Jagged Alliance: Rage! Reviews

Jagged Alliance: Rage! launched earlier this month, promising a fresh take on turn-based tactics and a chance to catch up with some of our favorite quirky mercenaries twenty years down the line. And if you’re interested in what the critics have to say about this latest attempt to revive the venerable series, you can check out a number of review below:

Rock Paper Shotgun Scoreless:

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a developer try to recapture the magic of Jagged Alliance and I hope it’s not the last, but I found Rage pretty hard work to enjoy. Much like the mercs themselves, for every positive trait it may offer, there tends to be some frustrating problem to deal with too. The combat is rarely all that enjoyable and a game that requires so much inventory management should do so much more to make that process appeal to the player. It’s hard to recommend Rage over something like Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden this month, even if you’re desperate to see this series make a proper comeback. Sorry Ivan, maybe you should have stayed in retirement.

Hooked Gamers 6.8/10:

Jagged Alliance: Rage is a fun game when judged on its own merits. It’s certainly not a proper sequel, and perhaps that would be a bit too much to expect from a game that’s selling for a mere 20 bucks. It does have a few whiffs of what made Jagged Alliance great though, and if this would have been sold as a way to whet our appetites for a full sequel coming out next year, I think it would have landed much better with the fans than it did. As it stands, Jagged Alliance: Rage is a cute distraction, a fun-for-a-while-not-quite-Jagged-Alliance that will polarize fans more than it had intended, but should not be dismissed right out of hand.

GameSpew 5/10:

You can have fun with Jagged Alliance: Rage!, but just don’t expect it to last that long unless the experience really clicks with you. It almost feels as though it was made for the mobile market in a way, with its small but plentiful maps and cut down features. Perhaps enjoyed like a mobile game – played little but often – you’ll get more out of it. If you’re looking for your next meaty turn-based strategy to sink your teeth into, though, this isn’t it.

Turn Based Lovers 5/10:

Shame, really. And I don’t mean developers. They did their best to make a solid experience, that I, frankly, kinda liked. Heck, if not for the bugs, I would recommend Rage! as an entry point for turn-based tactics genre. Shame on marketologists, who think that a brand name is something akin a magical whistle. It’s not. People go for an established brand, well-known franchise because they know its tenets, its principles, and they know what to expect. When game developers use a franchise name, they need to live up to franchise fans expectations. Otherwise, they are going to feel fans RAGE!

GameGrin 3.5/10:

Aside from the campaign, online cooperative multiplayer is also included. However, despite an infuriatingly tedious series of lengthy sessions during which I stared at the word “matchmaking” for tens of minutes at a time, I was unable to either join a match in progress or coax another player into mine. Is nobody playing Jagged Alliance: Rage? Is the matchmaking just not up to snuff? I honestly couldn’t tell you, but I can honestly tell you to not bother enduring the pain of finding out for yourself. There are enough alternatives in the turn-based strategy genre that are infinitely more playable than Jagged Alliance: Rage for me to wholeheartedly recommend that you give this game a wide, wide berth.