Jagged Alliance 3

Very fun and addicting TBS game. Inventory management is a must and you need to plan your attack as well as what mercs to take on a job.

Fun game, lots to do. Mods/cheats for stuff you don't like. Pretty dern gud.

I really like it. It has a good deal of humor and it's quite challenging. I fire it up when I'm tired of shooters.

Bougth on release, no regrets. Completed twice, second time solo with a killer build Ivan Dolvich. Back in a day I had a hard time with JA2. Was too rough, unpolished and not very newbie friendly. But JA3 gave me the exact experience I wanted from the legendary JA2. Story, humour, tactics, fun, cool characters and even a deep emotional experience. Much love for the developers who managed after many years of failed attempts to breath life into a classic series and make it player-friendly.

Good tactical gameplay and balance in Jagged Alliance 3. Would be great if they add a DLC.

A decent game with somewhat poor writing. Having finished it once, I feel like most of the criticism comes from the fact that it's supposed to be a successor to the legendary Jagged Alliance 2. I don't think it is, because, for once, JA2 had an infinite re-playability whereas I don't feel like playing JA3 ever again. Nevertheless, the single playthrough was fun and I would recommend the game.

To be fair, I think there are even two aspects in which it DOES supercede JA2:

1. The 3D engine adds a real depth that has tactical implications. Sure, you could climb a roof in JA2 but that just isn't the same.
2. The overwatch mechanics seems to make sense. I would've liked something like that back in JA2. AFAIK, it was available in the unofficial 1.13 mod but I haven't played that one.

Perfect game. No notes.

Definitely the best of the very few games localized into Indonesian, in case you were looking for language learning resources.

Finally a worthy successor to Jagged Alliance 2!
While playing I often thought that this feels exactly like JA2 back then, but with up-to-date graphics

Here is what you get:
-Action-Point based Tactical Combat (not like XCOM, here every action costs points, whose availability is determined by the stats and the status of your Merc)
-Squad Management (which Merc to hire, which weapons do you want to use with what kind of Ammunition)
-RPG-elements (Stats on Mercs, Status effects, Stat checks for interactions and dialogue, Talents on Mercs)
-Quests were your decisions have an influence on the outcome
-new interesting additions to the roster of your favourite Merc's

There are references to JA2, but you only miss out on a few jokes/nostalgia if you haven't played it.

It’s really good and I highly recommend it if you like tactical RPGs in the vein of XCom or played part 2 back in the day, an absolute classic, to which it is a worthy successor.

I've been waiting years for a sequel close to as good as the original Jagged Alliance games. This is the closest anyone has ever come, and it is fantastic!

I won't lie, I'd be pissed too if my adversaries wrote an insulting message to me, but it's in the wrong language.

Game could have lasted longer and I wish after it was finished I could have still explored around a little.

"WANTED: Tactical Wannabe-Geniuses and Lovers of Explosions!
Apply Immediately. Trustworthy Psychopaths Welcome."

Looking for action? Strategy? Something to do on your long, lonely evenings? Jagged Alliance 3 has got you covered! Here’s what we’re offering:

Tactics That Slap: Plan your moves, take cover, or blow it all to bits and figure it out later. With each turn, feel your brain cells actually working for once!

Mercs with Personality (for better or worse): Hire absolute legends like the German powerhouse Grunty, the charmingly "maybe a bit on the cheap side" Fox, and the trigger-happy chain-killer Ivan. They come with one-liners that hit just as hard (and terrible) as their bullets.

Freedom to Get Creative: Blow down defensive positions, lob grenades, set up ambushes, or have Barry attempt "diplomacy" (Hint: it involves explosives). Your tactics, your call—no babysitting. We’ll smash your face in just to make you learn faster (we’re firm believers in old-school parenting).

A Country in Chaos, and You're the “Hero” (Kinda): Liberate the good people (or just your paycheck) from a brutal regime in Grand Chien. Every town, every choice is up to you. Got morals? Cool. Got none? Also cool.

So gear up, recruit the craziest squad you can find, and make some memories (and, possibly, regrets). Remember: "Risking your life has never been this much fun while sober."

Amazing - initially the AI was very boing, running towards the first shot, however a few patches later the game got amazing.

