Legolas_Katarn
BACKER
Entertaining start with fun campy acting and dialogue that is full of nods to past games and characters from the series' history. The exploration was not done in a point and click style, instead having you explore fairly barren location in first person that can leave the world feeling a bit empty, often talking to people is done by entering certain areas that you don't explore manually. Unfortunately it starts to fall off in the last third as the tone shifts and character moments are mostly left behind for a focus on item hunting and puzzles that are a usual average to mediocre affair.
Worth it more for those that enjoyed the previous games and will like and understand references and character relationships. If you don't have that past with the series it can be an ok time but there are much better options out there for adventure games.
Worth it more for those that enjoyed the previous games and will like and understand references and character relationships. If you don't have that past with the series it can be an ok time but there are much better options out there for adventure games.
1996
Point and click adventure, originally a title aimed more at children it was rewritten to feature more adult content and took on a high budget for the genre as it features frequent animated scenes and high quality voice acting.
Christopher Lloyd stars as Drew Blanc a depressed animator burnt out after a decade working on the Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun Show who is pulled into a setting full of characters he has created. Drew appears as himself in the cartoon world and immediately meets one of his creations, Flux, a more edgy character he created who is not part of his current show. Drew learns that the land is split into three areas with one being full of the happy cute creatures from his show, one with characters more like Flux, and one with a new evil character who has a device that is turning the other cartoons and the environment into dark or barren versions of themselves. Drew and Flux take the job of finding a way to fix the land so he can find a way back to his world.
Entertaining banter between leads and the characters you meet, often succeeds at being funny. Looks good with a lot of small details in the environments or character movement. Good voice acting from people like Christopher Lloyd, Dan Castellaneta, and Tim Curry. Mostly logical puzzles that aren't as ridiculous or pixel hunting filled as many from the time had.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1736601392725549384
Christopher Lloyd stars as Drew Blanc a depressed animator burnt out after a decade working on the Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun Show who is pulled into a setting full of characters he has created. Drew appears as himself in the cartoon world and immediately meets one of his creations, Flux, a more edgy character he created who is not part of his current show. Drew learns that the land is split into three areas with one being full of the happy cute creatures from his show, one with characters more like Flux, and one with a new evil character who has a device that is turning the other cartoons and the environment into dark or barren versions of themselves. Drew and Flux take the job of finding a way to fix the land so he can find a way back to his world.
Entertaining banter between leads and the characters you meet, often succeeds at being funny. Looks good with a lot of small details in the environments or character movement. Good voice acting from people like Christopher Lloyd, Dan Castellaneta, and Tim Curry. Mostly logical puzzles that aren't as ridiculous or pixel hunting filled as many from the time had.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1736601392725549384
The first game in the Elder Scrolls series, not as hard to go back to as some older games like this but is held back by content they likely couldn't get into the game in time and some poor earlier design sensibilities.
There is a large number of classes and the series usual race options give some good variety for character creation. Music is good. Fairly good UI/controls for the time, there are a some more commonly bad for the time and strange control options (shift J for a forward jump) but I have definitely seen worse, being able to add notes to an auto map and ask for directions in a town for people to mark your map is nice, you get a journal that gives you relevant quest data. There are many towns in each region of the continent with a good number staying in a similar or the same location for future games, different parts of the world will have their own music, environments, and architecture. Good flavor text when entering a town, inn, mage guild, or when walking around in some dungeons. Different seasons in the game lead to different text descriptions or effects in the environment. You can toggle the slow pixelation effect on menus/text off if you want to get through menus and conversations faster. Some cool spells like one that allows you to break down many types of walls.
