Ohhhhh boy. It's time. It's time...
When I was but a teen, I had some kind of cheat/walkthrough magazine, and to be honest I don't even remember why I had this particular magazine, but inside were pages dedicated to seemingly endless amounts of spreadsheets, tables for arms, legs, weapons... I knew what none of it meant, but I saw that it was for a game called Front Mission 3, and from then on, I knew that this game was awesome.
I didn't know what it was about, mind. In fact, I was probably only vaguely aware that it was about Mechs, and if you've been following along with the 1001 list you'll know how far I gush over Mechs. As time went by, and I learned more about Front Mission 3, I knew I had to play it - but never did.
It is time to rectify that wrong. It is time to play what could potentially be the greatest game of--I'm getting ahead of myself.
Fun Times
It was not long ago at all that I was impressed by the computer-generated scenes in Final Fantasy VIII, but I am blown away by those that greet players starting up Front Mission 3. It's dark, we don't know where we are, but something is getting stolen by a Mech, and a bunch of Mechs show up to stop it, but a volley of gunfire and a few explosions later, all we're left with are destroyed chassis', stolen cargo and a who-done-it mystery.
And then the game kicks off.
It would be my pleasure, Scientist. I've been waiting to activate this wanzer for a while now. I'm emulating this PlayStation hit, and if I was a smart man, I'd be cranking the settings up and using whatever plugins are needed to really make it pop, but I'm not, so I've just got to enjoy it for what it is, and it is already awesome.
I say this primarily because of the Mech design on show. Sure, you can't make much out - polygons can only go so far at the turn of the millennium - but you can clearly see that these are proper Mechs. Tank-like Mechs. Walking Panzers. If this dude was brilliant white, with blue highlights and red boots, I'd be close to fuming (unless the gameplay had what the graphics didn't).
Equally important to a Mechs looks is its armaments. What have we got here?
Pinch me, I'm dreaming! A shotgun and some knuckle-dusters? Some Mech sized knuckle-dusters?! Sign me the fuck up. Look at those Mechs! Look at that HUD! The colours! The numbers! The fecking fonts! Grrrr! Makes you want to smash another Mech, dunnit?
Too right, JDF Engineer, too right. Right. What are we doing?
We are a test pilot for some Mech lab somewhere, and we've just put that latest Mech through its paces, ready for delivery. After having fun in the (test)field, Front Mission 3 tasks us with absorbing some story through a simple menu tailored to the environment you're in.
Here in the JDF Laboratory, we can chat to our fellow test pilot chum, Ryogo, who has a job of his own to get done but will soon find himself swept up along for the ride, thanks I believe in my choice of the following options:
It is my understanding that this choice, minutes into the game, determines whether you take the 'easy' or 'harder' route through the game, with the harder route having a couple of tens of hours extra content. Naturally, I went with Ryogo for a little while, because this is a tactical RPG, and everyone agrees to quests in RPGs, so not going with him was simply not an option.
Turns out we just get a bit of dialogue and end up with more questions about what's going on in the city before heading back here and getting on with the game.
No better way of getting on with the game than having explosions go off and automatic defence systems going nuts. Time to get our game on.
Front Mission 3 uses a turn-based action point system, centred on a square grid overlayed on whatever environment you find yourself on. You get to move all of your Mechs as much as your action points or circumstances allow, performing actions such as attacking and using items before the enemy has their turn doing likewise.
If you've saved points, and the situation allows it, you might get the opportunity to counter an enemy attack, returning gunfire or a quick punch and the like, ensuring a nice back and forth amongst combatants.
To be fair, there's not much combat against some fixed turrets, so we'll focus on all the pretty colours on display instead. Movement and party health are shown in a lovely electric blue, with stats for action points, weapon damage, individual Mech part health and so on, with offensive elements of the design taking on the greatest orange I may have ever seen in a video game. If that doesn't scream both dangerous and cool, I don't know what does.
But you can't be cool against turrets. We need to see where this story takes us.
There are certain points in the game where you are able to access the in-game Internet. This is apparently what computers one hundred years from now will look like, according to developers of the late 1990s. Anyway, to say this stuff is fluffy is an understatement. It's not only a bit of backstory and worldbuilding, but is at times key to knowing what is going on with the plot, and new websites are made available depending on who you talk to in this futuristic world.
As you would expect, there's even a working email system, to keep on top of whatever spam people are sending through emails in the 2100s.
Oh shit! Plot!
Front Mission 3 isn't stop-start, but it does take the form of 'here are some Mech fights, and here's some downtime, and here are some more Mech fights, and here's some more downtime'. It's important that it does such a thing because it's probably better to talk about missing half-sisters in text boxes and 2D art than it is with blocky, goofy looking polygons - at this stage in video game history, at least.
