Buggy is the best way to describe this game, using cover seems next to impossible. Units that stop moving when being fired apon and ignore drop commands....

and I'm not a huge fan of the sorta real time combat but I could probably have made that work If the rest of the game worked.

Although having an interesting setting (conquering an island with recruited mercenaries), game fails to deliver, mostly because of unclear controls : it's hard to understand what's going on, and ultimately, it seems it doesn't really matter anyway.
This game, like many others, would have beneficed from having a tutorial about how to build tactics & actually play that game, instead of only about teaching you what each button does.

My main beef against this game was the following situation : by night, I approached a mining complex. My men were prone in the darkness, 2 of them armed with assault rifles, 1 with a shotguns and 2 with good handguns. The enemies were on lower height, in full light, with poor handguns, standing. They didn't run for cover when I started to shoot at them. They didn't need to, they decimated my team before I could kill more than a couple of them... Bummer... :-/

After that, I just reloaded, and walking around the complex, killing the guards 1 by 1, without anyone wondering why there were gunshots around.

There's no special abilities, no suppressing fire (coz all fire is suppressing but you don't know by how much), so that unrealistic gameplay doesn't have any depth nor special things...

I read a walkthrough, and apparently, you can stealth with 2 men armed with handguns for many missions. It's not what I expected and wanted to do in this game.

I'm a fan of the original JA games. This one started out ok, but turned into a disappointment way too quick.

What I simply don't like in this one is the difficulty curve, or should I say the steep changes in enemy arsenal and numbers. First you're up against like six enemies equipped with machetes and revolvers. Next sector you're up against 20 guys with assault rifles and grenades. I mean... WHAT?! In the old JA games, there were never such differences between neighboring areas, save for late-game ones.

Then there's the issue with very micromanage-y combat, hard to read environments (sometimes a branch of a tree blocks vision, other times a man-sized ventilation shaft offers zero protection) and clunky interface that by default assumes you want to keep queueing new actions to happen after old ones are complete, unless you manually clear old orders first. Every. Single. Time. Guns also can't be fired in melee range, apparently, and melee hits register still after the target is ten meters away.

Lots of potential, but poor execution and lack of steady progression killed the fun for me way too quick. Can't recommend. Shame.

After logging many hours on this game in the last two years, I finally decided to write a review. My taste in PC games mostly includes the strategy (especially turn based and pausable RTS) genre. I'm a fan of the X-Com Games, The Total War Series, Close Combat, etc. I played all of the Jagged Alliance Games and enjoyed them all. In my opinion, JABIA is a good game if you like this type of game; a game that requires a lot of management (inventory, strategy, assembling teams, et.). I found the planning and execution of my plans in this game a lot of fun. There are a few rough edges. They could have included a way to look at items ordered after you ordered them, as in the old JA Games. As it is now, you place the order and you have to remember what you ordered until it arrives and the only place it can arrive is at the Drassen Airport, requiring a lot of 'mule' trips by your mercs who will spend much of their time running back and forth for supplies and using newly hired mercs as mules when they come in. The end result of this is that I found myself spending much of my time organizing logistics for reenforcement and resupply. If, like me, you enjoy this in a game, then you won't mind it and may even have fun with it. If this kind of micro-management isn't to your taste, skip this game.

The other part of the game is the tactical combat. This is done using a real time pausable system that requires many pauses and movement order updates during combat to be succesful (survive). With a small group of mercs (one or two teams of 6 each) it can be very exciting and great fun, but as the game goes on, and especially when you are getting ready for the final assaults on the enemy strongholds, you will probably have several dozen mercs going against hundreds of bad guys in just a few sectors. At this point the tactical combat becomes overwhelming as it is virtually impossible to be everywhere at once and are therefore forced to send a small group of mercs at a time against many enemies to whittle them down slowly, and it becomes a drawn out meat grinder of attrition. Not much sneaking around, tactical planning here. Just a whole bunch of shooting against very long odds. I think JA2 did much better by forcing the player, VIA limited finances and merc contracts, to run fewer teams and keep the game managable, while not requiring quite so many mercs to succesfully complete the game. When you hire mercs in BIA, you pay the fee up front and they are yours for the whole campaign regardless of the length of time they work for you, and the money you find and earn in this game will easily run into the hundreds of thousands, so there is a balance issue here. Also, militia are pretty innafective, and when they die the weapons you equip them with dissapear. I found it much more effective, once you've been in the game for awhile to just leave teams of mercs within striking distance of primary towns and mines that you have captured and send them in when enemies try to attack. Mercs can move amazingly fast along roads and, as mentioned before, you'll have the money and therefore can afford the extra mercs to do the job.

Some things I really like about this game:

-Friendly fire is a threat. This adds some realism that I welcome, especially with grenades and explosives. You don't have the automatic grenade placement of the new Xcom. "Watch out for that tree branch...Hit the dirt!"

-The strategic logistical and organizational planning and the tactical planning for each sector. A lot of fun here if you like that sort of thing.

-The great fun of fast moving firefights once you get used to the interface, especially when the skirmishes are small.

