Front Mission Thread

Played the SNES game when I was young and wondered what were other good games in the series or similar games.

Any recommendations?

Admittedly I still need to play through them myself, but I've generally heard good stuff about FM3 and FM5 (the latter is fan translated). Might be worth looking into.

Wondering the same here. I, like , have also heard praise for Front Mission 5 in particular.

Numeric ones are similar yes, and generally good.
1 is good
2 I didn't play, I don't think it has 100% complete translation
3 is very good
4 is good
5 is very good, but it's half of a game it is, if you didn't play the rest first, it's one huge fan-service pack and the conclusion to the saga.

Spin offs are mixed bag
Gun Hazard is ok, story is the weakest part
Evolved is meh, most people hate it because of franchise's high standard. As a separate game it's playable enough to complete once.
Online I didn't play, from vids it looked like prototype for Evolve but without shitty story.
Alternative I didn't play either, but people say it's good, I think there is translation out there somewhere.
Dog Life (manga) is very good.

Actually similar games are hard to find. There are plenty of tactical mecha games that are fundamentally the same genre, but Front Mission stands apart with its gritty militaristic setting, combined arms in the field, insanely in-depth customization and complex overarching story.
If you want real-time Front Mission game but can't deal with Evolve's shittiness, I recommend Armored Core 1 or 3, but of course you can also try the rest for more futuristic/space settings.

I've been curious, given that Front Mission does seem to have a fan-translation base (given that FM1 SFC, Gun Hazard, FM2, and FM5 have seen efforts), is there a reason why Front Mission 2089: Border of Madness hasn't seen any work?

Nigger I have never played the Front Mission games before, and I fucking hated Evolved. The only reason I got it(and then returned it) was because I used to have a friend who played FM3 and wanted to see how this one was. I still plan on getting 3, but FM: Evolved was total trash. Let me list a few reasons
1. Absolutely horrible story and voice acting
2. While the mechs, and parts look cool several missions force you to use certain parts, or weapons which really hurts your ability to customize your mech.
3. Horrible on foot missions, because that is what people want from a mech game. Not to pilot a mech apparently
And that is just what I remember. It was a shitty armored core rip-off and not at all like the rest of the series

Ring of Red

Never heard of it before your post. Maybe that's why.


Basic controls and "mech feel" are god-tier though. I'm huge /m/fag so it was enough to drag me through it. It actually felt like I'm piloting a wanzer.
All your points are correct through, except "armored core rip-off". It actually doesn't feel or control like any of armored core games.

It's a DS game that was remade from a mobile phone game by a company called h.a.n.d., after a survey Square did showed that most series fans were not fond of mobile as a gaming format, and the DS version had a number of extra features from prior games added in. I honestly don't know much about the game myself.

I'm actually almost finished with Dog Life, Dog Style. I didn't expect it to be so grim but man it has been a blast so far. Anyway I'll start with replaying 1 since the series is story heavy.


Heard about this from another thread and picked it up. Actually forgot I had it.

Golden Ax on Snes

I think I've heard the DS version of FM1 includes an extra scenario. Might be worth giving a look.

There are actually a whole bunch of mangas, light novels, radio dramas and other jap-sepcific media in Front Mission franchise, but Dog one is like the biggest of them all, and is also 100% canon.

Get:
PCSX2 emulator,
Front Mission 5 iso,
FM5 english patch,

patch it and enjoy one of the best TBS mech games with pretty solid story and great customization.

It actually is complete. 70% of it is in the game, the rest is on a txt file because the translation team gave up trying to break the encryption for those files.

It's perfectly playable. Also, the biggest game of the saga, with pretty huge battles.

The same team that did the 2 and 5 translation has retired without ever finishing the translation of Alternative.

There were robots in that game?

FM3..grab FM3 and marvel at the ROFUP/Zoom I machine that is Ryogo.

It also had a sequel on the mobile too.

As for "similar" games, there's Vanguard Bandits for the PS1 where you control medieval mecha ala Escaflowne.

Also, the whole SRW franchise.

And finally, there's a shitload of that stuff in Japanese, ranging from Hearts of Iron in space with Gihren's Greed to various anime adaptations and spin-offs of varying degrees of quality.

Not even the same genre, theme, or even aesthetic. But Golden Axe is good.


