Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business

The Good
This game is more challenging than its' predecessors, and it eliminates the tedium of worrying about income. You just begin getting down to business!

The Bad
Graphics were not quite state of the art when released, but it's not distractingly bad, either.

The Bottom Line
This is not truly a sequel nor an expansion. It is a stand-alone game that engages you in turn-based tactical combat with squads of mercenaries. Included in this game are indicators of your soldiers' line ot sight and weapons range, which allows a little more intelligent planning. You will need it. There are no substantial opportunities to upgrade anything in about the first half of the game, and you will be challenged from start to finish.

The Good
More Jagged Alliance 2, can't go wrong - or so I thought. The enemies are not really smarter as is sometimes claimed but just follow another routine. Still nice; New tactics on your part are required. First battles are challenging as the enemy will outnumber you and outclass you weapon-wise. After that you get rather showered with equipment. New cool guns. Fun (though few) recruitable characters. Roughly half the game takes place in a bunker which could make for great gameplay, but, see below.

The Bad
Oh my, where to start.

Software: There is no limit to the bugs. Now I hear you say we are used to that from JA2. You are not. The old bugs are negligible in comparison. The game will freeze or crash on you every other 5 minutes, at least on windows XP. I did play from an original CD, but I doubt they were able to fix anything at GOG.

Gameplay: Really short and one-track. Only about 20 accessible sectors. No side-missions, no strategic decisions. Cash is limited, but plenty, time is unlimited (and mercenaries are paid per mission not per day), which feels like cheating since you can spend all the time healing, repairing and training you want. Above ground everything is rather ok, nice challenges, at least two well though out sectors. The problem is below ground. Instead of tactically challenging situations you are faced on numerous occasions with spots where all you can do is turn the corner or move through that door, taking fire. No diversions, no decoys, no alternative routes, no blowing up walls, no decisions to make when to invest heavy gear like LAWs and when to save it (Instead you have lots of LAWs but most walls and doors are immune to them). Realistic? Yes, maybe. Interesting to play? No. Smoke grenades now only work in the enemies favor, that is, he will always see and hit you, you won't, no matter who's in the smoke. In exchange you can sometimes throw grenades at weird angles that did not work for me in JA2. Towards the end of the game it comes down to this: move through door, get hit, shoot back, use regeneration boost you find, rinse, repeat. Occasionally the enemies will be able to shoot through walls (corners), sometimes you can't shoot back. Who gets an interrupt now seems to be entirely random or predetermined. The game seems to intend that you take only one team into the later part of the game but it is easy to use the menus in a way that allow entering with most mercs. If you are prepared for the bugs and freezes that seem to come with it.

Story: Not that important really and basically sound but a few weird elements. Useless blabla emails from Miguel and Enrico. Some dialogue seems nonsensical but maybe that's just me.

The Bottom Line
Don't buy, don't play. First quite promising but then extremely frustrating. Taking the fun out of Jagged Alliance. One time I stopped playing for a few days and the last sector was nothing but "please let it be over soon".

The Good
What I liked most about this game was the minimal amounts of "resource managemnt" carried through from Jagged Allience 2 and the increased action. The addition of new mercs and weapons is a welcome surprise, as is the ability to select exactly what your custom merc stats are to be, each of the mercs has their own personalities and voice acting which is one of the biggest features of the whole series and this edition is no exception, all the characters have dozens of lines of dialouge and unique personalities, including the NPC's. Just like JA2, UB has one main goal with a few minor sub missions for your team to complete along the way, while you could still complete the game without doing them, it would be very difficult if you don't (one mission rewards you with the ability to purchase medical supplies.). The game is also extremely addictive although you may count this as a down side.

The Bad
One major problem with Unfinished Business is that on some computers, the AI turn runs incredibly slow, this can drag the AI turn on for upwards of 5 minutes in sectors with higher numbers of enemies. Another down side is the extremely repedative gamplay, how ever the failry short overall lenght of the game(another down side) helps to deminish the feelings of repedativeness.

The Bottom Line
JA2:UB is a modern, turned based, 3/4 down perspective, small unit combat game with stats improvement elements akin to a traditional RPG and dangerously addictive gameplay that will make you loose sleep playing the game. If I had to compare JA2 or any of the Jagged Allience series to a similar game, the closest game would have to be the Fallout series, although it has lots in common with the earlier X-Com series. Great fun even for people who don't realy like RPG's and this "lite" version is perfect for those who don't want to pussy foot around with mediocre functions when they could be fighting enemies.