The randomly generated inn quests are often fairly dull, though to be fair to the game, are better than what Skyrim generated all these years before. Health and stat rolls can be very out of your favor where a class like the Barbarian will roll between 1-30 per level and you can get 3-6 stat points to assign at each level up. Never was a fan of random stat gains in all these games that are almost entirely about combat or combat and exploration. Though much of the combat can be made very easy with the use of potions that give elemental resistances, and near the end of the game you pretty much have to make use of these. Named enemies and their followers in quests are rarely a real thing. Many of the main quests will have someone telling you to go somewhere to get the thing that was stolen by some leader or powerful character that you will never see but will often be thanked for dealing with when you get back, I assume they wanted unique bosses at one point but were unable to add them before release.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1382592131366211585
There is a large number of classes and the series usual race options give some good variety for character creation. Music is good. Fairly good UI/controls for the time, there are a some more commonly bad for the time and strange control options (shift J for a forward jump) but I have definitely seen worse, being able to add notes to an auto map and ask for directions in a town for people to mark your map is nice, you get a journal that gives you relevant quest data. There are many towns in each region of the continent with a good number staying in a similar or the same location for future games, different parts of the world will have their own music, environments, and architecture. Good flavor text when entering a town, inn, mage guild, or when walking around in some dungeons. Different seasons in the game lead to different text descriptions or effects in the environment. You can toggle the slow pixelation effect on menus/text off if you want to get through menus and conversations faster. Some cool spells like one that allows you to break down many types of walls.
The randomly generated inn quests are often fairly dull, though to be fair to the game, are better than what Skyrim generated all these years before. Health and stat rolls can be very out of your favor where a class like the Barbarian will roll between 1-30 per level and you can get 3-6 stat points to assign at each level up. Never was a fan of random stat gains in all these games that are almost entirely about combat or combat and exploration. Though much of the combat can be made very easy with the use of potions that give elemental resistances, and near the end of the game you pretty much have to make use of these. Named enemies and their followers in quests are rarely a real thing. Many of the main quests will have someone telling you to go somewhere to get the thing that was stolen by some leader or powerful character that you will never see but will often be thanked for dealing with when you get back, I assume they wanted unique bosses at one point but were unable to add them before release.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1382592131366211585
1993
Very solid beat em up game. Sound and feel of attacks appropriately weighty. Even without a dash ability the characters are able to keep up well with groups of enemies and move or react quickly when surrounded with their attacks both having the needed range and allowing you to quickly alternate between attack in one direction then turning to attack in the other. Most characters have some amusing attacks such as combos that you can turn into uppercuts, the female character having aerial throws and her main attack being a blindly fast slapping combo, one of their health damaging attacks targets enemies in a circle around them and hits them with lightning. Multi shot rocket launcher pick up is fun to use.
Nothing too interesting music or stage design wise but there is some nice little details and some amusing background civilian characters.
Nothing too interesting music or stage design wise but there is some nice little details and some amusing background civilian characters.
2002
Side scrolling action game that plays and looks like a less interesting Metal Slug. Most obvious feature change from Metal Slug is the lack of vehicles while the unique thing about this game is that each character has a "pet" following them that can release an attack after you hold down shoot or it can be converted to a shield that stays until enough damage is taken and is recharged through melee attacks. Visuals and enemies pay homage to Metal Slug and look good but never reach the better moments in that series.
2017
Improves on the first game in every way with better atmosphere, exploration, stealth, horror elements, and use of STEM. Excellent aesthetic throughout the game with a strong starting antagonist that leads to some of the best visual moments in a horror title I've seen while the evolution of the main character and STEM lead to one of the most badass scenes I've seen in a game. Instead of frequently feeling like a mediocre attempt at being Resident Evil 1/4 as the first Evil Within did the sequel successfully does its own thing to end up as one of the best action horror games I've played.
Does starts to fall off towards the end with a few cliche bad cutscenes moments, new antagonists after the first each start becoming less interesting than the previous. Still has a poor camera at times that can force your vision to places away from what you would want to focus on in a way that can get you hit or killed.
Does starts to fall off towards the end with a few cliche bad cutscenes moments, new antagonists after the first each start becoming less interesting than the previous. Still has a poor camera at times that can force your vision to places away from what you would want to focus on in a way that can get you hit or killed.
2022
Some style, almost no substance. Attempts to capture the feel of classic samurai films with a monochromatic style but a short and dull story and combat that starts awkward and bland and gets worse makes it hard to recommend.
