Inventory management and resupply remain the aggravating clickfests they were in JA2, and might even be worse. The pause-and-go system is an exciting innovation, but the underlying game seems badly weakened.Ĭuriously enough, the clunkiest aspects of JA2 seem to have made their way into Back in Action without a hitch. Dynamism and unpredictability were seminal features in Jagged Alliance, but Back in Action seems to have eliminated a lot of the mechanics that enabled them.
This is the kind of change that strikes at the heart of Jagged Alliance, and I'm not clear what Back in Action puts in its place. Night combat, one of the deadliest and most intense parts of JA2, now seems more like a cosmetic difference than a tactical one. You can see every enemy soldier on every map, so you don't need to worry about blundering into ambushes or getting outmaneuvered. This worry is not remotely allayed by my second major concern: Back in Action does not feature fog of war. Highlighted cones showed guards' field of view, revealing that they can barely see their hands in front of their faces and making BiA look more like a stealth puzzle game rather than a tactical RPG. This is hopefully just an issue with an early build, but I am not so sure. First, enemies seemed about as reactive as fence posts, to the point that sentries would step over corpses without reacting. However, I also saw some worrying things in this preview build.
In fairness, BiA does not seem like it requires the same level of finesse in angles and timing as Frozen Synapse. It's a lot like Frozen Synapse, though the controls do not allow for quite so much fine-tuning of your soldiers' actions and timing.
BiA plays out in continuous-time, and a tap on the spacebar freezes the action so you can issue orders and plot out what your mercenaries will be doing when the action resumes. The big new idea is Back in Action's "pause-and-go" system. Over the course of the campaign, you hire more mercenaries, capture strategic towns and mines, carry out quests for NPCs, and buy new equipment with the funds you raise. The campaign plays out on a grid map of the who country, and when a clash occurs in one sector, you go to a tactical battle. You hire a team of oddball mercenaries, then begin retaking Arulco piece by piece. The exiled ruler of Arulco hires your band of mercenaries to liberate his country from Queen Deidranna, his treacherous wife who usurped his throne and inaugurated an era of devastating oppression and exploitation. Jagged Alliance: Back in Action (BiA) uses the same setting and campaign mechanics as JA2.
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