Jagged Alliance: Back in Action

Lore & Background

Jagged Alliance: Back in Action is a remake of the 1999 Jagged Alliance 2, the third installment in the Jagged Alliance series. The player assumes the role of a mercenary captain contracted to liberate the fictional island nation of Arulco. Outside of battle, characters move in real time, but when a battle starts, the game switches to a turn-based system. The game features a pausable real-time system called 'plan-and-go', where the player issues orders for characters while paused.

The game was developed by Coreplay, a studio based in Munich, Germany. It was announced on August 20, 2010 as Jagged Alliance 2: Reloaded. On February 2, 2011, Kalypso Media and bitComposer announced a publishing partnership and the new title Jagged Alliance: Back in Action. The game was showcased at the 2011 Game Developers Conference and at E3 2011, where an October 18, 2011 release date was announced. On August 11, 2011, the game was delayed to the first quarter of 2012. It was released in German-speaking countries on February 9, 2012. Two downloadable content packs were released in May 2012 and June 2012: Shades of Red and Point Blank. The game was ported to Linux and macOS on February 14, 2014 by Bigmoon Studios.

A standalone expansion pack, Jagged Alliance: Crossfire, was announced on June 13, 2012. It features a new campaign set in the fictional country of Khanpaa, adds an optional line of sight mode, a fog of war system, and ten new mercenaries. It was released on August 24, 2012 in German-speaking countries.

Reader's Guide

Jagged Alliance: Back in Action received 'mixed or average' reviews according to Metacritic. Critics noted that while the game had some of the spark of its legendary predecessor, it was ultimately inferior. The 'plan-and-go' system was seen as a good attempt, but flaws in the artificial intelligence made the game less engaging than it might have been. The removal of fog of war was considered a huge mistake, and the turn-based combat was gone, with mercenaries losing their edge. Even hardcore strategy players found liberating Arulco to be a frustrating quagmire. The expansion pack Crossfire also received mixed or average reviews. It was described as more of the same, bringing little new to the table and doing little to enhance core strategic gameplay, though it was still solidly playable and challenging. Some critics noted that Crossfire was imbalanced, with an economy unfitted to the new territory and many 'gaming mines' to step on, making it worse than Back in Action on its debut. The game's legacy is that of a remake that failed to capture the magic of its predecessor, but retained enough of the original's character to be a compelling impostor.

Did You Know?

• The game was originally announced as Jagged Alliance 2: Reloaded.
• Two DLC packs, Shades of Red and Point Blank, were released in May and June 2012.

Genre Identity & Defining Characteristics

The Tactical RPG — sometimes called a strategy RPG or simulation RPG — occupies a distinctive niche where two beloved video game traditions converge. Rather than following the open-world, exploration-heavy structure of classic role-playing titles, this subgenre borrows its pacing, rule structure, and visual presentation from tabletop role-playing games and strategy wargames alike. The player typically commands a small, finite party against a comparable number of adversaries, with death usually being temporary. What sets the genre apart from a standard RPG is the deliberate removal of broad exploration; instead, the focus shifts entirely to battle strategy. Characters are built and trained across various classes, earning experience through combat and secondary points for class-specific advancement. Each engagement carries explicit victory conditions — eliminate all foes, survive a set number of turns — and only upon success does the next map unlock. Between skirmishes, players manage equipment, class changes, and training. Some entries even break the single-player mold to include multiplayer, as seen in Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions.

Core Gameplay Architecture

At the heart of the Tactical RPG's design philosophy lies a fundamental reimagining of how a player interacts with their characters in combat. Where a traditional RPG might let you wander a town, talk to NPCs, and stumble into a fight, the tactical RPG strips that away and places you directly on an isometric grid where every step matters. The player controls a limited roster of heroes, each belonging to a distinct class — warriors, magic users, or other archetypes depending on the title. Progression is dual-track: primary experience points are earned through battle and make characters generally stronger, while a secondary experience pool lets the player invest in specific class paths, tailoring each unit's role. Battles are bounded by concrete objectives rather than open-ended combat, and the map itself becomes the arena. Between engagements, the game opens up a management layer where equipment is swapped, classes are reassigned, and training is allocated. This rhythm of structured combat punctuated by strategic preparation defines the genre's loop and distinguishes it from both pure strategy titles and conventional RPGs.

Tabletop Roots & Early Video Game Pioneers

The Tactical RPG did not emerge in a vacuum; its DNA is written in the rulebooks of tabletop skirmish wargames. Early tabletop role-playing games themselves descended from combat-focused wargames like Chainmail, which prioritized tactical positioning over narrative. When those concepts migrated into video games, the tactical combat format appeared surprisingly early. Tunnels of Doom (1982) and Ultima III: Exodus (1983) both employed a system where a random encounter triggered a shift to a separate, graphical overhead battle screen for turn-based combat. In Japan, Koei's The Dragon and Princess (1982) on the PC-8001 used a nearly identical structure. These titles, alongside Dungeons & Dragons and Chainmail as tabletop ancestors, established the foundational grammar — finite parties, tactical grids, turn-based resolution — that every subsequent Tactical RPG still speaks. The lineage is direct: wargame, then tabletop RPG, then early video game combat screens, and finally the full Tactical RPG subgenre as we recognize it today.

The 8-Bit Japanese Foundation

The 1980s in Japan produced a remarkable cluster of experiments that collectively forged the Tactical RPG into a recognizable subgenre. Koji Sumii's Bokosuka Wars (1983, Sharp X1; NES port 1985) is widely credited with laying the genre's foundations by blending role-playing progression with strategic army command — a king recruits soldiers, leads them against overwhelming forces, and each unit levels up along the way. Kure Software Koubou followed with Silver Ghost (1988, PC-8801), a real-time strategy RPG with a point-and-click cursor interface that inspired the Shining series, and First Queen (1988), a hybrid letting players control one character at a time while AI-managed allies followed, with battles scaling to fill an entire screen. SystemSoft's Master of Monsters (1989, MSX2) grafted fantasy characters and magic onto the wartime Daisenryaku formula, introducing experience bars for units — a concept later popularized by Fire Emblem. Then in 1990, Intelligent Systems' Fire Emblem for the Famicom synthesized Dragon Quest-style RPG concepts with the turn-based strategy expertise gained from Famicom Wars (1988), setting the template for the entire tactical wargame RPG lineage that persists to this day.