I've played through Emma's route. I've played with through Alisa's route. I am now the premier expert on an okay enough game!
Front Mission 3 is a game that's pretty fun if you overlook all its glaring flaws. I want to make this short, so let's get to it.
What sucks?
RNG. There's too much of it, and I hate it. Do you need to attack your opponent's body or arm? Then ya better pray. Too many times have I seen an enemy with less than 100 HP ready to die. But a melee attack decides to strike the legs anyway...again. It draws out the game and inflates the difficulty in the stupidest way. I understand that accuracy is a thing, and you can't hit every shot where you need to, but why do the legs absorb fifty percent of all attacks?
And this goes into my second least favorite thing: the surrender mechanic. Has your opponent given up? Too bad because Phan just shield smacked the body, costing you several thousand dollars. It feels rigged, and the game targets the body or legs only at inopportune times. Meanwhile, enemies seem to get their big hits just to screw you over.
A way to select special attacks or a way to tilt your attacks would do wonders here. And figuring out a way to force surrender instead of a regular attack would have made me enjoy the game so much more. Instead, I saved scummed my way through both scenarios.
Several characters end up being pretty bland. And along with that, several side stories don't conclude. Most obviously, Kazuki and Isau's relationship. What happened between them, and why didn't it get resolved? It's an open goal to help our flawed character be better, but Square double doinked it! On the flip side, Ryoji, Pham, Yun, and Linny don't have any conflicts. I liked three of those characters, but their connections to this story seemed tertiary at best. They're great personalities, but they lacked something to make them memorable.
And what is here is kinda bad. There are several massive leaps of logic in the main story. We're in the year 2121-ish, but radio isn't common anymore? Why don't our enemies call into their HQ more often? And there are a few too many surprise twists. I can overlook the surprise siblings thing, but the surprise backup McGuffin is dumb. And why does Kazuki get to yell at everyone, army or otherwise? He'd get his ass court marshaled and thrown in jail four times before the game even starts.
There's also not enough of a conclusion for some side characters. How's Lixion, Ran Fong, or Lia Luang? We get some ideas for a few of them, but what happens after we blow Midas?
The music, while not bad, was totally forgettable.
There are a few things I can go either way on.
Thirty-year-old me has mixed feelings, but teenage me would love the two stories. They're both unique and share no similarities. And there's a lot here, too. I have just over sixty hours on my memory card after beating both of them.
While also not bad, I was surprised to see so many visual novel style graphics. I expected a traditional RPG with character models in a room and not just portraits. Those scenes still exist from time to time, but they're few and far between. Honestly, I wonder why they didn't stick with one all the way through?
But what does it do well?
I loved the backgrounds. They're prerendered, but they hold up twenty years later. My favorite part of the world was looking at the sky or the city in the background. They fit in so much, and I almost want to add them to my list of magics.
But it's not just the backgrounds; everything graphically worked for me. Character models looked rough, and wanzers might not have aged well, but there's so much to see. The variety, customization, and sheer amount of models are rad and more than makes up for the scruffiness. Pretend it's the year 2000 again when the world was still nice.
The gameplay can be a lot of fun. It's a strategy RPG with giant robots, and the game works around that at the forefront. Tweaking your wanzer, getting new skulls from parts, and shredding your opponents with duel shotguns or a shield slap will always be rewarding. Watching Ryoji unload a Ryfupi III got a rise out of me for sixty hours. Figuring out how best to use those strategies on the field was the highlight of my nights. I spent so much time looking at a guide to see what new wanzer parts would teach a character. And I did it again to make sure everything would fit. Assuming, of course, you're patient and don't mind the randomness of it all.
Now let's get to the tl:dr version.
Plot: Uhhh. The characters were interesting, but they deserved to be more fleshed out. 3/10
Gameplay: Damn RNGesus. The game was built around the strategy RPG mechanics and the robot combat. The story is secondary to wanzer customization. 10/10
Art Direction: Oddly stunning. This is the first game that's made me want to look up who drew things. 10/10
Sound: Middling. I can't say anything bad about the music, but I can't say anything good about it either. Why are the guns so loud, though? 8/10
Charm: Too much? Look, the in game internet is vast and deep. Perhaps, too deep. Much of it feels unimportant, but it did give a massive amount of backstory and world building. Like the story length, it could have been cut down. 8/10
The only negatives are that the randomness of war can get tedious without save states. -2
Alisa's story is slightly shorter and gets points in favor of length. She gets a 39 out of 50, while Emma gets 37/50. This averages out to a 38.
I had a lot of fun playing in the future, even if that future just looked like the 1980s. It was a great fake out! A part of me wanted to keep playing over time, but I couldn't for a few reasons which aren't important. That being said, I have no desire to play Front Mission 3 ever again. Sadly, I don't want to explore the rest of the Front Mission franchise, either. But I hope the solid C+ looks nice. Congratulations, by the way. While not official because I didn't write about Alisa's story, FM3 is the longest game I've played for this blog. Twenty nine days! Down goes Legend of Dragoon!
Akin to everything: Happy Anniversary, Lucy. I love you.
No comments:
Post a Comment