All right, time to start an article that I'm tentatively dubbing "I Attempt to Explain Jagged Alliance 2 to the 10% of My Readers Who Know More About this Game Than I Ever Will, and the 90% Who Will be as Every Bit Confused as I Am". The Jagged Alliance series, all highly tactical turn-based skirmish simulators, has a fearsome reputation among PC diehards akin to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or Dota 2 where the high level of complexity and newcomer alienation is not only treasured by its proponents but exhorted as a exclusionary virtue by those who have fallen firmly under its spell, and were willing to undertake the long, difficult road towards mastering the game and its many moving parts.
I can respect that. A lot of modern games feel ephemeral in part because there's always another one just like it around the corner, and that the "consumption machine" of the top-tier game industry chugs along on the idea of getting people in, quickly acclimatizing them to a game's universe and to the usually familiar gameplay mechanics and systems, and then either letting them go to move onto the sequel (or in Ubisoft's or EA's cases, the dozen or so very similar games they just put out) or stick around for some timely DLC. It seems precious few games want to risk scaring people away early by presenting a steep learning curve, especially since their choices for alternative ways to spend their free time are becoming increasingly legion. That the handful of newer games that still buck that trend, like the various Souls or Hearthstone or Overwatch, are often some of the most highly regarded by critics and fans alike is probably no coincidence. You're willing to spend hours figuring out the spacing of M. Bison's charge attacks, or learn the right conditions to get the most out of Pharah's aerial-based ultimate, or get the timing down on a rocket-propelled mid-air shot on goal in Rocket League, because there's satisfaction inherent in becoming proficient at something that initially seemed impossible.
I'd not played Jagged Alliance 1, but the jist of what's going on in the sequel is one of its few elements that doesn't go out of its way to be deliberately alien to newcomers: the player is a veteran mercenary who is recruited by the deposed leader of the country of Arulco to topple its despotic queen, Deidranna, who has the remaining destitute population huddling in terror as the members of its rebel forces get picked off in raids. The goal here is to not only foil Deidranna's immediate plans but to galvanize the rest of the country into taking back their land, inspiring them through daring exploits and instilling the idea that Deidranna's armed forces are not insurmountable. The player's custom-created mercenary is joined by any number of those recruited from a "Mercs R Us" type of website, each of whom sticks around for an agreed upon number of days after being paid. The player is required to keep careful eye on their finances, as it'll mean the difference between a well-armed, well-stocked unit of soldiers of fortune and being on their own with nothing but rocks for weaponry.
Once again, I apologize sincerely to fans of this series for the incoherent bemusement to follow. This game does not lend itself well to "first impressions" articles.
Jagged Little Playthrough (a.k.a. I Oughta Know (How To Play a Damn Video Game))
Welcome to Jagged Alliance 2! This was hellish to screencap. Be sure to click the images to blow them up if the tiny text is indistinct. I'm also using the 1.13 fan patch because it adds a lot of necessary technical updates - I've tried to ignore the amount of extra gameplay stuff it adds, if only because I have a hard enough time figuring this game already without all the extra toggles.Like this. No idea how many of these settings were originally part of the game or part of the fan patch. I left them all on default, except for "Difficulty Level" (and you better believe I'm going easy mode for my first rodeo).We're treated to a small video of Deidranna's forces rolling into the small town of Omerta, on the outskirts of Arulco. I'm sure she has enough tanks, but it always pays to be certain.I suspect this Deidranna might be a bad person.We suddenly move to Prague, Czech Republic to conduct some business with a mysterious contact. It's Enrico Chivaldori, the former King of Arulco (they have, or had, a democratically elected monarch. It's weird) who tells us to meet with a man named Miguel Cordana, leader of the remaining rebels, for help and directions when we enter Arulco. We're also paid enough up front to hire some mercs.And now it's suddenly Windows 95. I'm going to see if I can get Freecell working on this. OK, I guess what I actually need to do first is visit the I.M.P. website.The Institute of Mercenary Profiling is where you go to "build" the player character via a personality questionnaire. The original version of the game only let you have one, but I'm going to create a small team to ensure all my bases are covered in terms of specializations. (This isn't quite cheating, at least not sufficiently to break the game - though created mercs don't cost me anything, many of the ones I can hire are better than anything I can make. I've always preferred party-based RPGs that let me have more created characters, anyway.)Inspired by GB's "Forces of Nature" nicknames in their PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds streams, my trio of mercs all have disaster names. I imagine my first run will be a disaster anyway, so why not roll with it?This part of the character creator lets me sort out my character's appearance, though the sprite's so small it scarcely matters. I imagine the enhanced resolution's more to blame than anything. Still, I'm sure I can make that blue shirt out against any backdrop. I guess the worry is that the enemies will also have no problem doing so.They weren't kidding about it being a personality test. Each of these has a slight bearing on the player's stats, and also affects how well they work together with others of a different temperament (socialables and loners don't really get on well, for example).I think the idea is that you stick with the people who make you happy, possibly because morale is a factor.I... hesitate to say how helpful any of these are. Maybe it's just a higher difficulty modifier for veterans? The game (or this version of it) has a few of those.Here we go. These are traits that determine your skillset, and