Front Mission 1st comes to modern platforms with a simple but good visual upgrade and the features of the two former remakes intact while maintaining the original odd mechanics that made the later games better.
This is the third remake of the original Front Mission that keeps the former remakes added gameplay elements while adding new game plus and more difficulty options while making changes to the visuals, camera control, and UI. The 2003 Playstation remake of the original SNES game added the second campaign that plays like one of the later Front Mission titles with each character that joins you having more characterization and more conversations between missions, more chances to talk with your squad members, more air and vehicle enemies to fight, gives more characterization to people you meet or fight in the main campaign, involves some characters from the then upcoming Front Mission 4, and is the stronger campaign in general despite being a bit shorter. The DS remake added some Front Mission 2 and Front Mission 5 cameos, equipable parts from later games in the series, and nine secret missions across both campaigns. The only thing I noticed missing here was that in the final after credit scene of the main scenario only the main story pilots show up at the end, with none of the side characters and one slightly main not appearing with a line or two like they do in the other versions of the game, odd thing to remove but not a big loss since they had almost no personality or scenes and never showed up in the next four games.
The gameplay is a fairly simple turn based mech game where each character pilots a Wanzer which has a has a body, left and right arm, and leg part with the arms able to equip both a handheld or built in weapon and a shoulder mounted missile launcher or shield that you can use to add to your defense when you are unable to attack or if you decide to defend instead of counterattacking. Pilots rank up their skills in short, long, melee, and dodge from 1-9,999 with them becoming more accurate (or better at avoiding) and doing more damage (never found anything that knew what exact calculations are) every time they are attacked or use a weapon type with them getting more experience when they destroy a body part. Destroying the body destroys the Wanzer, arms disable weapons equipped to it, and legs can reduce movement speed (and maybe reduce dodge, people didn't seem sure or how much). Every pilot has a certain weapon experience level where once they reach a certain point, that is different per character, they can learn a skill once they raise their main level (levels only add very small amounts of XP to every skill and unlock a skill if you reached the requisite).
Short ranged weapons give you duel where you are forced to use the skill every time and can choose a body part for all your shots or your one shot to aim at with a severe to no accuracy penalty depending on the skill level, switch allows you a chance to attack with your off hand weapon if they are both short ranged after your first attack and can chain multiple times while also allowing you to switch your duel target, and speed adds to the number of bullets you can fire. Melee gives you first that allows you to attack before an enemy when otherwise melee attackers go last, stun that can stun an enemy both stopping their attack if it goes off before they attack and stunning them on the map screen if other units attack them but with a chance they can wake up, and double which works like switch but with two melee weapons. Long range experience can unlock guide which works like the short range duel skill. These skills mean that short is significantly better than everything else just by the massive amounts of damage you can do, and means that typically the SMG style weapons are a much better choice than rifles or shotguns once you unlock speed (even more so since the weapons don't actually behave differently in Front Mission 1 even all having the same 1 tile range). Long is more of a weapon type just to have to weaken enemies and missile launchers run out of ammo. Close is good in the early game but massively falls of due to skills leading to a damage drop when compared to short weapons and the game just seemed to forget to add new melee weapons to the game for some time while all other weapons are getting multiple upgrades. You have no way of knowing but some pilots just can't unlock certain skills making some much worse choices than others. Once you get a skill raising its level from 1 to 3 is random and has a chance of happening when the skill is used. So when you first unlock duel and have a 50% accuracy drop you want that to level up quickly and that might rank up in one use or it might rank up after 100 uses. There is also some UI issues with the game where you just aren't always given information that you really want to know, like the damage status of units being attacked and enemy status when they are attacking you and what weapon is where on their mech before you switch to the combat screen after choosing your weapon or defense options (this was still also a problem in Front Mission 2).
It's a system that all works well enough but gives more options in future games with a few of them somewhat showing up in the second campaign that has things like a few rifles that can be used at a distance.
Outside of combat you can make use of an arena to gain money or experience, talk to a few characters at a bar in each town, buy new parts for your units (with new parts coming at an annoyingly fast rate in the main campaign, even worse when you are upgrading more total units and constantly running out of money unless you use the arena). There is a variety of different looking styles and even legs parts that handle movement differently but so many of them are just statistically worse options and the leg parts don't make a huge difference with certain movements types not being seen much or not being given as many upgrades to make them that viable. The second campaign adds the ability to speak to your squad members while in towns or at bases and that give them all a bit more personality that would be found in the later games in the series. The stories set up elements of later events and some of the themes and atmosphere of later games but there is not a huge amount of plot yet, especially not in the primary campaign where moments that should have a bigger impact or often quickly gotten through.
The remake also adds a great looking tactical map view you can switch to that could be used as the main UI for an entire type of game, while also serving absolutely no real purpose in this game and not allowing you to move units on it even though everything about it seems to have been made for it.
