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AUTHOR'S NOTE: This post assumes familiarity with basic terms related to the Front Mission series. Anyone who has never played a game in the series may find some of the terms and acronyms confusing.
So I've been on a big Front Mission kick for the last month. It started when I decided to actually play the used copy of Front Mission 4 we got a couple months ago. Having played through the game twice now (once normally, then a New Game+ run) I can say it was 5 bucks very well spent. It's a damn shame that Square Enix didn't advertise the game more when it came out here in America because it quickly tanked and fell into bargain bins.
Which is sad because there's absolutely nothing wrong with the game. My one complaint is that it ends a bit too abruptly. Well, that and the requirements for unlocking the best simulator missions are alluded to absolutely NOWHERE in the game. Some obscure hints at least? Even the strategy guide sold alongside the game is incomplete, misses some steps on some of the obtainable items, and erroneously lists the rewards for some of the simulator missions as rewards gotten by unlocking the sim level itself.
Anyway, there's great rising action for the story that doesn't quite reach it's expected zenith.
Front Mission 4 contains two storylines that the player alternates between. They might not seem related at first but near the end of the game the connection becomes clear. The first thread takes place in Europe with a U.K. wanzer research organization called Durandal. They are asked to investigate a sudden, mysterious attack on 5 German bases that resulted in tremendous damage and loss of life and, this being Front Mission, get sucked into the grinding geopolitical gears. The second follows three U.S.C. soldiers in Venezuela who decide to take their fates into their own hands amidst the raging war of secession in that country.
The Durandal team gets a rather satisfactory climactic battle against their primary foes but Team Venezuela ... not so much. I was honestly surprised the game ended when it did but thinking it over there really weren't any antagonists left for Team Venezuela to fight. After two additional playthroughs it just feels like there's not enough story substance for Team Venezuela.
Anyway, since I don't want to give away any spoilers (go play the game if you want to know what happens!) I'll move right along to systemic issues. First of all, FM 4 has no load function (EDIT: in battle. The game has a load function on most of the intermission screens.) It seems like such a small thing but it is honestly irritating having to reset the console or initiate a battle, open the system menu, go back to the title screen, then re-load. (Clarification: I was mostly annoyed with the complete inability to access the one quicksave file per memory card from anywhere other then the start screen.) FM 3 has this functionality so why was it cut? Secondly, the shop and wanzer set-up menus needed to be integrated into one rather then going into the shop, waiting for it to load, then if you want to look through the gear or items you already have you have to exit that, wait for the standard menu to load, select wanzer setup, wait for it to load, then go about your business. Once again, FM 3 did it right in that regard and you could even get to pilot setup in the same menu as the shop itself to select battle skills and assign AP.
This might not sound like much of a problem but it becomes a huge timesink when you want to mix and match wanzer parts between what you have in stock and what is available in the shop. It is also a pain when equipping items as you cannot see what items you have in stock quickly while in the shop.
Now, what FM 4 did right was the entire battle system. In FM 3 you had to buy upgrades to wanzer parts to enable evasion, armor bonuses, and accuracy upgrades. Not so in FM 4. Instead those are all tied to the parts - legs + body for evasion, arms for accuracy, and you could choose Impact, Piercing, or Fire resistance in wanzer setup independent to parts. Pilots could also increase their evasion by buying extra evasion upgrades through the use of enhancement points (EP).
In FM 3 action points (AP) were gained by increasing your medal count - tallied by destroying wanzer parts and increasing weapon proficiency levels. They could be assigned to activate upgrades at a cost of 1 AP per level of upgrade, per part which would temporarily reduce the pilots available pool for moving and attacking. Counterattacking cost additional AP on top of the weapon's AP cost and being affected by the Confusion status increased all AP costs In other words there were significant AP sinks in FM 3. This was to control the rate of attacks and counterattacks.
It doesn't work all that well because of battle skill activation strings. In FM 3 characters randomly learn battle skills and can, at somewhat random depending on what they have equipped, string together multiple attacks with skill activations. For example, if a character shoots with a shotgun and no skills activate they shoot once and then their turn is over. However, should say a Zoom or Rate of Fire UP skill activate they can attack again and again so long as they have enough skills equipped and they activate. Each skill can only activate once per battle - with a battle in Front Mission defined as one firefight, not a stage. So, for example if A shoots at B that's one battle. If C then walks up and shoots B that's a second separate battle. Rate of Fire UP can be pretty devastating if it strings into multiple attacks.
