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Front Mission 1st Remake Launches November 30th for $34.99, New Trailer Nov 3rd

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
For anyone holding out hope for a physical copy, forever limited looks to have it, three versions of it to be in fact.

Never gotten anything from them before and honestly didn’t even know they existed.

Prices are in euro but I believe they ship worldwide.

That's cool and all - but 26 euro shipping to the US really kills this as that alone costs almost as much as the game does digitally.

Hoping someone with reasonable shipping gets physical copies, even if from a different region (Asia, Japan, etc.)
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
The remake looks very cheap and dated, worse than PC RTSs from late 2000s. Front Mission deserves better...

Another dumb troll post..

New vs old

FVnakhkXEAEFmZ5.jpg:large
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Most of the bad reviews I've seen say that the graphics and sound are excellent, but they wish this game had more modern QoL improvements and had a rebalanced difficulty that didn't rely so much on random chance.

I'm actually kind of happier with it being a more faithful remake to the original.
 

Arsic

Loves his juicy stink trail scent
Another dumb troll post..

New vs old

FVnakhkXEAEFmZ5.jpg:large

Thanks for posting that. Remake looks superb.

Any word on how this stacks up gameplay and story wise to 3? I’ve messed with 3 once on an emulator and loved it. I’m very excited to get to play the third one but you never really hear any praise on 1&2. I hear more about 4…
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
What does that mean? I've played the original many times, but not recently. However, I don't recall the difficulty being much of an issue.
I think the biggest complaint I've seen so far is that there is too much random chance involved in the attacks (both to-hit and damage) - to the point that a battle that's going well for you can turn sideways in a hurry if you get bad RNG. But that's the whole point - this was made in an era where the strategy elements were made in a way to mimic tabletop strategy games that were also just completed based on dice. This is just digital dice. Modern gamers expect some sort of re-roll or rewind features maybe?

Another gripe I've seen is that there isn't some sort of auto-save between turns and you can only save between battles. Some of the battles can get pretty lengthy. But, the Switch has a standby mode that still works fine if you've got shit to do and want to put it away for a while and come back to it. Making autosaves between rounds would just lead to save-scumming (I guess that would give people their re-roll feature) which kind defeats the point. When you die in this game, you just go back to before the battle begins so you can reformulate your strategy. Modern strategy games like Triangle Strategy give you EXP even when you lose - which is cool, but would throw off the balance in this game that wasn't designed for that.

Lastly, I've seen people complain about the menu system here being "archaic". Which it kind of is, but also this is a pretty complicated game. You're not going to be able to achieve the same level of complexity by dumbing down the menus. Lots of modern games use pictograms and such to help with this, but this game doesn't have any of that. I'm personally pretty excited that they didn't fuck with the menus - because most of the time when that happens, they fuck it up.
 

Pallas

Member
666.66

Is there a physical release too? Is it just digital?

Waiting for a physical release.
www.forever-limited.com seems to be the only place that has physical copies of the game including limited and collector editions of it. It seems a lot of Forever Entertainment games that they remaster/remade are on there like House of the Dead and Panzer, however it’s a European company, so unless you live in a EU country, expect to pay a international fee to get it shipped to you.
 

Roni

Member
I was also wondering if that was some sort of... mistranslation, maybe? Wikipedia says that Manichaeism mostly died out in the 14th century, so nearly everyone on the planet right now could be described as non-Manichean.
It just means the characters aren't black and white: you're not fighting villains, just other people stuck in their own circumstances.
I'd rather get an official translation and american release of the 5th game which was much better received
5's story was fire.
 

Naked Lunch

Member
Hope this does well so we can get further releases into the series.
FM5 gained an almost mythical rep over the years never getting that official PS2 western release.

Im hoping theres a chance this drops to other consoles - really no reason for something this lowkey to be exclusive.
 

Kimahri

Banned
I think the biggest complaint I've seen so far is that there is too much random chance involved in the attacks (both to-hit and damage) - to the point that a battle that's going well for you can turn sideways in a hurry if you get bad RNG. But that's the whole point - this was made in an era where the strategy elements were made in a way to mimic tabletop strategy games that were also just completed based on dice. This is just digital dice. Modern gamers expect some sort of re-roll or rewind features maybe?

