Let's see. What to do, what to do for something in this game. Well... Let's say that you are in safari plain, with five others, all mercenaries, and you have your gun cocked and ready to fire on three goons, part of a marauder group and all not really strong, that have a bus load of people out on the road. Amongst them is a man on the run from his government, who has documents you need to help with your overall goal - the liberation of a small country in Africa from said government. You and your men are ready to move out, and give hell to them to achieve your goal, knowing that more are just out of sight elsewhere in the area; either behind the bus or in the bush nearby. You approach slowly, and get spotted by their leader, who wishes you to approach him. You talk to the leader with gun hidden, try to figure a way of getting the guy, and opt for a fight overall and then...
You get wasted pretty easily because you and your men only wield a selection of handguns, submachine pistols and a shotgun. And for the easy difficulty, where enemies should be penalized to make it easier for a player, this is not something good; heck you get wasted because the difficulty of the conflict is deceptively, and if honest, cruelly hard despite what you set it to. So... what could you do next? Maybe try to find some other way of completing this, to find the guy you know is with the hostages? Maybe that might work better... But if you prefer to fight and get it over with, it's hard to know how you can do so with an enemy that seems to beat you easily when you might just be a novice to this game. Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge, aims to be a good strategy game, yet it falls at a lot of hurdles in doing so. "How so?" you may ask. Well, let me explain things by running through the premise of the game.
The story is a simple affair. You are a hired mercenary for a deposed leader of an fictional, African country called Diamond Coast, aptly named for the diamond deposits beneath it's surface that supports it's economy. Your aim is to remove the country's current leader who controls all with an iron fist despite making out that he leads it like a democracy, by taking over various regions, securing resources, and ultimately removing the dictator with the aid of allies. Sounds decent for a plot right? Yet, somehow... you can tell this story sounds familiar; in fact very familiar, if you look hard enough and know what game this tries to claim to be a successor to. Let me go over the good points of the game first, at the very least, to explain what it does well at...
- The graphics in the game, all 3D, are very good. The models of mercenaries look nice, the UI looks crisp, and the full 360 degree camera allows for a better view of the region you are in, whether a dam, a mine, a train-station, a jungle checkpoint and so forth.
- The overall map area for travelling around is nicely done, and is easy to use. The icons for squads look nice and the flags help to let you know who owns what on it.
- It's easy to work over the controls, the UI is easy to handle, and there's no major issue with running the game.
That's about it, from my point of view. But don't let others say "Oh! This is a good game, it's really fun." or "This is truly a successor to Jagged Alliance..." because whatever they say, it is none of those. Despite what the designers have done to make this seem like a good title to own, this whole game has the feel of an idea that has been thoroughly ripped off from perhaps a really good strategy/tactical series. Jagged Alliance introduced us all to a good idea of a game series with many elements to enjoy, but Hired Guns seems to have ripped off all that they designed for their games into this one. Yes, the country map might have no need of using sectors to get around unlike JA 2, but a lot of what is in here is so ripped off from it, there's hardly anything to say that it is original. Let me go over all the bad points about it, that just make this not a good game to have...
- The mercenaries you can hire, seem so devoid of life. There's no real sense from the designers that they have personalities to themselves like those in the JA Series (who can forget the speech of Steriod's or how Grizzly enjoys making a kill). When you enter a fight, their words seem so lifeless in the conflict. "Ernie, they spotted you..." might sound nice from Arnie, but it sounds so bland, so much like the designers never thought to make him sound like perhaps, a merc with mental issues as if he was speaking to a hidden friend outside of battle.
- The Options for hiring mercenaries, ordering weapons and checking messages and e-mails all from the laptop might seem nice, but it seems deliberately ripped off from JA 2. The custom merc system is truly and completely ripped off, right down to the password, the Merc Hiring Site's name is just a rearragement of AIM (to IMA), and "Dickie Jay's" is just a rewrite of JA's weapon site. Nothing here seems original at all.
- The music score, if any, is completely bland and not exciting whether on the world map screen or when controlling mercs in a region. It just stays the same, dull and boring, especially when checking a region, and then entering a fight. In JA 2, the music changed when fighting an enemy to give it a dynamic feel and then to a calm beat when out of battle, or still tense if there were enemies around.
- Combat seems nice and tactical, but feels much more harder. If in the early stages, it should be easier to cope with, then bumped up in difficulty when things are progressing. You don't even have moments when you can tell if the merc truly can get a clear, if not accurate shot, at an enemy. Even in the early stages, an enemy might throw a grenade at them before you are more prepared to take them on. Truly poor.
- The English translation of the game is rubbish, and really bad. You can tell that someone didn't work well on grammar, with the messages you read and some of the internet sites visited. The journal sounds alright, but the other bits should have been worked on better.
- The story is a complete rip-off of JA 2's very own; everything, right down to the dictator in control, and the deposed former leader has been blantantly copied, and despite the fact they made changes here and there, you can tell they never thought out anything original with this. What's more, the intro cutscene has no simple information on why you are going to Diamond Coast at all unlike JA 2, only that smugglers are helping you to get into the country, though what you see sounds misleading in a way. You have to practically read messages to know why you are there in the first place, though even those follow a similar pattern to the ones you got in Arulco.
Overall, this is a poor game for this series and does no good to the likes of Jagged Alliance; in fact it kinda just blatantly steals an idea of that series and tries to make it sound like its own idea. The designers should have worked hard to make this their own design, not copying something else; it's a surprise the owners of Jagged Alliance didn't take a look themselves to see what it was like and saw the ripped parts they used. In my view, the story could have been done a lot better and been original in everything; originality would have also been better in other places, including the websites. The difficulty of the game should have been tested more thoroughly and made to follow which one the player chooses, while the music could have been much better than it is, and the mercenaries made to be a lot lively with personalities you could either love or hate.
If you want a poor *third*-rate, strategy/tactical game, try this and be disappointed. But if you want one that is well designed, well made, with good characters, good story, and more within this game category, I'd recommend anything from the Jagged Alliance Series than this title.
This game gets 2/10 from me. "Bad Design, too much copying of a respected series, and no life to anything of it, at all. Makes me wish I never bought it. Bad, really bad..." - Reviewer's Last Words...