I never realized the series was that big. And now it's dead. But SE will keep giving us the mobile games we always wanted and milk 3 KH games before 3 comes out!

Honestly, looking at Square, they've been pretty content to kill off most of their older series, leaving the big focus being on Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Bravely I suppose (Dragon Quest as well, but that sees a lot more focus in Japan than the wet from them). Meanwhile, Chrono's dead (Square having bitched that the DS port didn't sell as much as they wanted), the last Mana game to come out was just a remake of SD1 (and the DS ones prior to that weren't exactly well liked by fans of the older ones, if memory serves), Front Mission's stopped seeing games, and while SaGa has a new game in the works it'll most likely just be left over seas since Square-Enix hasn't been real fond of the Vita out here.

And hell, even with the franchises Enix had previously owned the rights to, only Dragon Quest sees a lot of new games still (in Japan). Valkyrie Profile's latest game to be released was mobile shit, and Star Ocean 5 got censored worldwide (even in Japan) because they think the western press would throw a shitfit about panties. Oh, and aside from ActRaiser, they haven't bothered to put any of Enix' classic stuff on the PSN or VC last I checked, as if they want to ignore that those even happened.

And if the FFXV pre release material is anything to go by FFXV will have the same narrative fuckup FFXIII had, on top of clunky gameplay, as well as the second part of the game being linear.

They are betting everything on FFXV but it's gonna bury them first.

Maybe they're hoping that they can coast by between what sales it does get, FFVII remake, KH3, and DQXI whenever that comes out (given Dragon Quest seems to be a bit of a battery for them to tap, in that they can use Dragon Quest generally selling like hotcakes out there to offset lost profit/blown budgets when they fuck around with other games they make)?

I honestly don't understand the strategy.

FFXV has cost them a ridiculous amount of money. We're talking about the standard massive marketing campaign, on top of an anime, a CGI movie, hiring famous fashion artists to design the costumes (that look like shit and are indistinguishable from the rest of the FF costume trash), built a fucking Audi car to look like the one in the game, etc.

This is fucking retarded. They are betting all this money on a game that has been in development hell for years, clearly falsely advertising it as something it's not.

On top of this their golden goose, the FFVII remake, has fans worried because of the moronic episodic approach.

And that's ignoring how every other IP of theirs has sold like shit over the years, but especially the Western ones like Tomb Raider and Hitman.

And this after they threw a hissy fit over Front Mission not selling well enough when they purposely released a shit game that had nothing to do with the franchise in general.

They'll need to make three to four games just to recoup how much FFXV cost to make.

I played FM, FM3, FM4 and FM5.

FM3 is still my favorite, OP. The protagonist is a whinny faggot, but the game itself is awesome.

They barely even make standalone JRPGs at this point, and the one they did recently, Setsuna, they seemed to push as a successor to Chrono Trigger, and from what I hear, they didn't seem to get that quite right.

I suppose maybe it's not anything new for them though, as even in 7th gen the standalone stuff had started to dwindle. I think the DS saw maybe three of them, but the only one to come west was TWEWY (Blood of Bahamut and Sigma Harmonics being Japan only; the former's fan translated but the latter isn't even feasible for that). Still, you look back in the past and they seemed more than happy to put out non-franchised, at times experimental games: Live-a-Live, Treasure of the Rudras, Threads of Fate, Brave Fencer Musashi (I don't think most people tend to acknowledge that one actually does have a sequel, but at the time it was stand alone), Racing Lagoon, Xenogears…

Well, considering how apparently part of why they had two more XIII games was to make easier profit due to asset reuse, or something (going off what I've heard, anyhow), it wouldn't shock me that's part of the decision to make the FFVII remake episodic. And hell, for all I know, maybe they'll do "Final Fantasy XV-II: The Band Breaks Up" and "How Noctis Got His Groove Back: Final Fantasy XV."

Thing is, just as EA and Ubisoft are discovering, you can't keep shitting out one thing all the time, people get fatigued eventually and look for their fun elsewhere.

FF hasn't been doing well since VIII, and it has only gotten progressively worse as time has passed. I might not be a big fan of most jRPGs, but I genuinely liked FFVII, not even nostalgia talking, it's a fun game with a likeable cast, some good music and engaging gameplay, plus a big world of stuff to explore and a story that works most of the time, at least on the emotional level.

