Front Mission

I remember playing this game for the first time about 7 years ago on a Super NES emulator. At that time, it was translated by a fan group who were doing a lot of the Squaresoft translations that never made it to North America for SNES. Front Mission is a really addictive tactic based game. Rather than roam around like a standard Final Fantasy style RPG, they decided to make this game very much like the Final Fantasy Tactics game for Playstation. The game is developed looking at a war from both sides involved. Rather than having foot soldiers running and shooting at each other, soldiers pilot mech suits called Wanzers. Throughout the course of the game, players earn money and weapons in order to purchase better parts for their Wanzer units. Pilots also begin to join your party as you progress through the game making your own unit much larger. Pilots match their skill sets to the type of equipment that their Wanzer unit is outfitted with. This adds some diversity to the types of attacks you can launch as well as what tactics will be employed.

One of the strongest points in this game was the fact that it actually had a story line. Unlike many tactics based games that I have played in the past where its just map after map with no rhyme or reason, this game actually takes you through a whole plot and story that is well drawn out. Every character that you recruit ties well into the story, making it easy to spend hours playing like a standard RPG.

The artwork in the game is also very well done. The Squaresoft style of drawing their characters as being very serious and powerful looking is present in this series as well. The music is not the greatest but still fits with the game quite well.

Overall, if you are into mecha, war, and tactics based games, this is definitely a title that you should pick up for the Nintendo DS. For those who are not too big on the DS or want to go a cheaper route, you can always pick up the translated ROM for the SNES from various sites (Google is your friend).