Front Mission 4

Written by Adam Woolcott  on July 22, 2004

Full Review: Big ass mech squash your puny head!

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For quite a while, the Front Mission franchise has been one of Squaresoft's biggest sleepers Ц while Final Fantasy gets all the attention, Square's strategy/RPG hybrid has maintained its own following, despite only one entry in the series actually coming to the US before, in Front Mission 3 for PlayStation. It's popular and beloved for a reason however Ц tactical, challenging mech-based strategy and an epic storyline (something that, you know, Square is known for) to go along with insane amounts of customization for each СWanzer' in the game. The first entry for the PlayStation 2, and the first under the Square Enix brand, Front Mission 4, continues this famed gameplay mechanic, offering a lengthy, customizable, difficult, yet ultimately well-done strategy/RPG game with a ton of cool gameplay elements Ц if you like this sort of thing. It has some strange AI flaws and can get a bit repetitive for some, and can get extremely challenging if you're not apt to spend time learning how the game works, but no matter, FM4 is a great buy for more strategic RPG fans who think Final Fantasy is a bit too light in the depth department. It won't convert you if you're not into this genre (it might push you out, actually), but if you're part of the choir being preached to, this is right up your alley.

Front Mission 4 takes place some 100 years in the future, in an alternate future based on reality (a strange thing for a Square Enix game). In this era, much of the wars involve huge mechs called Wanzers (pronounced Vaanzers), with accomplished pilots handling them. In the case of Front Mission 4, you actually have two separate storylines involving mech pilots Ц firstly, Elsa, a former Wanzer pilot in the French Army, and the rest of her Durandal crew. Their job is to investigate happenings in Eastern European regions, going to Germany, Poland, and other such locations. On the other hand, you also play a story involving Darryl, a СAmerican' Wanzer pilot who comes off along with his friends as part of the U.C.S. army as complete slackers. However, when they get involved in a crisis with a crazy, power-hungry Governor of Venezuela, the destinies change. Naturally, the two storylines eventually collide. Unfortunately, the story is not very well presented, especially because there's really no Сcutscenes' to tell it. Instead, it feels very old-school, with pop-up windows and character art next to it, taking place at empty backdrops. Considering how Square Enix has created some marvelous storytelling devices with many of their other games, it's a bit awkward and backwards to see the presentation like this.

Thankfully, in a game like this, the storyline is a means to an end Ц it's the strategy gameplay that is the star of the show. And believe me, Front Mission 4 has a lot of that. To its credit, FM4 has a very gradual and fair learning curve for the first few hours. When you begin, the battles are basic, safe, and require little more than understanding the battle system and how to move around on the map and how the AP system (read: how many points you use per turn) works. It lets you learn the very simple basics of the square-to-square based movement system so you're able to handle normal combat without too many mistakes. Eventually, you start learning the complicated things, like Links. Links let youЕuhЕlink up with a party member for both attack and defense purposes, adding a bit more damage to an enemy during a specific turn, or a defense measure. Of course, your enemies can also link, so you too run the risk. It takes some time to learn, but the pace of the game lets you do so, and because you can actually go into the Simulator between missions to practice (as well as earn some scant experience points, as well as points to spend on upgrades), you have a safe environment to learn it all in. Once you get Links down, you start learning more stuff, and the game gets extremely complicated, and extremely challenging as well. There's a certain brutality to the game despite the AI flaws we'll discuss later on.

There's also another Сgame' to Front Mission 4, and that's the customization options. Like any good strat-RPG, there's enough customization depth to last hours on end, if not longer. You could seriously spend hours upon hours at a time just browsing through different parts for your mechs, to find out just what works best in a particular mission. Then you can spend some time on the abilities screen, figuring out the helpful skills and upgrades can help you get a needed edge. In all honesty, this can be a chore merely because you'll have to do this a lot (we'll get into it), but man, if you like customization of Wanzers, FM4 will let you fiddle, tweak, and decorate to your hearts content. In conjunction with the Simulator modes, it's possible to spend more time prepping for a mission than the mission itself.