Combat lacks a visceral feel as even some of the weakest enemies can just ignore and attack through your hits, all getting worse halfway through the game when you start to fight undead and spirits. Combos and parries don't respond well, and parries don't really time like they do in normal video games while also being much easier to do than in most games that have them. Dull collectible hunting, a lot of useless lore items but you can also miss health and stamina increasing items as well as some combos of which there are already few of. All but the most basic enemies will likely have you just using a light, light, heavy combo to stun them to allow for an instant kill finisher that will also regenerate some of your health, these finishers tend to be the only hits that have weight and good looking contact to them but there aren't that many and you will see the same ones even among different styles of enemies. The larger bosses from the later chapters seem to barely function in this style of game and can even just be beaten through sheer brute force on the normal difficulty.
Going from more free explorations to the fights that lock you to only moving left and right once enemies attack leads to some odd moments as enemies can get in each others way and you find you can't quite hit some targets that haven't fully entered the locked plane of movement when other enemies or the environment is in the way. You have to manually turn around with a button press to fight enemies on both sides of you but you quickly get the ability to block from other direction and attacks that can attack behind you and turn you around, that combined with most enemies being in front of you anyway tends to make being surrounded a fairly pointless feature. When it is always easy to just charge the ones in front with a stunning attack anyway I never found much use for all the backwards spin and attack combos you can do, some even coming near the very end of the game when they no longer matter at all. You unlock three ranged weapons that can get you some easy kills while you have ammo for them but none feel particularly satisfying to use. There are some nice visual moments often involving a way an encounter is framed or the background or by the use of fire and water effects but just as often an odd camera angle or the brightness of a certain area can make it difficult to make out enemy attacks.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1733994635239080025
Video: https://youtu.be/1Jla94SsHeg?si=nizpyrRAWYZYiIpe
Combat lacks a visceral feel as even some of the weakest enemies can just ignore and attack through your hits, all getting worse halfway through the game when you start to fight undead and spirits. Combos and parries don't respond well, and parries don't really time like they do in normal video games while also being much easier to do than in most games that have them. Dull collectible hunting, a lot of useless lore items but you can also miss health and stamina increasing items as well as some combos of which there are already few of. All but the most basic enemies will likely have you just using a light, light, heavy combo to stun them to allow for an instant kill finisher that will also regenerate some of your health, these finishers tend to be the only hits that have weight and good looking contact to them but there aren't that many and you will see the same ones even among different styles of enemies. The larger bosses from the later chapters seem to barely function in this style of game and can even just be beaten through sheer brute force on the normal difficulty.
Going from more free explorations to the fights that lock you to only moving left and right once enemies attack leads to some odd moments as enemies can get in each others way and you find you can't quite hit some targets that haven't fully entered the locked plane of movement when other enemies or the environment is in the way. You have to manually turn around with a button press to fight enemies on both sides of you but you quickly get the ability to block from other direction and attacks that can attack behind you and turn you around, that combined with most enemies being in front of you anyway tends to make being surrounded a fairly pointless feature. When it is always easy to just charge the ones in front with a stunning attack anyway I never found much use for all the backwards spin and attack combos you can do, some even coming near the very end of the game when they no longer matter at all. You unlock three ranged weapons that can get you some easy kills while you have ammo for them but none feel particularly satisfying to use. There are some nice visual moments often involving a way an encounter is framed or the background or by the use of fire and water effects but just as often an odd camera angle or the brightness of a certain area can make it difficult to make out enemy attacks.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1733994635239080025
Video: https://youtu.be/1Jla94SsHeg?si=nizpyrRAWYZYiIpe
Horizontal shooter where you have a basic straight shot but the main feature is that your other attack fires a missile that can do damage and destroy certain enemy ships but for a select few they will change into an outline of themselves that you can fly into that then transforms you into that ship. The ships you can change into have their own main weapon and an alternate fire that might be a three use powerful attack or that allows you to reorient your weapons. Being destroyed in this form takes you back to your starting ship. It's a fun mechanic, the music is decent, and it has a nice opening scene. Problems come from the majority of ships you change into having a very large hit box, top of being difficult to dodge shot patterns the last two stages start creating obstacles that you can barely get through or can't get through with the ships available to you. If you lose those ships your main ship just isn't fun to play with its weak attacks and slow movement, and while you do get a few lives on each continue that respawn you on the spot this is rarely helpful in the boss or miniboss fights where you are likely to die because your small ship isn't a good match for those bosses, losing all your lives resets the stage on a continue. Stage design isn't very interesting. Some of the ship types shot make a fairly loud and annoying sound that is also playing over the music constantly.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1731540388111139149
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1731540388111139149
2023
DC Dual Force presents a fairly generic multiplayer focused card game with a few varied elements and single player comic episodes with scenes and storylines taken from comics to play through that have some effort to them but are never actually interesting to play.
