Forum Overview :: Reviews :: Front Mission: Gun Hazard may be an exception to the Front Mission rule

[quote name="athodyd"]<a href=http://agtp.romhack.net/fmgh.html>That rule being that Front Mission is boring and overrated.</a> Still wasn't released in the States though, even though what is arguably its sister game <a href=http://agtp.romhack.net/valken.html>Assault Suits Valken</a> was released as Cybernator, one of the best goddamn SNES games ever, and generally left unharmed except for snipping out a bunch of extraneous dialogue. Anyway, FM: GH is a side-scrolling mech action RPG and one of the very few RPGs where I have enjoyed the normally horrible gruesome awful chore of levelling up, because instead of wandering around a map waiting for the screen to go all pixelly you just enter a level and bust robot ass with weapons that become increasingly satisfyingly powerful. I've never played an RPG with a more visceral and noticeable sense of increasing power, since a level that was original a grueling death-march becomes a carefree romp with you and your powered-up shotgun. The billions and billions of annoying customization choices of other FM games are basically eliminated and replaced with a straightforward system of weapons, chassisesesess, and accessories that are ordered by how much they can be leveled up, reducing the problem of what you should spend money on to whether you should max out a current weapon's XP or trade it in for the next level up (which often starts out at a lower damage rate than your fully-maxed out obsolete gun). The gameplay is generally similar to Cybernator (meaning it's good) and what I remember of the story was pretty decent. If memory serves, at one point you help bring an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict by blowing up the Jews' rolling battle fortress from the inside, and I've always taken that as a sign of quality game writing. Other than that, I can't think of a Front Mission game worth playing unless you're really really determined to enjoy some robots stomping around failing to hit each other with future machine guns accompanied by lengthy Japanese writing about how war is bad and terrible even when it's necessary to prevent a greater evil or acquire oil and Korean women. If it had a battle system that was anything but the overplayed SPEND ACTION POINTS TO MOVE AND SHOOT!!!! formula (why hasn't anyone else picked up on the truly awesome simultaneous action system of the Combat Mission franchise?) I might be more interested but as of now if I want hot fresh tactical giant robot combat I'll play a game where I actually control a hot fresh giant robot as opposed to just telling it to plod over to someone and knock them over the head (and miss).[/quote]