliance 3 carries the legacy of the original games with the depth and complexity of both its tactical and strategic aspects. In tactical battles, you can use a wide variety of guns, take aim at any body part you desire, reduce buildings to rubble with explosives, and dispatch your enemies stealthily before they even know what hit them. In the strategic map, you can manage your mercs, renegotiate contracts, train local militia, and improve the skills of your guns for hire. You can also immerse yourself in a variety of side-quests, filled with things like thrilling investigations, adrenaline-pumping boxing matches, cockfight betting, and even the daunting challenge of curing a deadly plague. |
| Visuals | Though the graphics are average, Jagged Alliance 3 gives attention to the details. From the character designs of the individual mercs, allies, and enemies, to the environments with little details crammed into every nook and cranny. The game will also impress you with its scenic rendition of Grand Chien’s lush forests, arid deserts, and poverty-stricken dumps. |
| Audio | The soundtrack accompanying the game is reminiscent of a classic action movie, complete with jungle drums and chimes that transport you into Grand Chien's lush forests. The use of rolling drums and trumpets during the intense moments after you’re discovered by the enemy adds an extra layer of excitement to the experience. However, what truly steals the show is the exceptional voice acting for the various mercenaries and other characters. Despite some lines being a tad cheesy, the voice actors have managed to imbue their characters with vibrant personalities. |
| Value for Money | You'll be spending a lot of hours playing Jagged Alliance 3 and its immersive campaign. There’s just so much stuff to do: from training mercs, recruiting militias, buying weapons, prospecting for diamonds, and digging around dumpsites for bullets. Once you've completed the main campaign, there's always the option to start a new playthrough using different sets of mercs or setting up self-imposed challenges to keep things fresh. The game also comes hot off the press with modding support. In the months ahead, you can expect mods that will add new dimensions to your experience and possibly extend your playtime even further. |
Jagged Alliance 3 Review: Back in Action… Again!
Bringing back beloved game franchises can always be a risky endeavor, often resulting in mixed outcomes. Titles like 2014's Thief, Duke Nukem Forever, and the more recent Shenmue 3 have left fans with lukewarm impressions at best. However, when it comes to Jagged Alliance 3, developed by Haemimont Games, they have managed to hit the mark and recapture the essence of the original games.
Of course, some fans might argue that certain mechanics have been altered or removed - such as the absence of a gun shop or reduced interactivity with the world, compared to Jagged Alliance 2. But these perceived shortcomings can potentially be addressed through future patches or user-made mods. Ultimately, what shines through is the solid core experience of Jagged Alliance 3. It's undeniably enjoyable to play - almost too enjoyable in fact - making it difficult for me to even tear myself away from playing just long enough to write this review.
I’m confident to say that Jagged Alliance is back in action, proving itself just as resilient as one of the series’ most expensive merc, Gus Tarballs. And just like old Gus, not even retirement can keep this series down.
Jagged Alliance 3 Full Game Review
Pros of Jagged Alliance 3
| Things Jagged Alliance 3 Got Right |
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 Deep Strategic and Tactical Gameplay Immersive Campaign Colorful Cast of Characters Long Playtime and Modding Support |
Deep Strategic and Tactical Gameplay
The legendary Jagged Alliance series was famous for the depth of its gameplay, and Jagged Alliance 3 is no exception. The basic premise is that you run a mercenary company and move mercenaries around to defeat local forces. Your mercs move across sectors on a strategic map, after which you zoom down to a tactical map to fight the enemies occupying those sectors in turn-based battle.
From here, there are two game modes on the tactical map: real-time and turn-based. In real-time mode, your squad can move around the map freely as long as they aren’t detected by enemies. This gives you a chance to set up an ambush at a vital roadway with a machine gunner or have one of your snipers shoot isolated enemies and whittle them down before the fight starts.
Once the battle begins, you go into turn-based mode, which gives you many options as well. The environments are destructible, so you can do things like blow a hole in a building and attack enemies that way. Players also have the opportunity to execute precise shots at specific body parts of their enemies, allowing them to inflict various status effects depending on where they hit. If you see a particularly dangerous enemy approaching, you can headshot them for an easy kill or hit their legs to prevent them from getting too near.