The way the game works is that you choose two leaders from factions that include Might (characters including ones like Superman/Wonder Woman), Tactics (Batman/Cyborg), Energy (Zatana/Flash), Anarchy (Harley/Doomsday), and Tyranny (Poison Ivy/Black Adam) and are than able to make a 40 card deck with the cards you have that include the factions that your leaders belong to. The board has six spaces to deploy characters with your heroes starting on the the bottom left and right, characters played in front of others block the ones behind them from being attacked (certain abilities aside). You start with a bronze token, then get two, then one becomes silver, both silver, one gold, and last both gold with those tokens being used to play cards that either have a free, bronze, silver, or gold cost associated with them or possibly with their deploy abilities. Each character might have passive and active abilities and their own damage and health stats, you choose who or if they attack each turn hoping to defeat your opponents two leaders to win the game. Each leader starts with their own health value (typically somewhere between 18-24) and might have a passive ability as well as a skill you can activate after they gain enough charges, a charge is gained on each turn other than the first and possibly by certain cards or characters played and these skills might activate varied abilities and/or give your leader a temporary damage stat that allows them to attack like another character.
There are over 300 cards and around 4 leaders per faction and having those two leaders and their abilities is an interesting touch and the factions give you different kinds of tactics to focus a deck around but most everything else is just too generic and not a great use of DC characters. There are so many cards and character abilities that can just kill one, all, or move cards back to your hand and your limited card draws unless you build a deck focused on drawing more cards combined with the natural advantage the first player can have with possibly multiple characters being readied before yours can lead to frequent dull moments or ones where you know you've lost before the game even really started. Some leaders like Aquaman and Batman seem significantly better than others and having those times where you play Superman and Hal Jordan for a turn just to have your opponents turn be the I play my kill everything cards, and you two do that back and forth until someone starts drawing non character cards they don't have a use for at the time and lose because they can't do anything are frequent and boring.
It's pretty easy to unlock cards. I paid $10 just to have access to the other half of locked off comics available to subscribers and did most of the challenges available in about a months time and have access to every card except for some of the rarest and some leaders and have more than enough in game free atom currency that I could use to get access to whatever I wanted if I needed something for a deck type. The artwork on the cards is ok, nothing great like in something like the Lord of the Rings Fantasy Flight card game or some of the alternate art Marvel Snap cards but decent. You can unlock "shiny" versions of cards and while many of those are just kind of a sparkly effect it was nice to see that effect be different for some cards that it seems less appropriate for or added visual effects to certain cards like a Batman card having the smoke in his card become animated. There aren't too many unique in game effects but some cards have their own animations like playing Wonder Woman's lasso will show a lasso grab and move an opponent's card or playing Green Arrow who has an ability to fire arrows at enemy cards when he deploys will show an arrow shooting up from his card and landing on your target.
The comics would be an interesting element and they do add a bit extra to it where each comic might have their own events or choices that can give you different bonuses or access to different cards and leader options but your base decks in these modes is typically bad (and doesn't let you actually view what is in it) and the AI ranges from just being bad to being near suicidal.
At release there seemed to be more problems with the UI but that seems to have been worked out, it's still not all organized well but it seems to function correctly.
While the game continues to get patches and new content, I can't see it lasting that long due to the very limited player count.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1730584299781652491
The way the game works is that you choose two leaders from factions that include Might (characters including ones like Superman/Wonder Woman), Tactics (Batman/Cyborg), Energy (Zatana/Flash), Anarchy (Harley/Doomsday), and Tyranny (Poison Ivy/Black Adam) and are than able to make a 40 card deck with the cards you have that include the factions that your leaders belong to. The board has six spaces to deploy characters with your heroes starting on the the bottom left and right, characters played in front of others block the ones behind them from being attacked (certain abilities aside). You start with a bronze token, then get two, then one becomes silver, both silver, one gold, and last both gold with those tokens being used to play cards that either have a free, bronze, silver, or gold cost associated with them or possibly with their deploy abilities. Each character might have passive and active abilities and their own damage and health stats, you choose who or if they attack each turn hoping to defeat your opponents two leaders to win the game. Each leader starts with their own health value (typically somewhere between 18-24) and might have a passive ability as well as a skill you can activate after they gain enough charges, a charge is gained on each turn other than the first and possibly by certain cards or characters played and these skills might activate varied abilities and/or give your leader a temporary damage stat that allows them to attack like another character.
