Review

Jagged Alliance 3

A turn-based tactics game with RPG elements, set in the country of Grand Chien. You hire mercenaries, build a squad and fight isometric battles where positioning and weapon choice matter. It is playable solo or in co-op, and returns to a series known for its tactical depth. Is it your kind of game?

Turn-basedSquad tacticsMercenariesXboxPlayStationPC

Games like Jagged Alliance 3

8/10

Game Avant verdict

A confident, deep return to the classic mercenary-squad formula, where the strategic layer around the fights matters as much as the fights themselves, undercut only by an early-game slog and dialogue that leans too hard on jokes.

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By GameAvant · Published Oct 3, 2026 · Updated Oct 9, 2026 · 13 min read

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IGDB

83%

18 ratings

Steam:

89%

10,899 reviews

Fits you if

you want to build a mercenary squad and think through every turn.

Skip it if

you want fast action or do not enjoy long, planning-heavy battles.

Availability

Where to play

Steam

$4.49

Buy

Facts

Platforms: Xbox · PlayStation · PC
Release date: July 14, 2023
Difficulty: 3/5 (estimated)
Genres: Role-playing (RPG) · Strategy · Turn-based strategy (TBS) · Tactical
Themes: Action · Warfare
Perspective: Bird view / Isometric
Modes: Solo only
Languages: 3 languages
Text in your language: Yes
Steam Deck: Playable
Microtransactions: None

More about Jagged Alliance 3

Jagged Alliance 3 is the first mainline entry in its series since Jagged Alliance 2 shipped in 1999, a 24-year gap that turned the wait itself into part of the game's story. Developed by Haemimont Games, the Bulgarian studio best known for the Tropico series, and published by THQ Nordic, it released on 14 July 2023 for Windows, followed by PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S that November. Several earlier attempts to revive the series were cancelled over the years, which makes this one feel less like a sequel and more like a studio finally getting a long-awaited second chance to get it right. The pitch is defiantly old-fashioned in the best way: you hire a squad of mercenaries through a fictional recruitment agency, drop them into the fractured nation of Grand Chien, and fight a private war one sector at a time. Forty mercenaries are available across the campaign, from returning series names like Ivan Dolvich and Fox to a deep bench of new hires, and each one plays differently enough to change how a squad approaches a fight, not just cosmetically but in actual combat behaviour and banter. Combat itself is turn-based and rewards positioning, suppression fire and stealth in equal measure rather than defaulting to a straightforward cover-shooting loop. Around those individual fights sits a strategic layer that matters just as much: controlling sectors, training local militia and securing mine income all feed back into how much firepower and money you have for the next engagement, so the map itself becomes as important as any single skirmish fought on it. The game runs two clocks at once, missions in turn-based time, and the wider world in real time, meaning a sector can fall to a Legion counterattack while your best squad is still three turns deep into an unrelated firefight elsewhere. For veterans who remember Jagged Alliance 2 as punishing and want that same edge back, optional rulesets covering permadeath, ammo scarcity and mercenary costs let you rebuild a harsher version of the experience without hunting through a settings menu for a single difficulty slider. The dialogue leans hard on jokes and mercenary banter throughout, which keeps long campaigns from feeling like a grind but occasionally undercuts scenes the story clearly wants to land as tense or grim, a trade-off that depends entirely on how much comic relief you want from your tactics game. Twenty-four years is a long time to wait for a sequel, and Jagged Alliance 3 spends that inheritance carefully: it keeps the mercenary personalities, the sector-by-sector strategic layer and the turn-based tactics that made the original a cult classic, while updating the interface and production values enough to make the whole package approachable for players discovering the series for the first time.

The thing you'll love. Or hate.

Forty distinct personalities

Two clocks running at once

Comedy over gravity

Not quite for you?

Three alternatives, one line each on why.

Shorter

Similar, but noticeably shorter.

With co-op

Similar, but playable together.

Cheaper or free

Similar, for less money.

Frequently asked questions

Which platforms is Jagged Alliance 3 on?: Jagged Alliance 3 is available on Xbox · PlayStation · PC.
Does Jagged Alliance 3 have co-op?: Yes — Solo only.
Does Jagged Alliance 3 run on Steam Deck?: Playable
What does Jagged Alliance 3 cost?: $4.49 on Steam.