Recent reviews by pumpadumpadump

First Up: This is the first Jagged Alliance that I've played.

I do like the game.
I recommend it to everyone who likes turn based strategy and is more interested in gameplay depth than in nice cutscenes.

Yes it is not polished and not everything is smooth, but.
I'm really enjoying the fight mechanics. I got the feeling that there are many aspects to explore on how to min-max the fights and different strategies. I only played the first sectors that were not so challenging yet, so I really only used one kind of aim and worked with positioning (going into cover, popping out of cover, waiting behind walls with interrupt and so on) But i have the feeling that there is still a lot to explore, like min-maxing weapons and mercs, maybe playing with the moral and energy System. I'm really looking forward to the "hard" fights that won't work on the first and second try, i believe that's when the game will become very interesting.
The last turn based game I've played that i can compare it to was Blackguards. Blackguards was more expensive and polished and smooth but i got bored pretty fast, it's too stream lined and you don't get the feeling that the world is actually alive, it's just a series of puzzles with nice scripted transitions.
With Jagged Alliance Flashback those nice transitions are missing, you kind of get thrown into the world and have to figure out what is actually going on and who are those guys that you have to fight for and against (which is hard if you don't like to read in games). But what makes it better than blackguards is that you actually are playing in a living world. Moving on the global map is not for free it costs money and time and the chance of being attacked. Also in sectors you can't just stand around and take forever to manage your inventory because chances are a roaming enemy will discover you.

Allot of people seem disappointed because they compare it to the old Jagged Alliance games. I can not make this comparison.
After playing a little I've got the feeling that theres is a lot of interesting gameplay still ahead of me, and strategic challenges motivate me more than nice cutscenes.

That's why this game deserves a thumbs up from me and another one of course for the Linux compatibility ;-)

will try to update this review after I played some more.