I was thinking of getting a Jagged Alliance game, and since I don't want to spend much on a series I'm not at all familiar with, I looked for a game that costs 3 dollars. JA2: Wildfire seemed good enough, but the top review is troubling.

So... is it really that bad? Should I get JA2: Unfinished Business instead?

Get Jagged Alliance 2, play through it, then grab the 1.13 mod, which should allow you to play JA2:UB as well, and you should be able to add the Wildfire additions to it as well.

As for the "Steer Clear" review, it is more or less correct, though the "amateurish mod" is debateable. JA2:WF has different maps from JA2 (a godsend if you're bored of playing the same maps over and over, but JA2 1.13 includes them), more weapons (JA2 1.13 includes them), a few more mercs (JA2 1.13 includes them, and a few more as well), higher resolution support (JA2 1.13 supports them), bigger merc teams (JA2 1.13 supports them), increased difficulty compared to JA2 (JA2 1.13 has many more customizations for the difficulty, so you can better tweak it) and possibly one or two other things that I can't recall atm.

On to JA2:UB now. While JA2 was a more or less sandboxy game, since you could decide in which order to attack the sectors, and what to do with your time there, JA2:UB is more or less a sequence of sector assault on sector assault, and thus far more combat oriented. It does have the benefit of having a campaign editor supplied, and quite a few campaigns exist for it, but as I said, JA2 1.13 supports most of them by now.

Haven't played WF, but UB can get frustrating quite fast, it's not really a good entry point for a newcomer.

I'd recommend JA2 instead, it's arguably the best in the series, but JA1 is still valid enough if you really don't want to go above 3$.

I didn't feel cheated by WF, I also wouldn't rush to buy it if I found I no longer had it. It's not that bad, it's just not that good.

I'm guessing that a lot of the bad critics for WF are based on the 1st version of WF, which is Wildfire 5.
That version was extremely bugged. I remember every sector having it's own file. To fix bugs those files needed replacing. I replaced a bunch than gave up. I think support stopped quite soon too.

At some point Zuxxez (which later became TopWare) got the rights to or ownership of Wildfire. They fixed the bugs and updated the game. That version is known as Wildfre 6 and is the version GOG.com is selling.

see also [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagged_Alliance_%28series%29#Jagged_Alliance_2:_Wildfire]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagged_Alliance_%28series%29#Jagged_Alliance_2:_Wildfire[/url]


It seems the 1st review is based upon WF5.
I'm not sure on mercs and voices as it's been a long time since I played it.
The overall map is pretty much the same as in the original JA2, some npc are too. There is some minor story overlap, etc.
In my opinion it's a good game and well worth 3 bucks. However if you can spend a little more, get JA2. It's well worth the extra 2 bucks as it will give you much more gameplay and replayability.