Jagged Alliance 3 - Preview

Heypoorplayer checked out Jagged Alliance 3:

Jagged Alliance 3: War is an Expensive Business

When you’re paying people to risk their lives, that seldom comes cheap, and when playing a preview copy of Jagged Alliance 3, that was one lesson I quickly took to heart. Jagged Alliance 3 casts the player as the leader of a mercenary outfit tasked with rescuing the kidnapped president of a fictionalized African nation named Grand Chien from a vicious army of raiders known as The Legion. The first thing I did in the campaign was to recruit a team. Each character demanded a hefty price for fighting for me, with the insecure combat medic even asking for a higher price because he hates working with a swaggering musclebound mercenary on the team (aptly named “Steroid”). That was my first tip-off this strategy title was as much about managing people and finances as it is about the combat itself.

Jagged Alliance 3’s combat will be immediately reminiscent of the X-Com style of tactical turn-based RPG that’s been ascendant for the last decade, where characters move between full and half cover. What’s a little different about Jagged Alliance 3 is the action point system where characters have a pool of points they use for both moving and shooting. Characters can spend AP to go prone, decreasing their chance to get hit and increasing accuracy at the cost of making it more difficult if they’re flanked and need to scramble to their feet to move to a better position. This extra complexity adds a sense of tactical depth to the proceedings.

[...]