Being the sequel to my self-proclaimed "best game ever", Front Mission 4 has a lot to live up to. The early signs have been so-so - gameplay elements have been changed, the internet browsing system is gone entirely, and the demo portrayed a series of boring or easy battles. But as any RPG-demo can tell you, its hard to really tell how intellectually (tactics) or viscerally (smash bang) exciting the final game will be.
Thankfully, Front Mission 4 has come up smelling like aces so far.
Gameplay is fairly tight. In the demo version, the game seemed abnormally easy as each character was fully set up with chains and skills - not so in the full game. After each battle, the characters in your group earn points that can be used to buy those features, and more: things like extra AP, speed boosts, evade, and other handy upgrades. You can also perform a rank up, which moves to another (more expensive) level of upgrades. It actually feels a bit nicer than in Front Mission 3, where earning skills was more repetition and guesswork than anything else (FM3 skills were built into wanzer parts and had to be randomly activated).
Speaking of skill activation, it happens a lot more often than the previous game. This isn't a bad thing, as it keeps the individual encounters spiced up. Melee damage seems to be way down (the machine gun is far more useful for most unit types than anything else), but I'm hopeful that some ability upgrades down the road will smooth things out.
The Repair Backpack system has left me undecided (in FM3, recovery was only possible through items, while in FM4, backpacks provide an unlimited recovery option). On one hand, it sucks to make items feel so useless, but on the other, the weight and power requirements work out like reducing the number of active units in your squad, so everything does seem to even out. I will probably have more to say later in the game when all of the new backpack types are in use.
If there is one thing I've noticed new Front Mission Players get wrong, it would be gameplay style. Gamers weaned on titles like Advance Wars and RTS games are prone to find the ideal mission solution - optimizing every step of the way, reloading if they don't like their weapon layouts, and trying to avoid every mistake from the get go. In my experience, you're supposed to play the game loose - pick your squad, run up the middle, and adapt to the situation. When things go wrong (somewhat often), then its time to tighten those formations, cherry picking opponents and finding cover. You wouldn't believe how many times in those situations that your Wanzers (robots) will pick up the slack, pulling off 'Hail Mary' style skill chains and staving off death with more bravado than Bill and Ted.
The only real weak point early on is the interface. Most of it is familiar to the Front Mission fan (wanzer customization is no more difficult than in previous games, despite review comments to the contrary), but some of the aesthetic choices during missions really need to be questioned. I mean, five lines of dialogue per text window? And why is everything in dull shades of grey? Do we really need to know the enemy pilot's proficiency with every weapon type? Gamers who are familiar with the series or play a quarter of the game will adapt, but everyone else is going to have to ignore a lot of elements to make it through the early going.
The game does suffer from two other issues on the presentation side of the fence. For one, the characters in the game are never shown as 3D models - only as wanzers or portraits. Its a bit odd considering FM3's 20 polygon humans of wonder. The second quirk has to do with the speech audio, or rather how little there is of it. It's a great dub by video game standards, using a a proven anime studio, but Square-enix really should have gone the extra mile to dub the entirety of the game. As it stands, only major plot points get the voice, leaving text to suffice for everything else.
Petty complaints aside, the game continues to be satisfying. Each level seems to build on another sliver of strategy, whether is be through a newly introduced game mechanic, or just trying out your Wanzer with the skills and abilities you just bought minutes before. I can't wait to see how far it all goes.
