I signed up for the
Jagged Alliance Online (JAO) Beta a few days ago, and played a few missions. It's one of them browser-based freemium games (as it turns out "freemium" is not a word I made up while half asleep last night - it's a real thing.)
Quite naturally you start comparing it to both the just released
Jagged Alliance - Back in Action (JABIA) and the classic fan-favourite
Jagged Alliance 2 (JA2), released in 1999.
JABIA, in short, would've been considered a decent game if it hadn't been advertised as a modern remake of JA2. As it is, too much from the original is missing, resulting in only average reviews.
Now, JAO actually does a few things right that JABIA did wrong: Most notably, you have your own merc, though the creation process is a lot less funny than it was in JA2. They've also kept a lot of the speech for the other mercs, so you actually recognise them.
Other than that though, JAO is very limiting in what you can do. Maps are small, not a lot of tactical options. It's permanently turn-based which I guess the creators deemed neccessary for multiplayer, but in single player it's annoying. Interaction between mercs isn't possible it seems, interaction with the environment is limited to shooting barrels to make them explode. And the designers are pretty blunt about their use.
Of course, the worst thing about JAO is that it keeps trying to get you to spend real money on in-game currency.
Wanna do something cool? Sure no prob. Enter your credit card details here please ...
So, which one am I going to play? I recommend going
here and installing that over the original JA2 which still is by far the best of the three options, even after 13 years.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
