http://www.computerbild.de/artikel/cbs-Tests-PC-Jagged-Alliance-Flashback-11044000.html

Mediocre..

Yes that was expected. But the release is just the start I guess or I hope. At this point the game is not good. But the game can be good in the future maybe.

That there are no animated portraits and no deep merc commentaries and interactions kills this game totally for me. That was and will ever be a MUST HAVE for a JA game right from the start.

I just can hope the game generates enough money to bring all this into the game after some big patches.

That is the soul of the JA series. Without it it is just like any other turn based game.

Shadow I find it kinda funny that you keep talking about the animated portraits. Not that I don't want them or like them, but if that was the biggest issue, the game would be awesome. It's only a cosmetic luxury.
I'd preffer attachments,rooftops and stuff like that first.

i am with jimmious here. i find the pics really good and the atmosphere is not destroyed by not havin animated portraits imo.

and about reviews:

They will be mediocre at best, because JA:F will always be compared to JA2 and it loses in every aspect (-graphics). But i have still hope that it will revive the franchise.

I agree totaly with whats written in the Review. Especially about di AI.

There are many JA-features wich are missing. The only one i hated in every JA-game has been adoptet:  you pump an enmy full of lead, sadly at the end of your turn he is still standing with a few Healthpoints left and during his turn he fires back and hits one of your mercs. And then he bleeds to dead, or gets cut down by your mercs.

Sadly only real JA fans will buy the game and play it for a short while. Lets hope that the patch will come in time or it will be wasted if everyone hast quit to play the game

Combat might be improved drastically with the addition of attachments (especially silencers) and AP/HE ammo. 

Also they need to get rid of the biggest flaw in the combat atm, which is AI switching state to alerted when game enters TB mode.

...

As for immersion, it lacks one major component of JA2 (fuck me, I can't believe I actually never mentioned this): those pre-scripted action scenes triggered by various major evens (Eliott slapping, remember?). THAT was what made you feel immersed in a story during Arulco campaign.

If the JA:F quests would be accompanied by such pre-scripted "mini-movies" then they would make sense. Plus I don't think they're so hard to make anyway.

Well, the story itself was never extremely special in JA. Basically just kill the bad guy / girl. All those quirky characters and exactly those "mini-movies" are what made it special.
Adding things like this would improve the story a ton.

If I was redesigning the UI I would also get rid of the whole dialogue menu and use text-bubbles instead over NPC heads. Coupled with pre-scripted scenarios would make the immersion go off the chart.

Take a couple of the JA:F stories. The priest who got herpes. Turn that into a mini-movie. Does it even compare to some NEXT-NEXT-NEXT lines of text?

Or the quest where you help with the "unsatisfied wife".

Or the poster quests. All you have are some gruesome description of what those killers do. If you had 3 mini scenarios with the in action... boy... imagine how you felt when you actually met them.

Plus the whole main story - those radio messages don't help at all. Prince never appears. Miranda is just a static. Put that as an action scene and bingo..

Sorry but I played JA2 because of the cool mercs and their interactions to each other. In JA2 we had a great intro, a cool hiring menu were we really talked to the mercs. They were personalities. You cared about them. There was a real atmosphere. That was the reason why I liked JA so much. That was the reason why I backed the game. I wanted the soul that BIA lacks. Nice painted animated 2D portraits with character and soul plus cool comments. Nothing of this is in JAF.

And it is a basic feature of every JA game. Even the first game had this. Nothing special or on top of the basic features. They promised they will bring this into the game and they failed completely.

In JA2 you really felt like you hire real mercs and they want money from you and they also leave.

Sure you have all this in a poor level in JAF but it can´t transport that feeling of JA2.

And that is not because nobody can do it. Its because its poor implemented and designed.

Just hope the future will bring this on the right level.

Yes Shanga, the scripted scenes of JA2 were very funny and imersive. When i see the trailers FC did, i'm wondering if they could do some scenes for the game. Code wise, i don't know if it's hard to implement a movie input, but i really don't think so...

@FC: Intro movie and small scenes for main story and quest would add a lot to the game. Think about it!

