JA2 is the best game of all time. Just so you know where I'm coming from.
E5 was fun but disappointing. Surprisingly, the smart pause combat system works great. You can configure it very granularly to your liking, and people who dismiss the game out of hand just because it's real time are cheating themselves. The complete lack of AI for your team does get frustrating; your guys can't so much as remember to keep shooting at an enemy who drops out of sight for even a moment. You'll see what I'm talking about. But that's not a game breaker. And shooting at people is always fun.
So the combat is pretty good, and the enormous selection of guns and attachments is wonderful. It's the CRPG part that really fails. Character advancement is meaningless, even basic skills like medical and mechanical have no tangible effect on gameplay. And there's no income; you don't take over the map sector by sector, you just zip around wherever you please having no effect on the game world. Also, at the default setting the game is frustratingly tight with money; guns sell for very little, delivery quests pay very little, med kits cost a lot, and if you hire a single merc, you're going to have a very hard time ever affording your truck. And you need that truck. Enabling Easy Money, a game option, overcompensates and leads to vast wealth, making you feel like you're cheating.
The translations are embarrassing, but that's no biggie because no one really has anything to say. The mercs don't have nearly so wide an array of dialogue as in JA2, and there are fewer of them.
The game's been out for a while, and the developer is just not patching it at all. I hate that.
But it's a fun game, if only because slowly upgrading your team's guns and shooting lots of people is inherently fun. I'm just frustrated they didn't go further in ripping of JA2. They ripped off the feel, but completely failed to rip off the gameplay.