There are some annoying bugs and design flaws, a few of which are:

-In close combat you can't shoot at an enemy when he gets close to you. You'll hear comments like "Can't make the shot" and your merc will just stand there as the enemy soldier cuts you to pieces, even if you have a pistol or SMG.

-Unlike the other good games in this series, you can't repair any equipment but weapons. Body armor just takes damage until it's useless, and it is very expensive.

-Sometimes when told to fire repeatedly at one target, your mercs will cycle through the count-down time for aiming, then cycle through again without firing. They seem to be able to do this indefinately so you have to watch them carefully.

-When in a firefight, mercs are often forced into a kneeling position (frequently exposing themselves to enemy fire) when doing certain tasks, like first aid, clearing a weapon or disarming a mine. This also happens when you try to arm a LAW (Light Anti-tank Weapon). This unfortunate glitch will get you hit fast!

-Game stops working occasionally for no apperent reason ('JABIA has stopped working'). This doesn't happen often, but just when you are about to win an intense twenty minute firefight, it's a bit annoying.

NOTE: There is a very good mod that helps this game quite a bit called the "Realistic Rebalancing Mod for Jagged Alliance - back in Action" by KILLATOMATE. I highly recommend using this mod to help some balancing issues and decrease the frequency of some glitches within the game.

As it is, I find this to be a very good game that has a lot of replayability. It's interesting to start off with various combinations of mercs to build different teams, then progress theough the game by taking areas of the map over in different order, etc. If they had taken a little more time and care in the development of this game, it could have been great.

I love the Jagged Aliance Series, but I don't get warm with this one.

The graphics are good, the sound and look is ok, weapons and merc are good too. I mainly do not like the game because of the new combat system. The good old turn based combat system was great, this one feels just odd. I mean its not super bad, but it's just not what I want from such a game.
Also I mustn't make my own merc, which is a big downer. Another thing is, that you can't repair your body armor like in the previous titles (not sure if they fixed this). Also inventory management is clunky. The "story" is also a rip off, of the old titles or pretty much a one to one copy, nothing new here, no imagination.

I really wanted to like this game, but I just cannot.
If its on sale for cheap you can give it a try, but its not worth more than 8€.

I've tried time and time again to like this game. I install it, play it for a while, and every time I have to uninstall it because I'm so immensely frustrated at the shoddy mechanics. The camera is fine for everything but actually seeing what you're doing, and you need to point and click where you want characters to go based on the camera's view. Point and click, mind you, on any pixel in a large map with thousands of tiny variations in elevation which can mean the difference between spotting and shooting and enemy or being blinded by the tip of a mintue hill. You CONSTANTLY have to deal with adjusting your position so you're behind cover but still able to see and shoot the AI, who by the way, do not have to deal with ANY of what I've complained about so far.

There are so many other small things I could complain about, but the above is what's making me vow to never play this again. Who would have thought a grid system would be make or break for this kind of game.

On the plus side, I really like the idea of a plan and go tactics game.

I decided to give this another try after playing the epic failure that was Jagged Alliance: Flashback - and I realized how good this game actually is. The graphics aren't fantastic, but neither were the graphics is Jagged Alliance 1 and 2, it was the solid gameplay that kept you hooked.

I strongly recommend playing BiA with Killatomate's balance mod, which you can download from ModDB via this link. It fixes a lot of bugs and inconsistancies, especially with the AI and weapons.

This is a very tenuous thumbs up. The pause/realtime system was indeed a break & a daring experiement for the franchise, but I think it works. I'm not one of those "turn based purists" who think anything else is blasphemy. I'm fine with it, actually.

The characters are familiar, and most of returning player expectations are met in that it delivers what it says on the book - a reboot of JA2 into a new game engine. The same systems are all in play, and that's a good thing. It's got your sector-by-sector conquer and consolidate, your cheesy dialogs and plenty of gun-fetish to go around.

But it also falls flat in some areas. Any real firearms enthusiast can find a hundred different flaws, errors and downright screw-ups in that equipment list. The AI, both friendly and enemy, is questionable at best. A lot of the light humor from JA2 has either turned dark or disappeared. With the helicopter removed, supply logisitics are simply nightmarish, now. Most offensive of all, Elliot is gone.

However, all that being said... when I look at this game and compare it to all the increasingly horrible crap out there that tries to leech JAs name whilst simulataneously grinding that name into the mud... I find myself compelled to defend the easily superior quality of this product on general principle.

The combat is still solid (usually), the tactics still interesting, the new problems that each town presents still challenging, and overall... yes, it's still fun. Far from perfect, but fun.

In short, it is not the best JA game out there, but at least I can say is really is a proper JA game and not some crappy knock-off and/or wannabe junk. It may just be JA2's ugly brother, but it's still family. That's more than I can say for the rest of the garbage out there.

This review is for the Windows version. The MAC/Linux version is unplayable at this point.

I am a fan of JA2 and i was quite disappointed when JABIA was released. It was unfinished and overpriced on release. But things have changed. Most of the game's problems can be fixed by using mods and the price of the game has decreased considerably. I played the modded Windows version for 220 hours and really enjoyed it. I can only recommend this game.

