I found the game rather amazing, started two plays in parallel, and it's a lot of fun as a toy tool.
At first the game can feel have combats quite difficult for lowest difficulty, and for me it was a good thing. But by playing more, it's clear there are tools that can lower a lot the amount of problems in combats. It's from using a lot stealth to use a lot Sniper, but also using a lot grenades, using massive weapons to solve tougher cases, more. But it's also tricks related to the sector and the combat, like use a fixed machine gun or C4 or ensure kill first a potentially annoying enemy with a rocket launcher. I quoted also few sectors allowing a total exploit of overwatch and it's a lot of fun because it's rare.
For global management aspect, from players comments it seems the dev made it a bit too random when mines become dry. I quoted comment of player with all mines weirdly dry, or when the mine is captured it is already dry. It's bizarre that dev seems have used mines becoming dry to avoid excessive grinding and training, and would still make it very random. Myself I had to fire some mercs, but I can't say in the two unfinished and running plays I ended in a dead end because of money.
From second play I'd say to play it more cautious for economy:
- That's the obvious first mine east to small island, but then mine at south, it seems north is more to unlock faster a rush to an end, or perhaps let player unlock faster a hard difficulty mode. The two mines at north are less safeguards for economy than progression of main stories that will end to provide more mines.
- Only hire mercs for 14 days, it's cheaper in long run, and will force you be less "pocket hole" on mercs costs that you allow yourself to hire.
- Consider setup a strong point in path of enemies diamond caravans, like with militia trained and one mercs or two at least at default difficulty. Even if this will generate more expanses, including one or two mercs for such task, it still should be at worse no money lost and a lot of militia training time won by using a few extra mercs. For sure it's just for default difficulty.
- Don't hesitate consider squad split and one or two extra mercs so you can manage healing and repair and crafting or even some other tasks in parallel. ok Multi team UI is good only with global map management (activate extra pause options not by default) but almost bad or micromanagement heavy with anything else, ammo, items, caches, resources sharing along multiple squads. But if you can go over it it should be a lot of time win. Many sectors won't require a full team, I doubt even at max difficulty, but my comment is for default difficulty.
- You could be tempted to accumulate money for safeguard, but there are mercs that will scale their next salary augment on your current money amount, so perhaps it can works but certainly with bad surprises and by changing mercs.
- Common, activate the Indulgent option, it's here to facilitate this aspect, and it won't break your play if you are worry on this aspect.
All of that to say that if it's not (yet) a game for high level tactical challenge, it's already an incredibly great game, like an advanced Tactical RPG with a faily nice mercs sim aspect and a very well developped RPG side, plus great combats and cool global management, BG3 you are warned
. But really for now JA3 is my GOTY. I loved Expeditions Rome also a Tactical RPG, but JA3 is at another level. But yes if you can't bear play games not well polished JA3 isn't yet for you, ER is (now) at opposite on that, a game almost too much polished lol.
At first the game can feel have combats quite difficult for lowest difficulty, and for me it was a good thing. But by playing more, it's clear there are tools that can lower a lot the amount of problems in combats. It's from using a lot stealth to use a lot Sniper, but also using a lot grenades, using massive weapons to solve tougher cases, more. But it's also tricks related to the sector and the combat, like use a fixed machine gun or C4 or ensure kill first a potentially annoying enemy with a rocket launcher. I quoted also few sectors allowing a total exploit of overwatch and it's a lot of fun because it's rare.
For global management aspect, from players comments it seems the dev made it a bit too random when mines become dry. I quoted comment of player with all mines weirdly dry, or when the mine is captured it is already dry. It's bizarre that dev seems have used mines becoming dry to avoid excessive grinding and training, and would still make it very random. Myself I had to fire some mercs, but I can't say in the two unfinished and running plays I ended in a dead end because of money.
From second play I'd say to play it more cautious for economy:
- That's the obvious first mine east to small island, but then mine at south, it seems north is more to unlock faster a rush to an end, or perhaps let player unlock faster a hard difficulty mode. The two mines at north are less safeguards for economy than progression of main stories that will end to provide more mines.
- Only hire mercs for 14 days, it's cheaper in long run, and will force you be less "pocket hole" on mercs costs that you allow yourself to hire.
- Consider setup a strong point in path of enemies diamond caravans, like with militia trained and one mercs or two at least at default difficulty. Even if this will generate more expanses, including one or two mercs for such task, it still should be at worse no money lost and a lot of militia training time won by using a few extra mercs. For sure it's just for default difficulty.
- Don't hesitate consider squad split and one or two extra mercs so you can manage healing and repair and crafting or even some other tasks in parallel. ok Multi team UI is good only with global map management (activate extra pause options not by default) but almost bad or micromanagement heavy with anything else, ammo, items, caches, resources sharing along multiple squads. But if you can go over it it should be a lot of time win. Many sectors won't require a full team, I doubt even at max difficulty, but my comment is for default difficulty.
- You could be tempted to accumulate money for safeguard, but there are mercs that will scale their next salary augment on your current money amount, so perhaps it can works but certainly with bad surprises and by changing mercs.
- Common, activate the Indulgent option, it's here to facilitate this aspect, and it won't break your play if you are worry on this aspect.
All of that to say that if it's not (yet) a game for high level tactical challenge, it's already an incredibly great game, like an advanced Tactical RPG with a faily nice mercs sim aspect and a very well developped RPG side, plus great combats and cool global management, BG3 you are warned
. But really for now JA3 is my GOTY. I loved Expeditions Rome also a Tactical RPG, but JA3 is at another level. But yes if you can't bear play games not well polished JA3 isn't yet for you, ER is (now) at opposite on that, a game almost too much polished lol.
Last edited:
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You're really our guy for all things JA-related.
