DevDiary 15 - Thank you!

Guys! The game has been a blast. It might not be perfect and I've my own list of issues with it, ranging from visuals to gameplay elements, but damn have I had fun playing.

You managed to finally, after over 20 years, bring us a game that is worthy of the title Jagged Alliance and it is seriously good. I can't wait to see what you have in stock for the game in the form of patches and DLC.

Thank you, for all the effort and care you've poured into the product. It shows. 

Edited July 21, 2023 by BossWeapons

Thank you very much for making us such a great game! You deserves it!

Hey guys! Thanks for a great Jagged Alliance 3!

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We are about to launch our first small patch later today, the patch notes you can read on Steam once the patch goes live.

Looking forward to that one!

The launch stream was great, it was a blast waiting in your company and finally playing the game!
Yes, it is fun! Sometimes a little borderline cringy, but we had a trigger warning, let's kick some ass 90's through and through!

I wish some features would have made their way into the game, yet I hope the good launch will allow you to make some DLCs, my wallet and I are ready for it!

Although JA3 is already the best addition to the series since the JA2 branch, I'm happy to read there is a post-release roadmap, and that you are not taking the "release and forget" route. I hope this will make JA3 a success far beyond the release date, and that it will lay the foundation for ultimately reestablishing the JA franchise as the contemporary turn-based tactics series. 

Just wanted to say thanks to you all at Haemimont Games for a great game and how awesome to know you're going to continue to support the game.

Stream was blast, I was not sure what to do, play game that I waited for for 20 years or join the celebrations on Twitch!

Now that celebrations are over I finally had couple days to enjoy MY game and relive my teenage years, it is amazing so far.

Whilst characters and dialog are super cheesy at times but I do kind of dig it, definitely it add to my reliving teenage years vibe 😄 

Thanks for all the efforts so far and looking forward to what next. Meanwhile excuse me I have some baddies to destroy!

No, no. It's that WE thank YOU!

The game is awesome! I love the world with many different sceneries, graphics, changing weather, dialogs and it's impact on the story, humour and atmosphere.The soul of Jagged Alliance is definitely there. It's deep game that you can feel the heart put into creation of JA3. The Currie definitely knows how to add flavor to the game!

Big thanks to Mr Currie and Haemimont Games, you guys nailed it! 

The world and maps are very impressive, high levels of detail and it all being destructible / penetrable is really fun! 

The voice acting is top shelf, former French colony was a great choice! The story/plot so far feels very real and just like any good conflict in Africa there are more than 2 parties fighting! There was nothing close to this much plot in any prior game and it's so well done, great improvement. 

A nice balance was struck between evolving the core game play and staying true to what made the JA series popular.  Perks and abilities are a good addition.  Overwatch is really just a more formalized method of interrupts, but nicely implemented.  Every weapon class has a role now, right tool for the job, as opposed to being a rung on a progression ladder.  

The mercs as well have similar attention to detail, there is no way to experience all the content in one playthrough and I absolutely love that!  Many shortsighted studios would view content that is not likely to be experienced by the played on his 1st playthrough as a waste and cut it.  They just don't understand how to make a game that people still play 20 years later.  Am already thinking about next playthrough and not even done the 1st one yet!

Nice to see the game is being supported and updated as well. 

To everyone involved, thanks for being awesome! 

 

Wasn't able to play when it came out, but just liberated Ernie Island last night and had a blast - while not perfect (nothing is) you've redeemed a lot of skepticism and finally made a worthy successor to JA2.  IMP + Barry + Fox + Kalyna + Livewire starting off, picked up Wolf after my first cash infusion.  The merc voice lines are just the right side of campy for me most of the time - one exchange between Fox and Wolf was a bit much, but Kalyna's innocent response at the end redeemed it. She's a new favorite! I wasn't sure about Livewire but she's growing on me too, it's a nice touch that while not being a stealth character she favors it due to not being a traditional commando type.

Combat is great - love how overwatch is implemented. Shooting through enemies with a rifle on one of two shots was a treat.

Some constructive criticism:

1) I'm playing on a steamdeck (don't have time enough to be a proper "gamer" these days so I own that and a M1 Pro for work/general use and the black bars between text using GPTK seem annoying) and it's really hard to set up stealth encounters on the controller. Moving six mercs into position as enemies stroll into a town is near impossible, or having someone lean out more than I wanted in an overwatch and trying to get back to them and cancel it etc.

