One of the neat things in JA2 was having a trainer character and leaving them to buff up the militia. Diverting funds and resources to help protect areas would have made it a lot less back and forthy, as well as potentially adding more meat to the overmap.ДЄdam: Yeah, there could be a lot more done with the RPG and strategy aspects on that front.

You can give some guns and clothes to some random guys in territories you've seized, then they're ineptly defend in the event of enemy invasion, but that's about it - so you end up ushering your own squad all over the place annoyingly. Speaking, again, as someone not too versed in JA2, I'd have liked to see the friendly militia system fleshed out a whole lot more. Silent Storm did it so well whereas JABIA doesn't do much with it at all.ДЄlec: yes, just the silly c4 charge points. I would have liked to see better destructible scenery. It's when a load of things happen simultaneously that you risk things turning into a chilling pantomime of stupidity if the AI's not right.ДЄdam: I have been back to JA2 again since the WIT and what surprises me is that there is so much that could be done to the game, hopefully to improve it, without losing the core. Being shot at isn't silly, it's dangerous.ДЄlec: turn-based can forgive a lot. Silly soldiers don't seem silly if you can't see what they're doing until they are shooting you. I said it somewhere, I think when playing the beta, but it may well be no worse than in JA2, but that game used smoke and mirrors to hide deficiencies. I'd get close to a delicious kernel of strategy cleverness, then it would all collapse into chaos and men vibrating against each other.ДЄdam: The AI is horrible. So it felt like a nut I couldn't quite crack. To be honest, I'm only passingly familiar with the original JAs so I approached this relatively fresh - which meant the major bugbear was the AI for me. But a lot of thought has gone into making the tactical side of things interesting and fairly unique, whereas the campaign seems stripped back to me, an awkward necessity rather than an involved sort of overgame.ДЄlec: yes, particularly in the overmap, which ended up being little more than, well, a map. Actually, 'lavished' may be too strong a word. It does that its own way and the 'plan & go' system is pretty clever, but the campaign felt like a requirement based on the heritage rather than something that had the same amount of attention lavished on it as the gunplay. The biggest difference, in terms of quality, isn't actually in the combat. There are problems but the actual shooty stuff works really well at times. Any sense of what you might have made of it if it had turned up out of the blue and called Men With Guns In A Place or something?ДЄdam: I think I would have appreciated the fact that I was playing a squad-based tactical combat game with a great deal of depth. It's highly peculiar that it slavishly followed so much of JA2 - the characters, the plot - but threw out the stuff that actually made it JA2. I think the name hurt it more than it helped, although the financials may tell a different story.ДЄlec: Yes, it could have been a relatively well-received strategy game in its own right under its own name. The first thing is that in so many ways I wish it hadn't been called Jagged Alliance, even though it had so much of Jagged Alliance about it. Although there are many things fresh in my mind, or at least close to fresh. Have you been back to it since your WIT?ДЄdam: Not once. I played loads of it, what, three weeks ago? I've had at least nine sleeps since then, so I can't possibly be expected to recall much about it. 'Alright, Smith, you've got a deal! But keep those hands where I can see them.'ДЄlec: Right, let's see if I can remember anything about Jagged Alliance: Back in Action. He thought about making a break for the pool of darkness behind the wheelie bins, but finally he accepted that he could be fugitive no longer. Time to talk about what we each made of Jagged Alliance: Back In Action.' Alec froze, hesistated. He reached to his side, and brought up his specially-silenced keyboard. Suddenly, Alec was caught in the light of a cash machine, and Adam wasted no time in seizing the opportunity. Each knew the other was out there somewhere - but where? Slowly, they crawled forwards, occasionally hiding behind a trolley rack or starting as an orange plastic bag fluttered past in the gentle evening breeze.

Alec and Adam lurked on opposite sides of the supermarket car park, lying on their bellies, waiting, watching.

Jagged alliance back in action map