There's an interesting titbit I want to share about Welcome to the Jungle, yes the GnR song. My family during my childhood would blast that song, I'd see movies playing it during intense scenes, and there's the famous Megamind scene we all know of.
Jagged Alliance 3 is kind of like that, all the cheesy one-liners, tough façade, romanticizing weapons, causing mayhem, taking down the bad guys, and saving people. It's a formula that has been standardized by hyper masculine American action films, and in nicely fun, satirical way, it still works here. And the song itself doesn't get that old either. All that in a solid Tactics RPG.
Don't get me wrong, this game has clunky interface, questionable design choices, and I hate the RNG, yet I also love it. I can still make the game work, because I am having such a blast playing this. It's a difficult one, I made bad calls and had to reflect on too, as well as save scum. Yet plenty of dumb fun to be had here.
In the nation of Grand Chien, there's so much that have gone wrong, militias taking over, people are being stripped of their rights, resource mining, some megalomaniac wants to burn everything down, and then occasionally some zombie outbreak somewhere.
This game is made by an European developer, so they aren't exactly holding much back in terms of what they can make fun of, that includes using certain stereotypes, but then again, people here shoot each other, I'd say the setting makes almost anything mostly plausible.
I cleared out a village with my small ragtag group of mercenaries, asking for some help here and there, they had requests, some of them useful for my needs to finance the people I hire. I mean, sadly I can't keep them around for long, I'll run out of money eventually, so I have to make money to keep people for hire, while also doing god knows what else in this war-torn island nation.
One of the biggest mistakes I made was hiring too many guys, because I kept losing more money. But it made more sense to me at the time because these guys couldn't shoot for s**t. They have shots missing even just point blank distance at their targets. It was getting ridiculous. That also made me realize I miss other things like stats and abilities of theirs later on.
Their interactions do more to compensate for that, because these mercenaries aren't just fodder or tools for hire. They're people too, and they come with various personalities, quips, and good sense of humour too. Some people need plenty of that considering what goes on in here.
My second enemy base was a complete difficulty spike, as it was an area close to the village I liberated. Just an hour later, most of my poorly equipped rookie mercs are sort of unmatched against these guys. I still have a chance to win this, but it is a long shot. Based on various factors.
I did not have weapon variety, everybody had pistols except a few that manage to snag an AK-47, and a sniper rifle. Out of the 6 people I had, everybody was missing shots, and you know what I got my hubris? Two snipers with one positioned on a tower, a guy with a rocket launcher, bunkers, crazy militias, and oh, I found the son of the villager. Not even enough explosives and health packs to use.
So bad idea, I got my squad to retreat, and their wounds needing to be treated. Here's the other thing, I need resources like meds for treating wounds, and parts for fixing damaged weapons. Weapon jamming happens too, this game has incurred severe stress into the whole micromanaging thing, and I was so far 3hrs in. And now, I need money to hire mercs, and more arsenal power. It hasn't even come to my attention that hiring 6 people was haemorrhaging lots of money.
So I a few more missions like clearing out, I saved more people, trained militias for protection which have yet to have use, treasure items did keep me afloat, but there was no revenue stream till I found a diamond mine. Yeah, so selling goodies wasn't cutting it, and I had to fight against Hyenas, and madmans with machetes alongside the rest of the militias.
I made another decision, and that was hiring 2 more mercs. One of them had a shotgun. Each of these mercs having roles is important as it helps me know who can do what. For example, I make anyone else besides a bomb expert throw a grenade, mishaps happen, and well, that's not a risk am willing to take. Medics can treat units better, and then there's my favourite all-rounder; Grizzly.
Ok, so new crewmembers, a diamond mind, and some new gears later, I was back baby. That base that pretty much put my team down? Yeah, well we came back harder this time. 2-way split in both deployment areas, and started coming after them from both sides. There are stat bonuses for stealth approaching and flanking enemies.
The physics based sandbox is also designed to create uneven changes during combat, some of enemy covers can even be destroyed. I mean, for crying out loud, they have grenades and rockets. Units with more AP points can go further, and use more abilities often. And ah, weapons can easily be modded, providing all kinds of bonuses.
So two way of playing this game best is having useful mercs with good stats, and weapons that help make things a lot easier. But if anything, maybe hiring a few mercs who are more experienced, and stronger soldiers to fight a lot of militias at once. Then again, I checked and they cost up the wazoo.
At this point, just a few places I had left and some optional missions given, I checked out a spooky mansion filled with landmines that my bomb guy had to sort out. Those things can do nearly kill anyone. I engaged in battle twice, the second one had guys coming in hard, and one of them killed my Russian shotgun guy. My first permakill and crew lost.
It's like my whole experience so far, just 7-8hrs in was being nearly destroyed by them, then coming back after spending money and finding better weapon and gears, learning to repair, and all that. And the funniest thing is, the last thing I just found out is that I can create my own commander, and I don't have to pay em nothing, because they is me. At the complete last point.
Unfortunately forgot to change portrayal and give a name, so this happened instead. Oh well, time to redo my questionnaire, which speaking of, is the funniest sh** I've ever seen. I watched the show Archer, the humour is so deadpan, and dark. It's great.
I guess having a commander is good for morale, because that's another thing I have to keep an eye on. Once that goes down, people are missing shots, getting themselves easily killed, or getting spooked and going rogue for a few turns. These mercs are human beings, I need to be a special empath too to figure that out now.
This reminds me of Mutant Year Zero, and Gears Tactics, but also this outlook tracing back to early 90s games, including Commandos. It also has co-op, so I guess some of the design choices make sense, but imagine how annoying it is to move units on SAT view whether you want them to move or cancel it because of the poor implementation here. The UI and input is terrible.
Also, I can move multiple squads at a base encampment, but there's no way to do so without pulling a QTE on the freaking space bar. I learned more about the game from trial and error, by loading save games, and this was at the first difficulty. I didn't try the forgiving mode option, no that would turn me into a wuss. The tutorials didn't help much either. In the end, it has a lot of complex mechanics, but when learned well, can be tons of fun to create absolute anarchy. One point am avoiding a crocodile, next I "hasta la vista" it later on with a powerful rocket launcher. And that is actually a thing here.
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