Are the Front Mission games any good?
>>12780361They are good if you like mecha and have the patience for them (they get a semblance of varied gameplay at 3 and it reaches its peak at 5)Try them or watch some gameplay and decide for yourself.
>>12780373>they get a semblance of varied gameplay at 3 and it reaches its peak at 5I've heard that a lot of the earlier games feel more luck and RNG based than having actual depth to them, I assume that's not true?
>>12780361Honestly, Left Alive is better than MGSV
>>12780396not retro
>>12780383There's a lot of RNG in all the main series' games, though you can work around it on 4 and 5 by attacking one Wanzer at a time with a lot of links/spare action points for reactions.1 and 2 feel 'luck-based' because you evade depending on the percentage of the tile you put your Wanzer in (you'll evade better in a Jungle tile compared to a Road tile, for example), not because of positioning in a 3D field like in 3 and above. That, coupled with your machine's modifiers (parts, the weight/output ratio, weapon acc and others), adds to the randomness in battle.The rule of thumb is to use multiple hit weapons, missiles and melee over rifles, though 3, 4 and 5 give you options for better hit rates with them; they are high damage but you either hit or miss with them, so the early game can be frustrating in 1 without skills and not paying attention to evasion %s.
>>12780361FM1: kinda boring in some parts . mostly tedious. cool story. the not really related Manga adaptation was KINO.FM2: long drawn out battles. some people liked that. lolwtf japlish interwebs included. proper translations never.FM3: not so lol ingame interwebz. much nicer early 3D mecha polygons and textures compared to FM2. combat mechanic got streamlined probably for the best, but basically combo-ing the 1-slot skills beats the game. and machine guns and shotguns work so much better than the other weapons. plot? probably the "funniest", if you like HOTBLOODED ONI-CHAN fighting all over the world to save his imouto plot. very anime, much shonen. and filipinos got nuked.didn't play the other games other the platformer SNES game counts. that is okish but it bugged out on me in Snes9x so i gave up.
>>12780647Thank you for the clarification. This sounds a lot more strategic than I thought and pretty damn fun, so I'll definitely give it a shot.
>>12780654>didn't play the other games UNLESS the platformer SNES game counts
>>12780396Not retro and incredibly wrong. The only point of comparison is Shinkawa's art, and Left Alive is a mess gameplay wise.
front mission gun hazard is a god game
>>12780361Of the tacticool ones I like FM1 & 5.The arcadey spinoff is pretty cool as well.
>>12780654>FM1: kinda boring in some parts . mostly tedious.Anything particularly tedious about it? Is the gameplay just sometimes repetitive?>didn't play the other games UNLESS the platformer SNES game countsI'd count it, gonna probably play that as well if I try these out soon.
>>12780669This is Gun Hazard? Looks really cool.
>>12780656You get the hang of things eventually. The best piece of advice throughout all five games is to gang up on enemy Wanzers, one at a time. Missiles (and grenades, but they miss often) are your only ranged weapons in the first two games, so you'll always have to soften a target with ranged attacks then run a train on it by putting your units in the surrounding four tiles and shooting/punching them until they blow up.
>>12780669I love the light shining through
>>12780664S-Tier game for the Super Famicom.
>>12780674>just sometimes repetitive?many of the missions are basically more of the same. > e.g. kill these guys. kill that guy. kill that big crab robot and some guys.and basically after every mission you gotta spend some time to manually repair each and every mech that got damaged. and maybe change their parts to something better if the shop got updated. there's no automated/fast way to do this. once you got like 16 characters in your team, it becomes a pain in the ass.
>>12780669>>12780676It's the only one I've played but it's great. Its structure is a bit ahead of its time I would say, it's the sort of sidescrolling action-RPG you'd expect to find on GBA.
>>12782135>many of the missions are basically more of the same. >> e.g. kill these guys. kill that guy. kill that big crab robot and some guys.I started playing yesterday and I'm feeling this now. I wish there was some more variety and a limb targeting system, but ah well.
>>12782405One big flaw of FM1 is that you get skills in the mid to late game. Keep using one of the three skills (Long, Short, Melee) for each character and you'll get skills for that one eventually. Meanwhile, teamwork and items are your only choices.The pool is limited compared to following games but they improve your damage output a lot. Long gets one skill (choosing a part) while Short and Melee get three (Aiming, more burst damage and using both guns for the former; two hits, stun punch and attacking first for the latter).
Yes. Mecha is cool
>>12782135>there's no automated/fast way to do this. once you got like 16 characters in your team, it becomes a pain in the ass.desu it was so bad I kind of blotted it out my memory but you're right. All the srpg/t-RPG fm games I've played are bad at that.