The story/scheme of the game is very similar to JA2: You are hired to liberate a small 3rd world country and can only afford to send in a few wannabe mercenaries. You start to liberate/loot remote locations in order to get your hands on more money and better weapons while you recruit NPCs and improve their skills.

In contrast to JA2 this game is in 3D and in real time. Which is awesome in my opinion. You dont have to watch 40 AI moves until it is your turn. You can pause and intervene at any time. The game offers a lot of freedom. You can run away from tough battles and come back later with better equipment. You can even leave the first battle of the game and explore instead.

There are a few flaws, however:
-Mercs have less character compared to JA2 and there is no option to create your own mercenary.
-AI is just as stupid as in JA2 and attack squads are very predictable
-Animations in this game feel like placeholders (all weapons have same reload animation and sound)
-Annoying melee combat. Guns cannot be fired at melee range and melee hits damage all of your gear.
-Explosives (C4) can only be placed on brittle walls. you cannot set traps for enemies.
-You will spend a lot of time managing your inventory
-Militia is not very useful and recruiting is tedious.
-You cannot train/repair/heal on the strategical map (which was a nice feature in JA2)
-Enemies cheat / have superhuman skill (fixed by mod)
-Weapons are imbalanced and have wierd stats (fixed by mod)
-Broken Stealth: enemies hear you walk/climb from up to 150m (fixed by mod)
-Broken Camouflage: camouflage not working properly, especially at night (fixed by mod)
People also complain about horrible aimtime in CQC, but this can be solved by using the Run stance (F3) at close range. This will result in rapid-fire instead of aimed-fire.

Some reviewers claim that combat gameplay is "micromanagy" and "tedious". In my opinion combat is very simple and entertaining as long as you avoid common mistakes and use hotkeys. It is even possible to play the game completely in real time without any pausing as long as you know what you are doing.
Watch the following gameplay videos and decide for yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPUG-1YX80w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbSYfYrhP9o

MODS
Mods are very important to make this game more enjoyable. They are free and very easy to install. Mods fix most of the bugs, improve gameplay, improve balance, weapon progression, tweak AI, improve textures/sounds and add new weapons and ammo types. If you are interested in bugfixes, improved gameplay and new content, check out this mod:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/realistic-rebalancing-mod
It took 530 hours to create this mod and the amount of fixes and improvements is considerable.
More mods can be found here:
http://www.moddb.com/games/jagged-alliance-back-in-action/mods

However, a few problems cannot be fixed by mods and remain:
-performance issues in some locations
-equipping militia is a tedious task
-animations glitch from time to time (ladder/repair/heal)
-sometimes enemies are able to shoot through their own cover

Conclusion:
If you can live with the problems mentioned above you should consider buying this game. $10 is not much for potentially 100 hours of entertainment, is it? ;)

My rating:
Original release: 5/10
Patched game: 6/10
Modded game: 8/10

It is such a shame that Jagged Alliance went on to be one of the most abused franchises in the gaming industry. By "abused" I mean that pretty much every release with the name JA slapped on it was a huge disappointment when compared to JA2 (on which I spent so many hours, I could've built a spaceship using only a spoon in that time).

Anyway, let's talk about BIA.
BIA is quite an awkward game. On one hand it's a fresh approach to the genre and the title, on the other hand it sometimes makes you want to pistol-whip the living daylights out of the developers.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS REVIEW IS FOR THE MODDED VERSION (using either Combat Evolved or the Realistic Rebalancing Mod). The vanilla game will disappoint you. Plain and simple.

• The combat system. The combat system is in real-time, yet it can be paused at any moment, and orders can be queued to your soldiers. It's awkwardly good - it needs a lot of getting used to, but once you get a hang of it, you can use it to your advantage and it's fun. Still, sometimes combat gets confusing, mainly when you're attacking using multiple teams.
  
• The graphics. They're alright. They do the trick. Camera angles may get weird sometimes, but usually they're ok.
  
• Sounds. Pretty much the same as the graphics. The voiceover isn't great, but it's not a deal-breaker.
  
• Gameplay. It can get challenging, you'll get lots of gameplay hours out of it. The UI is ok, I've seen worse. Stability is ok, although the game has some tendencies to crash on you. What disappointed me a little was the lack of the lovely JA2 humour, with the Deidranna cutscenes missing altogether and other details not incorporated at all (like the florist website and many other things). BIA tries to take a more serious approach and fails, since humour was a big part of what made JA2 so much fun.
  The AI is a mixed bag, one fight they'll just run towards you and get mowed down, a few moments later they'll use cover and cause some serious trouble.

I played BIA using both of the aforementioned mods (in two separate gameplays, of course) and it was fun. They fixed a lot of issues, brought in tons of new guns and modifications, Combat Evolved also gave you access to a lot of old friends from JA2.

So, do I recommend this game?
Yes, as long as you mod it. You miss out on a lot playing the vanilla game.
The modded version gives you a touch of good ol' Sir Tech JA2, so if you're a long-time fan, don't even bother playing BIA straight out of the box.
Of all the other JA clones or "remakes" out there, this is probably the best one.