However, what truly makes Jagged Alliance 3 stand on its own among its predecessors is how it retains the same level of detail to things outside combat. Once a tactical battle is over, you return to the strategic map, where you can manage your entire operation. Since your characters are, well, mercenaries, you'll have to keep them paid or else they’ll walk out on you. To keep your operation funded, you have to capture various mines across the country, as well as liberate nearby towns to keep those mines staffed.
Navigating tactical maps allows for looting valuable items and engaging with non-player characters through dialogue options, which can shape the game’s outcome. Some of these NPCs may even give you side-quests that will land you a new merc, a nice weapon, or money. Building a cohesive squad is also crucial as incompatible personalities may lead to bickering throughout the campaign, negatively impacting morale, and thus making your troops more likely to run or go berserk.
True to its predecessors, JA3 flawlessly combines tactical and strategic elements, creating an immersive experience that will keep you hooked. This is the only game where you can step into the shoes of a badass mercenary company boss in an RPG seamlessly blended with turn-based strategy, and a business management simulator. Trust me when I say there's nothing quite like it.
Immersive Campaign
Once you touch down in the rugged expanse of Grand Chien, there's no time to waste. Your budget is tight, barely enough to sustain a mercenary operation for two to three weeks at best. You need more money. So what do you do? Take over the biggest diamond mine you can travel to. Once your income starts flowing in, you brace yourself for the daunting task ahead: gradually freeing Grand Chien from its oppressors one sector at a time…
Or don't.
There is nothing stopping you from making a beeline to the very end of the map, and trying your hand at rescuing this impoverished nation's president from the warlord that took him prisoner. Well, almost nothing, other than the hordes of elite enemies who will put their lives on the line just to stop you. But the fact remains; you can try. Your mercs probably won't survive, but you can definitely try.
You can also take the opposite approach. Ignore the main quest entirely, and instead scour the countryside for all the enemy outposts, diamond mines, and side quests you can possibly take up. You can rescue a beleaguered squad of mercenaries trapped by bandits, or track down a rogue merc who eloped with a native woman, or even assist a German noble in obtaining a mutagenic growth hormone. There's no shortage of detours for you to take. These side quests may become so engrossing that saving the president becomes an afterthought.
The only thing that will force you to push forward with the main quest is the depletion of your older diamond mines every few months. Though, by the time they get depleted, you’ll have made so much money from them that it hardly even matters. Plus, either the creators or modders will eventually come up with a way to disable that mechanic entirely, making the game almost open-world with how you can get lost playing the little side stuff.
Colorful Cast of Characters
Another pillar of the Jagged Alliance series that the third installment has retained is the colorful cast of misfits you can hire throughout the liberation of Grand Chien. They run the gamut from a professional ex-SWAT Team commander to a deranged Cuban who named himself after Fidel Castro.
Just to give an idea of how varied they are, the squad I had in my first playthrough consisted of a former nurse turned gravure model, a former mime, a religious Hungarian bomb expert, a Pakistani call center agent, and an all-around American merc. Later on, I enlisted the services of a young Ukrainian girl who believes she’s the protagonist of a fairy tale, a Jamaican mechanic, and a stoner who was so high he forgot his entire identity for a while. He’s really great with explosives, though.
Each mercenary not only has their own specializations, but their own perks and abilities as well. Some mercs can safely run across an enemy’s overwatch field, meaning the enemy won’t fire if they run across their vision cone. Some mercs will spontaneously make their own explosives after a week or two. And some mercs are just plain psychotic, quite literally tearing your enemies to pieces. It’s up to you to decide how to leverage these different abilities and use them to complete your mission.
But outside of hunting for the best stats, it’s just enjoyable to see the interactions between the different mercs during missions. They praise each other, they diss each other, and they thank each other for being healed or given covering fire. As I mentioned earlier, putting together compatible mercs positively affects morale. These characters have a history with each other, so you need to be mindful of who you'll put together. For example, some mercs won’t join you because you fired their friend recently, or you hired one of their ex-wives. Others will hate certain mercs on the team because either they’re huge perverts, unprofessional, or simply just smells bad.
