AIM vs MERC?

[DEADPOO]

What's the distinction between the two? Never played JA or JA2 and so was curious, lore-wise...

[Your Neighbour]

MERC like... AIM at home

In JA2, MERC is where you hire meme mercenaries of jobless people who have never fired a gun once in their lifetime for 1/10th of the price and regret it.

Later on in MERC if you hire their rubbish mercs they will actually improve and start to have elite mercenaries, not sure about JA3

[SirHawk]

MERC was started by the ex-AIM Biff Apscott and an other ex-AIM I forgot the name of (starts with S for sure), they're Costco mercs you hire only when you're absolutely desperate. In JA2, as mentioned previously, MERC did actually receive mercs that are not laughing stock later on.

[DEADPOO]

So basically, MERC are the walmart of mercenaries, and AIM are the better professionals?
Thanks guys!

[SirHawk]

Exactly. While events in JA3 are (mostly) not their fault, they are exactly how AIM mercs talk about them during story progression. Reason why AIM mercs facepalm each time someone mentions how terrible mercenaries are while referring to MERC.

[uncle nick]

Everyone hates on MERC; but they were there for those moments when you played JA2 for the first few times, and you were still figuring out things for yourself, running out of money, the AIM mercs have died, upset each another, low morale, asking for more money or left you, and you are running out of options, ...you could always hire a MERC on a cheap low daily fee.

Eventually, people realise they can hire the cheap MERCs to help with the logistics, medical, repairs and training, non-frontline type duties.