Mission Impossible: game finished - a short review

[w.f.schepel]

Overall feeling of difficulty: resources were scarce. Money was for most of my game a serious issue that kept me from hiring a second team. I didn't REALLY need it, though. Combat early on was a learning experience but silencers and Barry's special grenades did a lot to make just about everything very manageable. I actually would have liked a bit more of a challenge. Especially sneaking around is laughably easy. The AI is blind as a bat.

MERCS in the first team:

Fox: Outstanding. Extremely useful, but I had to bring in dr. Q. for the Red Rabies mission.
Livewire: Outstanding. Top level performance for a recruit straight from the start.
Barry: Same as Livewire. Who needs legendary mercs when recruits are this good?
Omryn: Great sniper. The knife that is welded to the second slot is an issue, though. In terms of inventory management that is a -1 spot. Also less flexible as a result. If I do a second run I might replace him.

I started with the above 4 and only after I captured the second mine did the following enter the first squad:

Grizzly: SMG / LMG specialist. Mostly important because of his strength. Fox and Livewire are great at their jobs but they don't carry much weight and there is a lot you need to carry around in terms of relevant stuff for mods and ammo / explosive production.
Kalyna: Hired for leadership purposes - at this point I hadn't figured out the IMP yet. Would have saved me a lot of trouble, but hindsight is 20/20.

Eventually I did create that IMP. Honestly, it feels a bit like cheating.

Weapons used:

Some rifles. Mostly because I am a sucker for 'sniper' rifles. In reality, the real workhorse of my run was a variety of assault rifles. People keep going on how 'weak' they are. They aren't. Shooting from stealth doesn't require big damage numbers. What you do need is accuracy and penetration. There are a number of AR's that give you bonus to accuracy on aiming and armour penetrating ammo deals with the second issue. Also important: thermal scope. (Can be combined with smoke in bad situations: your guys guys get grazed at most and you return fire for full hits.) Various LMG's were useful, but I rarely used them because ammo is hard to come by.

Note: even on mission impossible the game is 'easy'. (Do avoid higher level enemies, though, because they are close to unkillable for some arcane reason. The malus to hit for a lower level merc is insane.) I have fought a number of battles with different approaches and different guns and everything can be made to work. I liked the stealthy approach, but going 'loud' is just as feasible. Shotguns and SMG's work fine, too. (The quick reaction scope on the smg is gold.)

Note 2: Overwatch is an ammo sink. I made the mistake of using it extensively early on and at one point I was down to a few shots for all weapons. It took some very careful sneaking and knifing to get out of that bind!

Story & quests:

Forgettable, for the most part. I am not a fan of the zombie theme. I really, really wish they hadn't included that. Otherwise, I don't think the game is interesting because of the story line. The tactical puzzles combined with resource management is what kept me hooked.


On balance, one of the more enjoyable games I have played this year.

[ChaosKhan]

I am on the verge of finishing my run and have about the same impressions as you. Wanted to play stuff differently compared to my commando run though and got Steroid for mechanic, which turned out to be quite a headache in a lot of situations. Some mechanic checks are simply unreasonably high, that make using anything but Livewire and Vicky a problem.

My starter team was IMP, Fox, Hitman, Steroid and Barry. After capping the first mine, I rushed getting Fley. I flew in Nails, Wolf and MD, dismissed Hitman and then sat around a couple weeks improving agility and marksmanship. The issue were the frequent attacks though and I was forced to stop training, because my ammo reserves got dangerously low. Loot drops from raiding squads were nonexistent and they AI sent one about every 1-2 days.

Once I got the second and third mine, I expanded my A-team with Raider, recruited a full B-team and (after finishing the Smiley quest with 2 squads) then proceeded to work on the eastern part of the map with it (includes recruiting Pierre), while my B-team made sure to get Larry and slowly made its way towards the Refugee Camp and later Landsbach. Once A-team got the 2 mines on the eastern part, I got a third team and are now about to finish the campaign.

My overall impression was, that indeed, auto-weapons are more viable on MI than on lower difficulties, because the overstatted enemies often require a lot of stopping power. You want to target grunts with ARs and SMGs, while your sniper rifles take out the high HP targets. I got a couple Winchesters pretty early, which made ammo management a breeze, but my main carries remained a fully modded 10x scoped Dragunov on Fox, coupled with 2 FALs with a 40mm each on Nails and Barry. Raven usually used a Winchester until I found an AUG. Raider carries around a modded Glock-18 (best 1-hand weapon in the game, hands down) and smoke grenades and has a fully modded RPK in the secondary slot just in case.
The biggest and most interesting surprise was Bobby though. With his agility nearly hitting 80 after training, he is a pretty good tank. Runs around with molotovs, tear gas, smoke grenades and a single Anaconda for overwatch and mobile shot finishers. Has full health perk build, is supreme bait and very useful overall.

Overall I was fairly unlucky as far as loot drops are concerned, but it wasn't that much of an issue. It made me appreciate weapon types, that I usually neglected before, like handguns and shotguns. I honestly don't have even the slightest idea why people would resort to an all sniper team, but I guess if they have fun with it and love to reload and metagame, why not...
The game isn't even remotely hard enough for the players to be forced into some presumably OP weapon type meta.

[Salinga]

It's a bit of a shame that the only real difficulty in this game is the resources. And in the end, only the ammunition at most. The enemies are simply too stupid to keep the tactical game interesting in the long run.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy that JA3 exists, I just think it would be nice if the enemies could be made a bit smarter.

[Lightning]

Yeah seems the enemy raiders follow a designated path all the time so you know exactly where to defend at any time, unlike the previous JA's they had rng pathways

[oxide]

overwatch is a single shot mod is one of the must haves

[Marcus]

Originally posted by Salinga:

It's a bit of a shame that the only real difficulty in this game is the resources. And in the end, only the ammunition at most. The enemies are simply too stupid to keep the tactical game interesting in the long run.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy that JA3 exists, I just think it would be nice if the enemies could be made a bit smarter.

100 agree! The stupid AI is the biggest Problem, in this Game, but its a great Game.

[ChaosKhan]

Originally posted by Marcus:

100 agree! The stupid AI is the biggest Problem, in this Game, but its a great Game.

Not just "stupid" AI, but that it's always forced into the same pattern - it will ALWAYS move EVERYONE first and then attack (but only, if they see the target BEFORE the movement order), which is highly exploitable. For example, if you fully stealth your team and then reveal someone on purpose far away from them, the AI will do one of 2 things: remain in place or ALWAYS make a full move towards the "revealed" target and run face first into the hidden squad. Since AP won't be available though, it won't be able to attack the now revealed squaddies in it's face and die to either overwatch or aimed shots during your turn. Then you can just re-hide again and repeat it.

Those that remain in place can be easily sniped, those that rush you can be easily overwatched or burst-aimed down.

In games like XCom for example, this wasn't possible by default, because the AI never moved everyone at once and never spent both actions on movement immediately. There, a single soldier would use his action to move, reveal your "ambushing" squaddies, and then the rest would simply mow them down if they are positioned in a bad way. In JA3, "bad" positioning is never a consideration as long as I can click on the "hide" button. It's like magic, really.

I understand why JA3 devs did it - probably to reduce turn times - but it's really a horrible solution. The upsides are undeniably there (turn times are lower indeed), but the cost is way too high. XCom and Phoenix Point did it right. The AI isn't ingenious there, but way, way less expoitable than in JA3.