Front Mission 3 (PlayStation)

Overall, Front Mission 3 is a very enjoyable console strategy title, and one of the better games in the genre that I have played in some time. The story is interesting, the battles intense, and the gameplay addictive. If you are looking for a good console strategy game for the PlayStation, look no further.

Front Mission 3.Before Squaresoft became SquareEnix a team of brillant minds made one of the best strategy and mech games.with multiple choices in the game you can spend over 120 hours playing this game just to see every branch in the story.The story itself interesting having some surprising turns and plot twists.As for gameplay you can choose a multitude of mechs or mech parts,or if your just feeling cheap why not take the enemy's mech and make it your own?This game features an online option thats inside the game,by encountering new people and websites in the game you can open up new links and websites.You may even find some secrets in the online option.As for combat in the game you can blow the enemy apart using a variety weaoons but the enemy will try also.check this game out if your a mech fan now!

The title of this review says it all. This game is essentially final fantasy tactics except every soldier pilots a mech suit called a wanzer, and instead of spells and traditional swords, axes, maces, etc the mechs are outfitted with rocket pods, bazookas, machine guns, sniper rifles, brass knuckles, spike piles (melee weapon where you punch forward, and a spike breaks off in your target causing a nice chunk of damage). There are even some specials that your pilots can perform, like assisted missile targetting, and later on some abilities for finishing off foes.

The battle system is essentially the same as final fantasy tactics, square grid like environment, turn based movements dependant on character's speed/manueverability. The only major change here is that the environments themselves are much more modern taking place outside and inside of modern towns, modern cities, shipping yards, and so on.

The mechs themselves are very cool. Very custimizable, head parts, chest parts, leg parts, left and right arm parts, shoulder parts, back pack parts, and then there are specialty parts such as a backpack used for quick in battle repairs, etc.

The weapon selection is very large too, but can be broken down to a few areas.
-Semi and fully automatic rifles.
-Semi and fully automatic machine guns.
-Melee/fist weapons.
-Rocket Pods/Long Range missiles.
-Sniper Rifles and other long range ordinance (there is a special weapon in the game which is essentially a sniper grenade rifle).

There are other types of weapons but this is all that I've encountered so far (I'm only about 3 hours into the game at the time of writing this).


So If you are looking for another interesting playstation 1 era game, and love final fantasy tactics, or just games made by squaresoft, this game is definetly for you.

Front Mission 3, a Strategy Roleplaying game for the original Playstation console, is by far, the best in the series yet. Reaching cult classic status shortly after its release, Squaresoft brings out another must have. With a creative mutli-pathed story, the game offers excellent replay and so much more!

Grid-combat strategy games tend to be very lacking on story, but Front Mission 3 delivers with a balance of mechanized combat, story choices and even its own in-game 'network' with little surprises for the length of the game.

Like Mecha? There's plenty. Bipedal, quadrapedal, hovering combat robots a plenty armed with Guns, rockets and more out the exhaust pipe! Customize your party's Wanzers (Vaan-ser) with a myriad of parts, weapons, backpacks and computers. Take them onto the field or into the simulator for battle and test your piloting skills against the forces who pursue you. Eject enemy pilots and commandeer their warmachines or beat them down with brute force and battle skills.

An excellent game worth hours of excitment.

First, I'd like to clear some odd misunderstanding amongst the rest of the reviews. This game isn't 40-50 hours... maby if you do nothing but button mash through dialogue and don't do anything extra that may be the length of a single scenario. The game is approximately 150 hour long on average, which can actually get monotonous, and probably the only downfall.

Story wise, the game is similar to a large scifi novel. The plot is slightly cliche, but the first time through on either scenario has plenty of twists and turns.

graphics lately mean nothing, especially on these older games
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t261/RojinPC/FrontMission3ScreenShotenhanced2.png
that is a good example of the graphics enherantly programmed into the disc, however the playstation can only handle a fraction of the detail. In all the enhanced graphics i've seen for ps1 games, this is one of the best.

with such a long game... the music gets repetative quick.

Exactly what I was looking for in terms of gameplay, but the storyline and character motivations (especially the motivations) are a bit stupid.

If you've played Front Mission 4 (for the PS2) then you've pretty much got FM3 down. Turn-based tactical mech combat, with upgradeable parts, weapons and abilities. Some of the specific mechanics are different (no Linking, but abiliites can combo, allowing extra attacks for free). Even the basic weapon types are mostly the same (a flamethrower instead of a bazooka). Out of battle gameplay is basically menu navigation. There are some nice pre-rendered backgrounds during conversation, and an interesting Internet-type system, to help explain the story. I've also noted that the story can change depending on how you finish a battle, with slight variations in how everything turns out.

But the story, ugh. FM4 is basically a sequel to FM3, and the story of FM3 is very similar. You follow a Japanese wanzer (gear/mech) tester as he gets himself involved with a beautiful scientist (and wanzer pilot) and international conspiracies. It worked ok with FM4, but in FM3 the characters just seem stupid. Everybody just jumps about fighting everybody and then leaving, doing whatever they want with no regard for the setting. If it were Final Fantasy, in a setting where the fastest travel was by airship or Chocobo, OK, maybe you can get away with that, but in realistic/futuristic setting where country governments are unified and international politics key, you don't want a group of people running around in weapons of semi-mass destruction doing whatever impulse comes to mind. It breaks any sense of realism.

Graphics are standard PSX, pre-FF9. Story sequences are well scripted visually (even if, as mentioned, what the characters do doesn't make any sense) and there are CG cut-scenes at appropriate times. About what you should expect when you buy a 7 year old game (as of 2007).

Music is acceptable. Nothing that makes me want to get the soundtrack. I usually end up muting it and putting something else on, but that's just me. The rest of the audio is perfect, with guns and wanzers sounding as they should. There's no voice acting outside of the cut-scenes and those are left in their original Japanese.

Controls are fine, since it's turn-based you can take as long as you need to figure anything out. Most things are explained if you read the tutorials, and if not, there's always Gamefaqs :P

Secrets/extras out side the storyline seem to be limited, but considering I haven't beaten it yet, I can't say how much there is (or how much I've missed).

Game time seems about standard at 40-50 hours, but as I said, I haven't finished it, so maybe there's still a lot more to do, a la Okami.

All in all, a good game if you can't wait for Front Mission 5 to come State-side, but don't expect a story on par with Front Mission 4's. A nice change up from the fantasy of Final Fantasy Tactics and Disgaea/NipponIchi, and definitely worth playing for fans of mechs and turn based RPGs (as opposed to mechs and fighting games).

Phew, that's lengthy. But I've got a 3500 character length to use, so why not? :P

good sound and great role playing and tactics
bad graphics but what can u spect from 1 of the old timer games
nice on my opinion nice great game should try playing it. ^^