Anyway, in FM 4 AP isn't penalized on counterattacks and doesn't have to be assigned for upgrades. Instead it gets chewed up by the Link System. What the Link System does is increase battles to squad level firefights. Each pilot can have up to 12 link points for establishing links in pilot setup - 3 offense and 3 defense links per character.
So, A establishes an offense link with B by spending link points. B makes sure their offense support is set to a valid weapon (missiles, grenades and rockets cannot be used as support weapons). Now when A attacks someone, if B is in range, has ammo, enough AP and a functioning weapon they too will attack that same target. If B wanted A to support them in the same way they would do the same by spending their own link points. Conversely if A had set B as a defense support then B would attack anyone who assails A (provided B can, that is). This whole network of links can burn through AP in short order. All shotguns and machine guns attack twice at AP costs of 3 and 4 per shot, respectively. Rifles and bazookas drain 6 AP per shot. Melee weapons, however, only cost 1 AP to use so having a melee support attacker linked to everyone else is a great way to add extra damage to each battle.
Now add on a passive skill that can be learned that reduces the AP cost of all linked allies in a battle by 1 - even if that character is all the way on the other side of the map - and it starts getting pretty crazy how many attacks you can string together in one turn. The enemy formations are built with the Link System in mind. They move and fight as squads but it doesn't work as well as it should because of disparate movement values. Anyway, I'm getting off target...
All characters start with 10 AP. The maximum, with all base set AP upgrades and spending a small fortune at the computer shop, is 34.
Another thing FM 4 did right was not make it possible to injure pilots in combat. In FM 3 pilots could be hurt if, at random, an enemy got lucky and succeeded on a pilot injury check while attacking or if they used one of the Pilot Damage skills. Attacks could, also at random, cause one of three effects: confusion, stunned (unable to do anything), or ejection. Both stunned and ejection cause the pilot to lose a turn and left the unit extremely vulnerable. Of the two ejection is probably worse because at least if the wanzer is stunned it has far more health then any pilot and is easily repaired. Obviously a wanzer with a dead pilot is pretty useless.
There are times when the RNG in FM 3 can really screw you. It doesn't matter how good the wanzer is if the enemy kills your pilot! It adds a level of danger and frustration to the game that goes well with missions where you have to protect piddly little humans or fight without wanzers but I'm not sad to see it go in FM 4.
So I've been on a big Front Mission kick for the last month. It started when I decided to actually play the used copy of Front Mission 4 we got a couple months ago. Having played through the game twice now (once normally, then a New Game+ run) I can say it was 5 bucks very well spent. It's a damn shame that Square Enix didn't advertise the game more when it came out here in America because it quickly tanked and fell into bargain bins.
Which is sad because there's absolutely nothing wrong with the game. My one complaint is that it ends a bit too abruptly. Well, that and the requirements for unlocking the best simulator missions are alluded to absolutely NOWHERE in the game. Some obscure hints at least? Even the strategy guide sold alongside the game is incomplete, misses some steps on some of the obtainable items, and erroneously lists the rewards for some of the simulator missions as rewards gotten by unlocking the sim level itself.
Anyway, there's great rising action for the story that doesn't quite reach it's expected zenith.
Front Mission 4 contains two storylines that the player alternates between. They might not seem related at first but near the end of the game the connection becomes clear. The first thread takes place in Europe with a U.K. wanzer research organization called Durandal. They are asked to investigate a sudden, mysterious attack on 5 German bases that resulted in tremendous damage and loss of life and, this being Front Mission, get sucked into the grinding geopolitical gears. The second follows three U.S.C. soldiers in Venezuela who decide to take their fates into their own hands amidst the raging war of secession in that country.
The Durandal team gets a rather satisfactory climactic battle against their primary foes but Team Venezuela ... not so much. I was honestly surprised the game ended when it did but thinking it over there really weren't any antagonists left for Team Venezuela to fight. After two additional playthroughs it just feels like there's not enough story substance for Team Venezuela.
Anyway, since I don't want to give away any spoilers (go play the game if you want to know what happens!) I'll move right along to systemic issues. First of all, FM 4 has no load function (EDIT: in battle. The game has a load function on most of the intermission screens.) It seems like such a small thing but it is honestly irritating having to reset the console or initiate a battle, open the system menu, go back to the title screen, then re-load. (Clarification: I was mostly annoyed with the complete inability to access the one quicksave file per memory card from anywhere other then the start screen.) FM 3 has this functionality so why was it cut? Secondly, the shop and wanzer set-up menus needed to be integrated into one rather then going into the shop, waiting for it to load, then if you want to look through the gear or items you already have you have to exit that, wait for the standard menu to load, select wanzer setup, wait for it to load, then go about your business. Once again, FM 3 did it right in that regard and you could even get to pilot setup in the same menu as the shop itself to select battle skills and assign AP.
