Profanity: The screenshot give a pretty horrible impression of the game, the video with gameplay + music looks rather smooth and dashing.
Also, nope, I do not know JA2. I'm rather young person and have almost none nostalgic feelings towards old games, except Diablo and Doom, because I used to watch my dad play it when I was very little. When I finally tried Doom, also as a very little kid, got scared shitless after I died and that horrific death animation and sound came up.
Anyway, Outcast just became my next buy. Now I'll either hope for a sale, or finally won't be able to take it and just buy the damn thing. We'll see.
Jagged Alliance 2 is one of the most well crafted turnbased tactical games ever created. You are sent into a country ruled by an evil dictator (cliche, I know), as a mercenary. Your job is to free the country, and restore prosperity. What sets the game apart are several things actually. In order to save the country you need to hire mercenaries, all with their own skills and prefferences (the better ones are more expensive). These will get better over time, depending on what they do (if they shoot a lot, they will get better at aiming, if they use first aid kits a lot, they will get better at first aid and so on). To get money, you need to gather support from the people, by liberating towns. These will in turn generate revenue for you (or more specifically their mines will), which you can then use to hire new mercenaries, pay for the ones you already have (they don't work for a one time lump sum, they want continuous payment for their hard work), train militias, which is used for defending towns (Queen Dedriana won't sit idly by as you take over her territory, she will send out soldiers to undo your hard work). There are also RPG-like quests to be done (though they are rather simple in design), which ranges from helping a guy with an unruly customer, to closing down a factory which employs children.
The meat of the game is its tactical combat though. When you enter a region with enemy soldiers the game will enter turnbased mode. When in turnbased mode there are a lot of things to take into account, like visibility, sound level, cover and so on, and as your soldiers are common humans, they can't take a whole lot of hits before going down (and healing is a slow process), so you need to be careful. You can also impact the environment, shooting a bazooka round at a wall will blow a big hole in it, and also possibly stun the people on the other side, which is not exactly subtle (every enemy on the map will most likely hear you and come running), but it is a viable tactics. Attacking at night is useful if you have the right tools/soldiers for the job, but it can also be a big hindrance (remember, the enemies can use the very same tools against you, so enemies equiped with night vision goggles are quite dangerous at night).
Combat in JA2 is incredibly intense, you care about your soldiers, and mistakes can cost them their lives. You will most likely be at the edge of your seat during enemy turns, hoping that they won't kill your soldiers, that your soldiers are able to react quickly enough when new enemies appear (if a soldier spots an enemy during the enemy's turn, and it has action points left, there is a chance that it is allowed to act, depending on its stats, much like in X-com)
My description does not do JA2 any real justice, the game is expertly crafted, all the way through. My only gripe with it is its graphics.
And darn this thread, now I feel like re-installing Outcast :( (I finished JA2 just recently, and I'm tempted to do another playthrough of that as well)