Very tough game, great mechanics. I have been playing this series since the start. A true to original feel. Looking forward to a full play through

Couldn't stop playing this!! Any chance of making Fallout Tactics 2, developers? :-)

Wish the game was harder though, having finished the game 3 times, my list of complaints are:

* Sniper rifles are overpowered, best limit your team with one sniper, really.
* Ironman mode needs to be more hardcore, being able to load from the start of the battle kills the thrill.
* Maps are well designed but too small.
* AI is dumb, a more aggressive enemy option should be included.
* Not being able to initiate coordinated ambush from multiple mercs is lame.

Despite the above, a great game through and through, this is a faithful adaptation of the old classic, keep the turn-based tactic games coming!

A ton of fun as a TRPG but not without complaints. The core game play loop is fun and the humor is a bit more subtle then I thought it would be but it's still really good. Characters are memorable and the dialogue and voice acting are both very good, it actually sounds like everyone is a unique person.

The cons, it's VERY easy to miss click which usually has negative effects on your chances to win. The tutorial is lacking and doesn't go over several key features you would need to know to really enjoy the game (I didn't realize you could go to any square on the map by selecting tactical mode).

The minor gripes don't take away from an excellent game so far and I look forward to finishing my run!

Game is great and i love it. I played 147 hours and it was enough to finish it few times but i don't recommend it right now. Mostly because of BSOD and a lot of crashing and quitting to desktop. (A year after release!)

Still it wouldn't make me give up. But near endgame on hardest difficulty (to get ironman achievement) game crashed and my only save file was corrupted. This was the moment that i gave up and thought that i bought unfinished product.

So if you want to give it a chance - try it. But remember that you should play only on lower difficulty (because a lot of save files) so you won't feel more frustration than enjoyment from this game. Still i think that it's really great continuation of JA saga but game is not stable for a lot of users.

I'm around the last few missions of this game. In my opinion it's a great example of a well executed franchise reboot. I'd even dare to call it something like the Baldur's Gate 3 of turn-based squad strategy games. I've been the fan of the series since the very first game. Well, except for the stop-gap games between JA2 and JA3 around a decade ago, I could not take those seriously as all of them were sort of shallow to me but this one hits the spot and it hits hard. It's a worthy spiritual successor of the original line-up. On the developers side, it was a smart move to involve Ian Currie who was the father of the series. Also it did not hurt that they completely understood of what the franchise is all about.

But not even great games are perfect. In the case of this game the inventory management can be a little tedious, there are more fluent systems around. But the other aspects are so great that this small detail is forgivable and skippable as you get a massive, multi-layer dynamic playfield.

If you are into turn-based strategies, JA3 is a must-have.

Generally speaking a good game.

But boy, the closer you get to the end, the more bugs you get.
We played a coop game and finished it, but the last hours of gameplay was basically
- enter a map and get kicked out of game 1/5 times
- start the fight and be forced to reload after the first enemy turn due to desync after 1/10 times
- Multiple issues with inventory sync, map state, conversations and enemy positions

Generally a good game, and my singleplayer run was a lot better. But the coop experience was unbearable.
We played Start Citizen to get a pause from the bugs :D

!!! IF YOU NOT PLAN TO PLAY THIS GAME IN COOP, PLEASE IGNORE THIS REVIEW !!! (you will be fine and it is a good game, an okayish successor to JA2)

is it ok to downvote a game after 162h of gameplay? yes because i dont hate the game, i hate the bugs. i mainly played this game in coop. we started 2 runs, one shortly after release, the other one recently. desync is a major problem, with or without mods. without joking atleast 30% of the playtime logged is due to desync related issues in coop.

we stopped to play our first run without finishing after killing the major, and then facing the whole map being overrrun by the army, this alone - no problem - but with the desync problems in mind, we just couldnt bring ourselves to do it. this year around we... just bit through. did everything with a bit more knowledge but still, a lot of time went into reloading because of desync, restarting the game because of the other player couldnt join etc.

Great story and immersion. I really love the destructive environments and characters personalities. Still making my way through but what a great game so far, Wish I had grabbed it last year when I first saw it.

