Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business

aka: JA2:UB, Jagged Alliance 2.5: Unfinished Business
Moby ID: 3177
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Arulco calls again upon the player's help to rid of a new threat. This time, the threat comes from Arulco's former mining corporation: Ricci Mining and Exploration. After losing control over the mines during the civil war (Jagged Alliance 2), they now want those mines back. Ricci Mining and Exploration have established a missile base in the neighboring country of Tracona and threaten to attack Arulco with missiles unless their demands are met , and hey already blew up the Tixa prison as a warning. At Enrico's request, the player is to travel to the area suspected to contain the missile base, this time near the border of Tracona. The mission: locate the missile base and destroy it.

Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business is the first standalone expansion for Jagged Alliance 2, from which it can import characters. Among the new content are the new storyline, different AI, new character development options, new characters, new weapons and new tactical features like display of sight range and cover opportunities. The game also comes with a campaign editor. The map is much smaller, containing about 20 accessible sectors, considerable part of which are underground.

Appropriate to the mission, the militia training feature does not exist in this game. In this, Unfinished Business is more similar to the original Jagged Alliance than to its sequel.

Spellings

  • JA 2.5: Цена свободы - Russian spelling
  • 铁血联盟2:未完的使命 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

82 People (78 developers, 4 thanks) · View all

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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 73% (based on 29 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 28 ratings with 7 reviews)

The Sequel that offered less, but was still worth it!

The Good
I liked the new mercs: Gaston and Stogie should've been in the original JA2. You'll want them on your team! The new weapons are quite cool, especially the PSG-7, but the new Barrett sniper rifle is too heavy and powerful for this type of game. If you never saw a head pop off or a body fly backward in JA2, you'll see this in overkill once you get the Barrett.

If you found the difficulty too easy in JA2, buy Unfinished Business-- it is far more intense from the very beginning, although (being a small game) it's easier to reach the end, too.

The "Line of Sight" feature is brilliant. If nothing else, get UB for this. It helped me greatly in seeing my vulnerabilities in cover that weren't always obvious by sight in JA2. You'll notice new bullet trajectory angles after playing UB. After playing UB, play JA2 with your new knowledge.

The Bad
Sir-Tech managed to make an even less convincing villain than JA2. I don't even remember his name. The only time that you'll encounter him is before you kill him.

I wished that the plot were less linear. With Unfinished Business, with its similar sector map to JA2, one got the sense that you could make bigger tactical choices than you could really make. At least with Deadly Games (sequel to the original Jagged Alliance), you knew that you had no choice, at least, but that you could plan your raids according to the reward that you might receive for successful completion. Thus, you could make the superficial comparison that "Unfinished Business" is to JA2 as "Deadly Games" was to JA... but, to me, the sequel of the first was better than the original, whereas JA2 seems much better than its sequel. I felt a litle ripped off by "Unfinished Business" (even at a "budget" price of $20), because the campaign felt so short, which was a first for me with this series. Well, it was still worth it... yes, just not so much as the other feature-packed epics in the Jagged Alliance past.

The Bottom Line
It's not bad, except in comparison to the other games in this series. Historically, it offered few improvements in features or personality. With the very difficult to use mission editor, this game made and will make dedicated fan missions and campaigns possible (such as "Deidranna Lives"). However, this is because of fans mostly and not the original creators of Unfinished Business.

I can still recommend it sincerely, but not nearly as highly as I can as the "original" Jagged Alliance 2. At least "Unfinished Business" stuck mostly with a very good formula without screwing too much up!

Windows · by M B (15) · 2002

Annoying Bugfest

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".

Windows · by Tomthesecond (26) · 2011

More action, less resource management

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.

Windows · by Evil-Jim (145) · 2001

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kasey Chang.

Macintosh added by Cavalary.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Indra was here, JRK, Stratege, Plok.

Game added January 31, 2001. Last modified March 19, 2024.