I wanted to try this series out for the cool mech designs and the more unique take it has on turn based strategy compared to FE or FFT. What should i play first?
>>4024920play the DS version but make sure to get the version with the slowdown fix
I don't think its anywhere near as good as FE but I still had a great time with FE. The carrion crows are a cool team I really got attached to some of them.
>>4024920I've only played 1 and 3 for the first few missions, but I did play 4 all the way through. FM1 was fine except a little frontloaded on the difficulty, 3 was great but I ultimately dropped it because I forced myself to read every article in the in-game internet between each mission.I can see why some people say that 4 is a little too streamlined, but it felt like it struck the right balance of time spent in the garage between missions and doing the missions itself. It was a little easy at times because the repair pack engineers start with lets you spam heals on all of your mechs, and then later on you can respec squad members and get such high accuracy with rifles you can literally disarm enemy mechs because they can engage you at all.I hear 5 is the best of the bunch, but is only in Japanese. I have a translated copy downloaded but haven't played it yet.
>>4024920luv me some FM1, finished both campaignsBeing able to speed up on DS roms really helpsI played FM4 and did not care for it, I'm fairly sure all the sequels pale in comparison to 1
>>4024920FM1 is kinda tedious and most of the missions feel like filler... also it's easy enough that you can beat the game with just 5 or so mechs. except maybe THE WALL boss fight of sorts (Hell's Wall). gotta abuse missiles to beat it, for me. but soon after, you get access to the koolaid mechs the wallies were using, then it's like whatever. also most of the characters are kinda crap, except the punching skill guys. not sure if the remake fixed the boringness of the overall game.FM3 was like anime trip, though still has some filler missions. and one of the routes is clearly a bad ending. shields are very necessary in this game, and MGs/Shotguns work so much better than the other weapons. double punching and stun punches don't work that great compared to FM1. oh and filipinos got nuked, and i forgot the reason why.i quit FM2 because it was mostly untranslated and the battles really drag out. also the mechanics made it so you need a variety of weapons on each mech to hit stuff. no more specialisation, unless you wanna make the game harder for yourself. the japlish fake-interwebz websites are hilarious, as in they're worse than l33tspeek.
>>4025350oh and the manga is superior. you should read it. so much more awesome and edgy than the games. inb4 banned for /vr/a/ posting.
>>4024926>>4024920skip the first gamethe first game is boring and mindless>>40252021 is the worst one.
>>4025380well I disagree with you, so we cancel each other out :)
It's a pretty shitty franchise overall. 4 is the best and even that's just okay. Only kind of notable for how gullible the English speaking fanbase is and how the retarded nonsense peddled by the FM5 translation team still gets around.
>>4024920FM3 has some of the most comically random gameplay I've seen in an SRPG. Reminds me of old tabletop like Battletech where the focus was obviously much more on simulating cool mech things happening like getting cored in one shot than it was about one person winning through strategy.
>>4025380>skip the first game>the first game is boring and mindless>1 is the worst one.Impressively wrong post.
My favorites are 1 & 5. With the caveat that I played 1 twentyfive years ago with a fantranslation that only ran on zsnes (I think), so it might not have aged well.
>>4025783To be fair 1's OCU campaign is really bad. USN route salvages it somewhat.
>>4025918>USN routeI do not recall such an option.
>>4025922Exclusive to the various ports/remakes.
>>4025350>i quit FM2 because it was mostly untranslated and the battles really drag out.FM2 is the only satisfying one from a gameplay standpoint
>>4025924Must be. I played the SNES version. Fun game. Last twist at the end was chilling.
I like every Front Mission. With 1, 3, and 5 being my favorites. 2 is a slog, and 4 leaned too hard into the desaturated palette. Though 4's looping NG+ pilot upgrades were a nice mechanic. It also amazes me that no one has ripped off Front Mission 5's roguelite mode.
>>4025350>shields are very necessary in this gameDon't listen to this nigga. Why have shields when you can sport another weapon in there for a double shot or that 1-2 left right combo whose name I forget? He probably doesn't have a high-activation comp. Combat in 3 doesn't extend so far that you'd need a dedicated healer like in the later games. Just have one assault with a healing item and you're good to go.>>4024920I played it all. FM3 is where it really starts to get going which is funny because chronologically, it's the last game in the series not accounting the spin-offs. 4 was a slight improvement and 5 refined it some more. 5 was the most emotional. That ending got me right in the feels.Honestly, you're not losing much if you play FM1 and 2 as a remakes but FM3 classic is still the way to go for me. They really fucked up the remake on that one and lost all of its SOVL. The mechs act like they're being hit by wet noodles in the remakes. The Front Mission from Temu gacha game Mecharashi has way better production values.
>>4029798>5 refined it some moreUntil the last third where all the systems collapse on themselves.
