It’s been twenty-four years since the mercenary men and women from A.I.M. had a true sequel. A whole generation of gamers has cut their teeth on new turn-based strategy renditions of XCOM and BattleTech. But once again, the Jagged Alliance series proves that you can’t keep a good mercenary down. Finally, after a tortuous development life that puts even Duke Nukem Forever to shame, Jagged Alliance 3 returns, this time gracing not only PCs, but PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles as well!
Jagged Alliance 3 follows in the combat boot clad footsteps of its predecessors, both in terms of gameplay and story. A fictional third world country is in danger, and hiring mercenaries is the only effective way to fix it. There’s some resource to help pay the bills, and the player needs to try and keep his merc squads together and gradually free the country from whatever Big Bad is worse than whomever hired a bunch of mercs to “fix” the problem. This time, the fictional nation of Grand Chien is suffering under the flames of revolution thanks to a military coupé that has deposed the duly elected president and placed him under arrest in their camp. The revolutionary forces have also placed the diamond mines under their own control, threatening Grand Chien’s main export source.
Since the United Nations is presumably too busy aiding and abetting in war crimes elsewhere in the world, the independent business that runs the diamond mines hired mercenaries from A.I.M. to clean up the mess in the country, rescue the president, regain control of the diamond mines, and generally get things back to normal business operations.
The good news: you don’t have to worry about the big naval gun. The bad news: you do have to worry about the bad guys playing hide-and-seek inside the base.
Players take on both the tactical and strategic operations roles. Determining which mercs to hire, while avoiding personality conflicts and keeping a balanced team while not going over budget, is a critical skill. One aid in this is the return of the Create a Merc quiz, which provides players with a single customized merc of their own based on how they answer a series of “personality” questions. Those not interested in answering questions such as whether the proper use of landmines in home defense is in the front yard or strapped to the top of a Roomba can also just skip the questions and min/max their character stats instead.
On the tactical level, players take control of directing their squads when searching a sector and engaging in combat. Different weapon types offer a variety of special options, and players are not limited to having only one squad battle in a sector. Combat success is heavily dependent on making good use of cover, reaction fire, and having a balanced squad with skills and weapons that mutually support each other. Firearms enthusiasts will enjoy the wide variety of weapons included in the game, ranging from late 19th Century classics like the Gewehr 98 (a bolt-action rifle which would be the main German battle rifle in World War I) to modern weapons such as the M-16A2 and AK-74SU.
Where the shopping magic happens. At least, for things you can’t loot off the bodies of enemies who no longer need them.
The mercenaries themselves are a big part of what sets the Jagged Alliance series apart from other similar games such as XCOM. Where most other games feature soldiers with little personality, the mercs of Jagged Alliance 3 are all about big personalities. Some mercs work well together. Others will refuse to work with certain mercs, or will require a hefty additional fee to work with someone they can’t stand. When not in combat, they’ll sometimes make jokes or interact with each other. Depending on their skills, some mercs may also provide unique dialog options.
The PlayStation 5 version of the game runs well. The isometric perspectives used for combat do a good job of showing off the environmental details, but this isn’t a game that should be pushing any GPUs to their max. Of some concern were occasional random bad save files that would pop up during this writer’s gameplay. Jagged Alliance 3 automatically saves at the start of each combat turn (very helpful!) but deletes these autosaves after a certain point. Some bug with some of these autosaves would occasionally cause a file to be corrupted during the save process. Another issue with save files was that manual saves could be named, but would then lose the name in favor of the file system’s internal number when choosing to manually overwrite the file.
An interior environment. The combat system allows for targeting specific enemy locations (with greater or lesser degrees of difficulty and damage) and choosing different weapon modes (if the weapon supports it, of course).
Probably the biggest issue on console for Jagged Alliance 3 is UI quality of life. Although the developers clearly spent a lot of time working out how to make a very complex set of options work for a controller, the game was clearly designed with mouse navigation and keyboard shortcuts in mind. Toggling through merc hiring pages with R1 or L1, or swapping between three sets of squad command shortcuts using R2 and L2 is a cumbersome chore that had this reviewer almost constantly using the wrong button first.
The AI also can be subject to some extremely poor decisions. Watching enemies accidently kill each other with friendly fire from automatic weapons is hilarious, but seeing your allies do it is an exercise in frustration. Other AI issues mostly revolve around poor spawn points for militia on some maps, leaving them to run around trying to find a path to the enemy while the firefight rages on the other side of the map.
Semi-open outdoor environment. Still a fair bit of cover, but need to be careful.
The strategic Grand Chien map is huge, and a single playthrough will likely take players over thirty hours to complete. With a variety of branching side stories, it will take several playthroughs to see everything that Jagged Alliance 3 has to offer. Furthermore, developer Haemimont Games dropped a massive free content update on December 18th adding additional side-quests and a large underground complex.
Jagged Alliance 3 also doesn’t stray far from its roots in its difficulty levels. On anything but the easiest difficulty settings, players will need to move their mercs with a due amount of caution, or else be prepared to either spend a lot of time healing wounds after battles, or hiring new mercs to replace the ones who’ve been forced into an untimely “retirement”.
Indoor combat is a great place for grenades. Or a terrible place for grenades if you don’t have an explosives expert. Fortunately, this team has Barry, who is, in fact, something of an expert on things that go Boom!
Fans of the original games will love that Jagged Alliance 3 stays true to its roots. Likewise, fans of modern strategy games will find a lot to love here. After a long time spent in IP and development hell, with some bizarre starts and stops along the way, Jagged Alliance is back, and emphasizing that return like a .50 caliber bullet going through a refrigerator door into a binary explosive.
A review copy of Jagged Alliance 3 on PS5 was provided by the publisher for this article.
