I’ve recently been exploring Front Mission, the original one, the turn-based mecha sim released for the Super NES in Japan, but never in America. I’ve had a copy for some time now, acquired through…surreptitious means. As is my habit, I’ll return to a classic Super Nintendo title years after I last played it mostly because I’ve forgotten how it plays. Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, and Earthbound are examples that I re-explored this past summer, and I suppose it was only a matter of time before I returned to Front Mission. After all, I love mecha titles, and I’m fond of turn-based strategy titles as well.

It should be noted that playing Front Mission in a format with save states is a lot different, I’d imagine, than playing it with an actual cartridge. Namely, I spend a lot of time just grinding the colosseum to be able to afford the best for my troops, which makes the missions quite a lot easier. And with the save states there’s no risk involved.

I’m finally getting to the point where my characters are learning some decent skills–one character I’ve focused on melee is able to multiple attack using fists fairly regularly, another has a reliable punching stun attack. Some skills, such as being able to guide my attacks and shoot out certain parts of mechs, or to be able to double-attack with rifles, remain elusive.

Front Mission is also very light on instruction for the player. It doesn’t help much that the menus have little to no explanation. It’s fairly easy to navigate the mech upgrade system, but the parts you win from battles can’t be swapped in within the store even if you own them. This oversight ends up adding up–I’ve probably wasted a fair chunk of in-game change on things I already owned that I purchased additional copies of. Buying and selling items is also a bit tricky–simple repair items have to be purchased in one menu area and equipped in an entirely different one.

The core of the game, when you’re not grinding or upgrading, is the combat. It’s more or less Fire Emblem with mecha, which isn’t that bad, although the characters aren’t quite as well fleshed out and it can sometimes be a little hard to tell people apart. It’s largely by-the-numbers, too. The nice part is it doesn’t take too much to keep track of it, and so for intermittent, light play, I’ve been rather enjoying it.

All in all, though, Intelligent Systems seems to have had a leg up on Square when it comes to the entire 16-bit, isometric, turn based strategy games. Fire Emblem does the menus, characters, and plot better. It’s refreshing to be able to blow robots apart (and the chance to disarm your opponent for extra EXP before you do them in is rewarding) but overall I have to say Fire Emblem 4 impressed me more over all as a title. And, as I said, it’s only a matter of time before I return to that one.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 10:16 pm and is filed under Games.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.