Another gripe I've seen is that there isn't some sort of auto-save between turns and you can only save between battles. Some of the battles can get pretty lengthy. But, the Switch has a standby mode that still works fine if you've got shit to do and want to put it away for a while and come back to it. Making autosaves between rounds would just lead to save-scumming (I guess that would give people their re-roll feature) which kind defeats the point. When you die in this game, you just go back to before the battle begins so you can reformulate your strategy. Modern strategy games like Triangle Strategy give you EXP even when you lose - which is cool, but would throw off the balance in this game that wasn't designed for that.

Lastly, I've seen people complain about the menu system here being "archaic". Which it kind of is, but also this is a pretty complicated game. You're not going to be able to achieve the same level of complexity by dumbing down the menus. Lots of modern games use pictograms and such to help with this, but this game doesn't have any of that. I'm personally pretty excited that they didn't fuck with the menus - because most of the time when that happens, they fuck it up.
My problem with the game is that it is old and archaic, but when these games oroginally came out they came with manuals that explained what shit did, what shit meant, and now I have to go to google to figure out what symbol means.

It pisses me off. When you make a remake like this, make sure new players can understand the ins and out. Provide a digital manual or whatever. We didn't just figure it all out back then, we had the manuals for help.

So these big battles with no autosave or quiclsave get really frickin long when you have to redo them because you got stuck doing no damage to the same wanzer for 5 turns and you have no idea what your doing wrong before you go elsewhere for help.

Had the same thing with SMT Nocturne last year. Thankfully for that I still had the PS2 version so I could get the essentials from the manual.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
For people (like me) that were waiting on a physical release, and didn't want to pay 26 eur. shipping,



Looks like they'll be releasing a physical copy in Japan early next year.


I'll be waiting on this release, since paying $75 for a physical copy (when I've already bought the game digitally as well) is a tough pill to swallow.
 

Shifty1897

Member
Thanks for posting that. Remake looks superb.

Any word on how this stacks up gameplay and story wise to 3? I’ve messed with 3 once on an emulator and loved it. I’m very excited to get to play the third one but you never really hear any praise on 1&2. I hear more about 4…
2 never left Japan, so most people haven't played it, while 1st only came to the US with the DS remake. 1st is a good strategy game for its time, but it can be really hard and depend a lot more on RNG that modern strategy games do. I think 1 is generally considered the worst in the mainline series, but only because each sequel iterated on it. 3 is definitely the most popular of the US released games in the series.

I played through about half of 5 using a fan translation and a PS2 emulator and that game was incredible, it's a shame I didn't finish it before my PC died.
 

Power Pro

Gold Member
I was intrigued when these remakes got announced, because it's always been a blind spot in Squaresoft's history for me. I was looking forward to maybe giving these a try, but the lack of a US physical version that I can easily buy in stores has turned me off a little.

Before I pull the trigger on going digital, which is something I often try to avoid, I wanted to ask if this is a game that a newcomer might appreciate? Is the story good?? that's something I really value in my games, a decent story, and I really know nothing about it. Feel like any reviews I've looked up don't talk about it much either.
 

Shifty1897

Member
I was intrigued when these remakes got announced, because it's always been a blind spot in Squaresoft's history for me. I was looking forward to maybe giving these a try, but the lack of a US physical version that I can easily buy in stores has turned me off a little.

Before I pull the trigger on going digital, which is something I often try to avoid, I wanted to ask if this is a game that a newcomer might appreciate? Is the story good?? that's something I really value in my games, a decent story, and I really know nothing about it. Feel like any reviews I've looked up don't talk about it much either.
Each game is self contained but things that happen in one game are interconnected and referenced in others. I think the story is good enough, just don't go in expecting Tactics Ogre. As for newcomers, one is pretty rough from a gameplay perspective, maybe play it with a guide. I haven't played 2 but as I understand it, 2 plays a lot like 3, and 3 is very easy for newcomers to jump into, so if the series interests you, you should be good after you get through the first one.
 

Pallas

Member
Finally got around playing this and I’m pretty impressed with the graphic overhaul from the original version on the super famicom and DS version.

I was super excited that they kept the second scenario from the DS version too. Also there are some included stuff I think like hidden missions and all of the secret gear you can find on certain maps.

I’m glad it’s a faithful remake too and that the developers didn’t try to make it into something different.
 

dacuk

Member
I love this remaster, but it is not without problems... game crashes unexpectedly, or battles just get "stuck", where enemies just stay idle, without doing anything after being attacked and the game just stays frozen.
Hope Forever is working on a patch.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
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