There are over 300 cards and around 4 leaders per faction and having those two leaders and their abilities is an interesting touch and the factions give you different kinds of tactics to focus a deck around but most everything else is just too generic and not a great use of DC characters. There are so many cards and character abilities that can just kill one, all, or move cards back to your hand and your limited card draws unless you build a deck focused on drawing more cards combined with the natural advantage the first player can have with possibly multiple characters being readied before yours can lead to frequent dull moments or ones where you know you've lost before the game even really started. Some leaders like Aquaman and Batman seem significantly better than others and having those times where you play Superman and Hal Jordan for a turn just to have your opponents turn be the I play my kill everything cards, and you two do that back and forth until someone starts drawing non character cards they don't have a use for at the time and lose because they can't do anything are frequent and boring.
It's pretty easy to unlock cards. I paid $10 just to have access to the other half of locked off comics available to subscribers and did most of the challenges available in about a months time and have access to every card except for some of the rarest and some leaders and have more than enough in game free atom currency that I could use to get access to whatever I wanted if I needed something for a deck type. The artwork on the cards is ok, nothing great like in something like the Lord of the Rings Fantasy Flight card game or some of the alternate art Marvel Snap cards but decent. You can unlock "shiny" versions of cards and while many of those are just kind of a sparkly effect it was nice to see that effect be different for some cards that it seems less appropriate for or added visual effects to certain cards like a Batman card having the smoke in his card become animated. There aren't too many unique in game effects but some cards have their own animations like playing Wonder Woman's lasso will show a lasso grab and move an opponent's card or playing Green Arrow who has an ability to fire arrows at enemy cards when he deploys will show an arrow shooting up from his card and landing on your target.
The comics would be an interesting element and they do add a bit extra to it where each comic might have their own events or choices that can give you different bonuses or access to different cards and leader options but your base decks in these modes is typically bad (and doesn't let you actually view what is in it) and the AI ranges from just being bad to being near suicidal.
At release there seemed to be more problems with the UI but that seems to have been worked out, it's still not all organized well but it seems to function correctly.
While the game continues to get patches and new content, I can't see it lasting that long due to the very limited player count.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1730584299781652491
2014
A planning focused real time with pause tactical game that has you managing a SWAT team in what can feel like a top down Rainbow Six but with a much better tool to create and alter plans. You will draw out paths for each character, choose facing directions, when and how to use gadgets like flash grenades or tools to breach into rooms and those plans can be easily altered on the fly once the game begins or with you taking more direct control of one person at a time as you handle their movement and facing (though things like shooting will still be done based on that particular characters weapon, abilities, and different statistics. As you play you unlock more equipment and weapon options as well as class options that give your playstyle more variety. Despite the focus on planning and choosing character facing, your units do react well enough to obvious threats by themselves where they won't just ignore being shot or shot at because you didn't orient them another few degrees to the left or right. The only real negative I had back when I played it was an inability to que up commands when dealing with doors and that despite it being a PC game some design choices that gave it more of a look like it was meant for a phone.
There is already a wide variety of developer made maps to make the amount of content well worth a purchase but you can find player made content as well.
There is already a wide variety of developer made maps to make the amount of content well worth a purchase but you can find player made content as well.
2014
Control characters in real time as they explore derelict ships with a variety of potential threats, including your own systems needing to be adjusted to maintain your view of the situation.
Great and atmospheric concept but mostly poorly executed, and a somewhat similar idea has been done better now with this developer's future games and by the game Duskers. High RNG, lack of options for character control, poor character creation options and system, different enemy types that really just change what equipment you will want to use, poor cloning system, lack of interesting character interactions or environment information, needless amount of babying your characters in a way that seems to give you too much control and not enough. Too short and limited in options.
