https://milkandhate.wordpress.com/2024/01/08/jagged-alliance-flashback/
here's the full text didn't fit into steam
or here's TTS of the full text
https://youtu.be/7QWtuCV34Qw
but here's some paragraphs from it:
During the Kickstarter campaign i asked the devs if they will screw it up, and they said they are not gonna make Back in Action garbage. Well, i’m glad they delivered, and made a game about on par with Jagged Alliance 3 quality-wise.
When it came out the reception was not very enthusiastic, so i’ve never even tried it before. At this point the abysmal Back in Action has very positive ratings on Steam and this one very negative. But Steam is a grift DRM. In reality 700 scores are split in middle, but Steam claims there are only 400 and they are all negative. And shows only negative reviews, unless you manually pick to show only the positive ones.
I have no idea in which state the game was 10 years ago. I only judge the game as it is present on the store today, version 1.1.3-rc2-14135). I’ve played many games with turn-based-tactics combat to get my Fallout 2–UFO–Silent Storm–Jagged Alliance 2 fix. Including literal Fallout-clones like ATOM and UnderRail, and i got bored of them all. But this, this is the core mechanics of Jagged Alliance.
It’s a low-budget low-poly extra-indie game, which has a shallower mechanical depth than even the first game. But the action of calculating time units, pointing at the enemy, and shooting it, is present and executed the way it should be. The turn-based combat is actually enjoyable.
The story is pretty generic for the series — hire guns, kill the dictator. Jagged Alliance 2 just doesn’t let the developers who touch the IP to sleep at nights. The first game has a way more deep story with no dictators or deposed rulers. Pure corporate war. As a prequel this is all the same predestination, with guys from future somehow involved in this game. This is the homeland of Vicky from the first game. You can hire Buns who first appeared in the second game. At least not all of the mercs are on the island, at least there are no memes about arulco, at least no eliots.
The thing goes: some island nation starts to peddle drugs, so yankeestan decides to intervene and support the local uprising with CIA operatives. It didn’t go as planned, so only one custom CIA operative (not related to any other games in the series) has survived. They organized a new, more successful uprising with the help of mercenaries hired from somewhere that is not the internet. After the despot is deposed, he somehow makes everyone involved look bad in a convoluted scheme, which i don’t think is plausible. So the leaders of the first uprising flee to europe, do some shady things and organize A.I.M. from the first game. Or not, because you can find Da Honko flakes, which means this is the BiA continuity.
The game gives a rather bad first impression — the main menu is ugly as hell and looks like absolute garbage. If you get bad weather when you start the game it looks pretty bad too. But when you get a sunny day the game is actually not that ugly. And you will get used to the graphics after a time. The camera is rather bad. Instead of a free adjustable camera it has only four positions and the stupid lowering curve. It’s used so often in this damned industry, as if all the devs think it’s actually somehow good. Not only it’s annoying, the trees and other tall things obscure your vision.
In 50 hours i’ve encountered no bugs or crashes.
The achievements are working, but they aren’t too fun. Half you just get by playing the game, for the other you have to grind, repeating stupid actions, like harming your squad with a grenade then bandaging everyone.
Jagged Alliance Flashback has better controls, better graphics, and even better GUI than the first game. But way less depth. In some sense it’s even shallower than BiA. But it is a real proper turn-based tactics game any way you rotate it, and it is representative of the core Jagged Alliance gameplay, unlike BiA and JA3.