Long Playtime and Modding Support
Jagged Alliance 3 is a long game. Just one playthrough can take days to complete if you’re playing straight through it, more so if you don’t have a good idea of what to do at first. You’ll be running across Grand Chien, liberating towns and diamond mines, taking over enemy outposts, talking to NPCs, looking around trash bins and cabinets for scavenging, and helping an Indiana Jones ripoff find the country’s missing treasures. There’s so much to do in the game outside of fighting tactical battles, but it's not so much that it becomes overwhelming.
Once you’ve finished one playthrough, why not go for another one but use different mercs? Or use just one really expensive merc? Or maybe take a team of absolute losers and train them to become the most elite mercenaries the world has ever seen? And if none of that is your cup of tea, there’s something else that can extend your playthrough of Jagged Alliance 3 even more - the game comes with mod support.
That means, in the coming months, players will be coming up with mods that can probaly do anything from improving the game’s performance to adding new mercs and new locales to perhaps even overhauling the game. These mods can serve to not only enhance the great gameplay experience but also provide even more things to do in the game.
Cons of Jagged Alliance 3
| Things That Jagged Alliance 3 Can Improve |
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Sudden Performance Drops After Playing for a While Other Mechanics From Previous Games Some Missions Can Take Very Long |
Sudden Performance Drops After Playing for a While
During the whole time I played Jagged Alliance 3, it was largely a smooth experience. But, sometimes, it slows down quite a bit - especially after playing for a while. I don’t know whether this is a memory issue or something with the game’s engine, though hopefully that it’s something that will be resolved in a coming patch. It can be annoying to have to restart the game from time to time just so it would stop slowing down.
Absence of Weapons Shop, Other Mechanics From Previous Games
In the previous Jagged Alliance games, there was a website you could visit in-game called Bobby Ray’s Guns and Things. Through it, you could order all sorts of firearms and supplies for your mercs, which would then be transported via plane to any airport you’ve captured. Not only did you have to pay for the weapon, but you had to pay for shipping and handling as well! It might have been expensive, but at least it meant you had a steady supply of firearms to keep your guys fighting.
In Jagged Alliance 3, however, Bobby Ray and his website are absent. Your main source of weapons, ammo and other consumables will be the very same bandits you’ve gunned down. Though there’s a crafting mechanic that allows you to construct almost anything you need from various scrap weapon parts, there are times when you can’t use your prized sniper rifle anymore simply because you’ve run out of ammo for it. Needless to say, this can get really annoying.
Other features absent from the game but were present in Jagged Alliance 2 include not being able to send flowers over the internet to your main rival (it would’ve been very funny if you could do that again), not being able to examine most containers (even if they’re empty), and not being able to do things like steal a hospital’s medical supplies (which gives you a bunch of medical gear, but the doctors won’t be able to heal you anymore since, well, you took their stuff).
But, I’ll have to say that these missing mechanics can probably be restored with mods, or even by the developers themselves. As I mentioned earlier, the game comes with modding support from the get-go, so it may just be a matter of time before we can start ordering guns from Bobby Ray’s website again and pay him extra for overnight shipping.
Some Missions Can Take Very Long
Another issue I have with Jagged Alliance 3 is that some missions can take very long due to its turn-based system. For example, even if you’ve already defeated most enemies in the area, you’ll have to sweep it for the last bad guy. The problem is that you can only move six or so squares at a time, so it will take you a bit before you can find the last enemy on the map to finish the mission and go back to real-time mode.
This is an issue found in a lot of other turn-based strategy games as well, but some have provided solutions to this, such as having singular enemies retreat out of the area, or making them aggressive and having them actively hunt your party down. Either solution could be useful in Jagged Alliance 3.
Jagged Alliance 3 Story Plot
The poor island nation of Grand Chien is flush with diamond mines and loose firearms all over the country. But things take a turn for the worst when its elected president is kidnapped by a paramilitary force called "The Legion," headed by the enigmatic "Major." In dire straits, the president’s remaining family has pooled together enough resources to hire you and your group of skilled mercenaries (whom you've hired over the Internet) to not only rescue the president but take down the Major once and for all.
Just like other entries in the series, Jagged Alliance 3 is a parody of 1990s and early 2000s action movies, with a pop culture full of caricatures. From the stereotypical gung-ho mercenary to the psychopathic gun for hire, and everyone else in between - Jagged Alliance promises to have a big cast of characters who love and hate each other.
