Beaten: Front Mission 4

Beaten

Front Mission 4

System: PS2 (Playing on PS3)
Status: Beaten
Currently: Just beat the game, need to go again and do the optional simulators.

Ah, another game that while great, took me forever to beat. I do love the Front Mission series, especially this game with how it portrays fairly realistic mechs. Its a fairly old game by today's standards, but the graphics still look very crisp (barring the wonky trees of course), and the little details they put into the terrain and combat make all the difference in the game and its presentation. The only odd spot there is when people are talking, they have a still image with their jaw moving up and down...which...looks really weird. The voice acting itself is pretty good though.

The characterization and story of the game plays out well. It never gets too deep into philosophical nonsense that has nothing to do with mechs, instead pretty much sticking to the people, their job (or goal), and having you follow them along. The oddity being that the game actually has two stories, one based on a team in Europe, and one based on a team in Venezuala. You would think that with an RPG with two stories like that, eventually they would combine to one final mission...nope. Eventually they do contact each other and exchange information, but you never have a mission where you use both teams. So instead you end up ping-ponging between the stories, following and enjoying each separately.

The game play is fun and enjoyable, though very slow at times. Some missions you can chew through pretty quickly, others are rather rough, and you have to go slow so as to not make any mistakes and keep healed...and that can lead to a mission lasting thirty minutes or so. There is a quick save function so you can resume in the middle of a mission, but sometimes the objectives you need to accomplish are borked by early decisions. The AI is both stupid and brilliant at the same time. They tend to lock on to one target and never change no matter what happens, which is dangerous for you, but it also means they ignore more vulnerable targets. Units that aren't close to you will either get 'pulled' by you getting close, or are activated on a certain turn. Usually this means you slow crawl across the map, pulling units one group at a time so you don't get overwhelmed. The mech designing aspect is simple enough, and you can tweak it to your play style, though there are noticeably better styles than others. Still, with two teams who have different skillsets, you get to experience a lot of different mechs without having to retool everyone, or worry about switching guys in and out.

Overall, a very good game, and considering I got it used for like 10$ it was well worth it. All I have to do to complete it is to do the optional simulator missions, but that requires a replay through on new game+, given by the time I realized they were there, I was already past the point of doing them for the European team.