Just for the context - I'm mostly a fan of turn-based RPGs and this game happens to be my first Jagged Alliance title.
That being said, for me this game is close to being a perfect tactical RPG. You've got a really good and intuitive turn-based battle system, some overworld management, quests with multiple solutions, hell, even some slides in the end. It has a couple of really unfair encounters, but overall is well-balanced. It's also damn good on the visual side, almost without any performance issues.
There are some glitches here and there, but nothing too major, probably due to lack of time/money for development, the game feels like it's been made by a really competent team that actually cared.
Writing is... well, it's not really in my taste, but it's perfect for what this game tries to portray itself as. I feel like every single line is a shoutout or a reference, from Tarantino movies to Lovecraft, from covid pandemic to Skyrim, from Scooby-Doo to Apocalypse Now - and it's all done gracefully and doesn't feel forced at all. Voiceover is nothing special, except for the accents, these are mostly done perfectly (though still have some hiccups here and there, but oh well). Every merc has loads and loads of lines not only in battle, but in dialogues with the locals as well.
The only thing I found lacking is perks, definitely not enough of them, so your mercs tend to have one or two builds for everyone and that's about it.
Overall, I had some pretty high expectations and I still didn't expect this game to be so goddamn finger-licking good. Definitely will look into JA2 and I sure hope that this studio does JA4 somewhere in the future. If you have a weak spot for XCOM and/or Fallout 1 and 2 - you will absolutely love this one.

I want to like it, the game looks and runs great. The one-liners might be tolerable if the pace of the game was brisk enough, but after repeatedly getting swarmed by enemies that can reliably shoot you from three times the distance you can shoot them, it gets extremely annoying. The camera is also a pain in the ass, constantly bumping into things and moving around when you need it to stay still, and staying locked when you need to move it because it chose an incredibly stupid position. I wish I could refund it, but it took a few extra hours to realize this game just pisses me off. I wanted it to be the best of BATTLETECH and Wasteland 3, but it is neither.

I've played the other games and versions of those games, plus modded versions. This is a great isometric tactical turned based shooter with a little sprinkle of 80s or 90s nonsense sprinkled in. It isn't perfect, but it is good enough to burn 438 hours on...

Solid strategy game with many many flavors of the series. I really can't understand their punishing thoughts about ammo. It just make no sense what so ever that some guy I just killed can't be looted for his AK ammo. or even the AK. You mow down 10 guys and maybe get 2-3 weak drops. This forces you into buying and crafting something as stupid as 7.62 mm Warsaw pack ammo when literally a dozen guys were just shooting those rounds at you just to have them vanish on death.

True to the original JA and JA2 games, this one is full of great characters, turn based squad management, and some RPG through customization of your avatar mercenary as well as the ones you hire. Could be more complex in terms of story and strategy, and certainly a bit simplified versus other versions or even the X-Com games which had more economic management, but replayability is good with the various teams and tactics you can choose to employ.

Masterful game that brings JA back to the JA1 theme and improves on it in every way. What a masterpiece. 5 stars

I remember playing these games in the 90's when I was a kid and have a very soft spot for the genre and this game in particular. I feel like a kid again!

Played the previous games when i was a teenager in the 90's and most of their humour and references went over my head. Not this time. The game is an absolute banger and a contender for this year's GOTY (for me). Mercs have their personalities, there's a ton of insane support characters straight from Van Damme and Seagal movies from the 90's and early 2000's; the gameplay keeps you engaged for hours on end... Just buy and play the damned thing already!

Good game, turn based, great mod scene. just wish they would have kept updating it :(

I started with these games with 7,62 hard life thanks to Tehsnakerer's video and while it was very fun, it was giving me tons of headache. I heard Jagged Alliance is series that inspired Brigade E5: Jagged alliance. So I thought to playing Jagged Alliance 3, because It seem prettier and easier for me to understand. Which it is! All the characters are funny, the gameplay is fun and challenging enough. And as zoomer who didn't grow up with playing old games like x-com and jagged alliances, very charmed by them but my brain cannot handle them! It was more easy to get into. I am gonna play more... I don't know how old jagged alliance plays(which i should get into). Anyway I recommend this game. (I love Kalyna, she is lovely!!!)

Also since this game is inspired by 90's action movies as I remember, I am going to watch more action movies in around that time. It seem I missed out a lot.

This game is complete and utter trash.

Why does my legendary mercenary miss 3 shots in a row from 5 feet on a guy standing behind a boat?

Then both my other mercs do the same.

Yet next turn after my guy dies, immediately manage to hit the guy,

AWFUL!!!

If this games legendary fighters were called SEAL TEAM 6 it's because 6 is how many times they miss an easy shot in a row. They need 6 times the ammo you would expect.

View distance and shooting range/accuracy are total nonsense. Each square seems to be equivalent to 20 ft by game mechanics, which would be cool but the 300 ft long tables and 60 foot long cars dont make sense.

Supposed to be a war, ya fight with a handful of guys at best

No vehicles that I have seen yet.

Maps all kinda a random jumbled mess

No way to build fortifications that I have seen thus far.

