Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business

by Interplay

Product Details

• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000058AJI
• Media: CD-ROM
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,359 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good but Tough, March 2, 2001

By 

dj_swinger (Arlington, VA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business (CD-ROM)

If you like the Jagged Alliance Series I'm not sure why you are even reading this when you could be playing JA2: Unfinished Business. UB is pretty much just more JA2, although that is a good thing. It sports some nice new features as well, and a few new items. For the hard core, it also has a mission editor that is already pretty darn popular. However it has been stripped of all elements except combat. No roleplaying, only 2 quests, no resource management for money, no militias to hire. Just combat. And there is *tons* of combat. You will be attacked every sector you go into. And you will be vastly outnumbered. And you will load saved games, many, many times. Everytime you turn around you will be attacked by between twice and four times as many enemies. This makes for a very difficult, and often, frustrating game. The reason this gets 4 stars and not 5 is the ridiculous difficulty. Its not "challenging hey this is fun" difficulty. This is "grit your teeth as that mortally wounded enemy with a pop gun hits your merc at 50 paces" difficult. My mercs with 99 marksmanship occasionally seem like they couldn't hit water if they fell out of a boat! However, once you get some good guns as you progress, the game will grab you. Nothing like the feeling of a .50 cal sniper rifle dropping an enemy across the screen. One shot one kill, baby! If you are already a JA2 fan, I would recommend picking this up. The difficulty is tolerable once you progress into the game. If you are not familiar with the Jagged Alliance series do yourself a favour and pick up JA2 first. You'll be hooked and thank me for it. And you'll come back to UB for more.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Way too hard with no real strategy, May 31, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business (CD-ROM)

After playing and loving JA2, I looked forward to the Unfinished Business expansion pack. Unfortunately, after I getting it installed and importing my merc from JA2, I was disappointed to learn that 90% of what made JA2 great was gone.

JA2UB has the thinnest of plot lines and provides no flexibility in terms of exploration or order in which you accomplish tasks. When you crash land on the island, you must battle through 5 or 6 consecutive sectors with 20+ enemies waiting for you in each (all better armed than your 6 mercs). If you get hurt and want to rest up, go for it, but expect another group of 6-12 enemies to pop into your sector every few hours to disturb your rest.

Because you're forced through these sectors in order, there's no opportunity to attack from multiple sides, go exploring, retreat, etc. Every sector was the same thing -- come in at night (daytime attacks were suicide) and stumble around from one side of the map to the other until you find them. I don't know why they even bother with a map -- the game would have been virtually the same if they just gave you one random sector after another loaded with enemies. When you finished one, just start the next.

I played through to the first town and then quit -- just couldn't stay interested (which wasn't a problem with JA2).

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A worthy game any strategist should love., February 28, 2001

By 

Splatt (Utah) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business (CD-ROM)

JA2: UB is not a complete sequel to JA2, nor can it truly be called a full game (and, to be honest, Sir-Tech has never advertised it as such). Sporting just 20 new sectors to explore, it is more a campaign than anything else. However, built around the JA2 engine, UB, like it's predecessors, does just about everything right.

Almost every sector requires severe fighting (4-to-1, in some cases) and the whole game is extremely combat intensive. Enemies are much smarter, and their skill will surprise you. With such odds, tactics and planning truly are the key to success in this game. Going in shooting will only get you killed very quickly. To aid you are two new tactical tools: one that helps you find adequate cover (something that was a little hard to do in JA2), and one that helps you determine your odds of hitting a target.

There are new mercs to choose from, and powerful new weapons to use (the Barret M82A2, for example). Beware, though! Your enemies also have weapons that will surprise (or perforate) you.

Probably the biggest plus is that UB comes with a campaign editor! Yes, you can create your own JA2 campaigns!

If this game has one flaw, it is that some of the plot seems just a little contrived, and a few things are a little too convenient. For example, there are no active mines in you area of operations, so you have no solid source of income. However, you can now hire mercenaries for as long as you want for a flat fee (surprise, surprise), so you don't really need a source of income.

The flaws, such as they were, were quiclky lost in the joy of playing a truly well crafted strategy game. As an add-on to JA2, this is a worthwhile purchase for any fan of the genre.