Summary
Ugly mercenaries, great game
The Good
Graphics: Beautiful isometric 3D graphics (none of those silly polygons, mind you) with enough variation and well thought-out maps. Also nice rendered intro animation.
Sound: Talking mercenaries and NPC's (with really silly voice acting), only slightly annoying "combat music", and billiards of realistic sound effects.
Gameplay: JA2 lets you use any tactics you like to deal with the bad guys. Or not! - If you like, you can just have heaps of soldiers charge in head first with guns a-blazing, as opposed to all that boring stuff they teach in the army (and the myriad "stratagy giudes" you can read on the Internet).
Other stuff, just as important: Once you've gotten over the superb gameplay and presentation, you also start to notice the little things like the interesting sub-plots and all the not-so-important but well written background information on "Arulco", the different PC's and NPC's, and all the equipment.
The Bad
First of all, all through the game I expected "Hamous", the ice-cream truck thief to say "Me so horny", but he didn't! (Well, of course he didn't, but if the guy who did his voice had to fake such a preposterous accent, he really _should_ have said "Me so horny".)
Second of all, you tend to miss a lot of the sub-plots and NPC's just because they don't show on the map screen and it really gets to be a pain in the arse just walking around on the real-time screens looking for people who might or might not be there.
The Bottom Line
Well balanced combat game - play the way you like to.