It's also a chance to admire the writing if admire is the right word. It's perhaps a bit cliched, perhaps a bit cranked up to 11 in places, but at the same time it's pretty tight too. Characters generally don't waffle, with thoughts completed and spoken/written in a text box or two before someone else chimes in and moves the conversation along.
Bit by bit we learn about what is going on in this place, and then we get the opportunity to do some very light menu-driven interaction with the locals.
It's a shame we don't see any of them in these backgrounds, but they're there. In spirit...
I'm not too sure why the JDF would want to go into this much information on their website unless they're rather confident in their abilities to deal with anyone who might try to outmuscle the 134 wanzers that particular region has at its disposal, but I digress. The locals don't know much about an explosion on a military base, go figure.
But someone does...
It is at this point where I should just put up some video, because I'm letting the pictures speak for themselves, and I have a feeling I'm about to do a terrible job of describing how combat works right about now...
Numbers and graphics and fancy colours all boil down to one set of numbers hitting another set of numbers, but you have some amount of control over the outcome. I've not got the screenshots to show it, really, but I know that maximising your weaponry to use each part to its fullest means really thinking about your tactics.
While you don't have to worry about which way you're facing on your or your opponents turn, you will have to get an idea of the range, for example. Emma's missiles work better at long range, obviously, but even while a shotgun is useful up to a few squares away, it is more useful up close, and it's even more useful when shot from a square which the enemy has no viable counter move to, such as a counterpunch.
Those punches shouldn't be underestimated either, as certain weapon types are great for dealing high damage to specific body parts, and others are more of a general 'hit everything' kind of weapon. While it doesn't appear that you can choose which limb to hit, damaging different limbs results in different situations each Mech pilot will have to face - including yourself.
Weapons are attached to arms, usually, and if the arm is no longer present, then neither is the weapon. Now your Mech needs to take up a new role in the battle, especially if you've no way to repair that part during the fight. No legs result in a movement speed of just one square, which is next to useless when everybody else practically dances circles around you. Having no body is rather obvious - a destroyed Mech - but you can also get stunned, confused, and even ejected from your Mech.
A pilot with a pistol is no match for a Mech, so it's best to get back inside a Mech at your earliest opportunity, but that ends your turn, meaning you're still as vulnerable from the fight as you were on your fleshy legs as you are in your metal ones.
In some situations, enemies will even surrender and take themselves out of the fight if it's not going their way. The amount of things going on at any given time is amazing, and all you need to do is select a weapon and point to a square.
While blowing up isn't ideal in battle, the plot will dictate your survival - at full health - when the next fight takes place because each is split into stages, likely to make the game manageable and capable of running in the first place.
Frustrations
This battle took it out of me, and for a number of reasons. On two occasions, the emulation froze and didn't want to unfreeze, usually crashing. When it didn't freeze, I was so tactically inept that the enemy could have stopped me from escaping in my sleep. Once, I even got so confused that I hit the 'reset console' key instead of the 'take screenshot' key, and they're not even close to each other.
I was annoyed, but by God was I determined to keep making progress. I fired Front Mission 3 up again and again, save-scumming the hell out of it to be sure I could get somewhere...
This corridor was broken up by doors that required most of your turn to open. I'd managed to cheese it to the point where an enemy Mech would open the door, end his turn, get shot at by me before I closed the door, waiting for the next time he opened it as his one and only action...
I got rather bust by all his mates, but I felt like a genius and even managed to capture some Mech parts and upgrade some pilot skills in the process. I don't know what you do with all the captured stuff, or when you get a chance to do so - I suppose we should escape first - but I imagine a guide in a magazine, long ago, would come in handy right now...
Pilot skills stay with the pilot, regardless of which Mech they are in, and while I don't know if having ZoomI four times is wise, it worked out better than having it only once, so for now, Ryogo - who is miles better thank Frank is (must be the Mech) - will be the machine gunner of the party.
Final Word
I just couldn't put Front Mission 3 down. I'd spent hours on it, partly trying to fix freezes and retry battles, but mostly because I want to carry on. It looks laughable in places, especially in contrast to its astounding CG cutscenes, but they're few and far between, so you're stuck with that old school blocky PlayStation game charm.
The Mechs are the stars, but the characters in them are equally wonderful. I want to spend time with these guys. I might get fed up of Ryogo's sense of humour or bored by the other guy (I renamed him, but can't remember from what...), but the story they're in? The world they inhabit? I need to discover it. I need to surf the in-game Internet. I need to ask Drunk people what they know about the military. I need to get back into a Mech as soon as possible.