And the game lacks of atmosphere from the beginning to the end.

There is:

- No intro

- No real introduction to the story

- No real introduction to the mercs and why you hire them

- No messages from your contact (Like the emails)

- No cool hiring screen where you really talk to the mercs

- No animated potraits for the mercs and npcs

- No deep commentaries and interactions between the mercs

- No arms dealer screen

- No cutscenes

- No npc conversations with choices

Overall everything that took soul into the JA games is missing.

And nobody is talking about that. Nobody says that this will be better in the future. That is soooo SAD!

The other features like attachements and so on must be also in but that was known from the start and that is no bonus stuff.

the problem is that it does not seem to sell very well. It is not in the top 25 bestselling games on steam. That's tough

Hmm for us that is bad maybe. But don´t know what this represents compared to the sold copies overall. Maybe it is still selling ok.

But the customers are right. If I wasn´t a JA fan than I wouldn´t buy it too. That is not enough for a jagged alliance game at the moment.

yeah well. It is bad for us and FC.

Hmm lets wait for two weeks. Maybe the game sells well in the end.

Yeah hard situation. Not enough money to continue development and releasing a bad selling unfinished game. But that was to be expected. Maybe FC should have focused only on one game and make this right.

JAF is the only project I've ever backed and it will definitely be the last one. FC advertised the game as the "all time wanted" JA-successor .... and now everybody is disappointed.

Is there a way to get the money back? .... or at least to get a steam voucher instead?

Nevertheless, if the game should ever be completed as expected, please send me an e-mail ... I'm outta here

raw translation of some key points:

- not enough story
- battles too often the same. Only enemy count rises
- seems unfinished due to buggy AI and bugs in general
- game length too short, map too small
- bad presentation (immersion)

test grade: C 

This should have been the Early Acces launch, not retail. But I guess they ran out of money.

sadly i did not find it in the first 400 best sold games. either this is a bug or it sells really bad

Anyway, can anyone explain the rating system of that Computer Bild magazine? The lower the number the better?

- No rooftop climbing

- No triggered cutscenes (JA2 had it, just remember the "Elliot, you idiot!" *slap parts

- Do the characters like/dislike each others? I'm not sure about the JA1, but in JA2 sometimes they even refused to work, if there was a guy in the team they hated

I don't unerstand the intro part. It didn't even need to be an animation. Just get a green-screen, a couple airsoft gun, a woodland camo BDU and make a Red Alert 2 type of intro. Maybe 2 people talking in an office about the situation and the mission. Cheap and easy to make, It's possible even with bad actors.

1.0 best 6.0 worst

it's like grades in german school. US equivalent would be C.

The funny thing is that as a standalone title it would superior in tactical and strategy depth than the other modern TBS games of the past years - ARMA tactics, Shadowrun Returns, Antisquad, XCOM:EU.

Although some of those games have better polish and more immersion they have even less mechanics.

Sadly the game is a Jagged Alliance game and it gets compared to JA2 which was a really big game and the current title doesn't fair well against JA2

In retrospect is would have been wise to start reviving the series by promising something similar to the original JA (No promises about JA2 type of game, not sure if people would have backed, but it would have had more polish and could have been made more immersive) 

having played a little bit now and liberated that tiny island, here are my 2 cents:

I reallly like the graphic design with its details and also the interface in the tactical screen. The graphics create a good setting. I think the game in itself is very good, even though it has been rushed and still needs lots of polishing.

I think the main problem is, that it has the JA tag and people therefore have much higher expectations. If the game were named "Tropical Combat" or something like that, people all round would probably refer to it as a great game. But since it's JA it is really left wanting.

There is so much potential there but at the same time so much stuff missing where I am wondering how it can't be in there in the first place. This really feels like a beta and not a game that should have been released yet, so as a backer I am not really happy. I believe it needs another couple of months and it will be brilliant but I realise that FC might not have the money to do that. So I'm quite disappointed with what we have here, to be honest, since I pledged more than your reguler AAA title would cost in the shop.