>>4029806It was ludo kino narrative on the state of where the game and setting was headed. But seriously, I played the roguelite stuff and made monsters out of my roster. Shit was cash. I'm split on the game becoming a cakewalk at the end. It makes sense for the progression but it also made the last few levels kinda boring. I get why XCOM 2 added artificial difficulty with turn limits now.
>>4029798i got S Rank on the mission i used shields on. simple ass. it's the most efficient and "safe" strat. double shot/etc don't work as well as skills like PilotKill 1. you didn't play the game right.
>>4030228I get S ranks and I don't use shields. The AI doesn't do heals, the more damage you do the faster the stages go. You get less rank if you overlevel as the stages have a preset rank difficulty, maybe that's what's tripping you up.
>>4029817As far as the story goes I hate all the retcons that actively makes the setting dumber and hate Lynn even more.
>>4024920i tried it for a bitmaybe im just bad at TRPGs, but all battles, even ez ones, take a looooong time in that game.thats i prefer shining force, its just quicker
>>4031848it's a tedious game. play the newer ones if you want faster combat.
>>4024920Series where the creator actually got to finish the story. Also, FM2 has been recently been successfully fan patched so you don't need the remake.
>>4038780>FM2 has been recently been successfully fan patchedIt's AI but worse than that it uses the old shitty fanfiction "translation."
>>4038780>Series where the creator actually got to finish the story.And the story? MIND HACKING
>>4039303DUDEWHAT IF LIKEDUDEWHAT IF ALEX JONES HAD AN ARMY OF CLONESAND THESE ALEX JONES ALL PILOTED GIANT ROBOTSWOULDN'T THAT BE SO FUCKING SICK
>>4039518I am so erect right now, bro. This is the best idea ever.
>>4024920I was getting whooped hard because I didn't realize you have to level up skills in the area.
>>4048323you don't really need skills to win. the flash grenades(or was it smoke?) stun enemies easily. the missiles are almost 100 percent accurate and you can abuse the heck of them. a few of the later characters also join with decent skill right out of the oven. the rest of them are sucky though, just throw them in the cheapest mechs and use them as fodder
>>4024920>What should i play first?I played Front Mission 1 for the DS and SNES.But when I tried 2 for the PS1, I dropped it in less than 2 hours. Maybe I shouldn't have read up on it but I just don't feel like continuing it.Anyway, I then moved on to FM3 and finished one of the endings and was overall, pretty satisfied.Still tried FM4, or was it 5 for the PS2 and dropped it when this one mission had another new objectives thing that I should've known beforehand (my units were all over the map and I should've prepared and have everyone closer to each other before getting the new mission objectives) and by then, I felt like I didn't really want to redo that mission again.
>>4059564>Maybe I shouldn't have read up on it but I just don't feel like continuing it.Huh?
It's interesting because it's huge on worldbuilding but mechanically it's weak. An SRPG built around RNG activated skills, that RNG target limbs (that sometimes you need to spare, and you generally DO want to spare to play optimally) and then tossing mid-mission saves into it as a band-aid solution is terrible design. Missions take forever too.I was intending to play through the whole series but I got fatigued midway through 3 because (maybe it's the route I was on) of the Bush Sr. era neoconservative storyline. I found it hard to get motivated to care about the characters, who are all also assholes. This type of writing in the series started in FM2, where some characters (from FM1) that had very legitimate reasons to rebel against the ruling state, show up as bloodlust driven retarded terrorists who unceremoniously get killed in an optional mission. Then that game has you aiding the local collaborator mafia to overthrow a pan-Americas independence movement. It's like if Ace Combat was written in a way that the Belkans did nothing wrong and you just nuke them every game. It's kind of funny, but it wore me out after multiple games worth of it.The main reason was the combat though 3 honestly just has terrible dialogue in general which doesn't help. I really wanted to play 5 but it's intended for people who played all the other games. Most people have turned their opinion around on FM2 after it lost its untranslated appeal and now people are kind of divisive on FM3, so there's barely any "good" games left in the series, because people don't like FM4 either.
>>4060083>This type of writing in the series started in FM2, where some characters (from FM1) that had very legitimate reasons to rebel against the ruling state, show up as bloodlust driven retarded terrorists who unceremoniously get killed in an optional mission.Hate to tell you this but that was literal fanfiction.
>>4060107What does that even mean? That's how canonically the protagonist of the first game dies.
>>4060114It means that the fantranslators made it up and Roid or any of the other Canyon Crows never appears in Front Mission 2.
>>4059969If you read the walkthrough and other comments/reviews, I forgot from where (probably GameFAQs), and then play it yourself, you'd most likely end up agreeing with them that... Front Mission 2 is not as good nor as engaging as FM1 or FM3 (gonna leave it just as this to avoid any potential spoilers), and what they're saying is true but you can just skip it and play other games instead.That's all I remember about it, DESU. Sorry if this wasn't helpful.
