One of the more interesting, if totally underrated franchises to come out of Square. Front Mission is the brainchild of Toshiro Tsuchida, whom I doubt any of you have ever heard of, yet many of you have played a game he's worked on since he was the creator of FFX's CTB system and he also worked on FFXIII's battle system. He also created the Arc the Lad series for Sony but only worked on the first two entries. Despite all that, Front Mission was his baby and while the games never received the overseas recognition he wanted, he was pretty happy to have completed the full story he wanted to tell with the series.
The games are set in the end of the 21st century and early 22nd, where in addition to Germany finally figuring how to do this whole "giant robot" thing since it didn't seem like Japan was ever going to get around to it; the world has been swallowed up with Supranational Unions that have banded together for economical relevancy. With the rise of globalization comes an outcry of nationalism, and soon the various Unions deal with conflicts between other supranational unions as well as upstart nations within, clamoring for their independence. As one can tell, an overarching them of the series nationalism vs. globalization, and thankfully, I feel like Front Mission does a pretty good job of being pretty even handed on the subject, often showing the strengths and pitfalls of both ideologies.
The series works a bit like Suikoden, in that each entry is a mostly self-contained story, but each one also adds to the overarching struggle between these two ideologies that play throughout the franchise and strugles in one game has consequences in others. It also has a good dose of "war is hell" but much of that plays out more in the light novels and drama CDs. Speaking of which, Front Mission is kind of the only franchise that pulls the whole "multimedia" approach that Square likes to do, pretty well. Mainly because all the non-game media are either one-shot stories set within the world or simply follow up stories that tell you what happens to everyone after the credits end. You don't actually need to read any of it to appreciate the plots or understand the stories better, and that's how I feel it should be.
Front Mission 3 deals with the story of Kazuki Takemura, a test wanzer pilot for Kirishima Industries who becomes embroiled in a a global conspiracy involving a stolen USN developed nuclear weapon called MIDAS. MIDAS is a nuclear weapon designed in a way to bypass most anti-nuclear weapon laws in place and threatens to throw off the delicate power balance within the world. I say it's Kazuki's story, but he's more like a Vaan or Tidus in that he's simply the point of view character for the player, and instead the plot actually revolves around either Alisa Takemura, Kazuki's adopted sister who is a renowned prodigy that was working with the Japanese military in studying a prototype MIDAS construct the government got its hands on; or Emir "Emma" Klamsky, a USN scientist that helped developed the original MIDAS and is looking to find it and destroy it. Whichever one he chooses to follow, Kazuki tries to chase down MIDAS throughout the OCU, which is Australia, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. He also winds up in the Da Han Zong (DHZ) which is basically a united future China
The game has two different scenarios and understanding the whole plot will involve playing both of them. Alisa's story is shorter and considered easier, but Emma's arc has more unique elements to it like some unique wanzer units and the ability to affect who joins your group. The game has loads of characters with fifteen potential party members across both story arcs with only Kazuki and his best friend Ryogo being the the constants in each one. One of the most interesting aspects of the game is how each scenario finds Kazuki on a different sides of a conflict. The obvious is between the main heroines. If Kazuki sides with his sister, he joins up with a DHZ spy that smuggles them out of the country of Japan, and helps them track down the bomb before it can be used to destabilize the DHZ. If he goes with Emma, he's working for a USN block ops group trying to recover the weapon from the OCU and DHZ before the other nations learn about it. Several characters that are allies in one story path, are bitter enemies in the other and vice versa. When Kazuki lands in the Philippines, it's caught in the middle of a bloody civil war. In Alisa's plot, they help the rebels, but in Emma's they are getting help from the Philippine government. This allows you to get a better idea of the conflicts as one scenario may play out the rebels as freedom loving forces trying to take back the nation for the people, while the other scenario may reveal the call for independence is simply one persons rallying cry to gain more power as they use the war to destabilize the country and build their power structure. There is a lot of gray in this world and it's fantastic.
