Maybe I'll learn to like this game. Maybe it ASSUMES that you've played previous games in the series?

Thing is, when I started "Cold Zero" there was almost no learning curve. Things were
very intuitive, crisp, clear, simple.

Jagged Alliance practically SCREAMS for an interactive tutorial to learn the too-many and too-elaborate commands.

Cold Zero is about as crude as I would want graphics to be at that scale. Pixelation is way too severe in Jagged alliance.

I'm curious what commands you're finding too many or too elaborate. The JA feature set pretty much covers what you'd expect for a game in the genre...movement commands, weapons commands, and other ability commands (for explosives, mechanics, medical, etc.).

I don't recall there being a tutorial mission in any of the JA series, so you definitely need to read the manual.

All the JA games are definitely hard on rookies. Reading the manual helps and I really recommend new players to start at the easiest mode. And don't play on sci-fi mode in JA2 if you're new

I'm curious about that comment, having seen it a few times. I bought the JA series when they were new, and have played them all - but I can't remember playing with this setting on - what does it do?

Sci-fi mode means at some point you'll get reports about giant ants in the mines killing miners
You'll have to kill the queen and all the eggs (from memory) in order to get rid of them.
The goo that comes from them can be used like compound 18.

Really? Sounds good... make a nice change when I replay this... But I have so many games on the go, I can't imagine when...

It's hard.
Personally I never liked sci-fi mode.

Well, I've played through the game 3-4 times already (although always just the version on the CDs), so it'll do me good to up the difficiulty...

Actually it's a bit better than compound 18 and with a bit of jar hunting you can come back up with enough to coat a full squads armour. I think it's worth playing sc-fi at least once for the music that signals the bugs are about plus it's a use for all that HP ammo.

U can use that HP ammo to drain stamina and steal weapons ;)
And kill bloodcats... so always keep 4 mags with ya.. because all those naaasty roooarr bloodcats...