Hopefully a patch will sort out stuff - it seems to me to be less a problem of bugs but a lack of features. Some people are exaggerating with their demands though - yes vehicles would be cool, but do we really need them? no, JA1 didn't have them either and was still a great game. And yes, animated portraits would be nice but that is hardly game-changing if we can't even walk backwards or have to click the interrupt button EVERY SINGLE TURN FOR EVERY SINGLE MERC.

Just a note on Interrupt : The way it's designed is coherent with the rest. Going on interrupt is a choice in JAF. If you do it, you focus on that task, and therefore do not recover stamina. You may not like it, but it has its logic.

If I've set up a trap to get a few enemies with interrupts as they storm out of a house e.g. I need to click four times on four mercs, click four times on interrupt. And if noone is coming yet and I want to hide another round, and then maybe need to wait another round until an enemy comes or the game switches back to RT mode, I need 24 clicks to do something I needed no clicks at all.

No matter whether there is some logic behind it, it sucks and is my biggest annoyance in the whole game so far. 24 clicks instead of none... that surely can't be an improvement?

I shudder to think what happens later in the game, when you have some 12 mercs sitting around - not only for a trap, just when you want to be a bit more defensive, hiding in the bushes etc.

Yes, it's game like mechanic which nobody (Haven't read that it's good or anything in the forums) prefers over the realistic interruption that was in JA and JA2. But again this is a touchy subject for me because I really dislike the system :)

But you are right it works like it is supposed to. 

I reported as "Feedback" that overwatch should be the default stance for leftover APs (maybe if remaining AP > 5) but they didn't change it.  Who knows what the thinking behind having to turn it on every time is.

If the merc is on interrupt, he doesn't recover stamina. That's probably the reasoning behind it. However, I agree that this should be automated or a hot fix to be able to end the turn and put all mercs into interrupt mode with a custom hotkey.

I noticed someone else too was hoping hotkey for [b]urst. I tried to point this out too, but didn't yet get through with this hotkey request. I know I had many and many that I use are there :)

Yeah I also asked for L for look, didn't seem to make it in.

Saves clicks. Set to Space, or whatever you wish.

Yes, but pressing a button 24 times isn't that much better than doing 24 clicks ;)

To me that looks like a case of "if it ain't broken, don't fix it". But yes, a universal button at the end of the turn that sets all mercs with more than 5 AP to interrupt would help (like gdalf suggested).

It seems I'm not the only one who wishes there were more keyboard shortcuts. If you play a lot, keyboard shortcuts make your life so much easier, no matter the game.

After some twenty years I tried to give Eye of the Beholder a go a while back and I just couldn't deal with all the clicking to move about... uninstalled it after less than 30 minutes.

Why is there 1 font in the whole game?

game died the day they decided to release it...., imo everyone was suck in by FC's pure BS, they FC started this in the first place sadly they couldnt finish it, the out of money excuse is getting old, which gaming company arent digging deep into their pockets during development stage esp indie companies. If I had known they were doing another project and not fully concentrating their resources on this I wouldnt have pledge, but lesson learned.

And what if you see the books and you could see that they invested own money? Would you take back your argument? They had never the budget to work fully on ja:f. Even obsidian and other kickstart companies in gaming do parallel work so Core team can stay together and gets paid even after release. It is the only way to run a smaller company, before the last Bolch it is finished you half to start a new one.

idk unless we live in a different world BUT to release it now is tantamount to committing sucide, the competition out there is harsh as like them everyone the gamers has a budget to spend on games its receation not a necessity...

imo, they should have delayed and polish it rather than release this half finished product, did they even play it or tested it? simple core mechanics like shooting is a farce a joke how can someone even miss at close range using a handgun is really beyond common sense and real world logic and these are hardcore merc not your average mum or dad or joe on the street...

as it stand now the game is dead which fool will want to throw money at this...

imo there is nothing it has now in its current stage to even entice potential customer those that had never played any JA before...

ah well at least they pull the plug early since its gonna be a failure anyway, why prolong the pain lmao.

and its good to know that FC will alway be a hasbeen and wannabe.

my 2 cents

elminster imo you are overreacting. The game is not so bad.