Who Should Play Jagged Alliance 3?
Jagged Alliance 3 is Recommended if You Enjoy:
• Jagged Alliance 2
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown / XCOM 2
• The Commandos series
Jagged Alliance 3 is a treat for fans of the legendary series. They will not be found wanting when they play this game, as it has the tactical and strategic depth of the original and more. Those who are used to other turn-based strategy games like XCOM and Commandos may also be surprised at just how deep this game can be, especially when it comes to mercenary interactions and the combat system. If you’re a turn-based strategy game fan, you shouldn’t sleep on Jagged Alliance 3.
Is Jagged Alliance 3 Worth It?
Worth Every Diamond
At $45, Jagged Alliance 3 packs so much content already, with the potential for more as the first user-made mods start coming out. If you’re a big fan of the older games, you won’t be disappointed by the gameplay, the immersive campaign, and the banter between your mercs.
Even those who are fans of strategy games in general will get a hoot out of Jagged Alliance 3, and it may even be the perfect game to play before playing the older titles.
How Jagged Alliance 3 Matches Up to Recently-Released Games
| Games That Came Out Recently | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
 The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie |
If you’re not a big anime fan, that may already be enough of a reason to buy JA3 over Trails into Reverie. But also, the game has just as much immersion while having a lower barrier to entry since you won't need to have played the last two Jagged Alliance games to get into JA3. This is in contrast to Trails into Reverie, which requires you to play Trails to Azure and Trails of Cold Steel beforehand to understand what's going on. | For those who ARE into anime, though, Jagged Alliance 3 might be a hard sell. Also, those who like more traditional RPG formats will probably be more at home with Trails into Reverie than JA3. |
 Exoprimal |
By the price-to-content ratio alone, you can get a lot more for a lot less in buying Jagged Alliance 3 compared to Exoprimal. Plus, there’s an actual story to follow, and characters you will like. | If you’re not into strategy games, however, Exoprimal is a decent game. Just get it through game pass, though, and I wouldn't recommend playing it too much. It will get repetitive. |
How Jagged Alliance 3 Matches Up to Similar Games
| Games Similar to Jagged Alliance 3 | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
 Jagged Alliance 2 |
Gameplay-wise, Jagged Alliance 3 is a more streamlined version of Jagged Alliance 2. If you’re looking for a new way to get into the Jagged Alliance series with sleek 3D graphics, JA3 is a good game to start with. | But, JA3 is deficient in some areas compared to JA2. Aside from the lack of a weapons shop, there are also a lot of small details that 2 had that didn’t come with 3, like the various websites you could visit and the many ways you could mess with the main villain. Still, we think these missing features will eventually be restored one way or another. |
 XCOM: Enemy Unknown |
Jagged Alliance 3 is a solid choice over XCOM: Enemy Unknown because of its roster of characters. If you want to take control of characters with very colorful personalities and see their interactions in-game, play JA3. Though nothing is stopping you from getting both games instead, considering how cheap XCOM: Enemy Unknown has become since it first came out in 2012. | There’s one thing XCOM has beat over JA3 though: the scale of the conflict. In JA3, you’re controlling a bunch of mercs in Grand Chien against a ruthless warlord. In XCOM, you’re controlling an organization tasked with protecting the entire Earth from an alien invasion. |
 Commandos 2 |
Commandos 2 is similar to Jagged Alliance 3, especially the stealth segments and the layout. But Jagged Alliance 3 has various business management and role-playing elements to it, giving much more potential playtime than Commandos 2. | Commandos 2 is a very solid game, though. The setting is also World War 2, so if you’re more into that, why not buy it on sale along with Jagged Alliance 3? |
Jagged Alliance 3 Trailer
Game8 Reviews
Jagged Alliance 3 Product Information
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| Title | JAGGED ALLIANCE 3 |
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| Release Date | July 14, 2023 |
| Developer | Haemimont Games |
| Publisher | THQ Nordic |
| Supported Platforms | PC |
| Genre | Turn-Based Strategy Game |
| Number of Players | 1-2 |
| ESRB Rating | Rating Pending (ESRB) / PEGI 18 |
| Official Website | Jagged Alliance 3 Website |