Can be worth a look as it even now is somewhat unique but there are better options even by its own developers.
Great and atmospheric concept but mostly poorly executed, and a somewhat similar idea has been done better now with this developer's future games and by the game Duskers. High RNG, lack of options for character control, poor character creation options and system, different enemy types that really just change what equipment you will want to use, poor cloning system, lack of interesting character interactions or environment information, needless amount of babying your characters in a way that seems to give you too much control and not enough. Too short and limited in options.
Can be worth a look as it even now is somewhat unique but there are better options even by its own developers.
1991
Sequel that changes little from the previous rail shooter. A bit more variety in visuals and how you move around certain levels but has the same fairly dull enemy design. It feels like your weapon is a bit more effective and enemies take longer most of the time to start doing damage but that start to get ruined in the last 1/3 due to sheer numbers of enemies and different angles you are attacked from. After the final boss you get 30 seconds to stop self destruct and will almost certainly get an instant game over if you don't already know what is coming or didn't die on purpose to get your bomb weapon back.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1728578908503912525
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1728578908503912525
1990
A fairly short Operation Wolf style rail shooter. For 1990 some good destruction and scrolling effects and the brief story has some funny moments between stages. Your weapon fires full auto without a need to reload and you can launch a rocket that destroys everything on the screen and stops attacks at you but that will also hit civilians and lose you health if they are around. Good music. You probably won't have died that much by the end but it also isn't much of a fair challenge as the number of enemies on the screen combined with the amount of hits things take and the somewhat slow rate of fire your automatic weapon shoots at can make it extremely difficult to avoid damage, even more so during parts where multiple enemies appear at the same time and you would just need to know which shoots first to avoid taking hits.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1726072381524091261
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1726072381524091261
1995
A poor lightgun horror game with some brief entertaining bloody moments. At around 45 minutes it overstays its welcome, mostly by dragging every situation or area out longer than it has to. Some very cheap enemy design as well as placement of civilians that if you hit will lose you health. Mostly dull powerups as you already basically have a shotgun and the pickups tend to have you firing the same kind of shot but doing more damage or with some minor effect differences. A later stage has an instant game over state if you miss finding some items or don't use them in the correct order at a door leading to the final boss.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1725427764642422834
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1725427764642422834
Front Mission 1st comes to modern platforms with a simple but good visual upgrade and the features of the two former remakes intact while maintaining the original odd mechanics that made the later games better.
This is the third remake of the original Front Mission that keeps the former remakes added gameplay elements while adding new game plus and more difficulty options while making changes to the visuals, camera control, and UI. The 2003 Playstation remake of the original SNES game added the second campaign that plays like one of the later Front Mission titles with each character that joins you having more characterization and more conversations between missions, more chances to talk with your squad members, more air and vehicle enemies to fight, gives more characterization to people you meet or fight in the main campaign, involves some characters from the then upcoming Front Mission 4, and is the stronger campaign in general despite being a bit shorter. The DS remake added some Front Mission 2 and Front Mission 5 cameos, equipable parts from later games in the series, and nine secret missions across both campaigns. The only thing I noticed missing here was that in the final after credit scene of the main scenario only the main story pilots show up at the end, with none of the side characters and one slightly main not appearing with a line or two like they do in the other versions of the game, odd thing to remove but not a big loss since they had almost no personality or scenes and never showed up in the next four games.
The gameplay is a fairly simple turn based mech game where each character pilots a Wanzer which has a has a body, left and right arm, and leg part with the arms able to equip both a handheld or built in weapon and a shoulder mounted missile launcher or shield that you can use to add to your defense when you are unable to attack or if you decide to defend instead of counterattacking. Pilots rank up their skills in short, long, melee, and dodge from 1-9,999 with them becoming more accurate (or better at avoiding) and doing more damage (never found anything that knew what exact calculations are) every time they are attacked or use a weapon type with them getting more experience when they destroy a body part. Destroying the body destroys the Wanzer, arms disable weapons equipped to it, and legs can reduce movement speed (and maybe reduce dodge, people didn't seem sure or how much). Every pilot has a certain weapon experience level where once they reach a certain point, that is different per character, they can learn a skill once they raise their main level (levels only add very small amounts of XP to every skill and unlock a skill if you reached the requisite).
