After nearly a quarter century, Judged Alliance kicked my butt again. Bad luck, arrogance, stingy mercenary contracts, and a hail of enemy mortars ended a 25-hour campaign with little hope of recovery. I'm not angry - it was a brilliant last stand. I know what went wrong. We will renew the team and start again. This time it will be different.

While XCOM has become synonymous with squad tactics, I will always have a soft spot for Sir Tech's 1999 masterpiece, Jagged Alliance 2. It's a heady, highly simulationist game that mixes tactical firefights, strategic mercenary management, RPG-like dialogue, side quests, and looting. It was also bloody hard, but frustration was kept low by the depth of the learnable combat and the irreverent tone, somewhere between "The A-Team" and "Commando," which mimicked the action movies of the time.

To this day, no one has been able to recapture that brilliance. Darker, edgier and less joyless, "Jagged Alliance": Rage. felt like the end of the road. Thankfully, Hemimon Games, the developer of "Tropico," had other ideas. While squad tactics are not their usual forte, it is pleasing to see that "Jagged Alliance 3" is modern and streamlined while still retaining the spirit of the original. It's an old-fashioned game, and the antics are as goofy as ever.

Set just a few years after the 90s original, JA3 takes place in Grand-Cien (translation: Big Dog), a former French African territory rich in diamond mines and opportunists. A local general kidnaps the president of Grand-Sien, and his daughter wants you to lead a squad of rogues/bad-guys enough to liberate him, and possibly the country as well. Unfortunately, with only $40,000, you are forced to call up a B-team. There will be no other way.

Most of JA2's mercenaries are back here, plus a handful of newcomers. The goofy tone and scenery-chewing performance may turn some people off, but I found it fundamental to the experience and provided plenty of laughs. Unlike most tactical games, all mercenaries come fully formed as RPG party members, with about 36 available for hire. Some are pros, some are dunces.

The new voice actors do an excellent job with the returning characters, but I also liked the newcomers. Special mention should be given to the jovial young Pakistani engineer, Leili 'Livewire' Idrissi. He's good at fixing gear, providing snacks for people on long journeys, and hacking devices with his custom PDA.

All of the characters have a lot of voiced chatter, both in and out of combat, and often interject into conversations with NPCs; enough so that a squad of four to six players could play a campaign with a completely different feel all over again.

JA3's combat differs from the simulation-heavy approach of its predecessor to the easy-to-read battlefields and systems of modern XCOM. Movement is action point-based and influenced by agility status, morale, and rest level, but is visually intuitive. The movement grid shows a "blue" movement radius, from which there is enough AP to shoot. If you've ever played a modern tactics game, it's easy to jump in and get started, but the process of putting bullets into the bad guys is much finer than rolling dice.

Each bullet is a physical object that leaves the barrel and travels toward its target. If it hits something along the way (a rock, a wall, a bystander), it damages it instead. There is no hit rate, just a targeting cone based on equipment and status. Spending additional action points enhances the aiming (a flashing yellow crosshair indicates an almost certain hit) and makes the fight feel more natural and intuitive.

Cover protects against bullets unless broken, but protruding limbs can be hit by stray bullets or targeted individually. Head shots are deadly, arm shots are less accurate, and leg shots are slow. Stray bullets can be a major pain, so one must move carefully and swing the camera around to make sure everyone is behind cover. Armor is useful, but wears out fast, forcing you to assign valuable time between battles to mercenaries who know the mechanics to repair it.

Many of JA2's more labor-intensive elements have been stripped away. While you can sneak up on (and take down) enemies during the real-time infiltration phase before the firefight begins, once the turn-based combat begins, all characters have 360-degree visibility and orientation is not taken into account for shooting; JA2's stamina and morale bars have been replaced with simple buffs and debuffs; and the game's "no more" combat system has been replaced with a more "no more" combat system. Honestly, I don't miss them and there are interesting systems that fill those gaps.

