OK, so....this game. This is the Steam edition of a game released in 1999, and SirTech went out of business before Steam even existed. Despite that, this game introduced concepts widely copied, but never perfected. It has a sizeable community that has stayed active for the past two plus decades. It is so loved that many sequels have been published of varying quality over the years, but none capture the brilliant essence of Jagged Alliance 2.
So, what is it? I can't do it justification in this review, but I'll try.
Have you played the original XCOM: UFO Defense (the 1994 original)? Its local battle maps and strategy screen were definitely influenced by this game. You hire mercenaries to help bring about the fall of the current ruler of Arulco, an imaginary tropical location. You fight the enemy one sector at a time, attacking and recapturing towns, and then training militia to hold those cities while you continue advancing. Along the way, you'll have to have your mercs treat wounded mercs, repair items, and even practice at certain skills to improve outside of combat (you do improve stats for skill used in combat). Most towns contain a mine, that once captured, provides income to you, allowing you to continue paying for your mercs and hiring more mercs, weapons and ammo.
So that's cool, but the real fun are the battle screens. The enemy is not entirely brain dead, and appears to not suffer as much as you do with range penalties, so very soon you learn the value of cover. Heck, watch the AI, they know to use cover too. You can have squads of up to six mercs, and if you're really gonzo some battles you may have 2 or more squads in the same sector. The number and quality of your opponents varies--size and quality tend to increase as you get further in the game, but they drop nicer guns and armor too--but you'll probably have to repair it before you get to use it.
Did I mention range penalties? Why yes, this game takes its guns very seriously. If you really want a large variety of them, click Lots of Guns in the options. But even with that off, you'll have more than enough for a more casual player. You'll start with pistols (unless you hire a high end merc early!) and as you advance through the game, you'll find assault rifles, shotguns, grenades, and parts to make your weapons better or more specialized. Heck, there's even a few bazookas, lol.
To be clear, the game is not easy for noobs. There are plenty of resources available online, from walkthroughs, discussion of tactics, and far, far more. Don't be afraid of playing novice levels at first. If you like it enough, you'll probably replay it again, and juice up the difficulty once you understand how the game works.
One final note: this is an old game, so WASD is not present. Use the arrow keys for moving the screen. Also, being old, it doesn't play nice with modern systems, but there are tools that will make it work. Check the discussions for the ddraw fix--it will work like a charm getting the default version (1.12) working well, later community built patches like 1.13 also include that, but as a noob stick with 1.12 for your first run at least.
Don't let my hours played fool you--I had the original game and have played the campaign about once every 3-5 years or so. It's that good.
