I backed this game. I'm not sure why anyone else would have bought it. The early access reviews were dismal. The release reviews were just as bad. I didn't play either of these builds. I waited till the current version (1.2, which logically is the second post release patch) to play it, and quite honestly came with no expectations.

I also had no expectations when I picked up Jagged Alliance 2 out of the bargain bin 14 years ago. I would have been happier with a good fantasy RPG back then, but I had played all the ones in the store at that point, or wasn't willing to pay the price for a new game. It turned out that I was pleasantly surprised. Jagged Alliance 2 is a classic, and the model for Jagged Alliance: Flashback. You play a mercenary, who you get to generate in typical rpg style. A group of rebels on a Caribbean island hire you to retake their country from a corrupt dictator. As you capture sectors, you gain more income, which you can use to hire additional mercenaries. You'll need them, because the dictator begins to send more and better trained squads to retake the island.  One thing that makes Jagged Alliance 2 stand out is that each mercenary is unique, with their own skills, personality, and equipment. The game essentially consists of three parts and they are the tactical battles between your mercs and the dictator's troops, the strategic map where you decide which sectors to attack, and where you train militias to protect your conquests, and your management of your ever growing squad of mercenaries.

    (Using terrain to set ambushes can mean the difference between victory and defeat).

Jagged Alliance: Flashback has copied these three pillars of game-play. To give credit where credit is due, they've done it pretty well. The tactical battles are fun. Though some tactical aspects from Jagged Alliance 2 are missing (such as multistory buildings) , the maps have enough terrain to be interesting. Different structures can give you light, partial, or full cover, and these offer varying degrees of protection depending if you are standing, crouching, or lying on the ground. Fighting in the open will get half of your squad killed, so the trick here is to use the terrain to your advantage, drawing enemies into ambushes, and pulling back when outnumbered. Also conquering sector after sector on the strategic map works well. Its not only a matter of conquering sectors, but holding them. So your troop usually need to not only defeat the enemies in an area, but also defend it for a time against reprisals while you build up a trained militia, which can then hold the sector on its own. This slow push across the map is extremely rewarding. Also hiring and managing your team is fun. Each mercenary has their own voiced reactions, just like in the first Baldur's Gate, and the voices are for the most part well done, which gives each merc their own feel. Unfortunately, this is where the personalities of the mercenaries end. The idea presented during the kickstarter to give them more detailed personalities is missing, unless you consider a few lame jokes made about a some of them during the loading screens personality development. These things were fun enough that I invested 17 and a half hours in this game, and I would have probably finished the conquest of the island (though not the side quests) had I not encountered a bug, which destroyed 2 hours of progress, but more on that later.

       (Conquering sector after sector gives one a true feeling of accomplishment.)

This core game-play experience then which is present in Jagged Alliance: Flashback, is only a copy of earlier Jagged Alliance game-play. So what has Full Control done to make this game unique from or better than the 15 year older Jagged Alliance 2? The answer is nothing. Granted, Full Control stated from the outset that they could never reach the scope of Jagged Alliance 2, which was a rather large game. That was okay with me during the kickstarter, because they had ideas how to make the game different and interesting in its own way, but unfortunately failed in implementing them.

One way the developers wanted to make the game different was to give the game its own unique atmosphere. Initially the idea was that the story should take place in the cold war Soviet Union, and not on an island. Too bad they went away from this idea. Instead we have an island which lacks in comparison in terms of scope, variety, interesting NPCS, and quests to the island of Jagged Alliance 2. While the maps themselves have some interesting visual features, these aren't fleshed out in any way and one wonders if failure of funds and development time weren't the cause. Consider the Disciples and King's Bounty series. Both are small budget version of Heroes of Might and Magic, but with their own unique atmosphere. They both manage to separate themselves from that game in atmosphere enough that a lot of players like them as well or better than the Heroes games.

Even if the developers wanted the game to take place in a familiar setting, they could have given the game its own unique and well told story. Jagged Alliance 2 didn't really have that much of a story, but it was told with humorous cut scenes, and interesting side quests, which made the game memorable. Here also Jagged Alliance: Flashback fails. The story is minimalistic, poorly written, and presented in unattractive windows. I know the game had a small budget, but games like Expedition: Conquistador and Avernum show how one could present story and atmosphere with minimal budget and resources. Many of the side quests are just embarrassingly bad. I thought, for example, the “have sex with my wife” quest that a bar owner gives would have some sort of twist, but no; it's really what it says it is. There is also the “find the guns I forgot in the woods” quest. Most of the side quests simply lead to battles very similar to the ones you have to fight normally. Even the “serial killer bounty” quest doesn't feel or look any different from a normal battle. I love quests, but quite honestly I decided to ignore the side quests after a while. Even getting an extra mercenary or some unique equipment didn't seem worth the bother.