FFVIII, X and XIII are just clusterfucks that I can't believe ever got past the drawing board. People might shit on Spoony, but he was right when he said that the story in FFXIII is downright experimental.

I don't understand. What's the appeal in these games? It can't be the story, or the characters, since I really can't see anyone giving a shit about Squall and his bitchfits, let alone like Tidus. The costumes and art direction is bizarre and garish, the gameplay, while innovative in some aspects, is just the same shit over and over again.

Why is FF still popular? TWEWY is basically their most lauded game of the past decade, and it was a new IP that dared to experiment, yet they don't bother making a sequel for it, kill every other IP and waste ungodly amounts of cash on failed FF projects.

It seems to me the people in charge of SE are morons.

It doesn't but most of his other points are fairly on point. Its a fucking mess. The on foot sections wouldn't be an issue if your on foot weapons didn't turn out to be better than your mech weapons. Helicopters are easier to down on foot.

Then there is regenerating health, and the bullet time.


I can't imagine the FF7 remake being anything like what I remember. Not just for some stuff being bitched about now, but because of what they did with all the extended universe shit. They killed a lot of what was fun about the characters and I think they will only make it worse.

I think SE is doing the same thing that killed them last time, focusing everything into one big product. Instead of throwing out many smaller projects that are experimental while making a well known game every blue moon to get stable money. Now they rely in Enix's games like Dragon Quest and mobile games to support them while they throw everything on 2 projects.

I don't think it is. It's known, but not popular. People are just nostalgic about VII and X. They don't keep up with FF now.

How censored is that game?

The could just retcon that shit out, but that would require anyone at SE knowing good writing, which will never be the case again.


That's my point. Why even use FF for XV? There's very little that is fantasy about it, other than recycling the fucking crystals again for whatever reason.

It could have been a cool new IP with "modern" magitek and a plot focusing on political intrigue and winning your throne back, instead it looks just like another mess of poorly thought out story elements thrown together for shit and giggles.


I don't know about censored, but the translation is pretty shit.

Front Mission is one of the few vidya series that had a good overall run and went out somewhat gracefully instead of being used to extract maximum shekels with minimal effort.

In that sense, wouldn't it be somewhat close to FFVI? I feel the same way though. It's like how they labeled a bunch of localized games Final Fantasy: _ because they didn't think something that wasn't FF would survive in the west. Now they're doing it to their own games. I enjoy SE more when they do small projects. There's usually less bullshit centered around those. Not counting localizations.

With Final Fantasy being one of the best known JRPG franchises both east and west, It doesn't shock me that Square has, for better or worse, kept pumping them out. They might make dumb mistakes, but at the very least they haven't sunk to Capcom-tier and killed off the franchise they've been best known for. Though perhaps they need to take an honest look at what they've been doing with recent entries and why people weren't real happy with them, especially considering they shoved XIII in people's faces for an entire generation, to the point the series has only now moved on to FFXIV and XV.

I still remember how Square baited everyone into thinking TWEWY2 would be happening, only to announce a phone port as if that's what the world was really wanting.

It makes it worse when they see these reactions, and do nothing with them. They see a ton of people wanted another game, and yet they sit on it. It would print money since the audience is already there and hungry for more. It's not like the 3DS doesn't have a massive following so I don't know why they wouldn't make one.

Probably because they generally don't seem to have a habit of trying to turn standalones into franchises now. I mean, the main exception I remember has been that Brave Fencer Musashi got a PS2 sequel, but you don't see a second Live-a-Live (I suppose some might consider Chrono Trigger a successor of sorts), Treasure of the Rudras, Threads of Fate, or Xenogears (hell, you don't even see a finished Xenogears, given disc 2's issues) having been made. Hell, they didn't even go further with their foray into shootemups and make a second Einhander.

In a way, maybe that's good (creating new IPs rather than just pumping out sequels), but in TWEWY's case, you don't cocktease the fans with a countdown for something related to it, only to reveal a mobile phone port and then do fuck else with the IP.

There's Faselei on the NGPC

What do you call Front Mission Evolved user?

Anyway anyone tried out Dual Gear demo yet?

what's that?

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