But my misty-eyed nostalgia hasn’t blinded me to some its possible shortcomings. So, I’m really enjoying this game, and as a JA2 fan, I think it’s a worthy remake, but also a finely-crafted and engaging game in its own right. The graphics are sharp and well-textured, and filled with exquisite details which are in tune with the game’s geographical location, and create a rich & coherent sense of place and atmosphere. This is the time when you can explore the game’s handsome environments at your leisure, and maybe pick up some side missions. If the shopping is fun, then looting the field of victory afterwards is also very compulsive, as the game occasionally doles out some premium or unusual drops.

But look at the damage it does! Ohhhh alright then, I’ll take them both. In additions to the array of weapons, there’s tools, explosives, grenades (flashbang, frag, gas, and smoke), gadgets and clothing to consider, which mean that shopping trips involve those chin-stroking sessions where you weigh up the pros & cons of different equipment – this sniper rifle has longer range than that one, but is slower-firing. There’s also a vast supermarket of goodies, and I mean VAST.

Your mercs have skills and traits, and some of their perks are situation-dependent, rather than permanently available. Liberated locales also gradually accumulate rebel militia who will defend against the regular counterattacks from Queen Deidranna’s army, however the task of equipping these freedom fighters is completely manual, and one of the game’s few dreary micromanagement makework chores.Ĭombat success in JA:BIA is happily dependent on your tactical skills on the battle maps, but the merc characters are richly-structured too, and squad composition, equipment loadout, and character development are important aspects of the game, just like in the original. Outside of combat, you also have the job of hiring & equipping mercs, using income received from the grateful indigenes whom you’re helping – the more locations you liberate, the more income you get, and you can supplement this with side missions too. Instead, you suspend disbelief, giving your mercs their orders from a godlike perspective. In another small but significant depature from the original, this time you don’t get the fun option of crafting a player avatar to represent you in-game. Fortunately, you can save at any time except when actually engaged in combat.Īs before, your role in the game is as a leader of a mercenary force, hired to oust a vicious dictator from the fictional (but South American-looking) country of Arulco. If the latter, you can pause again, and edit your plan to try and recover the situation on the fly, or just retreat. When unpaused, the game proceeds in real time, with your squad obeying your orders and the enemy doing their thing simultaneously, and you get to see if your plan comes together, or unravels. Orders can also be synchronised on a timeline, for coordinated attacks. There’s also a guard mode which sets the unit weapons-free – useful for when you want a unit to automatically cover a doorway, chokepoint or flank, for example. The game can be paused manually at any time, or by an array of individually configurable triggers, and you can issue each unit with a chain of orders for movement, stance, facing, and using weapons. The most significant difference is the slick we-go simultaneous turn-based engine, which permits a fluid, cinematic experience in place of the immersion-breaking (if engrossing) sequence of individual units taking their turns.

Thankfully, JA:BIA doesn’t try to ‘re-imagine’ JA2 – it’s the same story, characters, and key locations, albeit with a graphical overhaul. And let’s also thank Frozen Synapse for contributing some finely-crafted indie freshness to the genre recently. You might even throw Baldur’s Gate 2, and Neverwinter Nights in there. This is a shame, as there were some fine titles: X-COM, Silent Storm, Fallout:Tactics, and of course JA2. JA2 remains a much-loved & lauded classic, but the isometric small-squad tactical genre has generally been under-represented over the years. They also occasionally mirror each other with the rare and risky strategy of the straight remake, like Michael Mann’s forgotten LA Takedown which he subsequently remade as the blockbuster: Heat.Īnd so it is with JA:BIA. The games industry parallels the film industry in many ways: budgets, sales, and an endlessly futile debate about whether they’re art or not. Honestly, it was like this when I got here

Jagged alliance back in action map