For anyone playing the GBA version of the game, to exit the level when you're done killing everything you have to walk to either end and hold DOWN and press B when the arrows appear.
they got barely released out of japani wonder
>>12780361Front Mission is kind of niche. Do you like turn based games? Do you like mecha? Do you like customizing your mecha? Do you like grinding to get money to upgrade your mecha? It’s definitely not for everyone and the first run can be very hard. >FM1Good but it can be frustrating sometimes. Recently played FM remake and I thought it was pretty good.>FM2 Can be a grind, but I enjoyed it and liked the story. It’s not for everyone.>FM3 This is where the game gets the formula down, and the gameplay. The story isn’t my personal favorite but it was a lot of people’s first Front Mission game since it was the first US release. >FM4I have an insane amount of hours in this game. I bought it when it came out, and every couple of years I’ll randomly play it through. I think I’ve unlocked every wanzer part, every weapon and every skill, so when I play it and start over I have enough money to just play the game and enough skill points to upgrade my pilots. This is my personal favorite game. They make good improvements in gameplay. >FM5 I never got to play this and I don’t have a PC anymore to emulate. >>12780396Left Alive killed Front Mission. I don’t even know what they were thinking. I might try and give it another go but I bought it when it first came out and dropped it
>>12780361I've finished the first three+GH and all of them were quite plainly shite for different reasons. FM1 and FM3 are overly simplistic brainrot with no real strategy to speak of. I will say, FM1 is at least plain and inoffensive, but FM3 is just aggressively retarded. FM3 has ZERO business having medals and rankings, it baffles me that they thought highly enough of the game to include that.FM2 is honestly onto something great, but the load times are so horrid that it's not worth the aggressive waste of time and life. The UI is so fucking bad, it withholds basic information like unit HP behind menus that ALSO have their own load times. Like, you can always make informed decisions, but at a certain point, informing yourself becomes such a hassle that you don't even bother. I'm pretty sure I ended up ignoring 1/3rd of the game's mechanics because of this.And as for GH, it's just unpolished and repetitive. Every level has a constant spawn of mindless enemies, and if you just sit in place and camp them, they just fucking stop spawning. The level will be completely barren from that point on. I've never seen such lazy fuckery in my life.Anyway, my only hope for the series going forward is that the later games return to FM2's systems but actually good.
>>12780361>army man>looks like AIDS ridden albino twinkWhat the actual fuck is wrong with japan.
>>12780674>FM1: kinda boring in some parts mostly tedious.I agree that it isn't very fun and only had trouble with 2 maps : one in the early game against a group of OP mercenaries, and another mid-game where you only have a handful of characters against an army that surrounds you. Imo, a lot of the other maps let you deploy too many wanzers so it's easy to steamroll the oppposition.The story and atmosphere still made the game enjoyable.
>>12780361Sick fucking art besides the monkey.
>>12780361I got 15 hours into the first one before getting bored and never coming back to it. I did like it but it felt very repetitive and tedious, as other anons have said. I'm sure the later ones are better but be aware the first one can feel like a slog.
>>12783345Just to add to this, the reason I even got that far into it in the first place is because everything about it is really cool in concept and it's not badly designed or anything. Ultimately the battles just weren't unique enough from each other or engaging in some other way to keep me pushing through the tedious parts.
>>12783318Amano's artwork is more suited to the spirit of final fantasy. Like a mix between D&D and Neverending Story.
>>12783318>>12783519It's not like Amano was the only artist Squaresoft had access to, I'm pretty sure they intentionally hired fantasy artists on the first few Front Mission games.Amano did FM1 and Gun Hazard, but then they hired Jun Suemi for FM2, and then Akihiro Yamada for FM3. All three are specifically known for their fantasy art.
>>12783553Jun Suemi also illustrated the cover of Hybrid Front.
>>12783339I was going to defend it but you're right, it looks ridiculous.
>>12783339>>12783615
>>12780361Yes extremely good.Oddly enough, I regard the spin-offs most fondly. Gun Hazard (side-scrolling action RPG) and FM Alternative (realtime squad-based strategy) are my favorites.
>>12784873Also, I should say I didn't like FM4, but all the other mainline games play really well.I don't understand >>12782984 fondness for FM4.
>>12780647>WanzerI'm sorry but I can't read that as anything but wank panzer now
>>12785131that's always been part of the charm, you wanzer!
>>12782984>Left Alive killed Front MissionI'm pretty sure Front Mission Evolved did that first, Left Alive was just digging up the corpse to piss on it a bit before burying it again.
>>12780664>>12780852>>12784873Gun Hazard gang member checking in.
>played FM3 first and enjoyed it (mostly), so I grabbed the DSmake of FM1 when it came out>made a fairly-accurate guess to the story from the intro and felt like a genius>then some years later I remembered FM3's in-game internet has synopses for the events of FM1 and FM2 and then I didn't feel so clever anymore
No lol. Shitty poser franchise.
>>12784875I've only played 1 and 3, never played 4 (we didn't get it in PAL regions), but remember people dissing it back in the day, mostly its battle system. What's so bad about it?
>>12788512Everything about it seeks to make FM as bland as possible. Think about the gritty atmosphere in the FM games you played, something most people likely adore a lot about them. That's gone.Just look at this. The scale of it is cute, but otherwise it is aggressively uninteresting, from the visuals to the map layout. Every battle is just a march toward the opposing force, switching from missiles to guns as you get closer.
