Front Mission Second – Review

With Front Mission 4 having recently been released on the PS2, the interest in the Front Mission series (at least in North America) has been on the rise. Newcomers are now looking to get more and more of a Front Mission fix. However, in America, there's little hope beyond 3 and 4, which is a shame, considering the 2nd game in the series is (by this author's opinion) the strongest in the series.

Front Mission 2nd, the sequel to the Super Famicon's Front Mission, is a tactical, turn based strategy game. However, where other tactical games feature upgradeable spells and skills, FM offers fully customizable robots known as Wanzers. Most of the satisfaction of playing a FM game comes from building the perfect group of Wanzers which compliment eachother in battle. This formula has made the series extremely popular in Japan.

It's unfortunate that, due to its lack of localization, Front Mission 2nd has been played by so few this side of the Pacific, and a crying shame that even with all the talk surrounding Front Mission 3 and 4, very few gamers will be able to go back to give this fantastic game a go. For me, FM2 will always hold a special place in my heart. Heck, I continue to play the game even after having beaten it 3 or 4 times before! What is it that makes this game such a wonderful experience? Let's break it down...

Graphics: 7.5

Admittedly, even given the era that the game was released, the graphics aren't anything to speak of technically. Most battles take place over massive isometric arenas broken up into a grid. This grid is built in 3D and detailed nicely with textures. However, since the camera is so far zoomed out, there really aren't any overly impressive details to mention. Wanzers, tanks, and other units on the field are represented with small sprites... very low quality sprites. We're talking 16-bit era sprites. Worse still, the sprites barely animate beyond the "bobbing" standing animation they have. When units are moved about the field, they "bounce" to their new location (as opposed to walking).

Once a battle between two units commences, the screen changes to a full 3D realtime view of the action. These fight scenes are of much higher quality, but still sub-par, even for the era they were conceived, and certainly much less pleasing than anything we have now. The two Wanzers (or tanks, etc.) slide around the screen for a bit before they begin firing on one another. The models are well done, and they animate fluidly (if a bit strangely... watch tanks sort of slide and move at the same time) in satisfying ways. Essentially, the fight graphics achieve what they need to achieve... no more and no less.

Finally, the battles are seperated by the "RPG" sections of the game, which really don't go beyond a few menu based pictures (Do you want to go to the...?). I really don't mind them too much since the game is primarily a tactical strategy game, and it's hard to knock against these screens when the art is so rich and lovely. Yoshi.taka Amano is responsible for the character designs here (he was responsible for most of the earlier Final Fantasy games) and in my opinion, Front Mission 2nd features his best work.

Sound: 8

The sound in FM2 fares better than the graphics. The music is always appropriate and fitting for the current scene. Ambushes sound panicked, charges sound heroic, and triumphs make you want to celebrate. In all, the entire game features a very military-inspired soundtrack, which is very fitting for a game fo this nature.

The sound effects are also pretty standard: machine guns, shotguns, missiles, etc. While there isn't anything overly amazing to say about them, they all fit well to do their job in a convincing fashion.

Story: 8

The Front Mission world has always been a deep one, with a lot of politics and a lot of backstory. Essentially, the story centers around a number of military platoons within the OCU (a new nation made of various Asian nations) that meet up and try to fight against a coup d'etat.

The ingame network provides a lot of backstory and purpose for everything that goes on, and the story itself is involving and very mature. The political strife revolving around the OCU, USN, and other political groups is all very intriguing... though all of it is in Japanese.

Well... at least all the menus are in English.

Gameplay: 9.5

This is where FM2 really makes its money, and the single biggest advantage it has over even the "big boy" strategy RPGs of today.

FM2's battle system is deep, extremely deep. It is built on the seemingly simple, yet deliciously complex AP system. Essentially each character has an alotted number of AP (Action Points) per turn (one of your's and of the enemy's) that are used to perform any sort of action on the grid. Wanna move? Each step will cost you a point. Fire at an enemy? That's 2 points. Fire a missile? A whopping 6 points need to be used. Simple, right?

Except it's not.

AP can also be altered depending on your position on the map. Standing next to a friendly increases your AP by 2. Standing next to an enemy decreases it by 2. This adds wonders to the game as it completely eliminates your unit's ability to "rambo" a stage all on his/her own, thereby giving him/her no AP backup and thus no chance at surviving. The amount of AP you have also designates how well you evade (at full you can evade almost anything), and how accurate you fire (at empty you can't hit the broadside of a barn), as well as controlling your ability to counterattack (counterattacks cost 2 AP as well) and use skills. This system effectively demands that you use every unit in your arsenal and work them together as a team (which has been my biggest problem with other Strategy RPGs which contain broken, all-mighty characters and classes) to make sure your team efficiently dodges bullets and uses skills to pound the opposition.

