Once upon a time, I played Front Mission 3 for the PSX and it blew me away (review coming eventually). The fact that I was reading Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World at the same time only enhanced my experience of the game. So naturally, being the third instalment of the game, I wanted to try the very first one to see where that masterpiece first started. While I did find some of the themes from FM 3 I loved in Front Mission 1, the execution wasn’t as good.

Graphics: 4/10

For my eyes, the graphics had several problems. First of all, the world outside battles is even more static than in Shining Force CD. In the latter game at least, you could see your troops walk back and forth between your priest, the shop and the exit. Here, you merely see completely static images (and, from what I observed, exactly the same background for everything, every time) of a military office, the village you are in, a shop, a bar, a coliseum and one or two other things towards the end. I’m not kidding: if there are any variations, it’s a case of “spot the difference” because they all look the same, dull colors. The only variation is a place with tents; and even then, the image is the same: a few tents with a Jeep.

Second, the producers were apparently too ambitious for the Super Nintendo capacities. As a results, the fights are far from fluid. When you fire a gun with more than a bullet, especially with a skill that allows you to fire more than its initial capacity, the image slows down to a crawl. The melee attacks suffer the same problems, especially against large enemies. It can sometime take two to three seconds before you start accelerating towards your enemy and punch it – and if you have a skill letting punch more than once, there are more delays. And for long-distance attacks, the change between the attacker and the defender seems slower than for Shining Force II.

And third, some battlefields are excruciatingly difficult to plan because of their layout. In the last battle for example, the floor is shaped like an X, and there are huge… things blocking your view. So while you can move behind them, so can the enemy, making it difficult to see where they are – you can’t even see their faint images when you pass them by. Battles where there are buildings or huge obstacles have the same problem too.

On a more positive note, the artwork for the characters (good and evil) is sublime. It looks like the character sketches from Final Fantasy VI you saw in the instruction manual. And notwithstanding the people you fight in the coliseums, there didn’t seem to be any pallet swaps; everyone was unique. This uniqueness also applied to your arsenal. Every part, every backpack, every weapon had a different design – although some invariable repeated because they are more advanced models of the same series. And fortunately, you can customize your wanzer (what you fight with) color at any time, making it easier to distinguish your allies in the battlefield.

Speaking of which, the weapons’ actions was designed well despite severe delays. Towards the end, your missile almost look like nukes with their white explosion. Also, whatever attack you do shows pieces being destroyed of the part you attack. When it reaches 0 (except for the body), that part becomes blacked out and looks very frail. I thought that was an interesting design.

Music: 6/10

For a Squaresoft game, the soundtrack was rather disappointing. I can’t say I will remember any particular track.

Now, most battlefields have a neat distinction between the player’s phase and the enemy phase. Your turn usually has a more joyful or heroic tone (especially towards the end), while the enemy’s phase sounds more dramatic, especially towards the end too. Even the theme inside a battle differs whether it’s you or the enemy that initiates the battle. Your theme is pretty much the same, but I like the variations in the enemy’s themes, once again especially towards the end.

Unfortunately, themes outside of battle mostly sound like unmemorable background music. The shop theme loops in less than 10 seconds, the map theme is merely noise and the overall city theme hasn’t caught my attention. The setup screen for the wanzer sounds like cheap dance music, and the final battlefield has very cheap organ that sounds very anti-climactic.

Sound effects, on their side, were done much better – at least inside battles. Your wanzer will make different noise depending on the kind of legs you have. If you have caterpillar tracks, you will not only move slower but you will actually sound like a tank slowly moving. But if you have “regular” legs, you actually sound like a robot moving around – and at quite an impressive speed considering the serious lags elsewhere. At one point you will even get a supply truck with you, and its movement actually sound like a huge merchandise truck moving around.

The sound of your weapons was also done pretty well. When you hit an opponent with a melee weapon, the sound of the punch is pretty decent and it does sound like it hurts. For regular gun, the sound was done well too, and despite the lags arms with more than one bullet sound good. Even your missiles sound good; when you miss your shot you can hear there whistling past you.

The only annoying sound I can think of is the sound of selecting an option, which tries to mimic a futuristic sound cheaply.

Addictiveness: 7/10

If you love strategy RPG, you will love this game because there is a lot to strategize about.

