Last week, we discussed the plot, characters, etc. of Front Mission 3, a tactical RPG for the PS1. While there was definitely a lot to like and tons of potential, localization issues and confusing dialogue ultimately prevented FM3 from excelling in those departments. That would have buried a traditional JRPG, but I've always believed those elements were less important to tactical RPGs where gameplay and combat is usually the biggest selling point. Fortunately, FM3 is largely successful in those areas, though it certainly has its flaws.
First and foremost, the combat is pretty solid. Anyone who's played Final Fantasy Tactics or any of its ilk will know exactly what to expect. Each battle arena is laid out on a grid, with your unit's stats and Action Points (AP) determining how far your characters can move and what actions they can take. Of course, none of these arenas are flat, so you will have to contend with varied heights and obstructions, which cost more AP to navigate and sometimes prevent you from attacking enemies. You bring four members of your team into each battle, each piloting their own unique Wanzer. You will almost always be outnumbered, though this is by design and you are substantially more powerful than most enemy mechs you encounter. Your characters and most enemies have five target points: body, left and right arms, legs and pilot. Destroying the arms will disable the use of any weapon equipped to that arm and disabling the legs will prevent a Wanzer from moving more than one space. If the body is destroyed or the pilot is killed, that Wanzer is destroyed, regardless of how much damage the other parts have taken. There's no perma-deaths here, so you can be a little more aggressive than most tactical RPGs allow. Characters don't level up, but their weapon skills increase and each individual Wanzer part can be upgraded to increase its stats. They can also learn special abilities, which seemed to trigger at complete random for me. I know there are certain criteria that has to be met to unlock these, but I could never figure it out and I beat the game without ever doing so, so I guess it's not a big deal.
Before we dig deeper into combat, let's back up a little bit and talk about Wanzer customization. This might be the strongest part of the game and it's also very important, as it determines your battle strategy going forward. There was quite a bit of customization, it pales in comparison to something you would see today but it was quite a bit for the era. Each Wanzer has the five unique parts outline above, as well as a backpack and onboard computer. Each part has its own individual stats and upgrades and you can build preset models or mix and match. Parts can be purchased, but you will find most of them by capturing enemy mechs, either by eliminating their pilot or forcing them to surrender. Weapons are divided into classes, with various melee weapons grouped together and ranged weapons including machine guns, shotguns, rifles, flamethrowers, rocket launchers and grenade launcher. The latter two are shoulder mounted while the others are equipped to one of the hands. You can also equip shields, which are critical for later stages. However, you can't just load up your Wanzers and make each one an unstoppable death machine. Each of these things have weight and certain parts can't hold as much weight as others. How you outfit your machines is a major part of the strategy: Do I equip one of the gliding leg parts so I can move more quickly? Or do I stick with my standard legs and get arms and a body that can carry more? It's pretty deep and adds a lot to the overall strategy.
So now that we've specced out our Wanzer, it's time to actually fight. One of the things I found most disappointing was you can only bring four characters into battle. I feel like you should have been able to have more. Anyway, you're given a set amount of AP, which you can use to move, attack or counterattack. You will be faced with an enemy army, which can include Wanzers, tanks, helicopters and various other vehicles. Each weapon has its own strengths and weaknesses, some are better against the mechs while others are strong against the other vehicle types. How you use these weapons, and whether you use them to their full potential, is the name of the game here. Unlike a lot of tactical RPGs, attacking from high ground or from behind doesn't provide any sort of bonus outside of some higher hit percentage. It's all about using your weapons in the best way possible. The missile launchers and grenades hit hard and from a distance, but can only hit one part at random and have limited ammo. Rifles are similar, though they don't have as good a range or high of damage and have unlimited ammo. Shotguns hit all parts of a robot, spreading damage around and do more the more parts are destroyed. Machine guns fire a set amount of rounds, each one at a random body part. Flamethrowers allow you to choose how many times you want to attack, at the cost of more AP for more attacks. As with most RPGs, there are various status effects you can inflict. You can stun enemies and knock pilots out of their mechs, which are usually effective. You can also inflict a confusion status, but I can't determine what exactly it does.