Short ranged weapons give you duel where you are forced to use the skill every time and can choose a body part for all your shots or your one shot to aim at with a severe to no accuracy penalty depending on the skill level, switch allows you a chance to attack with your off hand weapon if they are both short ranged after your first attack and can chain multiple times while also allowing you to switch your duel target, and speed adds to the number of bullets you can fire. Melee gives you first that allows you to attack before an enemy when otherwise melee attackers go last, stun that can stun an enemy both stopping their attack if it goes off before they attack and stunning them on the map screen if other units attack them but with a chance they can wake up, and double which works like switch but with two melee weapons. Long range experience can unlock guide which works like the short range duel skill. These skills mean that short is significantly better than everything else just by the massive amounts of damage you can do, and means that typically the SMG style weapons are a much better choice than rifles or shotguns once you unlock speed (even more so since the weapons don't actually behave differently in Front Mission 1 even all having the same 1 tile range). Long is more of a weapon type just to have to weaken enemies and missile launchers run out of ammo. Close is good in the early game but massively falls of due to skills leading to a damage drop when compared to short weapons and the game just seemed to forget to add new melee weapons to the game for some time while all other weapons are getting multiple upgrades. You have no way of knowing but some pilots just can't unlock certain skills making some much worse choices than others. Once you get a skill raising its level from 1 to 3 is random and has a chance of happening when the skill is used. So when you first unlock duel and have a 50% accuracy drop you want that to level up quickly and that might rank up in one use or it might rank up after 100 uses. There is also some UI issues with the game where you just aren't always given information that you really want to know, like the damage status of units being attacked and enemy status when they are attacking you and what weapon is where on their mech before you switch to the combat screen after choosing your weapon or defense options (this was still also a problem in Front Mission 2).
It's a system that all works well enough but gives more options in future games with a few of them somewhat showing up in the second campaign that has things like a few rifles that can be used at a distance.
Outside of combat you can make use of an arena to gain money or experience, talk to a few characters at a bar in each town, buy new parts for your units (with new parts coming at an annoyingly fast rate in the main campaign, even worse when you are upgrading more total units and constantly running out of money unless you use the arena). There is a variety of different looking styles and even legs parts that handle movement differently but so many of them are just statistically worse options and the leg parts don't make a huge difference with certain movements types not being seen much or not being given as many upgrades to make them that viable. The second campaign adds the ability to speak to your squad members while in towns or at bases and that give them all a bit more personality that would be found in the later games in the series. The stories set up elements of later events and some of the themes and atmosphere of later games but there is not a huge amount of plot yet, especially not in the primary campaign where moments that should have a bigger impact or often quickly gotten through.
The remake also adds a great looking tactical map view you can switch to that could be used as the main UI for an entire type of game, while also serving absolutely no real purpose in this game and not allowing you to move units on it even though everything about it seems to have been made for it.
Front Mission is decent game with a good soundtrack and unique art style that adds a lot of personality and that all lead to more interesting and better titles that expanded on what this game started in the future (even the SNES spin-off Front Mission Gun Hazard is one of the best games on the platform) and if you are going to get into the series you might as well start here.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1724717342188572844
This is the third remake of the original Front Mission that keeps the former remakes added gameplay elements while adding new game plus and more difficulty options while making changes to the visuals, camera control, and UI. The 2003 Playstation remake of the original SNES game added the second campaign that plays like one of the later Front Mission titles with each character that joins you having more characterization and more conversations between missions, more chances to talk with your squad members, more air and vehicle enemies to fight, gives more characterization to people you meet or fight in the main campaign, involves some characters from the then upcoming Front Mission 4, and is the stronger campaign in general despite being a bit shorter. The DS remake added some Front Mission 2 and Front Mission 5 cameos, equipable parts from later games in the series, and nine secret missions across both campaigns. The only thing I noticed missing here was that in the final after credit scene of the main scenario only the main story pilots show up at the end, with none of the side characters and one slightly main not appearing with a line or two like they do in the other versions of the game, odd thing to remove but not a big loss since they had almost no personality or scenes and never showed up in the next four games.
