Jagged Alliance Flashback Review

Jagged Alliance is a strange series. Long ignored by the industry but never forgot by the fans, the franchise has had a mixed re-entry into the gaming sphere. In early 2012 Jagged Alliance: Back in Action was released and met with a mixed reception, to be generous, best described as the perfect example of a game hindered by its title. Later that same year Jagged Alliance Online was released, going free to play less than ten months later, and the less said about it the better.
Full Control, the developer behind Space Hulk (which we reviewed last year), then went forward with the bold but not unusual move of Kickstarter to fund Jagged Alliance Flashback - what they call a complete reset of the franchise. Has this move been worth it? Let’s find out.

I must admit I adored Jagged Alliance, particularly Jagged Alliance 2, and I even tried my hardest to like Jagged Alliance: Back In Action - which to its credit was a perfectly functional tactics game, only really let down by its title. Sadly, Jagged Alliance Flashback just feels like even more of a step back.

It’s easy to just start from the beginning. You launch the game, everything is just thrown right there in front of you - no real introduction to call upon, nothing to even begin to get you invested. This anaemic movement in narrative only continues when you notice that all the personality of your mercenaries have disappeared - gone are the bits of banter that could be previously found, basically making Flashback a lifeless procession of shootouts where the only fear of losing a mercenary is the same as losing a piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

Of course some of the mercenaries can be very important pieces of your puzzle, but that is still what they are. Always replaceable with a newly bought mercenary, especially if you have enough time to fight some of the lesser roaming groups of enemies and the money to equip them to the same standards as your previous mercenary.

However, where the narrative may be lacking, the tactical gameplay is certainly not. Jagged Alliance Flashback has moved back to the turn-based tactical gameplay of the original two titles, away from the real time action with pause featured in Back in Action. There’s also an increase in difficulty and the thought required to win some of the more difficult battles.

This is primarily due to the improved AI compared to that found in Back in Action. Fighting in a town can be a constant worry, every corner potentially hiding a shotgun wielding soldier, fighting for the Prince - the not quite benevolent dictator of San Hermanos - and ready to put you down. This doesn’t make the enemies immune to stupid actions - occasionally I’ve had a small army of up to fifteen soldiers walking through a narrow corridor into a wall of bullets supplied by my mercenaries.

Of course as you move through the battles, closing in on the Prince, you and your mercenaries will gain more experience but at the same time, you come across more experienced and stronger enemies, who are also equipped with much better weaponry and armour. You will, however, have the ability to equip your mercenaries with more powerful weapons and armour through either looting the corpses of enemies, gaining gifts from helping out locals and completing quests; of course, you could also simply buy them with money earned from fortified locations.

This is one of the features partly regained from the older games of the Jagged Alliance franchise. Once you win a battle in a town, farm, mine or other major location, you can leave one of your groups on the location to train up to a maximum of fifteen militia that can defend the fort if any of the Princes’ soldiers were to attack it. The major problem of this feature being that you generally only have a maximum of two full milita groups at a time, only one early on, so leaving a group there until all fifteen militia are trained is a great hindrance.

Other smaller events like little quests, such as rescuing a farmer’s daughter from a nearby prison (which you were inevitably going to attack anyway) or putting together pieces of a treasure map all add a little to the game, but overall San Hermanos feels just too devoid of life, with its inhabitants looking more like a collection of sideshow mannequins than anything else.

Honestly, for £24.99, Jagged Alliance Flashback is far from worth it. A little cheaper and it could quite possibly be worth it, so beware of the upcoming Steam sales, but with the current price it’s hard to recommend it. It will give you some enjoyable and tense moments, particularly in the more challenging fights, but other than that, there isn’t a great deal to keep you coming back.