National Anthem of Nowhere (Day 351)

Front Mission 3 has been finished and my PlayStation backlog has been eliminated! Well, for now, anyway. If I'm being completely honest, there are still a lot of PS1 games I could think of to play sometime in the future--but not now! For now I must track down other games I've started and not finished. If it seems like they're worthy of finishing, I'll do it! For some reason, I keep buying new games to make this a more difficult task, but the number of games I've tackled that had before been languishing in my backlog for years makes up for that somewhat.

The PlayStation definitely has a ton of games that are worth playing. I've now beaten 21 of them and I can still think of several I'd like to play, like Breath of Fire III, Wild Arms, and Xenogears. At some point in the future, I may well do that--but for now, I'm moving on to another console. I think I'd had my heart set on PlayStation 2 since I have quite a bit of work to do there, but I'm going to take a little time today to think about it. In a couple hours I'm going to start playing some more Divinity: Original Sin, a game I believe I'll be playing for several weeks, even if we keep up with the marathon sessions on weekends.

Let's take a step back, though, and talk about Front Mission 3 a little bit. I really enjoy the series and of course I'm a big fan of giant robots. Front Mission is definitely more on the pseudo-realistic military end of the spectrum when it comes to robots, whereas Super Robot Wars is as big, flashy, and unrealistic as possible. If I were to be perfectly honest, I'd have to admit preferring the latter, but that doesn't mean that I find Front Mission to be boring. I really do enjoy the series, but some of the mechanics are a tad frustrating for me.

The most engaging part of Front Mission 3 (and indeed for other games in the series as well) lies in the wanzer customization. Constructing a robot from the available parts, upgrading these parts, allocating battle skills, and choosing which weapons to equip is a highly involved and interesting process. Shotguns deal Impact damage and deal an equal amount of damage to all parts--at the expense of lowered accuracy and shorter range. Some leg parts will ignore terrain but only move a few spaces per turn. The accuracy of arm parts is generally proportional to weight. If you want a highly accurate wanzer arm you'll likely need to prepare to carry more weight, meaning you'll be more limited in what other parts and weapons you can equip. The strategy involved in this portion of the game is what keeps me coming back to the series.

Ryogo vs Lukav

I also really like the battle skills and when they activate, it's typically really fun, especially when you chain several skills in a row. Decimating an enemy with three ROFUP1 (120% fired rounds) skill activations in a row is a blast to see in action. Unfortunately, all of these skills are completely random. Skills are inherited from specific wanzer parts. This aspect of the gameplay I can get behind. It gives you an incentive beyond simple statistical upgrades to switch out wanzer parts frequently. However, instead of learning these skills by gaining experience or performing certain actions in combats, these skills are learned completely randomly. You'll just have to keep attacking with that specific part loaded onto your wanzer until it happens. I've gone several battles without ever getting any kind of skill to activate at all. It's very unsatisfying to be so at mercy to a random number generator.

The randomness with which skills activate and are acquired is the primary issue I have with this game. Although I don't personally find the plot or characters to be interesting, I do recognize that they have merit and they don't necessarily detract from the experience at all. Crossing my fingers in every fight and hoping a skill goes off was not necessary as enjoyable. Front Mission 4 handled skills like this a little differently. Although skills had an activation rate in combat and occasionally would not go off, they were not learned randomly. In that case, you spent points acquired through gaining experience to unlock new skills--and you could even purchase them in some cases. I feel this system was an improvement, although I'd prefer if as many elements of randomness could be eliminated from the gameplay as possible.

That's 71 missions!

Despite my frustrations with how skills work in Front Mission 3, I can say with some confidence that it is a game worth playing, particularly if you enjoy strategy RPGs and giant robots, like myself. It lacks the charm and whimsy of a Super Robot Wars game but it does feature a lot more customization. Although I still haven't played FM2 or FM5, I feel the primary draw is always going to be the setup menu, whereas the combat ends up being just an exercise in going through the motions.