Jagged Alliance: Flashback Critic Reviews

Jagged Alliance Flashback resurrects the classic game, unfortunately only as a skeleton. I hope that some day the flesh, muscles and soul will be added.

Measured against Jagged Alliance 2 – a game with a budget many times that of Flashback – Jagged Alliance: Flashback does a solid face plant. It lacks the depth and personality that made its older sibling the cult hit still played by thousands of gamers to this day.

Full Control has managed to put together a mostly solid combat engine, which can deliver entertaining firefights under some conditions, but the rest of the experience has been neglected and does not create an interesting setting for the adventure.

Everything is reduced to the absolute minimum: character development, story, presentation. Luckily the tense turn-based firefights work well enough to save the game. Nonetheless you’re better off with Wasteland 2.

Jagged Alliance 2 is old and ugly, but its gameplay still blows Flashback out of the water.

A tremendous wasted opportunity for a definitive remake of a legendary turn-based game. Its gameplay fundamentals are solid, the presentation is nice and the combat system is fun enough, but numerous technical problems, performance issues, unfinished and sloppy gameplay and interface elements as well as several other issues tarnish a game that may eventually become quite good with further development and support. Until that happens you are better off waiting.

I should also point out unpleasant visuals, crappy voice-over work, horrendous pathfinding and sloppy UI, but it all simply adds injury to the insult, since, first and foremost, JA: Flashback fails as a tactical strategy game.

It doesn't stand up to the series' quality, and the dedicated community of modders can't salvage very much since the game is flawed in its core mechanics.

Jagged Alliance: Flashback looked poor and chaotic just a few months before its debut. The final version looks just as bad. The developers work will get no enthusiasm from gamers. A year and a half ago Full Control studio has asked fans for support on Kickstarter and now they need to explain themselves and fix a very poorly made game.

One shouldn’t be allowed to just cobble together “something Jagged-alliancy”, panting and cursing at every step. Development of an experience like Arulco or Metavira should be approached with a clear head and a clear conscience, otherwise instead of being a holy rite it ends up as a profanation of one of the best games in existence.