Jagged Alliance: Back in Action

Back in Action is a 2012 remake of Jagged Alliance 2, made by the Munich studio Coreplay. You are again a mercenary commander hired to take back the island of Arulco, sector by sector, with mercenaries hired from the same agencies.

Its big change was the clock. Combat no longer runs in turns. It runs in real time, and a system called Plan and Go lets you pause, give each mercenary a sequence of orders, and set them going together. An expansion, Crossfire, followed later in 2012.

It is worth playing as an experiment: what Jagged Alliance 2 looks like with real time and a pause. Plan and Go is a sound system, and coordinated assaults can be satisfying to plan and watch.

Most fans of the original disliked it. They felt it lost the precision of turns and the charm of the old cast, and reviews were mixed. Many returned to the original with the 1.13 mod.

Back in Action keeps Jagged Alliance 2's map and premise and changes its clock. That makes it the most direct test there is of whether the game works in real time with pause. Its reception suggests the answer depends less on the clock than on keeping the depth and character that the clock was carrying.