It's a fun game if you like losing a lot. My favourite part is how terrible my team is, always. Sometimes I just line them up for execution during a battle and watch them get mowed down by the enemy because I'm so annoyed by their incompetence. It's probably a good game that I just don't have the patience to play.

A worthy, long-awaited sequel to the 1999 classic Jagged Alliance 2 after many years of failed spin offs.

Interesting combat, awesome characters. Just don't hire Mouse unless you want your ears bleeding.

Finally, a worthy successor to Jagged Alliance 2! A lot of familiar faces, with a similar sense of humor and mechanics, with a whole new country to liberate. I really don't know how I missed this last year...

Not a good Game,the hit ratio is not good,you can have a clear sight ,be right next to them and you miss,really really ,dont buy this game

Great tactical isometric turn-based shooter with some nice management elements. Yes!

This game is everything I thought it would be - Great game, and a great addition to the series

After 2 hours of playing i already love this game.

You get to manage a MERC company, with a huge roster available for hire. You manage your weaponry and supplies and so on... if you want more details look up a review.

The game feels good, feels tactical and strategic. Feels like a game with real soul and spirit, teaches you economy and war guerrilla tactics. This is what gaming is about.

10/10 from me. Have fun :D

Brought back so many memories! Highly recommended for Jagged Alliance fans! Can't wait for the sequel or expansion!

Pros: Decent combat at mercenary builds!
Cons: Too short and time pressure can be a bit stressful. Too few melee weapons

It is good as the old one JA2. There are some new actions, and battle system is easier. Each grid of map is smaller than JA2 and make time cost less and make me feel easier to go on.

Doesn't have the depth and polish of JA2 but it does have its spirit. An enjoyable game in its own right for new and old JA fans. Initially well supported by devs for bugs and features, however they have gone quiet since the 1.5 release. Would be great if they released DLC!

In 2023, I spent the first half of my year obsessively playing Jagged Alliance 2 for the first time. As soon as Jagged Alliance 3 came out, I became more obsessed over it than anything else.
Jagged Alliance 3 is the best modern adaptation of Tactical Strategy RPG with action points, it has a complete and lovely collection of weapons (except it really, REALLY should have had the Beretta R93 and have your IMP start with it), the systems work together really well, and the turn-based combat is so smooth.
If you love turn-based games, you owe it to yourself to try this out.

It is good as the old one JA2. There are some new actions, and battle system is easier. Each grid of map is smaller than JA2 and make time cost less and make me feel easier to go on.

not good, not bad and that is a problem.
Game is soo cringe. Like look you meet karen in camp, a peta in anothere camp, there is a zobmie out brake in hospital, all things is so unorignal, from shows or from memes. In JA2 jokes where tame, they had sense even when you didn't get refrence. But here it is just supid mix of every thing i can thing off. Almost all mission have some problems and no choice at all.

Game play it is in middle, so much fun is taken away because you have no choice justy be atack on deploy. It is hard to tell where i can go and where I can hide. Mele suck(no change here), but what is more anoying mele suprisie attack suck. granate are weak for no reason. And bugs omg so many time game have problem with schooting some one.
Enemy AI is terible and have no sense.

I just finished my first playthrough, and i say first, because already now i see there will be (at least one) more.

I loved the game, i ranked up 90ish ingame hours faster than I am willing to admit, and here are the pros and cons:

I will try to avoid spoilers, but consider it as a warning

Pros:
1) The game is faithful to the JA spirit, and builds a lot on it. Most of the memorable characters, that are with us since the '90s are still here with all of their quirks, funny comments and conflicts.
2) The main story, even though it is typical for a JA game, is really good and convincing. I felt immersed in the game world, and felt as if my actions have actual consequences on the lives of the (virtual) people in that virtual country.
3) Technically the game execution is good. The graphics is a bit cartoonish, compared to the gritty style of JA2, and the whole atmosphere is much more lighter and optimistic in general. Some will like it, some not, most will not care.
4) The game difficulty (NOT the combat part - i will write extensively about it later) is tuned well enough to keep me on my toes all the way until the very late game. For me it was being short of money. Some other players were lacking ammunition, as I've read on forums. In one case I was even lacking meds (after some really bad early game decisions I've made).
5) To add on previous point, a lot of how your playthrough will look like, depends on your choices. There are many alternative resolutions to many quests, and all of those add up to the total in a very coherently orchestrated way, which I liked a lot. Many of the quests are connected to each other in an indirect way, and can influence each other significantly, that adds a lot to the 2)
6) Modding the weapons. This is great addition (yes you could put silencers or scopes on weapons in previous JA games, but here this concept has been greatly expanded upon), although fully modded weapons are extremely powerful. Maybe even too much - to that extent that i finished the game, all my mercs either had fully modded snipers or FN-FAL. I didn't use literally any other weapon, as these were simply superior to anything else I've tried. And many weapons I skipped, because the unmodded weapon was way weaker than what I already had fully modded. Probably I missed a lot of opportunities here, but I was not incentivized to change something that already worked as a charm.