It think you are right on the money there it needs to feel more immersive, speech bubbles and so on would really help with that, but there are some basics from JA2 that are missing like the interaction between characters, likes/dislikes/hates. Those are core to the game and really should be present. Animated portraits I can take or leave. They aren't imperative to the feel of the game, the portraits being static is just fine as long as they are present.

Recreating those scenes as actual scenes wouldn't be that bad either. Keep them short and sweet with a good bit of dark humour and it'll be great.

One thing I think has been missed during the development of this is that the pledging should have been continued. Every successful KS has kept pledging going, allowing more funds to flow in during development and allowing those stretch goals to be met easier. The second part that's been missed is the marketing. Barely anyone outside of the original community know about this game, there needs to be a push for release attention, even label it as Early Access and plan for development based off some good press, which is what needs to be pushed by PR whether at FC or Bitcomposer.

I'm sorry I haven't been around much during the development process, I would like to have contributed more, but life gets in the way at times.

I think I mentioned that dialogue in the corner was a bad idea during alpha feedback.  But of course I didn't feel strongly about it as I do now when trying to play through the game properly.

You're right and very wrong. You're right, because:

   "Id": "Mauser_C96",

        "Name": "Big Red",
.        "AP": 7,
        "EffectiveRange": 2.5,
        "MuzzleVelocity": 1.0,
        "BaseAccuracy": 95.0,
        "Mobility": 100.0,
        "Damage": 26,
        "DamageFalloff": 15,
   

Your IMP is probably 50-60 Marksmanship, which in JA2 is considered average. And all guides tell you "do not spend more skill points on it, it will raise fast". In JA:F as it's released, that statement is not true. As it is setup now, 50 MRK in JA:F means you're crap at shooting. 

Second, what you consider "short range" is actually setup as maximum range for your gun (2-3 stepts from enemy). After than, JA:F has drastic penalty to hit.

So you're right to feel confused. But you're also wrong. Because the devs never claimed they knew better than you what makes a great JA game. And they invested a lot of manhours into giving YOU the option to tweak your game as you feel right. Cause no matter how much they would've fine-tuned the game, someone out there would've said "meh, it's not how i play". 

I personally do not like the balance atm. I plan to change it and release a mod. So will probably Kaerar and Grim and dozens of other modders. You will be spoiled for choice soon. This is the main quality of JAF. So how would I do it?

   "Id": "Mauser_C96",

        "Name": "Big Red",
.        "AP": 6,
        "EffectiveRange": 4, (3 on some, 5 on others)
        "MuzzleVelocity": 2.0,
        "BaseAccuracy": 85.0,
        "Mobility": 100.0,
        "Damage": 26,
        "DamageFalloff": 15,

Why? Because from my experience majority of the fights take place at this range (3-5 tiles). The basic backup weapon is your handgun or SMG. So it needs to be decent. That also means the enemy will hit you more accurately, but since I plan to couple this with increased loot, medical aid won't be an issue.

From my plays I understood that gradual weapon progression is impossible in JAF because the map is too small. If you force the player to go into gradual progression, he meets overpowering enemies too fast and he gets wiped. So you either remove all overpowered guns from the game and make a "low-tech" weapons mod. Or skip the bad weapons fast and give the player the good gear. It's a design choice you will see in many mods.

But all I've said requires a lot of fine tuning. If FC would've had the money, ideally JAF would've had at least a full month of intense testing of the RC1. We had what? Hours? Of course there's no balance, bugfixing went on right until the game was pushed to live on Steam.

Is that bad? Yea, not the greatest idea.

Is that fataly bad? No, cause it can be fixed easy.

what shanga said but in fact I thought that this issue has gotten much better with JAF!

also, now we see percentages for a succesful hit - very helpful because previously you sometimes just couldn't know if some bush or tree was obstructing your view (badly/lightly) or not at all. And you would waste bullets and give away your position without hitting anything.

in JA2 a top merc with 90+ marksmanship could fire a burst with an AUG and all five bullets would miss the enemy on the adjacent tile. regularly.