Gameplay is a typical grid based Tactical RPG a la FFTactics fame. Players control the wanzers, the series named for the mecha, and can use up to four units per battle. There are over thirty different Wanzers in the game for you to acquire though some are unique to certain scenarios. Pilots can switch between wanzer units and wanzers themselves can be mixed and matched by parts with body, legs, and arms all being easily switched around though weight and power distribution will affect what type of weapons the unit can use. There are nine different weapons to choose from and every unit can usually have two. Despite this flexibility, some units are obviously better for certain tasks than others, and equally, the pilots themselves have certain weapons they gain better proficiency with than others. Kazuki for instance is a rare hybrid melee/attacker specialist, which means he works better with melee weapons and firearms like shotguns and machine guns. Emma and Alisa are both Gunner types that deal with high marksmanship so rifles and missile launchers are their weapons of choice.
Battles utilize AP that dictates how far you can move, which weapons you can use, whether you can use a skill, or whether your unit can counter or defend during enemy turns. Skills are powerful moves that associated with the different wanzer parts, each part teaches it's own skills, and while the likelihood is randomizes, it happens often enough and they are usually strong enough to warrant some attention. Once a skill activates for the first time, a character learns it and can have it assigned to them so it can be used even when you switch wanzer parts. Multiples of the same skill can be learned and assigned as well which will raise the likelihood of it activating in battle. With all that said, the amount of skills you can have a pilot assigned to them varies based on the skills level and the CPU of the wanzer, so it's not like you can have ten or twenty skills attached to them. Later, the game introduces special CPUs that will raise the likelihood of a skill activating or being learned, but it usually comes with some drawback to balance it out.
Combat works pretty similar to Tactics, but when I mentioned that units have parts, that plays into it as well. To defeat a unit, you need to destroy the main body or damage them so badly they surrender.. Destroying legs will reduce a unit to moving one square a piece and being unable to jump, while destroying the arms will often cripple their combat abilities. You can even potentially kill the pilots themselves by either knocking them out of the wanzer and killing them before they can re-board, or using special pilot targeting skills. You can even have your own party members board an enemy unit that has had it's pilot removed and thankfully the A.I. is a bit too dumb to go straight for your own abandoned unit. This all offers some interesting depth to combat, especially when you start factoring in skills that target specific parts, using a lucky strike on an enemy unit to commandeer it and give to an ally whose unit might be close to being destroyed, and the fact that surviving enemy wanzer units are automatically added to your own inventory if you win the battle which is great for gaining more customization options as well as being the best source of money in the game.
Between all of the fighting, the plot plays out like a very low budget visual novel, and you'll travel between locations within cities or bases while talking to your allies and NPCs. There are actually quite a number of little sidequests to do in the game and most involve the internet. Yes, the game has the internet, which is hilarious in hindsight cause it's a late 90s idea of what it would look like in the future and its pretty bad and non-user friendly, just like the internet was in the late 90s. Your party can go online to answer emails surf, websites, online shop, and even acquire some hacking programs to dive deeper into government websites or decrypt messages you obtain. Tis part of the game is actually way more involving than you think, and I would advise getting a guide for it because writing down all of the various passwords and learning when its possible to hack a certain website can be rather tasking. On the other hand, the internet aspect helps to sell the world and characters better as it will fill you in on the history of the world and tech, fill in backstory for the politics of the areas you visit and you'll get to see another side of some of the characters like Ryogo's womanizing, or hardass Marine Marcus' almost goofy love for his daughters. You can even acquire an internet stalker in Alisa's scenario.
It's a fairly involving game overall, and easily my favorite of the entries I've played. In fact, I'm replaying the game right now on my PSP, and it's kind of guilt tripping me that I never finished FM4. Still, it's a great series for people who love Tactical RPGs, Real Robots, and Realpolitk then this is definitely one to check out.
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