Yesterday I finished Jagged Alliance 2 after a considerable number of enjoyable retro hours spent playing the game. The game itself plays a little like Fallout 2 without the role-playing aspect; in other words, it is a squad-level tactical wargame. You can control multiple squads of units, each squad consisting of up to 6 members. Outside of combat, the game plays in real-time at the tactical level (inside a town, for example), or can be be played in fast-forward while viewing the strategic map, which displays all of the towns and areas between them. Combat is done turn-based, with each unit having a certain number of action points that can be spent attacking, moving, or interacting with other objects.

The game contains a nice variety of modern weapons to select from. Handguns, submachine guns, rifles, and light machine guns are pretty well represented in a few standard calibers (9mm, .45 ACP, .357 Magnum, 5.56mm, 7.62mm Soviet, 7.62mm NATO). I found some 5.7mm ammo for the FN P90 and some 4.73mm ammo for the HK G11, though neither of the guns actually turned up.

Your units are either straight-up mercenaries (recruited through a pretty humorous send-up of the World-Wide Web) or NPCs that have agreed to join your cause. Equipment is either purchased through a similar web-based system or it is found on the battlefield. This is, in fact, where you'll get nearly all of your supplies. The web page supplier generally offers new, advanced equipment only days, weeks, or months after you've discovered it on your own (it's really best for ammo and other basic supplies that are used regularly). This means that your own squads are often outmatched from a technical standpoint. You have to rely on better tactics and intelligence in order to win.

The game has a single goal, though there are a few side-quests that pop up from time to time. Most of these come up through the game's very crude conversation system that allows you to (try to) communicate with the few named NPCs you can find in various locations. The talk system was one of the game's major weaknesses: I like that the developers tried to incorporate some RPG-aspects into the game, but the player is given very little indication as to what the various conversation choices will do. Your only options are "Friendly", "Direct", and "Threaten", or you can try give the NPC an object, or attempt to recruit him or her. As for what these choices really in a practical sense only becomes apparent after you use them.

The game's most serious problem, however, was its bugginess. This was especially disappointing considering that this was a re-release of the game, with a new version number. Very rarely could I get through an extended play time (an hour or two) without the game crashing. Did it have anything to do with an older game and XP incompatibilities? Possibly. There were also a number of in-game bugs that popped up that could not be explained away so easily. Squad member orders would often randomly shuffle after a reload (there's no way to manually reorder a team in combat or on the move). Infinite loops popped up occasionally in the turn-based combat, usually when the AI units seemed with be "thinking", though every so often the game would display a clock and freeze on my own turn.

Jagged Alliance 2 is a great game for squad-level wargamers and fans of the combat-side of Fallout 2. In spite of its problems, it really drew me in and had me in Obsessive Mode (tm). I'd often be at the computer in the morning, before work, even if I could only get in 5 minutes of play time. This would tide me over until after work, when I'd get home and immediately bring my computer out of hibernate and start the game up again. It's a shame it took me until now to find out what a great game JA2 is. Now I have to see about the add-ons "Unfinished Business" and "Wildfire", and the various total conversion mods out there.