- Publisher: THQ Nordic
- Release Date: Jul 14, 2023
- Also On: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
- Unscored
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Edge MagazineAug 11, 2023A potent tactical cocktail, but one that's best enjoyed with earplugs. [Issue#388, p.116]
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Aug 7, 2023Jagged Alliance 3 pays homage to its predecessor and is one of the stronger turn-based titles of the year. It's intense, difficult and manages to enchant with its addictive gameplay. If you are completely new to the genre, it tries very hard to dissuade you to keep playing, but if you get comfortable with the set-up, everything changes.
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Jul 19, 2023Those looking for a solid tactical RPG to dig their teeth into will find it with Jagged Alliance 3. But while you may acclimate to the slightly unhelpful UI, the combat barks and general writing can be more difficult to ignore. There’s going to be a good amount of replay value in different builds, trying different options and choices, and of course different combinations of the 36-odd mercenary characters. But whether you want to spend more time in this setting will depend entirely on how much you can listen to a Ice Williams talk about popping caps in people.
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Jul 13, 2023Jagged Alliance 3 lays some strong groundwork for the franchise’s resurgence, but it often feels like a series of individual victories that fail to work in concert for something greater.
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Jul 13, 2023Jagged Alliance 3 is a bold attempt at blending the best of multiple genres. Despite success in several areas, its overbearing systems often sideline the enjoyment of an otherwise well-made game.
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Aug 17, 2023You'll love Jagged Alliance 3 if you're willing to overlook outdated graphics, some weird in-game mechanics and you like 90s American humor. Otherwise, you better spend your money elsewhere.
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Jul 17, 2023There’s a kind of scrappy, desperate feeling to a firefight in Jagged Alliance 3. Hits to the arms reduce accuracy, and damage to the legs impedes movement. Cover can be destroyed. Losing line-of-sight allows your merc to re-enter Sneak Mode and return to surprise the enemy. Saving a couple of AP to drop into a prone position at the end of a turn can be the difference between seeing the next turn or bleeding out. Yet, despite all this tactical granularity, the successful play is often a matter of running around the cover the enemy is hiding behind and shooting them in the back. Assuming you don’t miss, of course.
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Jul 13, 2023This top-tier strategy game loses points for the slurs and racial stereotyping in the writing. The best urban combat in a tactical game in years, but the world feels paper-thin even as the fights impress.
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Jul 18, 2023His combat and role-playing strength are the best, without a doubt, of the set; without detracting from the mercenaries and their crazy personality. However, the issues underlying his combat, the hard-to-understand menus, and the difficulty of him all weigh heavily. Of course, from here, Haemimont Games can build a good rebirth for the saga.
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Jul 20, 2023Jagged Alliance 3 is a capital-P, capital-C PC game, and I think it succeeds at delivering what it promises. Some of the humor may make you groan or wince; some of the controls feel like a nuclear sub; and the story is easy to tune out of. But landing that perfect shot, whether from Mouse's silenced handgun in the bushes or Grunty's sub-machine gun on a cliff, will keep you coming back.
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Jul 13, 2023I think it's a success. It's a strong push to move the genre beyond the model we've been stagnating in for years that still acknowledges the strengths of that design (so far that it copies some things I wish it wouldn't, like the godawful panic system). It will be divisive for that, and may alienate the most obdurate of the purists too, neither of which it really deserves. Tonally, it's mostly a miss, and aspects of its UI like travel, merc selection, transferring, and splitting inventory need another quality-of-life pass. But the combat / strategy / management elements are enough to carry it through those disappointments, and I suspect to keep me coming back for quite some time.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 88 out of 108
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Mixed: 12 out of 108
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Negative: 8 out of 108
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Jul 16, 2023Played about 30 hours over the weekend. I felt like a teenager again. I didn't even want to be distracted by food!
Definitely a masterpiece! -
Jul 16, 2023
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Jul 17, 2023