you can invest up to two points in any of these categories. You can even invest both points in the same trait if you really want to go all out. Currently, Tsunami will be my deadshot sniper, because I feel like that's going to be a useful field skill to have. Again, a lot of my decisions seemed spurred by all the PUBG I've been watching.There are pages and pages of "backgrounds", most of which are former professions but also a few odd ones like "Nobility". Each one gives you a few extra bonuses, so I just picked the one that will help me be a better sniper. Et voila, the end result of my trait assignments and the remaining skill points left over. No idea how effective this person will be in combat, but I've given myself a decent head start with that marksmanship stat. Health seems important, and I boosted my wisdom because that governs how quickly you increase skills/levels. The Explosives/Medical/Mechanical skillsets I'll leave to other characters. Seems like I'd only need one or two experts for each, right?Speaking of other characters, our next website to visit is A.I.M. (Association of International Mercenaries) to fill out the rest of the team. I don't have much cash in the grand scheme of things, and some of these guys can cost up to $20k for a week's contract. Best to find some bruisers to keep my created guys safe.Bull, here, is as bruiser-ish as they come. He'll only cost around $4k for a week too, so that seems like a bargain.The game actually has you call them up to negotiate terms, which is kind of neat. You get a sense of what they sound like and their attitude from these meetings. Since I'm starting with nothing but the clothes on my back, I'm putting up the cost for his gear too. It might be tricky to kill anyone if he doesn't have a gun.The game's map, and some even tinier writing. Omerta's the only accessible location right now. We last saw that place getting the crap blown out of it by tanks and bombers a few in-game months ago, so I'd guess it's empty enough by now?Definitely spoke too soon. The town has a small patrol of enemy guards in it, which we go about surrounding. Already, I've played enough of XCOM (and X-COM, for that matter) to know to stay behind cover and take potshots. Of course, what I didn't know is that ammo is in short supply around here.My field medic and close-combat expert Val "Valcano" Morgan needs to get closer to hit anything, but I also don't want to be mowed down while moving. The game has incredibly short movement ranges for its characters - there's an invisible grid, of sorts, and it is an enormous mesh - so what you can do is spend some action points crouching or going prone to be harder to hit.This jagoff (jaggedoff?) tried to surprise the team by running around to the front door of the house. The game doesn't have XCOM's "overwatch" function in the traditional sense, but what you can do is end a turn with action points remaining and if the enemy should pop into someone's line of sight and that character still has AP left, they can "interrupt" the enemy's turn to get a few shots off. That was the case for Grace here, who is also my knife guy. Everyone needs a knife guy.All right, so I skipped a big part here. (Blame that on the screen-capturing software - I went with Bandicom because it won't alt-tab out after every screenshot (the game breaks when you do this - it's part of the reason why I installed the patch, though that didn't actually fix that particular issue), and Bandicam wasn't able to find the gameplay window until I changed its capture mode.) At any rate, we defeated the patrol, made contact with the nearby rebels using Enrico's letter of introduction and got given the task of freeing up the trade route between Omerta and the nearby (and still standing) town of Drassen. We're joined by one of the rebels, Ira, who will make introductions once we reach Drassen.Before we leave Omerta, we might as well steal everything. It's not like there's anyone left around here. The busted houses occasionally have drawers or some other containers to check, and this house provided a first aid kit and some ammo.Drassen is to the east, but that also means travelling the guarded roads between the two towns. According to the map, the next square only has four enemy units occupying it. Seems simple enough: the first patrol had three soldiers and we easily overwhelmed it.We surprised this goon, and then took cover around the many rocks and trees here to work on the three remaining soldiers on the road.Suffice it to say, I didn't account for the fact that the other soldiers would be moving around the roads too, and we were ambushed by more soldiers coming from the west and the north.Turns out putting all those points in markmanship is paying off. Most of my characters have handguns and are lucky to hit the broadside of a barn, but Tsunami's out there taking the names of asses... she... kicked down. Wait.
I really didn't imagine I'd get into so much trouble so quickly, but after a protracted gunfight with almost fifteen foes filtering in from every direction, we have something of an ammunition deficit. I was lucky enough to only walk away with superficial wounds, which my three medics (Ira's also one, probably in case you were dumb enough to not hire one) quickly took care of. However, even with the scrounged guns and bullets from the fallen enemy soldiers, I'm not sure if another similar battle will play out quite as fortuitously. I suspect Drassen won't be completely deserted of enemies either, so maybe I'll finally get to use the game's stealth mechanics, if I can figure them out. I should mention that there's no obvious way to call up a list of controls in-game: either they expect you to have the manual open right next to you, or that you've come to this game fresh from the first Jagged Alliance and know them all off by heart.
There is some exhilaration in walking away from a firefight with no idea what I'm doing or how screwed I am with my dwindling resources, but at the same time I don't think the one week I gave myself for May Maturity's games is going to cut it here. It might take the whole week just to get my bearings. While I don't imagine we'll be seeing a game complete screen when I revisit Jagged Alliance 2 for its Outro, I'm hoping I'll have a veritable war journal of mechanics I've learned and stuff I've blown up. I refuse to let this game get the better of me, no matter how many restarts it may necessitate in the days to come.
