FRONT MISSION 3: Remake

You get two storylines for the price of one, a TON of lore to read, a better understanding of the whole Front Mission universe, and of course a new plot twist on the verge of a new world war. Arguably, the stat system feels much less constrained, letting you have abilities from parts AND set on your on-board computer. But the point system still manages to make you feel as if you'd need a computer with 8 slots, not 6. On the other hand, the gameplay here is GREAT. And from the little I've played of the original… it's much better paced and controlled. The missions themselves are all fun, with various levels of challenge, and if you really want to go for it… you can try a full platinum run to really suffer and think! You've got alternate paths, choices to make, teams divided, etc... BUT… you can only ever have a party of 4. Quite the downgrade from the previous ones, again. Well balanced, and great replay value for a tactic game; but you will constantly be outnumbered. However… not entirely due to the remake, it's also not on par with either FM1 or FM2. For one, the more childish tone doesn't just touch the designs, but also the characters. FM3 has lost entirely the gloomy and gritty patina of its predecessor, rather going for anime tropes and simple small group dynamics. It's not bad per say, but going through 200 hours of story mode may feel at time as if the network lore was written for a better game, or that the main event shouldn't be slowed to read the news that much. Front Mission 3 Remake is… really not as bad as old timers want it to be. It may very well have used AI placeholders in its early release, and yeah there is probably still one of these super deformed pictures on one of the network pages (fingers crossed that it is removed before you buy it)… But the music is kinda nice and at least the UI of the menus is less labyrinthine than in previous titles. Also, the Wanzer models feels blockier than in other release up to now, and the whole game was redone in much more colourful tones which, to be fair, may fit better the characters of this one. Yeah sure there may still be a few translation errors in there (There was still some when I played it), but the game doesn't crash as much as the other two remakes did on release; and if we're lucky, there might still be some updates coming. BUT, the game IS consistent with itself (unless you count that one Wanzer in gameplay Vs cutscene), and really easy to get used to. And when it decides to be beautiful… just go and look at all these screenshots! I'm not saying it's bad though. It's just not the same timeless quality as the first two remakes is all.