Currently it's ranking #24 in strategy games.

I checked Steam too. If you rule out strategy games released last year, DLCs and other crap (Farming Simulator or $1 games), JA:F is trending at number 6 in Strategy.

This review states exactly my sentiments: http://www.hookedgamers.com/pc/jagged_alliance_flashback/review/article-1354.html

FC, вы просто кучка ссаных хуесосов, которая надругалась над великой серией. Я ненавижу вас за это.

http://www.pcgames.de/Jagged-Alliance-Flashback-PC-257173/Tests/Test-Taktik-Murks-mit-JA-Lizenz-1140359/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PCGamesde+%28PCGames.de%29

Only 32%. It does not look as rosy...Ratings fly pell-mell :/

PC Games kills the game.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/jagged-alliance-flashback/user-reviews

I stated my points on MetaCritic. As for magazine reviews, we can't say FC wasn't aware that's coming. But it was their (forced) choice so they have to deal with it and prove everyone (again) wrong.

Will they get another review from the likes of PC Gamer? Probably in a year or so, if they ever release a separate expansion, a few words somewhere. Sad but true.

With this in mind, once euphoria of the launch wears off, it's back to work. Or these forums will be as deserted as those of BIA with only chinese spam bots posting. For me, that would be a very dark day. Because for JA franchise, it would be the end. In big blood red letters.

PC games did some errors. It is mentioned in the comments of this review. I think they rushed the review (as FC the game). This has a huge impact on the game as PC games is read by many many german readers. And other than 2 false claims, they are right to have their opinion and compare the game mainly to JA2 which was a full price game. I second that. It is hard for FullControl to do damage control now. You could ask: If you have the code of BIA and JA2 ... why not copy as hell or adapt and rewrite in unity as close as possible.

I can't write German, but from what I got from Google Autotranslate, the PC Games review is both biased and wrong on more than one count

Catastrophic enemy AI

Typical of the quality of game reviewers nowdays, he already has an oppinion on AI after 1-2 fights. Most likely against the first batch of AI opponents, which are equipped with low range weapons and WILL rush your position like retards. Because they're supposed to be retards.

High miss rate

LOL, wtf. He probably made an IMP with 35 MRK and tried to shoot with 20% CtH. Full Control, please tweak the default IMP to 90 MRK, otherwise you'll see no end to this kind of idiocy.

A few tactical options

That's such a generic statement I can't even comment. 

Abruptly-amateur-Story

Story is fine, but I agree. The whole UI, lack of any movies, prescripted scenes, all is a big MINUS to the RPG feel of the game. Probably one of the few parts where I agree.

Rudimentary action without any tension

Relates to the story, it's about the same freaking point, just for the sake of giving it another minus

No laptop to buy equipment

Idiot, it's the 80s. Your "laptop" weighs 50kg. Your mobile phone weights 2kg. Again. YOU=IDIOT.

No trade-Interface

A fix was already announced BEFORE release, but why an objective tester/reviewer bother to do a bit of documentation before a massacre

Missing JA2 charm, zero atmosphere

Subjective as fuck, but relates to the story again

Simple Quests

Maybe. It's not an RPG, but there's room for improvement.

No interaction with the game world

Ok, it's coming, but I'll give him this one. One day we might have chest with locks, doors, etc. 

Empty levels without chests and items

At release yes. With a small tweak to ItemGroups.json, bingo. Lots of chests. But OK, valid point at release.

Long waits while opponents trains

Hmm... ever played JA2?

Promised features missing (ammunition, weapons modifications)

No shit.

Lousy Performance

When? Where? Overall? In Tio at night? I've played and streamed this at the same time. And didn't crash once. Say that about your favourite AAA title at launch and eat your words.

Very long loading times

Again, fucking duplicating minuses just for the sake of justyfing a massacre

Environment covered viewing area

Weak point of JAF, inherited from Unity engine. Maybe solvable in the future with a wireframe version of the trees being dynamically loaded. But ok, valid point.

Clunky user interface

Good point.

Poor staging

?

