Jagged Alliance 2

aka: Guerilla: Jagged Alliance 2, JA2
Moby ID: 356
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

The political situation in the democratic monarchy of Arulco has gone from bad to worse. The country has been taken over through a coup d'état by Queen Deidranna Reitman, the wife of Enrico Chivaldori - rightful heir and son of late King Andreas Chivaldori. Enrico was reportedly killed in an assassination attempt during his trial for the murder of his father. Enrico however is alive and has contacted the Association of International Mercenaries (A.I.M.) to help him retake the island. Making contact with Miguel Cordoba, the head of the resistance team, A.I.M. will hire mercenaries and coordinate battle plans to control towns, organize militias in a quest to overthrow Queen Deidranna.

Jagged Alliance 2 is an isometric, third-person perspective turn-based tactics game. The role-playing elements of the game refer to (mostly) character development. The game is also able to switch between two different styles: sci-fi or realistic modes. From a new game, players will use their laptop to review information and hire mercenaries. Following that, the political map shows a satellite top-down position of the island of Arulco. From the map, equipment and funds are managed, as well as a review of enemy movement, and planning can be made to capture towns, mines and other locations. From the map, mercenaries can be deployed into a specific sector. Hostile sectors and enemy counter-attacks initiate combat mode.

The combat screen is where most of the actual gameplay occurs. Traveling in towns, exploring houses (with the purpose of stealing stuff of course!) and most importantly combat, occurs here. An encounter with an enemy team (either offensive or defensive) will prompt a battle in the area of contact. If on the offensive, players may opt to place mercenaries in favorable positions. Each team plays in turns, unless their action in interrupted by an opposing member. Enemies come in all shapes and sizes: enemy soldiers, tanks, bloodcats, and (in sci-fi mode) insect-like monsters. The team that remains alive will control the sector.

In order to recapture the island, players must engage in town militia management. A defense system must be organized for newly conquered towns to defend against enemy troops. Only loyal towns however may have its population trained into militia (indicated by a green percentage on the town via political map). A maximum of 2 mercenaries may train militia in any given town. The militia has 3 different training levels: green, regular, and veteran. The first 2 may be acquired through training, while the veteran status may only be acquired through combat.

Spellings

  • Агония Власти - Russian spelling
  • 铁血联盟2 - Simplified Chinese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Windows version)

226 People (195 developers, 31 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 87% (based on 31 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 142 ratings with 10 reviews)

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.

Windows · by Late (77) · 2001

Sirtech magic touch blessed this one too....

The Good
Absolutely almost everything was perfect, but what made this game a winner - even if as people say within the certain circle, is that mercenaries you controlled during game, had different personalities, something we always miss when we do create own whole group at the start. Different voices, faces, habits and traits made this gaming experience so wonderful for me, I come back every year to install and play this one. With decent if simple story, detailed and plentiful equipment and realism (as far as game allows) it has captured me forever. Graphics and music.. I dont care much about - as far as I concerned, they will satisfy me until I turn 60... Animations were as good as year 1999 allowed, granting small size of mercenaries too. Its a tragedy that there will be no Jagged Alliance 3, and I sincerely hope that no other company thinks of releasing flop sequel on their own.

The Bad
Some particular voicing was irritating at times, small glitches, but otherwise perfection itself.

The Bottom Line
Find it, buy it and play it - but beware, if it captures you like it did me, there are at least few days without sleep ahead... Really hard to stop playing this one, except if you mess up quite a bit and forgot to save before....

Windows · by Marina Shoykhet (6) · 2003

One of the best squad-based combat games ever!

The Good
Though sometimes very hard, this game is one of the best squad-based combat games I've ever encountered. This game even best's X-COM by allowing the user to control every aspect of his sqaud's movements and actions.

The game runs in real-time until your squad gets into a battle, when it switches to turn-based combat. Here you can control every movement and shot fired by your squad members. The more experience they obtain, the better they get (just like in real life).

The controls are intuitive (once you get the hang of them) and allow you to quickly deploy orders to your team. Once you take control of the airport, you can order refreshed supplies of ammo and other items and can recruit more mercs to help you in your task of taking back Arulco.

The game is completely non-linear: you can accomplish your missions (taking over cities) in any order you like. If you want to barrel-on through and take out the head cities first, you're free to try.

The graphics, though 2D, are perfect for this game. The picking is almost flawless and movement fluid. The voice-acting, usually a stumbling point in such games, is just right. The interface is free of clutter: the information it displays in useful and pertinent. The music for this game also seemed "right on."

The enemy is finely tuned. The enemies don't seem to have any artificial education to help beat you. They seem to know what they can see and nothing else (a Good Thing(tm)). Many enemies are difficult to defeat but rarely "impossible."

I just wish there were a Jagged Alliance 3 on the way... (there are rumors, but nothing confirmed)

The Bad
The game usually runs fine, but seems to have trouble with NTFS disks. It ran flawlessly until I redid my installation as NTFS. It will run a ways, but then die and refuse to load saved games.

It would be nice if this game were higher res and 3D. But I think these are more of wish-list items for the next version instead of complaints of this game. I never found myself thinking, "Man this game needs to be in 3D."

The Bottom Line
A great squad-based combat game. One that needs to be played to be appreciated.

Windows · by Frecklefoot (188) · 2004

[ View all 10 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Not 4x but x-com like squad/turn based tactics Dim Gri (30) Jan 2, 2012
4X (eXpand, eXplore, eXploit, eXterminate) SharkD (425) Aug 31, 2007
Anyone know what those switches are for? Indra was here (20756) Jun 16, 2007

Trivia

Character Responses

  • When Ivan sees someone hitting an enemy in the head he says, "This is why my brother became an alcoholic."
  • Mercenaries (mercs) are known to have certain personality problems with other mercs. One instance is Enrico, the Arulco rebel leader (and his bodyguard) who dislike German and Austrian mercenaries (due to German occupation of Arulco in World War II).

Cover Art

The talent (model) on the front box cover bears a remarkable resemblance to one of Jagged Alliance’s top mercenaries: Sheila 'Scope' Sterling, a British sniper, though this might be purely coincidental.

Awards

  • PC Player (Germany)
    • Issue 01/2000 - Best Round-Based Strategy Game in 1999

Information also contributed by Chentzilla

Analytics

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Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 356
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Heikki Sairanen.

Linux added by Trixter. Macintosh added by Cavalary.

Additional contributors: Andrew Hartnett, Shadowcaster, Brian Robinson, Unicorn Lynx, Indra was here, Trond Berntsen, Patrick Bregger, Plok, Dimi Morabito.

Game added November 1, 1999. Last modified March 20, 2024.