Having said that, I'm going to have to make a decision. While I'd prefer an easier time of things through endless savestates, emulation can sometimes be substandard. Choppy, sound issues, freezes... not ideal in the slightest. The original PlayStation disk still goes for a fair bit, but digital downloads for the PS3 and Vita (or was it the PSP?) might just tempt me into turning away from the PC and onto the sofa.
I don't know what I'll do yet, but I've got to find some time for Front Mission 3. If you like strategy and tactic games, if you like near-futuristic or military-themed games, if you like mysteries, or RPGs, or simple-to-use controls, or fancy colours and fonts... if you like anything, then you might just like Front Mission 3.
Even if you think you won't enjoy it, try it out. You might be blown away (in a mysterious military 'accident' that needs to be covered up from the public A.S.A.P...)
FILLING YOU IN
So a long time has passed, hasn't it? Just recently I've been lacking the motivation to do things, but I needed something to occupy my time and for whatever reason, I felt that now was the time to embark on a lengthy Mech-RPG - when I lacked motivation, remember...
My PC is getting older and older, and Windows doesn't like starting up sometimes, but once I'm into my own computer, I can still enjoy the progress in the emulation space, which leads me onto my new favourite, Duckstation. Silly name, lovely package, well worth the download.
Fast forward a good few hours of gameplay over a few days later (the save says 5 or so hours, but it feels longer) and I'm here to report on finally sitting down to play Front Mission 3 properly. It was pretty dang good, right until I locked myself into an impassable ROM-specific error of my own making. I think.
Let's back up. Front Mission 3 has two main story paths, and both times I've played it, I've stumbled into Emma's story path. I don't even know where the branch happens or what the other path is, but, as I say, all these hours later, here I am, on aircraft carriers and submarines around the Philippines hunting a clean nuclear bomb developed by a scientist who has just told me her sister is my adopted half-sister or something. The plot is a bit bonkers, the characters are a lot worse.
I think it might be to do with the translation, but our protagonist likes to shout at everyone if there dare to even speak to him, his buddy is a sexist prick of a child who, sadly, is somewhat more competent in battle, so I better keep him around, and the task force to stop the world from blowing up is a right ol' mix of characters that don't really make sense to be together except in the one situation they find themselves in - that being a Japanese RPG. Think Valkyria Chronicles.
So I'm in Taiwan and missions are branching left, right, and center. Depending on what happens in a mission, different forks from it will spit you onto new mission paths. By swiftly attacking a bunch of Mechs on a dam before they called in for some support meant I was now on a path that would ultimately lead to my doom.
Shall I go and see what Bravo team are doing, or Charlie team, who haven't checked in? Charlie, obviously. Bravo seems to be doing their job fine. But the mission over at Charlie's side of the country doesn't load. Guess I'll go check out what Bravo are up to then.
On the way, we meet a bunch of Mechs and deem it better to confront them rather than hope to slip on past - a choice I couldn't make, as it happens, and so into another fight we go. I've actually learned a lot about how best to approach the fights, and what tactics to use. I am by no means very good at it, but I'm slowing sinking my teeth into it all.
Anyway, we deal with our opponents and we're spit out onto a mission in a rural village, which also never loads. Hmm. Good thing I rotate between two games saves, isn't it? Sadly, I save every time the opportunity to save comes up, which means my oldest save isn't old enough. I think. Boy, I should check that when I get the chance...
Long story short though, I don't know how far into this long story I am, and I don't really know how best to advance from here. Maybe to start again, and hope to not run into emulation troubles? If I do, maybe I'll spot the branching point which leads on to a completely different five hours of opening gameplay. Who knows?
It's only in doing a small bit of Googling regarding this problem that I'm even aware there are two main branches of story to Front Mission 3, that's how much I've yet to explore of a game that I have put so far up my top ten list. And it's still up there. Plodding though it may be, performance wise, and basic though it may be, story wise, and stupid though it may be, character wise, I want more. I'll get more. Somehow.
FILLING YOU IN FURTHER
Months later, and I've finished both main paths of Front Mission 3. Time well spent, even if I did resort to save-scumming for the sake of moving things along. The plots are quite similar, but different enough to warrant a repeat playthrough, though I spread the second playthrough out quite a bit, so remembering the events that had taken place in this timeline compared to the first time through was a bit tricky.
At the end of the day, I feel like I've done all I want to do with Front Mission 3, yet want more of it. Not so much the characters, but the action, the strategy, the setting, the style. It doesn't even have to be in a video game. I'll take anything at this point, I reckon.
Fun Facts
The first of the series to be released in English speaking territories, Front Mission 3 has more emphasis on the RPG, than on the tactics and strategy, which may mean my head would explode if I watched footage of the first two games.
Front Mission 3, developed by Square, first released in 1999.
Version played: PlayStation, 2000, via emulation.