Front Mission 3

"They Don't Get Much Worse"

It's easy to see why Square never ported the first two Front Missions--if they're as gawd-awful as the third installment, I've suddenly lost all faith in Squaresoft. A once-proud company that brought me such beautiful titles as the Final Fantasy saga, Parasite Eve and a host of others...it's a shame to see something like this get kicked out the door.

So help me, I'll take Final Fantasy Tactics over this clunker any day of the week.

--Story-- (3/10)
To me, this is one of the most important parts of any game, which is why Street Fighter has become a bit less appealing in the past few years. Front Mission 3 doesn't fail to deliver a confusing, politically-driven bore-fest that never ceases. This wasn't helped due to the fact that the main charater, Kazuki, is whiny and annoying.

--Graphics-- (7/10)
One of the few things FM3 has going for it are the well-done wanzers and top-view environments. The character artwork--while nothing compared to Xenogears--is also nice as well. Of course, the ugly texture mapping on most of the close-ups of the environments almost made me hurl. Actually, it was the constantly-shifting missle-views that made me toss it. The removal of any character models was good, too...the few times we DO see characters, they look like logs with appendages.

--Music-- (5/10)
Who wrote this?? The supposedly awe-inspiring military themes could have done so much, but they fail to go anywhere at all. I've got better-sounding MIDIs than some of this stuff.

Sound-wise, it's not so bad. The sounds are actually what I'd expect to hear from two bumbling mecha beating the snot out of eachother. Sounds gets a better score than the music.

--Gameplay-- (2/10)
Possibly the most un-realistic and one-sided combat system known to man. FM3 is loaded with hoards of bad guys in wanzers that easily match two or three of your own less than ten hours into the game. The only possible way to keep up with this is to use some kind of infinite-cash cheat and keep buying parts and upgrading them, in hopes you'll get something that'll just barely push you over the top.

The idea of each body part of a wanzer having individual HP is nice, but being able to hit what you want should have been incorporated, too. I can't count the number of times I've whacked a wanzer with a baton in hopes of delivering the blow that'll make them surrender, and end up killing them. It seems you always hit the part you least want to. There have been only a few small cases in which I wanted to take out the legs of a wanzer before any other part; this is due to the fact that deeper into the game, most of the enemies are armed with rocket launchers, machine guns, and huge rifles that do triple damage compared to you.

Also, having my main character targeted all the time got really stupid really fast. I ended up having to replay more than one mission because only he got shot up, which threw most of my plans completely out the window.

Finally, there's the gobs of menu-based moving about. The Network idea is the most intuitive thing I've seen come around in quite a long time, and I spent most of my time in this game browsing through the in-game Internet and answering e-mails. This is a mixed bag, though; while I wish there was more actual ''moving'' than picking a spot on a menu and going there, the character models were so horrid I didn't care after a while.

--Summary--
Ick. Really, that's all there is to say. Ick. I hate this game, and I hate everything about it. I've had dental appointments that were by far more amusing than this, and I was drugged at the time, too.

I'm honestly not able to say anything about the Replay Value, because I was so fed up with this wretched thing I never made it too far into the game to care. And the most challenging thing I found about this game was not breaking it into little shards of CD after five hours (I spent forty bucks on this heap, and I decided I'd play it until I cried, which didn't take too long).

--The Good And The Bad--
GOOD: Great sound and wanzer design, as long as the camera doesn't get too close. And while I personally loathed the story, I'll give it some points for being in-depth and complex. Good character art, too.
BAD: Practically everything else.

--Final Score-- (3/10)
I swear, if Squaresoft shoves another lump of raw ''bad'' into my face like this, I'm giving up on video games alltogether. Video games--more importantly, Square games--should not ever, ever be this rotten. Don't buy it, and don't rent it. In fact, if it falls from the sky and hits you in the head, trash it. You'll be doing most of the world a huge favor.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/00, Updated 11/01/00