Front Mission is decent game with a good soundtrack and unique art style that adds a lot of personality and that all lead to more interesting and better titles that expanded on what this game started in the future (even the SNES spin-off Front Mission Gun Hazard is one of the best games on the platform) and if you are going to get into the series you might as well start here.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1724717342188572844
This is the third remake of the original Front Mission that keeps the former remakes added gameplay elements while adding new game plus and more difficulty options while making changes to the visuals, camera control, and UI. The 2003 Playstation remake of the original SNES game added the second campaign that plays like one of the later Front Mission titles with each character that joins you having more characterization and more conversations between missions, more chances to talk with your squad members, more air and vehicle enemies to fight, gives more characterization to people you meet or fight in the main campaign, involves some characters from the then upcoming Front Mission 4, and is the stronger campaign in general despite being a bit shorter. The DS remake added some Front Mission 2 and Front Mission 5 cameos, equipable parts from later games in the series, and nine secret missions across both campaigns. The only thing I noticed missing here was that in the final after credit scene of the main scenario only the main story pilots show up at the end, with none of the side characters and one slightly main not appearing with a line or two like they do in the other versions of the game, odd thing to remove but not a big loss since they had almost no personality or scenes and never showed up in the next four games.
The gameplay is a fairly simple turn based mech game where each character pilots a Wanzer which has a has a body, left and right arm, and leg part with the arms able to equip both a handheld or built in weapon and a shoulder mounted missile launcher or shield that you can use to add to your defense when you are unable to attack or if you decide to defend instead of counterattacking. Pilots rank up their skills in short, long, melee, and dodge from 1-9,999 with them becoming more accurate (or better at avoiding) and doing more damage (never found anything that knew what exact calculations are) every time they are attacked or use a weapon type with them getting more experience when they destroy a body part. Destroying the body destroys the Wanzer, arms disable weapons equipped to it, and legs can reduce movement speed (and maybe reduce dodge, people didn't seem sure or how much). Every pilot has a certain weapon experience level where once they reach a certain point, that is different per character, they can learn a skill once they raise their main level (levels only add very small amounts of XP to every skill and unlock a skill if you reached the requisite).
Short ranged weapons give you duel where you are forced to use the skill every time and can choose a body part for all your shots or your one shot to aim at with a severe to no accuracy penalty depending on the skill level, switch allows you a chance to attack with your off hand weapon if they are both short ranged after your first attack and can chain multiple times while also allowing you to switch your duel target, and speed adds to the number of bullets you can fire. Melee gives you first that allows you to attack before an enemy when otherwise melee attackers go last, stun that can stun an enemy both stopping their attack if it goes off before they attack and stunning them on the map screen if other units attack them but with a chance they can wake up, and double which works like switch but with two melee weapons. Long range experience can unlock guide which works like the short range duel skill. These skills mean that short is significantly better than everything else just by the massive amounts of damage you can do, and means that typically the SMG style weapons are a much better choice than rifles or shotguns once you unlock speed (even more so since the weapons don't actually behave differently in Front Mission 1 even all having the same 1 tile range). Long is more of a weapon type just to have to weaken enemies and missile launchers run out of ammo. Close is good in the early game but massively falls of due to skills leading to a damage drop when compared to short weapons and the game just seemed to forget to add new melee weapons to the game for some time while all other weapons are getting multiple upgrades. You have no way of knowing but some pilots just can't unlock certain skills making some much worse choices than others. Once you get a skill raising its level from 1 to 3 is random and has a chance of happening when the skill is used. So when you first unlock duel and have a 50% accuracy drop you want that to level up quickly and that might rank up in one use or it might rank up after 100 uses. There is also some UI issues with the game where you just aren't always given information that you really want to know, like the damage status of units being attacked and enemy status when they are attacking you and what weapon is where on their mech before you switch to the combat screen after choosing your weapon or defense options (this was still also a problem in Front Mission 2).
It's a system that all works well enough but gives more options in future games with a few of them somewhat showing up in the second campaign that has things like a few rifles that can be used at a distance.
Outside of combat you can make use of an arena to gain money or experience, talk to a few characters at a bar in each town, buy new parts for your units (with new parts coming at an annoyingly fast rate in the main campaign, even worse when you are upgrading more total units and constantly running out of money unless you use the arena). There is a variety of different looking styles and even legs parts that handle movement differently but so many of them are just statistically worse options and the leg parts don't make a huge difference with certain movements types not being seen much or not being given as many upgrades to make them that viable. The second campaign adds the ability to speak to your squad members while in towns or at bases and that give them all a bit more personality that would be found in the later games in the series. The stories set up elements of later events and some of the themes and atmosphere of later games but there is not a huge amount of plot yet, especially not in the primary campaign where moments that should have a bigger impact or often quickly gotten through.
The remake also adds a great looking tactical map view you can switch to that could be used as the main UI for an entire type of game, while also serving absolutely no real purpose in this game and not allowing you to move units on it even though everything about it seems to have been made for it.
Front Mission is decent game with a good soundtrack and unique art style that adds a lot of personality and that all lead to more interesting and better titles that expanded on what this game started in the future (even the SNES spin-off Front Mission Gun Hazard is one of the best games on the platform) and if you are going to get into the series you might as well start here.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1724717342188572844