Jagged Alliance: Rage! Reviews

This is a straightforward turn-based tactics game with a Jagged Alliance theme. Various characters are taken from JA2, including the half-dozen playable mercenaries, but there are few similarities beyond that point. The game features a series of fixed battles, presented as locations on a world map that is mostly linear. The combat is generally good, but the enemy behavior is quirky. Enemy sight cones are shown but don't always seem to work the same way. For example, I had two characters next to a body, both in concealment. Killing the enemy didn't trigger an alert, nor did picking up the body with one character, but picking it up with the other did. Everything was in the same visibility "zone". Later in the same map, there were two soldiers guarding the exit. They verbally reacted when I moved near, but didn't otherwise act. I killed one with gunfire, changed position next turn, and killed the other on the turn after that. Despite standing a few feet away from a solider who was shot to death with a noisy rifle, the second soldier did nothing. Plodding through a map after killing all enemies, playing hunt-the-pixel for containers with items, while getting a constant serenade of "always ready!" voice clips every time you select a unit, gets old quickly.

A fun stealth-based spin-off. The game's store page says it's a spin-off so I don't get the complaints about it not being Jagged Alliance 2. It has some jank but it's a fun stealth-based spin-off, I do agree it sucks that the early game is locked to only 2 mercs. (Though you can eventually get 2 more mercs.)