GB Feature: Jagged Alliance: Crossfire Review

After trying his hand at Back in Action earlier this year, Steven has turned his attention to Coreplay and bitComposer’s latest Jagged Alliance entry, Crossfire. Here’s a little something from our full review:

The country of Khanpaa is much smaller than the island of Arulco (with 14 locations versus 50), and so the campaign in Crossfire only takes about half as long as the campaign in Back in Action. This is basically bad, as you’re not given enough time or money to hire and build up your squad of mercenaries. I captured half the map with only three mercenaries, and I never did get around to hiring a sixth one to fill out my main squad. Only one of my mercenaries made it to level 10 (the maximum level in the game), and that only happened because I went out of my way to get him experience.

Most of the time in the campaign is spent capturing locations. These range from the harbor at the start of the game to towns, military complexes, a power station, and more. There are also several quests to complete, including some side quests that can earn you new (but generally not very useful) mercenaries. Unfortunately, there is also a lot of busywork. Your enemies keep sending out attack squads to take back the locations that you’ve captured, and these attack squads are way more difficult than anything else in the game. They have higher health, armor, and accuracy than your mercenaries, and most can only be damaged by a shot to the head. That makes defeating them a little tedious, as they can wipe out even competently prepared ambushes, and it means you’re going to have to endure a lot of saving and loading to get through them.