I'm not sure if you've heard, but there are a lot of really good RPGs on the PS1.
A lot of consoles have become known for specific genres over the years. The NES is filled with 2D platformers, the Genesis is known for its sports games, the modern consoles are known for FPS', on and on, etc. etc. But few systems are as synonymous with a specific genre as the original PlayStation is with RPGs. I kind of understand this and kind of don't. Sure, the PlayStation had tons of RPGs. It also had tons of literally every other kind of game because its library is so large. However, it was certainly more RPG focused than its contemporaries, the Saturn didn't have nearly as many (though a lot of the RPGs that did land on the console are excellent) and you could probably count the Nintendo 64 RPGs on one hand. A lot of it had to do with the fact that most of the "big name" RPG franchises made their home on the PS1, with Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest being the most notable. That said, it was also haven for lesser known RPG series', like Square's Front Mission.
While modern entries in the series have branched out into MMO and 3rd person action genres, Front Mission made its bones as a tactical RPG. If you were wondering why I decided to start with the third game, it's because the first two were never released in the west, at least initially. I had heard so much about the franchise, yet had never actually touched it until now. Hey, my foray into Shin Megami Tensei went well, so I thought maybe this would too. I had always wanted to try FM3 out, but I just never got around to it when I was younger and the game became prohibitively expensive as I got older. When I learned it was available as a PS1 classic title, it was the first game I went and bought when I thought the PlayStation store was going offline. But was it worth the wait? I'm not sure. There was definitely a lot to like about Front Mission 3 from a gameplay, storyline and production standpoint. However, it has some major, backbreaking issues that keep it from joining the pantheon of great golden RPGs, or even the higher end of RPGs from the era.
Front Mission 3 puts you in the shoes of test pilot Kazuki Takemura, an employee of Wanzer manufacturer Kirishima Industries. He, along with his friend and associate Ryogo Kusama, are tasked with delivering construction Wanzers to Yokosuka base, an outpost of the powerful Japanese Defense Force, or JDF. The job goes about as smoothly as planned, until a powerful explosion suddenly rocks the facility. Ryogo insists that it's no big deal, simply a malfunction that the JDF will have to deal with, and that they should just return home. But Kazuki has other ideas. His sister Alisa, of whom is extremely protective, has recently been transferred to the base and he's not leaving without finding out what's happened to her. At this point, the story splits and there are two potential paths the player can take, but either way, Kazuki and Ryogo break into the base and what they find underground is truly horrific. Some sort of bomb has exploded and destroyed a significant portion of the facility, ripping a massive hole in the ground. They learn, either from USN agent Emma Klamsky or DHZ associate Liu Hei Fong, that the explosion came from something called MIDAS, a super weapon with untold power that was stolen from a USN facility in Alaska. What's worse, the duo is now being blamed for the explosion. Wanted by the JDF and with nowhere to go, the group sets off on a quest to clear their names and find MIDAS before it can be unleashed on the world.
The two main characters are pretty solid, though they lean a bit heavy into RPG tropes. Kazuki takes the whole "lawful good" thing way too far, he's constantly chiding other party members and NPCs for their actions and seems to be able to do no wrong. He is fiercely protective of his sister, but it comes off as overbearing. Alisa is no soldier, but she's an accomplished scientist and can hold her own, she doesn't need his constant protection. Ryogo is the wisecracking best friend, he's always got something to say to someone and his personality is interesting, if a bit stale. Alisa and Emma, who both become massively, massively important to the story have similar personalities in that they both vacillate between whiny and brooding to technical and matter of fact with seemingly little explanation. Some characters change based on which scenario you play, but the one I went through featured an ok cast. Emma's USN counterpart Dennis seems to exist solely as a plot device, his all to convenient connections help get the party into and out of a number of situations throughout the game. The hacker Yun is more lighthearted, she's kind of a foil to Ryogo and constantly reminds him of what a moron he is. The other characters are less memorable, and that includes most of the villains. Your journey will take you through Japan, OCU and DHZ territories, where you will fight both government forces and mercenaries along the way. Most of your time seems to be spent in DHZ, where you assist the aforementioned rebels in battling the government, but you will also encounter hired guns called "Imaginary Numbers" and "Real Numbers" along the way. I can't say too much about them as it would spoil the plot (though you will see the plot twist involving them from a mile away), but suffice to say, these guys and their leader are heavily involved in all this MIDAS drama.
That's all well and good, but there are two huge issues with the story here. First, there are a lot of plot twist and devices that are just way too convenient. We are talking Final Fantasy VIII, "we all knew each other the whole time!" level absurd. Sometimes you have to have things like this to advance the story, there just isn't any other way to do so. But here it happens constantly. There are at least three Emma/Alisa related plot twists that just come out of nowhere with zero setup that make zero sense. I stopped counting the times where you would get re-routed to a random village in the DHZ and just so happen to come across a character that was suddenly important to the plot. Small spoiler here, but what are the odds you accidentally end up in a remote village, end up at some rando's house, go to the bar, meet her brother, who you soon learn is actually her adopted brother, who is the sole survivor of a plane crash 16 years ago, who happens to be the long lost son of the former leader of the DHZ, who's plane didn't tragically crash but was actually shot down by his enemies? And this is all taken care of with about 10 minutes of exposition in a 30+ hour game. That's the most egregious example, but there's stuff like that happening constantly and it really throws me off. It's bad enough when that happens in a game with a fantastical world where wizards are riding flying unicorns casting magic missile, but it's even more jarring in a game that's trying to present a realistic (giant robots not withstanding), gritty, political universe and plot.
But the biggest problem here is the translation and localization. My goodness it is absolutely horrible. This may take the cake for the worst translation I've ever seen, its up there with Legend of Dragoon. It might even be worse than that, even if its technically better. Let me explain. The translation in LOD is notoriously bad, so much so that its hilarious. Anyone who's ever run something through Google Translate knows that getting a one to one, word for word translation is impossible. It's just not how language works. You need to go back through and clean up your translation to ensure it makes some level of sense to the end user. The people that developed LOD did this at at least some level. The dialogue may be hilariously bad, but it usually conveys the point the game is trying to get across and the plot isn't that complex to begin with.
With Front Mission, they actually did a better job of technically translating words and phrases into something that an English speaker might actually say. There's nothing about bitchin magical power, there are no wonderous thingys, no one is receiving anyone's fist, you get the idea. But they paid almost no attention to context. Like, at all. A character will make a statement, something like "we should engage the enemy" or "what should we do next" and then your party members will all add their two cents. And that two cents will come in the form of short, unintuitive statements that vaguely have something to do with the situation at hand. All of the words will make sense, they just won't make any sense in context. There is no world map or exploration, just these post battle scenes and the battles themselves, so you will get minutes upon minutes of what sounds like nonsense that bog the game down. This is compounded by the fact that the story is trying to spin a complex web of international relations and geopolitical strife. Just when it feels like you are starting to get a good grip on who's on who's side or why you are doing what you are doing, you get more nonsense and more confusion.
It's a shame because there's a really good story buried somewhere deep within. When you can understand what's going on, it gets really interesting. Despite some of the confusion, the game does a really good job of making you care about the characters. It was also nice to see an RPG attempt to take on a story and universe like this. I know I had my complaints, but I've certainly played way worse and its clear that Front Mission 3 was created by a company that knew what they were doing. Still, I was a bit disappointed on the story and presentation front. As for the gameplay and graphics? Well, that's for next week.
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