[jareth_chong]

I have just started playing Jagged Alliance. I had missed out the Jagged Alliance series because of X-COM, a game I truly despise. Some ten years ago, when people and reviews described Jagged Alliance as a "game that is like X-COM", I immediately decided that I was not going to try Jagged Alliance.

I bought X-COM when it first came to the US because of all the rave reviews and praises. I played it, and I really really hated it. Its gameplay involved too much number crunching, and its unintuitive interface was overcrowded with too many buttons. I played it for a couple days and gave up on it.

A few years later, after I had upgraded my computer, I tried playing X-COM again. There was still too much micromanagement of statistics and numbers. The X-COM soldiers lacked any sort of personality or individuality--they are just vanilla plain. In fact, the whole game just does not have any unique "personality" or "flavor". X-COM was really just a "spreadsheet" gameplay. I still did not like the game at all.

Then, a few more years later again, at the turn of the millenium, I bought another new computer and gave X-COM the third and one last chance. I ended up hating it even more because its graphics and sound was already badly outdated by then, plus I had never liked its gameplay in the first place.

I had known Jagged Alliance, like X-COM, also had fund management, map overviews, personnel management, and many seemingly similar elements. I had always imagined the two games offered very much the same sort of gameplay. So I had never bothered giving Jagged Alliance a try.

A couple weeks ago, I was looking online for the old classic Ultima (VI-VII) and Quest for Glory series to download when I came across Jagged Alliance and Deadly Games. The games were free, so I decided to give them a try. Wow! Jagged Alliance is so not like X-COM at all. I really enjoy Jagged Alliance although it is over ten years old.

Unfortunately, the free "abandonware" versions of Jagged Alliance and Deadly Games do not have speech. So I ended up buying used copies of Jagged Alliance and Deadly Games because I wanted to play the games with full sound and voiceovers. I am going to start playing Jagged Alliance 2 after I am done with the first two games.

Now that I know X-COM had made me missed out Jagged Alliance for ten years, I hated X-COM even more. X-COM was truly a burden for Jagged Alliance. I have read that many X-COM fans have never tried Jagged Alliance because the two games came out at around the same time, and Jagged Alliance was generally regarded as a X-COM "clone". X-COM had overshadowed Jagged Alliance. On the other hand, people who hated X-COM (like myself) would have never tried Jagged Alliance because, well, if we already hated X-COM, why would we even bother with some game that was "just like X-COM"?

Anyway, that is just what I have to say on this matter.