The gameplay is a fairly simple turn based mech game where each character pilots a Wanzer which has a has a body, left and right arm, and leg part with the arms able to equip both a handheld or built in weapon and a shoulder mounted missile launcher or shield that you can use to add to your defense when you are unable to attack or if you decide to defend instead of counterattacking. Pilots rank up their skills in short, long, melee, and dodge from 1-9,999 with them becoming more accurate (or better at avoiding) and doing more damage (never found anything that knew what exact calculations are) every time they are attacked or use a weapon type with them getting more experience when they destroy a body part. Destroying the body destroys the Wanzer, arms disable weapons equipped to it, and legs can reduce movement speed (and maybe reduce dodge, people didn't seem sure or how much). Every pilot has a certain weapon experience level where once they reach a certain point, that is different per character, they can learn a skill once they raise their main level (levels only add very small amounts of XP to every skill and unlock a skill if you reached the requisite).
Short ranged weapons give you duel where you are forced to use the skill every time and can choose a body part for all your shots or your one shot to aim at with a severe to no accuracy penalty depending on the skill level, switch allows you a chance to attack with your off hand weapon if they are both short ranged after your first attack and can chain multiple times while also allowing you to switch your duel target, and speed adds to the number of bullets you can fire. Melee gives you first that allows you to attack before an enemy when otherwise melee attackers go last, stun that can stun an enemy both stopping their attack if it goes off before they attack and stunning them on the map screen if other units attack them but with a chance they can wake up, and double which works like switch but with two melee weapons. Long range experience can unlock guide which works like the short range duel skill. These skills mean that short is significantly better than everything else just by the massive amounts of damage you can do, and means that typically the SMG style weapons are a much better choice than rifles or shotguns once you unlock speed (even more so since the weapons don't actually behave differently in Front Mission 1 even all having the same 1 tile range). Long is more of a weapon type just to have to weaken enemies and missile launchers run out of ammo. Close is good in the early game but massively falls of due to skills leading to a damage drop when compared to short weapons and the game just seemed to forget to add new melee weapons to the game for some time while all other weapons are getting multiple upgrades. You have no way of knowing but some pilots just can't unlock certain skills making some much worse choices than others. Once you get a skill raising its level from 1 to 3 is random and has a chance of happening when the skill is used. So when you first unlock duel and have a 50% accuracy drop you want that to level up quickly and that might rank up in one use or it might rank up after 100 uses. There is also some UI issues with the game where you just aren't always given information that you really want to know, like the damage status of units being attacked and enemy status when they are attacking you and what weapon is where on their mech before you switch to the combat screen after choosing your weapon or defense options (this was still also a problem in Front Mission 2).
It's a system that all works well enough but gives more options in future games with a few of them somewhat showing up in the second campaign that has things like a few rifles that can be used at a distance.
Outside of combat you can make use of an arena to gain money or experience, talk to a few characters at a bar in each town, buy new parts for your units (with new parts coming at an annoyingly fast rate in the main campaign, even worse when you are upgrading more total units and constantly running out of money unless you use the arena). There is a variety of different looking styles and even legs parts that handle movement differently but so many of them are just statistically worse options and the leg parts don't make a huge difference with certain movements types not being seen much or not being given as many upgrades to make them that viable. The second campaign adds the ability to speak to your squad members while in towns or at bases and that give them all a bit more personality that would be found in the later games in the series. The stories set up elements of later events and some of the themes and atmosphere of later games but there is not a huge amount of plot yet, especially not in the primary campaign where moments that should have a bigger impact or often quickly gotten through.
The remake also adds a great looking tactical map view you can switch to that could be used as the main UI for an entire type of game, while also serving absolutely no real purpose in this game and not allowing you to move units on it even though everything about it seems to have been made for it.
Front Mission is decent game with a good soundtrack and unique art style that adds a lot of personality and that all lead to more interesting and better titles that expanded on what this game started in the future (even the SNES spin-off Front Mission Gun Hazard is one of the best games on the platform) and if you are going to get into the series you might as well start here.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1724717342188572844