That barely scratches the surface of the combat here, as with most strategy RPGs its difficult to do it justice with just words. Overall it's pretty fun, but there are certainly flaws. For starters, there is entirely too much randomness. Without special abilities, it's impossible to target a specific body part. In a way I get it, you would just target the body every time, but there's still too much random for a strategy RPG. At least it shows you hit percentages, but that hardly matters when where your attacks hit are going to be random. The special abilities also activate at what seems like random. As I mentioned before, I know there are certain criteria you have to meet, but I could never get them to activate consistently. I also think they missed an opportunity to add some various mission objectives. Almost all of the levels are simply "destroy all enemies," there are a few that are different but they are few and far between. I guess I would rather that than a bunch of stupid escort missions, so that's a positive.
I also have to call out the side quest/mini-game that you have available to you from the start of the game. I know I complain frequently about people using the excuse that things "age poorly," but this really did age poorly. You see, each character in FM3 has their own e-mail account. You can receive and respond to e-mail from various characters, which will help you gather information and access new websites. Yes, you can actually surf the internet, visiting websites of various organization you encounter throughout the game. Some of this is useful information, some of it is just for background or story and some of it allows you to unlock special items. But at the end of the day...you're answering e-mails...and doing competitive research on the internet. That sounds like...my job? I do understand why they included this. For those of you that weren't there, or those who don't remember, getting e-mails or surfing the internet were novelties in the late 90's and early aughts. I remember creating my first e-mail address, during a study hall when I was in high school, and checking it constantly even though I never actually got any e-mail. But now this is the stuff we all do every day for work. As such, I skipped a lot of this.
My final gripe is with the graphics and sound. FM3 came out pretty late in the PlayStation's life cycle and its a from a huge developer in Square. And yet, the graphics are awful. The characters lack detail and all the areas are bland and lifeless. The textures are just bad and outside the cutscenes, everything is muddy and blends together. And I'm playing this on the PS3, which smooths out the graphics on PS1 games, so playing on original hardware would look even worse. The sound isn't bad, but its repetitive and it's far weaker than we are used to from Square. This is coming from the developer that has created some of the greatest gaming soundtracks of all time, so its sad how mediocre it is here. It's not the worst looking or sounding game I've ever played, but it's weaker in those departments when compared to its contemporaries and Square was definitely capable of better.
As with many RPGs, it's really hard to put a feel for the combat system into words. In short, FM3's is pretty good, though I wouldn't call it great. That's a bit of an issue in a tactical RPG like this, where just about all the gameplay comes from the combat. There's no world map or exploration here, just a series of menus between battles. I had plenty of fun with the combat, but it wasn't enough to pull the game up with all the other issues. I have found I grade RPGs on something of a curve, largely because I think you just get more out of them that you do with a lot of other genres. I honestly think FM3 might be more "worth playing" than a lot of the games I've given a higher sore.
But I can't put it in the pantheon of great PS1 RPGs, or even really good ones. It's not on the level Final Fantasy 7-9 or Tactics, it's not Star Ocean II or Legend of Legia or either of the Lunar games. Moving down a level, I wouldn't even say I would put FM3 on a level with Legend of Dragoon. Looking beyond its contemporaries and comparing it with some of the other RPGs I've reviewed, it's definitely not on the level of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne or Phantasy Star IV. It's probably closest in quality to Grandia II, but I think I would put it ever so slightly below it. I would probably put it ahead of The Granstream Saga though and it was definitely better than Shadow Madness. That's to say that FM3 is definitely worth playing, especially if you're getting it for $5 on the PlayStation store. But don't go spending $100 on it, and it's not worth going completely out of your way to play.
Comments
Post a Comment