Jagged Alliance: Rage

Jagged Alliance: Ra ge is all busywork and no play.

Jagged Alliance: Rage is in love with busywork. At every stage of the game I’m bombarded with basic maintenance tasks, survival elements, weapon degradation and looting—so much looting. It wouldn’t be so bad if there was more variety to the combat, but sadly I found myself using the same few tricks over and over. It works like this: You take your two mercs (you won’t unlock another for hours) and liberate a jungle island one turn-based combat encounter at a time. Each merc is a bundle of skills and quirks. This is the game’s biggest strength, as each character feels different, if not exactly balanced. Raven is a sniper who can’t carry heavy weapons. This is more useful than Ivan, a tank whose bad knees hurt him every time he jumps down a step.

The story is as deep as it is original—which is to say not at all—yet takes up a surprising amount of time, full of conversations I quickly checked out from, but couldn’t skip. It can’t decide if it wants to be gritty (they’re kidnapping children!) or cartoonish (they’re mind-controlling people!). The mercs are, to put it charitably, a broad collection of national stereotypes. The one clever idea the game has is to emphasize how old they all are, but despite being prominent in the marketing, it doesn’t come up often.

The fact that you only get two mercenaries to start with is important, because those opening few hours are brutal. I haven’t played any of the previous Jagged Alliance games, so I don’t know if they were always this hard, but even as an XCOM veteran I was initially worried I wouldn’t be able to finish more than a few levels before my deadline. Things do get a little easier a few hours in when you’ve managed to scavenge some armor and healing items, but even then you’re often saddled with awkward objectives that force you to take action before civilians are killed. The result is a game that often needs you to stealthily kill half the enemies on the map before you get spotted, which isn’t easy when your two soldiers are often facing 20 guards— all of whom get alerted very easily.

It feels like a lot of the game’s problems could be solved if I started with more mercenaries. The added firepower would make combat both easier and more interesting, giving me more than a couple of abilities to play with (there’s no levelling up, and most equipment is just slightly better versions of the same few guns).

Making camp

The difficulty is also increased by the fact that there is no post-mission recovery. Your wounds from the last battle carry over to the next one unless you rest, which carries the risk of being discovered by a patrol. The only equipment available is that which can be laboriously looted from individual corpses and containers (the game is really crying out for a ‘here’s all the loot’ screen). This survivalist aspect appears elsewhere too, with soldiers having to drink water, stem bleeding and fight off infections. I get the concept, they want to convey the idea of this scrappy team surviving in the jungle, but the reality is mostly just juggling several different consumable items to cure your various conditions.

There is an overmap, though, which enables you to traverse the island, moving your troops from node to node while pursued by enemy squads. In theory you can avoid these, especially as the game eventually gives you a squad of rebels you can use to delay them. In practice you’ll almost always end up getting caught in a series of frustrating ambushes, especially as the troops move while you rest to heal up and repair your weapons. Jagged Alliance: Rage is in love with busywork.

Ultimately it is that busywork, coupled with the odd decision to give you such a low number of troops, that makes the game a slog. The good news is that we’re living in a golden age of turn-based tactics games, and both Jagged Alliance fans and the rest of us can do better than a lukewarm game with a beloved name.

The story is as deep as it is original—which is to say not at all