Posted April 21, 2014
I just started re-playing Front Mission 3 again, an old PlayStation 1 game I hadn't touched in over a decade. I remember quitting sometime in the late-game in some extremely frustrating battle that I died on like 50 times over, after investing about 60 or 70 hours or so into it, my mechs were under-experienced, under-geared, under-monied, and I simply couldn't come up with a strategy against a battle in which you barely won with one nearly-obliterated robot remaining, and then immediately 5 more bad guys jump into the battlefield and you're expected to win that.
Anyway, now it's all coming back to me what I loved about this game, and what this thread is about. The very beginning starts out on a manmade futuristic island metropolis somewhere in Okinawa, with an introduction video which resembles those old short clips that used to air on the Discovery Channel in the '90s... you remember those ones with airy ambient-techno music playing in the background and a female British narrator announcing all the technology! Technology! Technology! Technology that you can look forward to seeing just around the corner.
The entire game has this exact type of mood and feel to it too, including when you access the Network screen and can browse around a Hollywood-style Internet of the future, including dozens of fictional web pages of the various companies and government organizations of Front Mission 3's world. All is not at peace, either; the plot involves world superpowers vying for resources of a newly-formed volcanic island, strife and war breaking out as a result. I'm still at the beginning, but I remember running around most of the Asian coast to places like mainland China, Hong Kong, Seoul, etc. and embarking in massive mecha battles in the middle of various metropolitan areas and even a few rural locations. Also, for a PlayStation 1 game, the artistic detail in the environments was impressive -- something we'd also see when Vagrant Story came out.
The only other game I can think of that resembles Front Mission 3, as far as geopolitical immersion goes, was the earlier Jagged Alliance 2, which happened to also have many of the same features (strategy-RPG, had a fictional internet you could browse, unit micromanagement, geopolitical struggles, etc) and could very well have influenced Front Mission 3's design choices. I never got that far in JA2, so I don't remember if it had any futuristic elements in it like FM3 does.
Now for the part where I ask for recommendations: Are there any other games similar to Front Mission 3, in which it is both geopolitically plausible (and in a way the story really goes into widespread detail) as well as futuristic yet technologically within reach of the next 200 years of where the human race currently is? Because I want to play more games like these -- especially if I get stuck on that same damn two-part battle that made me give up 13 years ago.
Anyway, now it's all coming back to me what I loved about this game, and what this thread is about. The very beginning starts out on a manmade futuristic island metropolis somewhere in Okinawa, with an introduction video which resembles those old short clips that used to air on the Discovery Channel in the '90s... you remember those ones with airy ambient-techno music playing in the background and a female British narrator announcing all the technology! Technology! Technology! Technology that you can look forward to seeing just around the corner.
The entire game has this exact type of mood and feel to it too, including when you access the Network screen and can browse around a Hollywood-style Internet of the future, including dozens of fictional web pages of the various companies and government organizations of Front Mission 3's world. All is not at peace, either; the plot involves world superpowers vying for resources of a newly-formed volcanic island, strife and war breaking out as a result. I'm still at the beginning, but I remember running around most of the Asian coast to places like mainland China, Hong Kong, Seoul, etc. and embarking in massive mecha battles in the middle of various metropolitan areas and even a few rural locations. Also, for a PlayStation 1 game, the artistic detail in the environments was impressive -- something we'd also see when Vagrant Story came out.
The only other game I can think of that resembles Front Mission 3, as far as geopolitical immersion goes, was the earlier Jagged Alliance 2, which happened to also have many of the same features (strategy-RPG, had a fictional internet you could browse, unit micromanagement, geopolitical struggles, etc) and could very well have influenced Front Mission 3's design choices. I never got that far in JA2, so I don't remember if it had any futuristic elements in it like FM3 does.
Now for the part where I ask for recommendations: Are there any other games similar to Front Mission 3, in which it is both geopolitically plausible (and in a way the story really goes into widespread detail) as well as futuristic yet technologically within reach of the next 200 years of where the human race currently is? Because I want to play more games like these -- especially if I get stuck on that same damn two-part battle that made me give up 13 years ago.