Jagged Alliance: Rage! Preview

Barring any last-minute delays, Jagged Alliance: Rage! should be releasing on December 6, 2018. And if you’re interested in reading a thing or two about the game’s systems and mechanics in their current early iteration, you may want to check out this WCCFTech preview. An excerpt:

Another thing that makes you think is the starting crew. You can only pick from two of the six available mercenaries. This does mean that each run will take on a new tactical view. Using Shadow and Vicki allows for a more fluid run, keep yourself moving and do your best to stick to the shadows. Going with Ivan and Grunty, however, means you’ll be relying more on brute force to achieve your objectives. In theory anyway, because stealth is by far the best tactic in Jagged Alliance: Rage.

This is where things become a little more simplified. The objectives have never been extensive, nor are they here. How you went about them was the best part of the earlier Jagged Alliance games. Combat, here, is simplified and borrows from more modern real-time tactics games like XCOM. For the most part, you’ll find that your actions are boiled down to move, shoot, stab, go prone/stand up and perform a few basic actions. These actions can be as simple as using a multi-tool to either cut through a wire fence or pick the lock of a door or possibly just picking up a body to then hide it in long grass.

Streamlined is the best word to describe it, which sadly can’t be said for the enemy. As you only have two mercenaries, your turns can go very quickly. Once enemies notice you, then waiting for your move can feel like an age. There desperately needs to be a way to speed up or skip enemy turns because it’s genuinely painful. Even more so when you want to restart the mission because you can’t even go into the pause screen during an enemy turn.

It’s the same loop that you’ll be used to from other titles. Kill the bad guy, loot him for items that help you to survive and kill the next bad guy. Rinse and repeat. Ideally, you’ll be doing this as quietly as possible though. Stealth kills are, naturally, one hit and are by far the best way for you to get through a mission. Once you get into a firefight, it’s a whole different ball game. You get to use the new rage abilities, gained through adrenaline through either dealing or receiving damage. Firefights are also when you notice just how fragile your characters are, as well as other issues.