This might not sound like much of a problem but it becomes a huge timesink when you want to mix and match wanzer parts between what you have in stock and what is available in the shop. It is also a pain when equipping items as you cannot see what items you have in stock quickly while in the shop.
Now, what FM 4 did right was the entire battle system. In FM 3 you had to buy upgrades to wanzer parts to enable evasion, armor bonuses, and accuracy upgrades. Not so in FM 4. Instead those are all tied to the parts - legs + body for evasion, arms for accuracy, and you could choose Impact, Piercing, or Fire resistance in wanzer setup independent to parts. Pilots could also increase their evasion by buying extra evasion upgrades through the use of enhancement points (EP).
In FM 3 action points (AP) were gained by increasing your medal count - tallied by destroying wanzer parts and increasing weapon proficiency levels. They could be assigned to activate upgrades at a cost of 1 AP per level of upgrade, per part which would temporarily reduce the pilots available pool for moving and attacking. Counterattacking cost additional AP on top of the weapon's AP cost and being affected by the Confusion status increased all AP costs In other words there were significant AP sinks in FM 3. This was to control the rate of attacks and counterattacks.
It doesn't work all that well because of battle skill activation strings. In FM 3 characters randomly learn battle skills and can, at somewhat random depending on what they have equipped, string together multiple attacks with skill activations. For example, if a character shoots with a shotgun and no skills activate they shoot once and then their turn is over. However, should say a Zoom or Rate of Fire UP skill activate they can attack again and again so long as they have enough skills equipped and they activate. Each skill can only activate once per battle - with a battle in Front Mission defined as one firefight, not a stage. So, for example if A shoots at B that's one battle. If C then walks up and shoots B that's a second separate battle. Rate of Fire UP can be pretty devastating if it strings into multiple attacks.
Anyway, in FM 4 AP isn't penalized on counterattacks and doesn't have to be assigned for upgrades. Instead it gets chewed up by the Link System. What the Link System does is increase battles to squad level firefights. Each pilot can have up to 12 link points for establishing links in pilot setup - 3 offense and 3 defense links per character.
So, A establishes an offense link with B by spending link points. B makes sure their offense support is set to a valid weapon (missiles, grenades and rockets cannot be used as support weapons). Now when A attacks someone, if B is in range, has ammo, enough AP and a functioning weapon they too will attack that same target. If B wanted A to support them in the same way they would do the same by spending their own link points. Conversely if A had set B as a defense support then B would attack anyone who assails A (provided B can, that is). This whole network of links can burn through AP in short order. All shotguns and machine guns attack twice at AP costs of 3 and 4 per shot, respectively. Rifles and bazookas drain 6 AP per shot. Melee weapons, however, only cost 1 AP to use so having a melee support attacker linked to everyone else is a great way to add extra damage to each battle.
Now add on a passive skill that can be learned that reduces the AP cost of all linked allies in a battle by 1 - even if that character is all the way on the other side of the map - and it starts getting pretty crazy how many attacks you can string together in one turn. The enemy formations are built with the Link System in mind. They move and fight as squads but it doesn't work as well as it should because of disparate movement values. Anyway, I'm getting off target...
All characters start with 10 AP. The maximum, with all base set AP upgrades and spending a small fortune at the computer shop, is 34.
Another thing FM 4 did right was not make it possible to injure pilots in combat. In FM 3 pilots could be hurt if, at random, an enemy got lucky and succeeded on a pilot injury check while attacking or if they used one of the Pilot Damage skills. Attacks could, also at random, cause one of three effects: confusion, stunned (unable to do anything), or ejection. Both stunned and ejection cause the pilot to lose a turn and left the unit extremely vulnerable. Of the two ejection is probably worse because at least if the wanzer is stunned it has far more health then any pilot and is easily repaired. Obviously a wanzer with a dead pilot is pretty useless.
There are times when the RNG in FM 3 can really screw you. It doesn't matter how good the wanzer is if the enemy kills your pilot! It adds a level of danger and frustration to the game that goes well with missions where you have to protect piddly little humans or fight without wanzers but I'm not sad to see it go in FM 4.
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