With all that in mind, it's obvious to see there are a lot of intangibles when it comes to enjoying this game. While early missions are short and simplistic, you eventually come across long, difficult, and dangerous missions that could sap the life out of an impatient gamer. While there's a quicksave to save during a mission, it's still possible to entirely cripple your plans of attack by messing up here and there. There's a lot of trial and errorЕwhich is fine in short bursts sometimes, but when you get missions that can last over an hour and consist of hundreds of turns just to win, it can get incredibly frustrating. And since much of success must come with the ability to understand just exactly what weapons and other accessories for your Wanzer work on specific missions, the micro-management can be daunting. Simply put, if you don't have the time to put into this game, for strategy, tweaking, simulating, and other preparations before an actual missionЕor don't want to have to possibly repeat lengthy battles more than once, I suggest you skip Front Mission 4 and find something a little less demanding, because this game will only frustrate you.

However, the game could have been much harder if the AI was a little more intelligent and less artificial. Since you usually won't be attacked by far-away enemies until you either approach them or attack with a long-range weapon (missiles), it's possible to slowly pick away at the enemies with a little less damage, though normally you'll be competing against merciless opponents. Square probably left it this way for a reason, if only because being outnumbered would make the game even more difficult than necessary (it's far from Сdumbed down' but instead it's balanced so you actually have a chance). Also, enemy Wanzers tend to single out one of your characters at a time, meaning you could feasibly just keep repairing the damaged mech with your Сmedic' Wanzer while everyone else remains at full strength Ц though again, if the enemies were to attack everyone, repairing them all would be impossible, leading to more frustration seeing how sadistic your enemies are. Perhaps Square Enix should have spent more time making individual mechs more intelligent instead of throwing 10 of them at you with minimal intelligence, making you the only ones deemed worthy of actually using brains to wipe out enemies.

Another nitpick is certainly in how you attack enemies. Each enemy, as well as yourself, has 4 different damage gauges Ц body (the most important), arms, and legs. If you destroy the legs, they still have movement, but cannot dodge attacks. Take out the arms and you can render them useless in battle as they have no way of attacking (unless their party has a repair mech to restore parts). Knock out the body and the mech is dead. However, you cannot dictate which part to attack, so it's all random. At least a few times I can note times when the enemy was down to a sliver of body health, where a single hit could kill themЕbut my final attack in my turn went towards damaging mostly healthy legs. Thus I had to risk getting eliminated myself just to get another turn to finish the job. The ability to somewhat, if not totally, dictate what body part gets attacked is a natural evolution of Front Mission 4, I think. Maybe next time.

The visual presentation is very ordinary, but not bad - aside from a few great CG-rendered scenes that are usual Square quality, the game tends to appear like a 16-bit game with better renders and worlds Ц but on the other hand, there are few Strategy RPG's that look as good. Most of the worlds are drab and Metal Gear Solid-esque in color choices, meaning it's realistic. Because the field is huge, there are a lot of things rendered on the screen, and being able to tilt, zoom, and rotate the camera means you can get the definitive angle. Truly, these graphics are forgiven merely because you really do need to focus your energy on seeing a large section of the map in order to properly strategize against enemies. There is a lot of detail, it's just higher up because the map is spaced out to show a ton of real estate at one time. Of course, already mentioned the lame Сstoryline' progression visual presentation that's locked in the SNES era; it looks a bit drab and generic seeing how well-told storylines are today, what with cutscenes, lots of action, and whatnot.

On the other hand, despite the bland storyline presentation, when there's voice acting, it's very good. It's also very well done in terms of localization, with intelligence and zero real errors. It's sharp and well done, and the voice actors play their parts very well, and if some are faking accents, they do a fine job of it. However, there's not as much dialog as a typical Square Enix game, which is a bit confusing seeing that there's a ton of disc space left on the DVD to stick on full voice acting. But one can't harp on what's not there, because what is in here works just fine. The music soundtrack is also pretty solid, it has some nice military-themed compositions that tend to repeat a lot in battles (especially in long battlesЕafter an hour even the best-sounding tune can get grating), but fits the theme of the game well. It doesn't have that Сepic' feeling at all times, but it works.