Only rudimentary graphics option

Tied to Unity, who the fuck cares about eye candy in a TBS game anyway

And the above kids, is how you profesionally massacre a game when you grow up and become a reviewer at PC Games. Which if doesn't get pampered, dined and wined by an AAA marketing department is very grumpy. And in general quite upset he has to review such crap indie games when his colleagues get to be driven by limousine to EA HQ to playtest the newest FIFA crap.

I agree on Some points. But to be honest your review at meta critics is as biased as this. It will push people to register and disagree with you. I think a 6.5 would have prevented that. I can write a review on a German site. I won't ATM because without patch this game I'd hard to enjoy. I only enjoy combat. The rest is not finished. 

With bad bad stage he did push the massacre again. It just a general term for overall bad game presentation.

also the writer states that he can only test the version he got. So there will be patches. He could have looked up that attachments will come. He should say that. But it won,t affect the grade.

No offence dude, but you sound like the biggest cheerleader FC could ever hope for. Maybe it's your whole "re-evaluating your life" thing, but the "bear" I remember would not be defending something so poorly released. But hey, to each their own. And I get the whole "it is what it is, make the best of it" point of view, I really do. I just believe your opinion carries more weight than average joe because of your history with Urban Chaos, Mod Squad and alike. While I'm not nearly as pissed off as some people, and I think paid more than average for it, I don't see this game as being worthy of full price FC feels it demands.

As for all those extra combat mechanics, like muzzle velocity and penetration, they are far from evident when your mercs are shot through static obstacles like walls and such. There is little to no depth to combat right now. They might as well have soldiers and mercs have shoot outs wild west style. Players get pissed off and quit when the basics don't quite work right. The majority of people buying THIS Jagged Alliance game (especially for full price) expect Jagged Alliance game right out of the box, not something that COULD be good few years down the line. There should not be props, or placeholders, or half-finished ideas. I think that's what stings the most people. That, and trying to cover it up by saying "small team" or "low budget" or "if you can't afford a Ferrari, buy an Audi and enjoy it".

Well.. at least he believes in something and tries to better it.. nothing wrong with that imo.

Ja 1.13 wouldnt have happened if people just whined about the bugs of the game, would it? And let´s be honest JA 1 wasn´t that much better a game then JA:F .. it´s a pain to play today. 

Only thing it really has better are more mercs, better mercs .. and voice overs... and that´s something which costs money.

Nothing wront with that at all. Like I said, to each their own. All I said was that his opinion carries more weight, whether he likes it or not. And that it comes across as very biased towards FC.

As for comparing it to JA1, it's not really fair. That's like comparing original Sim City to SimCity 4. JA1 came out forever ago. When you take yourself back to that time and only that time, did you have as much fun playing it as you do with JAF? I don't know about you, but I remember countless hours spent playing it because it was so engrossing, missed homework and failed school tests because of it. Of course, playing it now is not the same. Just like playing anything else that was superceeded by something better. Was it basic and simple compared to today's standards? You bet. Was it amazing to play when it came out? You decide...

JA1 plays still very nicely, I completed it and JA:DG before the kickstarter. Compared to modern TBS games JA1 is much more complex in tactical and strategy sense.
The same goes for JAF

The current TBS games are much much more simpler than JAF, but JAF isn't compared to other modern titles, but to JA2 which was an amazing game. JAF on it's own isn't a bad game, but compare to JA2 it falls short (not a fair comparison though, but it is still being done)

@ Shanga

I´m german and you interpreted the review of "pcgames" right. The universal translator seemed to do good job :). Otherwise i must say "pcgames" has not a good reputation in germany from what i know. "Gamestar.de" is the most popular german site, but they didnt do a review until now. Maybe they know about the status of the game and want to wait for a patch or two before they test it. I know Gamestar hates big publishers more and more over the last years, so maybe they wait on purpose... 95% of the time i totally agree with gamestar in points of reviews. PCgames is incompetent imho.

greetz

Except for the complaint about the hitchances i agree with everything they say.