Would it be possible to get a "pause" mode when in real time controls to line up overwatch cones / queue up movement orders?  This is probably less of an issue and more of a gameplay challenge with M+KB.

Another tack would just be force turn based mode vs pausing real time (which might be more in the spirit of the game).

2) Steamdeck overall works great - creating a custom save is annoying with the loop from the keyboard. Could there be an option to just save when hovering over a save by hitting X and not having to go through the naming? At this point I just have one save I use as a snapshot and overwrite.

3) Softer - it'd be nice to modify overwatch cone width (to some extent) ala Phoenix Point. Not critical, and I guess scope type will play into this down the road.

Edited July 21, 2023 by erutan

1 hour ago, erutan said:

 

1) I'm playing on a steamdeck

Another tack would just be force turn based mode vs pausing real time (which might be more in the spirit of the game).

 

If steamdeck can use workshop mods, there is a mod (called Active Pause!)on there that might be what you're looking for. It can be tricky to time stuff with mouse and keyboard, so I imagine it's really hard on the steamdeck.

 

I am absolutely delighted that JA3 has been so well received by both professional reviewers and individuals. I'm even more delighted that it appears to have been a good financial success so far too. 🙂 I very much look forward to the future of JA3, both with official DLC and player mods as well.

High five guys. You crafted a beautiful game alright!

I'm looking forward to seeing what you have in store for the future of the franchise.

Thanks to all the team. JA3 is the worhty successor of JA2. 😃

Thanks alot for bringing us Jagged Alliance 3 after almost a quarter century. 💚👍🏽

 

The game is really good (not yet great) & fun and has also a good potential to become better and all.

But it has still lots of flaws, hopefully you will correct it with upcoming patches and updates. Otherwise our only hope is that talented modders will edit and better the game later on.

 

BTW it seems like MD is the best dancers of all the characters. 😁

Edited July 22, 2023 by LoboNocturno

Appreciation for the great Work ( and you didnt f. it up.. ; ) Haemimont-Team!

Short summary of my impression..the boys are back in town.

I like the music, athmosphere, overall gamedesign (men, landscape, nature, towns and slums) and all the well thought details in them.
Cool classic-arcade-action man-style, resembles the classic movies very well and revivals Jagged Alliance and the old Fallout Games, f.e.
All stars for that.

Only the behaviour of new round-system feels a bit laborious and off to me, sometimes. But i can judge it better, after one complete playtrough, i think.
Plus, im waiting for official editor, mostly for gun-balancing.

But fun to play it anyway, which is most important.
So, thank you for your nice surprisingly-good new Jagged Alliance 3.

Edited July 23, 2023 by 5Cents

I played this game for approximately 15 hours the first weekend it was out. Absolutely loving it! It's a worthy sequel to Jagged Alliance 2, which is perhaps the greatest game ever made.

 

I love how I will go to bed and it's still running in my mind, like I'm thinking "Should I head north-west and train more militia at the mine, or go south and take over the next town? Or maybe split up my team and hire another merc...?"

On 7/21/2023 at 2:01 PM, Elder III said:

If steamdeck can use workshop mods, there is a mod (called Active Pause!)on there that might be what you're looking for. It can be tricky to time stuff with mouse and keyboard, so I imagine it's really hard on the steamdeck.

 

It'll automatically load mods I subscribe to from the steam workshop - I'm currently just using the increased carry capacity mod (at a modest 1.5x multiplier). It makes inventory management simpler without being too braindead, and there's still very noticeable differences between say wolf and livewire etc.  

The active pause mod looked like it was bugging out for people - I'd actually just settle for an option to increase time dilation when you have targeting up in stealth mode, as I like there still being some "time pressure"

I tried the chance to hit mod with relative hit chances vs numbers, but went back to the vanilla game pretty quickly. I was spending too much time fiddling with options vs just picking what "felt" right given opportunity costs.

Also excited to see the game grow over time - it has a great base and could use some QoL UI updates, 3 tap burst fire needs a bit of a buff, etc but for a 1.0 of such an ambitious title I'm blown away.

Thank you for this game, I'm really enjoying it. Played the original when I was 20, JA2 when I was 24 (and then for another 10 years at least) and now, at nearly 50, I get to enjoy the franchise all over again.