02/28/00

Front Mission 3

SquareSoft for Playstation

SquareSoft has been holding out on us. The Front Mission series, popular since its early Super Famicom days in Japan, has for whatever reason been withheld from U.S. gamers, unless you were willing to play the half-English, half-Japanese imports. They’re finally bringing the best game in the series, Front Mission 3, to the states, and trust me, it’s good.

If you’ve played Final Fantasy Tactics, you have a basic understanding of what Front Mission 3 is all about. Instead of sword-weilding knights, however, you command a team of heavily armed and armored robots, called wanzers (say "van-sers"). You can upgrade the armor, accuracy, evasion and boosting ability of your wanzers, and buy them new weapons from an impressive assortment of ranged and melee items. In combat, moving your wanzers, changing weapons and using items is accomplished through intuitive menus and commands. When a unit is attacked, the view swings seamlessly into a close-up 3D animation of the two battling wanzers. Unlike Front Mission 2, the battles here are much easier to manage and generally last 20-30 minutes, tops. Between battles, you can shop, upgrade your troops or practice in the simulator room.

All the depth of technique you’d expect from SquareSoft is included. Wanzers have five HP bars each, one for each part (body, left and right arms, legs and the pilot). Losing an arm costs you the weapon that was attached, broken legs reduce movement and you’ll lose the robot entirely if the body is destroyed. You can eject your pilot from his wanzer and have him fight on foot (not recommended) or commandeer another vehicle. Your units learn Battle Skills which activate randomly in combat and your pilots level up and gain proficiency in frequently used weaponry.

The storyline of Front Mission 3 splits into tow routes at the beginning of the game, and plays out from both sides of an international crisis. Each storyline has upwards of 60 battles and a whopping 40-50 hours of gameplay time. To say that this game has replayability would be an understatement. It’ll take you longer than both Final Fantasy VII and VIII to play through both scenarios in this game. The story itself is well written and more importantly, well translated. The story sequences never run too long and never take the focus off the meat of the game – the battles.

The graphics are as good as Playstation visuals in a game of this type get. When the camera zooms in one your wanzers you really believe that these are 50-foot giant robots engaged in combat. The battle maps especially are impressive, ranging from wild countryside to downtown city streets complete with cars and traffic lights.

The music is unobtrusive and generally forgettable. Where the sound shines is during combat, where the clanks of steel on steel, cracks of machine gun fire and sizzling of shattered circuitry combine to create an incredible atmosphere.

If you are even a slight fan of RPGs, strategy games or giant robots (I happen to be a big fan of all three), you owe it to yourself to get this game. I highly recommend it; it looks to be Square’s first giant hit of the year and it deserves and needs all the support it gets.

Graphics: 9 (the 3D battles are outstanding)

Control: 9 (Intuitive and innovative)

Sound: 10 (The music ain’t the greatest but the battle effects and wanzer noises are great)

Replay: 10 (You’ll spend 40-50 hours beating the game… and that’s just the first half!)

Overall: 9 (It’s about damn time they brought this series over!)

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