Jagged Alliance

About Jagged Alliance

Jagged Alliance (1995) is Madlab Software's tactical RPG in which the player hires mercenaries with distinct personalities to liberate a South Atlantic island whose mutated trees yield a miracle medicinal sap, Sir-Tech's best-selling non-Wizardry game.

Jagged Alliance in Depth

Nuclear tests in 1952 mutated the trees of Metavira, an island in the South Atlantic, and in 1995 a research team led by Brenda Richards and her father Jack finds that these sterile Fallow Trees produce a sap with remarkable medicinal properties. Brenda's assistant Lucas Santino sabotages her lab, wins control of a second science team and seizes the island with mercenaries, so the Richards fund the player to hire their own from the Association of International Mercenaries and win it back. Each day begins in a room where the player saves, hires and sleeps, then moves to a grid map of Metavira showing Fallow trees, control of each sector and the guards and tappers stationed there, all of whom must be paid.

On the top-down tactical screen, combat becomes turn-based when enemies share a sector, with action points set by attributes, interrupts, crouching, cover and stealthy movement, and aim improved by spending more points. Sixty mercenaries can be hired, up to eight at a time, each with health, agility, dexterity and wisdom, and medical, explosives, mechanical and marksmanship skills that improve through use. Wounds bleed until bandaged, injuries can permanently lower attributes, and the dead stay dead. Mercenaries demand raises as they level, some refuse to work with each other or desert overnight, and stubborn ones may refuse to move until their target dies.

Making Jagged Alliance

Madlab Software developed Jagged Alliance and Sir-Tech published it for MS-DOS in 1995. It received positive reviews and was a commercial success: PC Gamer US's William R. Trotter wrote that it "won plaudits from the critics and became the best-selling non-Wizardry title in Sirtech's history". Next Generation said not to expect a deep role-playing experience, but recommended it as "an entertaining mix of RPG and strategy", and PC Magazine gave it four stars out of four, calling it "one of the most enjoyably addictive games to hit the shelves in a long, long time". Computer Games Strategy Plus named it the best turn-based strategy game of 1995, tied with Heroes of Might and Magic. It spawned the Jagged Alliance series and was re-released on GOG.com in 2008 and GamersGate in 2010 with Windows support, while Strategy First and Cypron Studios developed a Nintendo DS version, published in 2009 with new music and cut-scenes.