Jagged Alliance

Jagged Alliance

Games like Jagged Alliance
Jagged Alliance screenshots Jagged Alliance is a great tactical combat game in which you control a bunch of mercenaries trying to take control back over an island. The story goes as follows: Many years ago there were nuclear tests done on an island called Metaviria but now many decades later the island is inhabited. On the island now grows a tree that produces the fallow sap which can be used as a cure for a certain illness, the thing is that this is the only known cure and the tree only grows on Metaviria. Your employer Brenda and her father now have lost control of the island to a local called Lucas Santano who has also burned down a research lab. Now you have to take back the island with the help of the mercenaries you hire.

The first thing you have to do when starting the game is to hire a number of mercenaries and at first this task seems daunting because there are so many to choose. You'll find out quickly that some of them are below average and many of the experienced ones won't help you before they check out your leadership abilities so you'll have to compromise. Each mercenary has a range of abilities like medical, aim, mechanic and explosives as well as physical statistics that show if the characters is in good shape. You'll have to get a balanced group with various members that can do different jobs as it's no use getting someone to do something they have no skill at. The better character usually have multiple skills but at the beginning of the game your income isn't high enough to allow you to hire many of them. Also each character has a personality and they might have problems working with some of the other mercenaries or they can start to dislike you if you cause a lot of casualties.

After hiring people you start the next day and you can outfit them with some extra spare items and you can employ natives as guards and harvesters who will collect the sap from the trees. Select the starting grid which is currently limited to the bottom right corner of the island and you're off. The main game is played from a birds eye view where you can view and give orders to your people, any buildings only show their "insides" once one of your members stand inside. The first area is completely under your control so you can wander around collecting items but when you travel to an enemy controlled location the game switches to turn-based control where every characters has a set amount of action points they can use to do things like walking and shooting. You'll have to make good use of the environment like hiding and ducking behind trees to minimize the chances of being shot. Enemy characters only become visible when one of your characters spots them but the same goes for your people as well so try and stay hidden to get an edge. Some of the buildings have locked doors and if your mechanic has a toolkit he can try to pick the lock, this is not always necessary during a firefight but if an enemy is hiding in a building you'll have no choice. If you can't pick the lock you are force to bomb the place to open it up. When all enemy characters are disabled you gain control of that area and you can walk around freely again and move in friendly natives to guard the area. This goes on until either the sun sets or you call it quits for the day but remember to pick up any items left by enemies and crates scattered throughout the levels.

Between days you also have to manage injured people and you can assign someone with medical skills to treat them. Also mechanics can fix broken equipment or make improvements like putting silencers or a scope on a gun, you can even make whole new equipment if you have the items like molotov cocktails and timed bombs. This makes picking up seemingly useless equipment more fun because who'd think you can make something useful out of a rag, empty bottle and some gas. Remember that you still have to pay people even if they are not out in the field so try and use the lower paid ones for fixing stuff if you can. The goal of the game is to conquer the area where Santano is hiding out which is the upper left corner of the island. While capturing areas you gain control over more and more land which enables you to collect more sap from the trees thus increasing your daily paycheck. You can hire more guards to protect them while you are away as well as giving you the option of getting the better skilled mercenaries. The best of all is simply called mike with 90+ on all but one of his abilities but he costs a whopping 12 grand per day but believe me the guy is worth it.

Jagged Alliance is one of favorite games of all time as there is so much to the game and it is executed perfectly. Little things like taking canteens of water on hot days to make sure your people stay healthy and making/repairing object complete the game. If that wasn't enough each of the characters has a distinct personality and the CD version has full speech for all of them! My favorite character is called Elio which you get for free if you have a spot open on the team, he's pretty useless and can't hit a guy standing right next to him but he's always got stories about parts of the island you visit and talks funny. If you can get the CD version I suggest you get it because the speech really adds to the game but even the disk version is a great game. The only flaw it might have is that you can't buy any weapons but it's only a small speck in this great game, if you haven't played it yet get it now! If you do not no how to play this game, find the Jagged Alliance guides here.