Skills are the lifeblood of combat, and randomly reward Wanzers with special abilities. As your characters level up, they acquire more skills. During a combat scenario they randomly appear and cause effects such as increasing your AP by 2 for the duration of the turn, or giving you a 50% chance to evade an attack. Most of the skills are offensive, and allow you to fire multiple times (once per skill activation), and let me tell you there's nothing quite as satisfying as watching yourself get "Beat Up" 4 times allowing you to destroy an enemy Wanzer in a single turn. Of course, many people will find the random nature of these skills a turn off, but again, the likelihood of a skill occuring is a direct result of the amount of AP you have left... which in turn is a direct result of how well you position and manage your forces. In a word, brilliant.

And of course, no FM game would be complete without the ability to fully customize your Wanzers. After almost every stage of the game you are allowed to outfit your war machines with custom combinations of arms, legs, bodies, weapons and shields, among others. This portion of the game (like the entire game itself) is a love it or hate it relationship. It can literally take you 15 minutes to decide what arms work best on a single character's Wanzer given cost, weight, and weapons being used. Some of the more unique parts include tank treads, flame thrower arms and cannon bodies. That being said, there is no equal satisfaction than taking a machine that YOU built and watching it dominate the battlefield. In many cases, the customizability of the Wanzers is just as fun as the actual fighting with them.

Of course, that's not to say the gameplay doesn't have a few flaws. The AI isn't terribly intelligent, and you can actually bait it (though it must be done carefully and very slowly) so that only a couple of units will attack your entire group at a time. That being said, the designers at Square did a good job creating missions that forced you into situations where you couldn't abuse this flaw.

Additionally, some might be put off by the pace of the game, which isn't really very fast. Load times between the map and fight scenes are atrociously long. Misses are common (especially with missiles) and it takes full turns to reload and repair Wanzers. Couple this with the sheer size of some of the maps and you have a game in which it can take an entire afternoon to finish 1 mission.

Versus Today...

Compared to today, FM2 can appear a bit lackluster. However, there are a few defining characteristics that still make it a gem among today's more modern software.

First off, the sheer magnitude of FM2 is unmatched in any tactical game this author has played to date. By the end of the game you are commanding 15-16 units against an enemy who commands even more. This makes for long battles which force you to think about efficiency... otherwise you will be fighting the last "wave" of enemies with very little life (and little hope of victory). More recent strategy RPGs have lacked this, opting for a 5-6 character party which really takes away a lot of positioning and "lastability" strategy there could be.

Maps are equally huge and feature a variety of objects to block/aid you. True this game doesn't feature "height" or "realtime objects" to get in the way, but the grand nature of the game forces you to think of "how to get to the right position" instead of "is a tree blocking my path from this position?" Besides, the number of strategies you can come up with using the AP system coupled with 15 Wanzers is certainly a heavy load on the brain already.

Difficulty is another big bonus. Most strategy RPGs these days are pushovers, especially the newer ones from Square-Enix. Front Mission 2nd is hard... but perhaps not in the way you think. Sure, you can get through a few missions with mostly your fighters and gunners, but fail to level up your missilers and you'll have big trouble later. In Front Mission 2nd, the player really needs to think about levelling up everyone evenly, otherwise later missions become damn near impossible. Having a level 16 gunner, and a level 7 missiler is nowhere near as useful as having a level 11 gunner AND missiler.

Thanks to the literal requirement that you have an evenly space out your party over the various classes, every character starts to MEAN something too. Ash BECOMES the rifleman of the group. Roswell BECOMES the big missile man. Everyone gets an identity, be it main man, clean up, or healer, and it makes the player appreciate them in return.

Front Mission 2nd is not a game for everyone. It really is a game for only those who really WANT to get into their games, not just play them. FM2 is a comittment of the mind, and one of the most technical games ever released on consoles. This is its biggest weakness and is also its biggest strength. FM2 battles are satisfying on a level well beyond other strategy RPGs. Unlike other games, you will not survive a mission without a well thought out and implement plan. It's a game about efficiency. It's really as simple as that.

For those who enjoy overly technical games, this one's for you. For those who have touched on tactical RPGs the PS and PS2 has to offer, I heartilly recommend you try and dig this up at an import store. If you can get past the Japanese, you'll find a long, deeply satisfying gameplay engine that is infinitely replayable. This is one of the best examples of a game that is more than the sum of its parts.

Pros:
+ Massive levels with literally armies of units (friend AND foe).
+ Complex battle system that is extemely satisfying when used correctly.
+ Long enduring gameplay that lasts for weeks.
+ Massive levels allow for various methods of attack, making the game very replayable.

Cons:
- Dated graphics (even by standards when it was released).
- Slow gameplay due to long loading and high miss rate.
- High difficulty which can actually have lasting effects on your party for missions to come.

Overall: 8.6 (Not an Average)