The game is getting slaughtered on Steam.  It is only a matter of time before it follows Metacritic and the negative reviews outweigh positive - We had a good headstart because of EA reviews of people who believed in the project, but that bump is gone now. Overall the reviews are going to be worse than Space Hulk because unlike SH, it is no faithful recreation of an original for die-hard fans to crank up the rating...

Of course people are going to compare the game to JA2, after all it's got the JA name slapped all over it. That really should have been expected from the very first second...

TBH I don't quite understand the purpose of the whole KS campaign if supposedly the intend never had been to produce a successor of the same quality.

@Archo - I rated them 8 on metacritic because retards will give them a 2 or a 3 without much after-throught. Consider that a balancing factor. My personal rating is above 7 because I have seen time and time around the devs putting in exactly the fixes that were needed. So I gave them 1 point in credit above the "official" 6.5 review.

@Syrop - You do what you think is best, I do what I think is best for JA future. But keep your assumptions on what I SHOULD DO to yourself. I did fine the last 15 years in that particular field without you holding my hand, I think I'll do fine without a few more. Deal?

The day I see this game being abandoned or mislandled by the devs, I'll let you know. So far, within their posibilities, they're doing their best. 

As far for the "oh but a larger studio would've made such an awesome game", did any of you notice any AAA studios lining up at bitComposer's door and begging for a chance to recreate JA? With the toxic state the community has been brought to? With such a goddamned cursed history of failures and bankrupcy? Did you even see Ian Currie scrambling for the Kickstarter to do a "Chris Roberts"?

No. 

So read my lips: this is the last flight of the Dodo. Either we teach it to fly, or it's extinct forever. So... I could stand by. And moan and bitch all day. God knows, Full Control are masters are feeding the trolls with enough to rage about. But I have chosen to help them instead. An idea for a feature, a stream here, a positive review there.

Why? Because, in the end, if there's no future for JA, there's no more future for Bear's Pit. And the story ends. Yea, v1.13 will keep us running for 1-2 more years. But that's all. Sayonarra. The end. 

So pick you side carefully when you go to war here.

@Shanga: I dont't think that if JAF fails there will never be a JA title in the future. Why should bitcomposer bury this iconic franchise just because an external kickstarter project from an indie studio that produced a prequel to the original series failed? They haven't produced officially JA3. So the series is not dead. JA3 has a big potential to be a huge and succesful game. They just need a good developer and time and money.

And there are many JA fans out there. With a good product they could easily make good money. Sure they have to invest much money first but in the end if they make a good game they will sell well. 

From the beginning the problem of the JA franchise is that no really good developer with big experience in strategic games tried to develop a serious successor of JA2. 

And I can't hear this bullshit that no developer can make a good successor of JA2, because its so complex and outstanding. There must be just a good developer and time and money.

That won't happen I guess but if fireaxis or another AAA developer would take this franchise serious and would produce 3 years they could make a JA3. Maybe they must bring new features in and make other old features not so complex but they could produce a great successor at its core so that many fans would be satisfied.

I still hope that FC will bring this game on a good level in the future. But for JA3 bitcomposer need balls and has to invest good money in a good AAA studio that can handle a massive roleplaying strategy game with the deepness of JA2. 

And to be honest: If they don't want or can't give us a AAA JA3 or if they can't sell the franchise to people who know what they are doing and who can handle this franchise than for sure they should bury it totally and forever. 

The fans don't need more poor dumb down trys over and over again. That won't help the producers and that won't help bitcomposer as a publisher. And I like FC they are great guys and do they best but overall they can't handle all this. That doesn't mean that JAF can't be a cool game in the future but it will never be a really great successor of JA2 and that is ok they wanted to produce a good basic JA title not JA3. But in the end all the fans want a good JA3.

So bitcomposer take this franchise serious and invest money or kill it please. That is the only solution.

