Jagged Alliance 3 is set to be released in 11 days from today (14 Jul, 2023), and I am of course excited since it seems the developer Haemimont Games wants to make a true sequel to Jagged Alliance 2. However, I do have some serious concerns with it.

My first issue is that burst fire will only do 50% of the normal damage. From what I understand, it was made like this because they couldn’t figure out a good balance for it. It was apparently too easy to just run up to enemies and unload on them. Now, that is worrisome by itself – are there no interruptions? Do the enemy NPCs don’t defend themself in any way? My main issue with this, though, is that it kinda tramples the whole simulation aspect into the dirt. There is absolutely no reason for a weapon to ever do less damage because you fire more bullets. It’s a very gamey thing, in something that wants to take the simulation approach. Or at least, we are told that it wants to do that.