Cons:
most of the cons will be related to the combat system unfortunately. Having in mind that it is the core of the game, it might seem counter intuitive that I am recommending the game, while criticizing it's core aspect, but I do it more from the love of the game, as I play the franchise from the first JA back in the '90s.
1) JA3 suffers from what seems inevitable in similar games, and it is that there is a win-button when it comes to combat, and in this case it is stealth. Already in the mid game, a team of 3 people, with not even that high marksmanship skill could make almost any combat trivial by using stealth and sniper rifles. I cleaned one of the most heavily guarded fortresses (close to 30 enemies) with only 3 mercs, without taking any damage. The only difficult combat would be in underground areas, where the game would throw high number of enemies at you, immediately as you enter the area, so you can't build up the distance for stealth takedowns, which brings us to the next point which is....
2) ... very stupid AI. I am aware that a good AI that with both tactical and strategic thinking is extremely hard to program, but some stupidity can be avoided with just a few extra "IF" statements. Having the enemies run into the overwatched areas like headless chicken, even though they just saw 5 of their friends being massacred previously is funny at first, but becomes repetitive and stupid really fast.
3) Combat difficulty is boosted through RNG, which feels like cheating. I really felt that, on higher difficulty settings, opponents were simply hitting more shots, while my mercs were missing more shots. It is really annoying to miss point-blank shots on an almost dead opponent, which results in my merc being killed in the next turn. This forced me to cheat as well, which is save-scumming, which I hate doing.
4) Combat maps are very small. I value that the maps are unique, and almost each and every map has some secret worth searching and exploring, most of the battles are done in 10ish minutes top. This contradicts with...
5)... the travel time between "squares" on the map. Traveling by land is extremely long in ingame time. We are talking about 6-7 hours or more for some sectors, while on tactical map those same sectors take 10-15seconds to run through from end to end. This part was killing the immersion a bit, and was heavily annoying. Contrary to that, water travel is too fast, and this pushed me constantly to return and defend some areas, or to use "mule" character and pay him just to carry stuff around.
6) Even though i listed the appearance of "old" characters from earlier games as a good thing, in some instances it feels like that the devs were playing a bit too much on the nostalgia card, and a lot of the material is recycled from previous games. Some references to the past are welcome - having them all the time feels like lazyness.
7) Some of the quests are "fetch" quests, that don't fit into this type of game. This is not a RPG (it is to some extent, but in my opinion, it is not the core). Many of those quests i just ignored, and because of it, probably i missed a lot of the potential lore.
8) Item economy. Crafting ammo and explosives?! Seriously!? Which mercenary fighting in an early civil-war scenario has time, skills, equipment and raw materials. This was very poor choice, and not a single time I had crafted anything this way. Mercs always had much more important things to do, and it felt a waste for me to do so. If the mercs were not fighting, or travelling towards a fight, they were not earning me money, so I had to keep them almost constantly on the move. And keeping them on the move seems what they should be doing, so this part was implemented right, which puts whole this crafting story completely out of whack.
9) Some of the allies you need to defend / save act like complete morons. They would go out of their way to eat as many bullets as possible. This playthrough i didn't savescum to save them, which means that most of the notable characters died in my case. This also felt like cheating from the game's side, because the difficulty is increased by the stupidity of the people that you need to protect and save. Just have them sit in cover, is it so hard to program? Don't have them run in the open into the crossfire just to be picked off and then force me to save scum, and preemtively position my teams exactly to counter exactly that. That would feel like cheeting from my side, so i just let them die.


TL;DR: If you like tactical turn based games and/or JA franchise, a lot of cheesy exaggerated humor with pop-culture and historical references - this is a great game for you, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it!

Finally a worthy successor to JA2.

I bounced off this the first time I played it - the first island didn't grab me, and I still don't think it's a great introduction to the game.

Giving it a go again a year later, getting a little further in, it really came to life. The characters, the humour, the escalating combat encounters. Well worth putting the time into.

Loved this game, played through 3 times each time increasing the difficulty setting.