Where do you draw the line between a minor flaw and major flaw? Aside from games like Bloodlines or KOTOR2 that were broken or obviously amputees on release, it’s a question of what variety of bullshit you’re willing to ignore.
Re: flawless pebbles, you know I was referring to Diablo and as far as Diablo goes the analogy is apt (you know it’s true or you wouldn’t have retreated to safer ground with JA2). Who knew Confucius had so much sage wisdom to offer about game design?
Jagged Alliance 2 is the best turn-based tactics game ever made. I’d say its greatest flaw is a byproduct of its greatest strength: the hardcore simulationist elements allow you to do amazing things—I’ll never forget the first time I killed some mook with a ricochet—but the system can also get tedious at times.
As for calling it a flawless victory, when? You usually review the “definitive” editions when you do your retrospectives, the way these games were meant to be played when they came out. Yet for JA2 you played 1.12, which is the fully patched version of the Gold edition from 2002 that apparently incorporates some changes from Unfinished Business. And if we’re counting stuff like 1.13, why not do the same for something like Bloodlines? Three years post release you already had Wesp and Tessera competing over their fan patches.
But if you now consider JA2 your top RPG rather than Fallout, I can only conclude that you’re kinda sick of RPGs. The things that make JA2 great are the strategic and tactical elements, not the RPG elements. If they stripped out the character creation and only let you recruit from their pool of mercs, the game would only be marginally worse.