@Shanga

First of all, I never fucking said what you should do. EVER. Seems like you're the one who needs fucking glasses. All I said was your metascore review came across as extermely biased to anyone who has followed this saga from the beginning. Second of all, you're the one calling people retards, idiots, etc etc etc for speaking out. Does it make you feel good about yourself insulting and degrading people? Makes you feel like a big man? Makes yo feel important? Makes you a bigger JA fan that someone who may have paid less money for it? Does being involved in 1.13 gives you the right to run the course of the debate? Because I'm disappointed in how this game came, I'm an asshole, a troll, a noob, and that you fucked my mother? Well, good for you. You carry your self-proclaimed title of Defender of everything that ever is JAGGED ALLIANCE.

Bottom line, people bought this game, just like everyone else, and they have a right to express their opinion, just like anyone else. If YOU don't like it, YOU should shut the fuck up instead of stirring up all this shit. People that buy games are not fucking obligated to give it second thoughts on how difficult it was to secure funding, how hard it was to get this project off the ground, all they want to do is play a game that resembles anything close to Jagged Alliance. 

And lastly, this addresses the whole "instead of being negative why don't you help improve this game". Maybe someone from FC can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall backers ever being given the opportunity to influence design. I don't recall ever a vote being presented that says "Guys, here's the UI idea we're thinking off, how many think it's good?" or "What do people think of our interrupt feature? How should it be improved or redone?" No, all that FC did was take the money and say "Guys, trust us, we can make a worthy JA game." And then have people like Fred have the fucking nerve to call people names for being upset with how their money was spent. Not everyone has the time to spend 80, 90, 100 hours "testing" a so called final game. Not everyone has the time to actively participate in forums. You want people to shut the fuck up? Give back the money and go on your merry way.

@Shadow - maybe... only problem is been more than a decade when i said this "maybe" the first time and nothing happened. I prefer the realistic approach - we got something to work with, let's work with it until we're 100% sure it's broken and not salvageable. People gave BIA at least one year of credit after release, but they're unwilling to cut FC any slack. Not fair.

//

@Syrop - take a walk then come back and read what I asked you and what you replied. Unless you're one of the idiots who rated the game with a 2 or a 3 on metacritic or a relative of that lame PC Gamer reviewer, I don't see where I insulted you. If that's the case, you should've had the balls to sign those with your own name or admit they're yours. Then I would've explained you more clearly why rating 2 or 3 on metacritic is just an immature hate move. Other than that, I simply asked you to drop the patronizing act and stop telling me what to do and how to support the game.

But most important, when you're quoting a honest confession about the death of a friend and a great member of the community in a snicker comment, below a chearleader toy picture, you're disgusting me. Not even making me angry. As for the rest of your rabid rant, I think that you managed to reach the lowest level seen by this forum since it has been created. You clearly have some issues with me, but this is not the place or the time to settle those. And I am pretty sure I do not want to read another line from you. Ever. 

So let's just ignore each other and move on. 

How? This bird has no feathers yet. Nothing works.

We are all a bit disappointed. I wish we could argue with the idea: at least we agree to disagree. So no need to attack each other. That does not help. At the end FC had a different game in mind and while Shanga thinks it is a good basis, lots of reviewers still expect the finished product. More or less a ja3. 

Guys we need you all for the future of jagged alliance as you all have expert knowledge of how a JA title should be. So please work together and stay as positive as you can. If FC earns enough to recoup their investments perhaps they give us access to the source, as it I'd clear they want a different game not a 1:0.90 copy of JA2 ;)

Drink a tea and calm down. I don't care about shangas past and I don't wanna know. i know he follows a dream. a new technical base to mod ja3 into the future.I respect all of you and your ideas and we tried to convince FC early that interrupts, UI, voice personality  need to change. They just don't see it that way.

So we should argue with FC instead so they copy more ja2 features and fix or externalizer that fu**** UI.

For the record, as I've stated multple times on this forum, this is a 6 tops game. If I did post any reviews on meta critic or steam (which again for the record I haven't) I have no reason to hide behind fake names. You calling people idiots and retards however is just as immature.

As for cheerleader bear, it's a visual pun for , which should have been in the game. If it flew over your head and you took it personal, then I apoligize. As for that other thing, I'm not even going there. You brought it up, I didn't. Lastly, I have no issues with you, in fact before this I actually respected you. Anyway, moving on.....