If you’re familiar with the Front Mission series, you may remember that Front Mission was the mythical beast that us Western SRPG gamers always wanted to play. Some of us (cough, cough) imported Japanese Super Famicom copies of the original game and struggled through as much as we could in Japanese just to try one of the highest rated strategy games released on the SFC/SNES. Other gamers waited until the DS release to finally give the beloved mech missions a chance in English. In the interim, there have been several fan translations uploaded here and there to give everyone else a chance to blast their way through Front Mission.
Now Forever Entertainment SA has brought us a new release of Front Mission entitled Front Mission 1st: Remake. Instead of a pure straight port however, we’re getting essentially a straight port plus a re-skinned version of the original game. Much like the DS release, this version of Front Mission follows the original SFC release so closely that almost none of the issues that the original had are resolved. The game looks pretty to be sure, but mechanically and technically, there are some notable flaws.
You play Royd Clive, a captain and skilled wanzer pilot in the Oceania Cooperative Union (anyone a 1984 fan?). Royd ends up losing his fiancée in an attack and then is discharged for the incident, falling back on a very Wolverine style of essentially cage fighting with giant walking tanks. Eventually, he’s offered a chance at redemption with a small group of OSU fighters called the Canyon Crows and things ramp up rapidly from there.
What’s interesting about Front Mission is that it’s an incredibly complex and mature script that is remarkably well-written and well-translated. This is not your average JRPG or SRPG. The depth of characters, detail work, and even conversation scripting is several notches above the norm for this era and it’s honestly a delight to play through the game. Royd has depth, the Crows end up becoming distinct personalities rather than throw-away companions, and as the story progresses it’s easy to get sucked into the conflict between the OCU and the United States of the New Continent (USN). Once you’ve made your way through the main scenario, there’s also an expansion of the original game included in this release (just like the DS one) where you play through the war from the other side, taking the reins as Kevin Greenfield for a more challenging second campaign. By the time you’ve finished both games, the stories tie together nicely and you’re ready for the rest of the series as well!
It’s a darn good thing that Front Mission’s plot and writing is so good too. Gameplay is an entirely different story here and while there’s nothing inherently wrong with the overall game, it’s the little things that are inexcusable in a re-release 27 years in the making. Let’s start with the biggest issue first. Front Mission is a mech combat game. And more importantly, the mechs have independent body parts – arms, legs, and body. Take out a mech’s body and they’re toast. Now it would seem like a simple strategy to focus on the core body armor in order to wipe a wanzer out but that just isn’t how things work here. Instead, you commit to combat by moving within attack range of an enemy and then selecting one of the weapons you are armed with. You’ll start out with a rather effective punch attack and a machine gun or missiles on your wanzers but you can soon add more. However, what you can’t do is target enemies!
That’s right, this is a detailed mech game that essentially runs a digital craps game to decide which extremity on the enemy mechs to target! Your highly accurate missile barrage nailed the enemy? Well, too bad, it only took out their left arm and that one didn’t even have a gun! Your punch from literally inches away magically missed with no enemy dodge or somehow hit them in the leg? Well, them’s the breaks. There is absolutely no way to control where your firing patterns are targeted other than ‘the enemy’ and that’s just irritating. And that’s not the only issue here.
On standard difficulty, Front Mission 1st: Remake is hard. It’s not impossible, but the enemy is way more accurate than you are and the upgrades available feel like they don’t give you enough of a chance. It feels like punching above your weight class. Knock the difficulty down a notch and combat is such a walk in the park that you barely feel like you’re being challenged at all and instead are just going through the motions, even though you can’t target body parts. Either way, the strategy itself is interesting with a range of mission parameters and plot-driven combat, but it’s substantially diminished by the randomness of combat.
Visually, Front Mission is a hell of an upgrade from the original SNES version. That’s not to diminish the original game in any way because it’s a marvelous pixel-art isometric adventure. Forever Entertainment has let you choose between the modern and classic versions of the game. That doesn’t extend to the original visuals however and regardless of whether you’re playing in the original mode or the modern mode with the added map and more, you’ll still only be able to enjoy the new and updated graphics. The mods look great too and it’s even fun to pick paint colors.
The original SFC version of the game has a locked isometric perspective that can make things harder to see and the new swanky upgraded visuals have a free moving 360 degree camera that can be raised and lowered, offering an excellent new perspective system to play through the game. The wanzers have burned up arms and legs as you slowly pummel them into scrap and the skid marks and other background visuals are noticeable and well done. The environments feel more alive as well and you really start to feel like you’re leading the Canyon Crows through hell and back in order to save the day for the OCU.
The soundtrack is also subtly updated for Front Mission, preserving the original music but adding in a full range of orchestrated depth that was simply not possible in the SFC version of the game. The tunes are the same but better and the powerful, almost militaristic soundtrack is excellent accompaniment to the otherwise dry process of selecting menu options. Front Mission has always had excellent composers and Front Mission 1st: Remake is no exception.
Honestly, if Forever Entertainment had really wanted to go all out here, they could have just dropped in a handful of changes that would have vastly improved Front Mission. The ability to target wanzer parts is the biggest of course, but a switch-on-the-fly system between the vintage pixel version of the game and the modern visuals like R-Type did a few years back would have been fantastic. It is definitely nice to be able to adjust difficulty on the fly and set the original version of the game but without the original visuals, why bother to play classic mode? It doesn’t make a lot of sense here. Finally, with a franchise as big as Front Mission, it’s a real shame that there are no galleries, no historical retrospective, and no additional content. That’s not to say that Front Mission 1st: Remake needs those things as it’s a solid game in its own right (balance issues not withstanding) but they would have been cool for the fans and there’s a wealth of content out there.
If you’re a mecha fan or a strategy fan, Front Mission 1st: Remake is a no-brainer purchase. For $35 you’re getting the entirety of the excellent original SFC campaign with a solid (not perfect, but solid) translation, the entirety of the second campaign added to the DS release, and a full suite of visual upgrades that make Front Mission seem modern and new. At the same time, there’s a lot more potential here and newcomers to the series might struggle with some of the archaic options available in the game, especially in regards to difficulty and targeting. Overall, this is a mixed bag of a game and if you’re playing it as a retro game, you’ll be ok. Just don’t walk in expecting a fully modernized remake because what you’re really getting is a fast-loading advanced coat of paint on a solid vintage title. Front Mission 1st: Remake is definitely still awesome and worth your time, but not what some fans and gamers might be hoping for.
This review is based on a digital copy of Front Mission 1st: Remake provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well in both. Front Mission 1st: Remake is currently a Switch exclusive game.