First, since you can customize your wanzer so much, you will need to find the balance between strength, hit points, defense and accuracy. Those that attack with guns will have a harder time since their weapons can weight quite a bit; you might have to settle in for inferior arms if you want a better gun. Speaking of arms, some of them come integrated with guns already… which usually mean you won’t be able to carry anything either in your hands or on your shoulders (like missiles and shields). What you have for legs matters too. While caterpillar tracks might be good for flat surfaces like sand, they are horrible for climbing up hills or platforms, slowing down your advance quite a bit.

Speaking of terrain, its kind can slow down your advance so you need to be careful. Many battlefields will have water or grass, which doesn’t sit well with wanzers. You need to make sure you move together as to not move too far ahead or be left behind and be ganged up on. You also need to make sure that you don’t clog narrow passages in order to move forward – that includes making sure you don’t waste your missiles too early on and keep them for stronger enemies towards the end of the battlefield.

Still about advancing against the enemy, you will need to watch what kind of enemy is around you. Don’t forget that missilers can shoot from far away and tend to gang up on wanzers that dare to venture too far. Also, many attackers towards the end have long-range guns. Despite their inaccuracy, they can still hit you pretty hard.

Finally, there is a coliseum feature I didn’t explore very much but where you can certainly practice your strategy. You can even gain a few allies there if you manage to beat them, which is always nice.

Story: 6/10

You play Lloyd, a member of the OCU community on some remote island in the Pacific. With your wife Karen and another ally named Sakata, you spy on a USN plant – carefully as both your countries have a tensed but peaceful relationship. Unfortunately, a soldier from the USN named Driscoll destroys your fiancée and the plant you were investigating, causing hostilities to start again between both countries.

A year after the incident, a man named Olson recruits you to be part of a mercenary unit called the Carrion Crows. You accept and go on to fight the war against the USN.

The story is pretty slow to unravel and didn’t catch my attention like FM 3. The first part of the game is simply the mindless war between your country and the USN, with very few hints about the “real” plot. Everything unravels quickly in the second part, after the OCU and the USN sign a cease-fire agreement. You finally learn more about Sakata (one of your teammate’s father) and his purpose, along with what happened to your fiancée.

Depth: 5/10

But even as the true story unravels, there have been quite a few misses to make this game memorable.

First, nearly all characters have no background story of their own. They just appear, like Paladin’s Quest mercenaries, to serve you and you barely hear about them once they join you. Even Lloyd doesn’t get much development; you don’t know much about his past and you don’t see much of a psychological evolution through the game, except about his guilt to “having caused” the war and letting his fiancée down.

And second, the first part of the game is simply a mindless war between two nations where you don’t quite know (in-game; I didn’t have background information from the instruction manual) why both nations are hostile. Producers could have introduced a bit more information about what we learn in the second part. Instead, it’s given fragment by fragment, until you get 90 percent of the missing pieces while fighting a “terrorist” organization while serving on a peacekeeping mission in the second part.

Difficulty: 8/10

This difficulty rating only applies if you don’t use savestates. If it’s the case, then you will have one hellish time getting through the game. Indeed, your goal is to destroy every enemy’s body part of their wanzer, but it unfortunately doesn’t always work. Often times you will hit their legs or arms, therefore delaying their destruction and increasing your chances of being destroyed. And many times, even with accurate weapons (accuracy rate over 80), you will miss completely and waste a turn (or worse, a missile, which are always very limited).

Also, the money you get depends both on how many enemies you destroy minus however many of your wanzers were completely (i.e. the body) destroyed. So without savestates, your commission might be quite low, keeping you from upgrading your arsenal and putting you at a disadvantage for the next mission. And with weight requirements, you will sometimes have to wait before making a much-needed upgrade that could help you withstand the enemy’s weaponry better.

But even if you don’t use savestates, there is a way around the difficulty level. Each character has some innate ability for either fight or short-range fighting. If you build up on that specialty, you can make them super fighters and they can gain abilities that will make them even more powerful. For example, gunners will be able to use two guns, and melee fighters will be able to hit twice, and maybe even three or four times if the ability gets to level 3.

In short, Front Mission 1 is a good game, but not much more. The plot takes a long time to unravel, it’s full of insipid characters and the slow speed of fights (and dialogues) will have you press the space bar more often than not. It’s a good thing since you won’t have to listen to an unmemorable soundtrack.