Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business

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
Hey, it's Jagged Alliance. What's there not to like? Most of the great gameplay found in Jagged Alliance 2 is still intact, in addition to more 'easy' or user-friendly character creation for those who did not import their star character from the previous JA 2.

The Bad
This is hardly a game, honestly. Compared to JA2, this is game is only 5 minutes (dramatizing). I mean this is a VERY SHORT GAME if you (somehow) didn't understand my previous sentence. The map is small(er) me thinks compared to JA2, plus the fact that they erased the 'train militia' option, this game became VERY easy to play. Basically, this game became JA 1: Unfinished Business. The one major difference between JA 1 and JA 2 was the militia option, making it more than a micro mercenary war game. The presence of the train militia made it a more macro strategy game.

The Bottom Line
It's playable. Just don't expect too much, in comparison to JA 2. Good thing it's a stand-alone game, Heroes of Might and Magic made better sequals than this. Doh.

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!