This year, the old-school series Jagged Alliance celebrated its 28th birthday. What an old man! But despite its respectable age by the standards of the industry, Jagu has not yet retired. So, in September 2021, a full-fledged third part was announced when no one was waiting for it.
Mativira Origins
The bad days for Jagged Alliance began way back in 1995. The creative duo of married couple Jan and Linda Curry came up with an interesting symbiosis. Mixing strategy with a top-down view, a turn-based action system with move interceptions, and a role-playing game in which each unit would have its own parameters, unique perks, and cues for a variety of situations. These or those elements were already in certain games of that time. But they imagined everything together in such a composition for the first time.
There is nothing strange that the know-how project has become one of the most successful series in the piggy bank of the Sir-Tech house.
The first part was remembered thanks to the colorful mercenaries and the uncompromising combat system. In 2009, they tried to arrange a second youth for the game by releasing it on the portable Nintendo DS. But the console public was not ready for the harsh realities of the PC strategy. After all, all the main features of the first part were transferred in full.
Cult of Agony
In the CIS, the second part was subtitled “The Agony of Power”. Released in 1999 almost simultaneously with Heroes of Might & Magic 3, it still boasts almost the same loyal fanbase as Heroes.
Adventures in the fictional “banana republic” Arulco has become a reference mix of tactics, strategy, and role-playing games. Gamers actively compared Jagged Alliance 2 with Fallout 2. They praised the variability of the first. Depending on the set of mercenaries from AIM and MERC corporations, you could play the game using different tactics.
It was Jagged Alliance 2 that defined the gold standards for turn-based tactical strategies on the PC. The high level of cruelty and pleasant isometric graphics made it a cult that is not the narrowest circle for nothing. The phrases of the mercenaries went to the people, and the authors themselves competently continued the fate of some mercenaries from the first part.
Non-linear gameplay, convenient modding, and nice graphics allowed “Agony of Power” to establish a cult status for itself. Over the past 20 years, modders have created a lot of quality stuff that brightened up the expectation of a prequel.
Curse Of The Third Part
Instead of the third part, gamers received another reboot – Jagged Alliance: Flashback simultaneously served as a prequel to the events of the second part and a soft restart of the series. Despite a successful crowdfunding campaign, the project was released in early access in 2013 and has not been completed over the years. The Danish studio Full Control, which was responsible for the development, consisting of fans and enthusiasts of the series, deceived buyers. A huge part of the promises remained on paper and on the Kickstarter page, and the game itself, even in its current state, can only be called an early alpha. Only 35% of players on Steam rated it positively. For real players, there is a game that will not disappoint you, and it’s the online casino blackjack with real dealers where your adrenaline levels will boom!
Outdated graphics and technical code curvature led to the fact that the game was anathematized after Back in Action and Flashback. Only 49% of gamers rated it positively. Especially sad was the fact that there was no one to finish this game either: Cliffhanger Productions released exactly one patch after the release and simply waved their hand at the rest of the numerous bugs.
New Hope?
Five years have passed since the release of Rage, and THQ Nordic is ripe to try to independently return the series to its former greatness, which was seriously frayed after a series of high-profile failures. For the revival, they decided to repeat Rage in a new manner – this is again about a game that will show iconic mercenaries after many years. Jagged Alliance 3 will be a plot continuation of the second part, and the company is delicately silent about those releases that were between 1999 and 2021.
Jagged Alliance 3 promises to combine the best features of the first two games, add online co-op, and present the world with a “full-fledged successor to the great series.” This, if anything, is a quote from a press release.