All mercenaries now have unique abilities. Some are passive (engineer Barry Unger makes several custom-shaped throwing charges) and some are active (step-hunter Yuri Omryn has 360-degree overwatch), giving each party a different feel to combat. Each weapon type also has a perk: SMGs move and spray defensively, machine guns dig in for precise overwatch, and so on. While there is little micromanagement in combat, there are many tactical options, giving JA3 a unique feel.

Strategic and RPG layers set Jagged Alliance apart; Grand Chien is an open world that can be explored, and the town is full of NPCs, mostly with French accents, many with side quests. There are also plenty of strategic elements, such as diamond mines to generate income, forts to create armies to retake territory, and harbors to move faster over water. On the map, mercenaries can heal each other, train local militias (adding allied soldiers to the territory they wish to defend), make ammunition, repair equipment, and modify weapons using parts procured by breaking unwanted guns.

Knowing what to do at any given moment is difficult at first, and you have to learn by feel your way around. The campaign is not long and linear, but over time the enemy's aggression gradually increases, and story events can send you into unplanned battles. Replacing lost mercenaries is relatively easy, but too many setbacks can lead to a spiral of doom. It can be frustrating, but you learn a little more each time you play. There is depth here.

One of the things that sets JA3 apart from its predecessors is the world map. Every square on the map is a custom-made battlefield, often with underground areas and loot caches. The map is also annotated with vantage points and patrol routes obtained by hacking for reconnaissance and intelligence gathering. This makes Grand Cheng feel like a single country, not just an abstract tile. It is also a handsome game. The battlefields are detailed and gorgeously illuminated, with weather and time of day looking good and having a statistical impact on the battle.

Even on "Normal" difficulty, Jagged Alliance 3 is complex and challenging, and overconfidence or lack of spending can halt progress. The enemies are not particularly clever (they are Hollywood thugs after all), but a single sniper shot or full-auto burst from an assault rifle can ruin a mercenary's day, and you are almost always outnumbered. There is also a toggle available to enable Iron Man mode, which can leave mercenaries dead with zero health instead of leaving them in a recoverable bleeding state.

While some players may easily complete the campaign (there are achievements for completing the game with only one character), I will enable Forgiving Mode, one of the options to reduce the difficulty, on my next playthrough. It will allow me to play a little more aggressively, although it won't reduce the amount of damage I do in combat, just the time and resources I spend on earning a few daily coins and recovering between battles. A good training ground for newcomers (or rusty veterans), but tougher than other tactics games at lower settings.

There are a few areas where JA3 does not live up to its predecessor. The cute elements of life insurance policies, mercenary obituary sites, and ordering flowers for your nemesis are unfortunately gone; the Institute For Mercenary Profiling (IMP) site is still there, and if you take a sarcastic personality quiz, you can create a custom character What IMP lacks in personality, it makes up for in pro bono work.

Another drawback is the UI in general. The tooltips and status blocks that appear during combat are intrusive, and I often wished they were half the size. The same goes for the inventory screen, which requires scrolling through mercenaries' highly detailed backpacks and stashes, with no auto-sort or cleanup options. It can be overly fiddly for no reason, and it can be a hassle to re-equip an entire squad.

While the battlefield is gorgeous and each mercenary has a unique character model (unaffected by armor wear), there are several areas where it is clear that this is not a mega-budget production. Character animations are a bit stiff (especially the shotgun and explosive knockdown animations), gore effects are a bit cheap, and it looks like someone spray-painted bright red blood on a wounded character. It's a minor quibble, but there are better things to do in modern games.

These flaws take the shine off this otherwise excellent strategy RPG, but they are enough to downgrade it to the point where I strongly recommend it to veterans of the genre. Haemimont promises extensive mod support soon after launch, and players will be able to play the new maps, characters, equipment, and even new stories. By the time I complete this campaign, there will be even more battles to fight. I can't wait.