One could also try to make the game more accessible than the original. For example, by having less skills and attributes. Or one could instead of having a “learning by doing” skill system, ala Skyrim, rather than assigning points at level up. The streamlined system of Jagged Alliance: Flashback is definitely not something I prefer, though I can understand the logic of implementing one, if its carried out properly with a good help function, manual, and a step by step tutorial. Jagged Alliance: Flashback fails here as well. There is no manual. There is no help function. There is a tutorial, which seems more like an afterthought than a planned affair. Its basically a very easy battle on the tactical map, where occasionally screenshots are shown to try to explain the game. One only sees the screenshots once, and I couldn't find a way to view them again later in the game. For example, I wanted to find out how to heal on the world map (which I remembered reading about in the tutorial, but didn't need until later in the game) and had to go to the Steam forums to read how. So in the end the game isn't really friendly enough to new players to justify the simplifying of the RPG mechanics.

               (NPC interaction is mostly forgettable, if not downright bad.)

The graphics from Jagged Alliance 2 are obviously quite dated, and here Full Control could have made something which sets itself apart from the original game. Granted, the maps look better than the original ones. But going back to screenshots of the original game, I was surprised by how little Full Control had done in terms of portraits or character models. Perhaps Pillars of Eternity will prove me wrong, but the games I've played in Unity so far (Might and Magic X, Wasteland 2, Expedition:Conquistadors) haven't been all that impressive graphically, and this is also sadly the case with Jagged Alliance: Flashback. It also doesn't help in my opinion, that the game was built with modding in mind. The maps look like they have built with building blocks, just like the Neverwinter Nights games did. It may also be my personal opinion, but I dislike the text, I find the textures lack sharpness, and the character models look all more or less the same to me. Jagged Alliance 2 might have very old graphics, but in terms of sharpness, art direction, and variety, it is visually more appealing to me than Jagged Alliance:Flashback. I prefer good old graphics to at best mediocre new ones, but that just may indicate how old I am.

Even after all I've said I still think any game which in its core fun is deserves at least a 5/10 score, provided it plays smoothly, but unfortunately Jagged Alliance still has a few big bugs. I tend to be a person who ignores minor bugs that don't directly have an effect on gameplay. That some of the Steam achievements don't seem to work properly also doesn't really bother me, for example. However, I've came across three major bugs in my playthrough. First there is the incredibly sloppy bug where all female characters (mercs, enemy soldiers, and NPCS) start on every map in the lying position. While not a problem when attacking a sector, it is very annoying when defending a sector, as you usually have about 2 real time minutes to move your squad before the enemy appears. People laying on the ground move more slowly, and bringing them into standing position also takes 2 clicks. Also my camera froze on the tactical map. This luckily was fixable by simply reloading the last save, but resulted in me saving almost every round of combat on the tactical map, just to be safe. The bug which ended my playthrough appeared on the strategic map. I had one squad defending a captured fort, while another was moving across the map. After my successful defense, I returned to the strategic map, to find my moving squad frozen in place. Neither reloading from earlier in the battle, nor trying to form a new squad, nor switching to the tactical map would help. I simply had 5 mercs frozen in place. My last strategic map save was two hours back, and all those mercs had 2 week contracts, which is an eternity in game time. I just decided the game wasn't enough fun for me to try to come to a solution, so I gave up at that point.

                                (The infamous 'female lying prone' bug.)

The sad thing about Jagged Alliance is that the core gameplay is good. Everything surrounding it is not. In its current state, I couldn't possibly recommend that anyone buy it. If all the bugs were fixed it would probably be a three star game, but Jagged Alliance:Flashback would still be totally superfluous as it doesn't do anything different enough from or better than the 15-year-older Jagged Alliance 2. In fact, the main thing playing Jagged Alliance: Flashback awoke in me was the desire to repurchase from GOG a Windows 7 compatible version of the classic game.

-Forgottenlor