National Anthem of Nowhere (Day 351)

Front Mission 3 has been finished and my PlayStation backlog has been eliminated! Well, for now, anyway. If I'm being completely honest, there are still a lot of PS1 games I could think of to play sometime in the future--but not now! For now I must track down other games I've started and not finished. If it seems like they're worthy of finishing, I'll do it! For some reason, I keep buying new games to make this a more difficult task, but the number of games I've tackled that had before been languishing in my backlog for years makes up for that somewhat.

The PlayStation definitely has a ton of games that are worth playing. I've now beaten 21 of them and I can still think of several I'd like to play, like Breath of Fire III, Wild Arms, and Xenogears. At some point in the future, I may well do that--but for now, I'm moving on to another console. I think I'd had my heart set on PlayStation 2 since I have quite a bit of work to do there, but I'm going to take a little time today to think about it. In a couple hours I'm going to start playing some more Divinity: Original Sin, a game I believe I'll be playing for several weeks, even if we keep up with the marathon sessions on weekends.

Let's take a step back, though, and talk about Front Mission 3 a little bit. I really enjoy the series and of course I'm a big fan of giant robots. Front Mission is definitely more on the pseudo-realistic military end of the spectrum when it comes to robots, whereas Super Robot Wars is as big, flashy, and unrealistic as possible. If I were to be perfectly honest, I'd have to admit preferring the latter, but that doesn't mean that I find Front Mission to be boring. I really do enjoy the series, but some of the mechanics are a tad frustrating for me.

The most engaging part of Front Mission 3 (and indeed for other games in the series as well) lies in the wanzer customization. Constructing a robot from the available parts, upgrading these parts, allocating battle skills, and choosing which weapons to equip is a highly involved and interesting process. Shotguns deal Impact damage and deal an equal amount of damage to all parts--at the expense of lowered accuracy and shorter range. Some leg parts will ignore terrain but only move a few spaces per turn. The accuracy of arm parts is generally proportional to weight. If you want a highly accurate wanzer arm you'll likely need to prepare to carry more weight, meaning you'll be more limited in what other parts and weapons you can equip. The strategy involved in this portion of the game is what keeps me coming back to the series.

Ryogo vs Lukav

I also really like the battle skills and when they activate, it's typically really fun, especially when you chain several skills in a row. Decimating an enemy with three ROFUP1 (120% fired rounds) skill activations in a row is a blast to see in action. Unfortunately, all of these skills are completely random. Skills are inherited from specific wanzer parts. This aspect of the gameplay I can get behind. It gives you an incentive beyond simple statistical upgrades to switch out wanzer parts frequently. However, instead of learning these skills by gaining experience or performing certain actions in combats, these skills are learned completely randomly. You'll just have to keep attacking with that specific part loaded onto your wanzer until it happens. I've gone several battles without ever getting any kind of skill to activate at all. It's very unsatisfying to be so at mercy to a random number generator.

The randomness with which skills activate and are acquired is the primary issue I have with this game. Although I don't personally find the plot or characters to be interesting, I do recognize that they have merit and they don't necessarily detract from the experience at all. Crossing my fingers in every fight and hoping a skill goes off was not necessary as enjoyable. Front Mission 4 handled skills like this a little differently. Although skills had an activation rate in combat and occasionally would not go off, they were not learned randomly. In that case, you spent points acquired through gaining experience to unlock new skills--and you could even purchase them in some cases. I feel this system was an improvement, although I'd prefer if as many elements of randomness could be eliminated from the gameplay as possible.

That's 71 missions!

Despite my frustrations with how skills work in Front Mission 3, I can say with some confidence that it is a game worth playing, particularly if you enjoy strategy RPGs and giant robots, like myself. It lacks the charm and whimsy of a Super Robot Wars game but it does feature a lot more customization. Although I still haven't played FM2 or FM5, I feel the primary draw is always going to be the setup menu, whereas the combat ends up being just an exercise in going through the motions.

Folkloric Feel (Day 350)

I have the next two days off! For the first time in what seems like forever, I have two consecutive days off. It seems like a really privileged and silly thing to whine about, but I really dislike only having one day off, even if I never work two days consecutively. I feel like I can't sit down and really enjoy my free time--at least not as much as I otherwise would. I don't mind working several days in a row if it means I get consecutive days off at the end of it. I feel like it really helps me to relax.

It's happening now though, and for that I am grateful. I'm worried about a lot of things in my life right now such as the status of my job, my health, and my social life, but for the next two days, I feel like I can just shove that stuff aside and concentrate on the things in my life that make me happy. Tonight I'm going to try to make a lot of progress on Front Mission 3 and maybe even finish it if all goes well. If not, I should have plenty of times to do so over the next couple of days, even if a fair chunk of those days will be devoted to Divinity: Original Sin, a game that I find I quite enjoy! I'm eager to return to it after taking a couple of days off and I think my co-op partner is as well.

If I manage to finish Front Mission 3, there's still Fire Emblem left to be completed, but I'm not sure how long that's going to take me. I technically have in the neighborhood of ten missions to go. Judging by the difficulty of some of the missions I've completed so far, they could take me a lot of time. On the other hand, I feel I've already gotten past the hard part. Most of my units are promoted and the majority of the important plot-related items have been gathered. The most difficult thing at this point is going to be training Est, the final pegasus knight sister. Without her, I can't perform the pegasus knight triangle attack. Unforunately, she's level 5 unpromoted on a team full of characters a good 20 levels higher than that. I'll probably stick her with the Starsphere to boost her stats and abuse the Drill Grounds to get her up to speed, because I'd really like to use her.

I haven't thought a lot about what handheld game I'll be playing after I finish Fire Emblem. Bravely Default is an option, but that game's length is intimidating to say the least, even if I have already logged quite a few hours on it. It might be my best best though, since my other primary option is another strategy RPG, a genre that I feel I may be overdoing it on lately. Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis is a game I've been wanting to finish for years but I've just never found the right time. In fact, the only game in the whole series I've finished is Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber. Considering how much I love that game, it's baffling why I haven't finished any of the others. All of them honestly seem like pretty good games.

I'll figure that out when the time comes. For now, I'm going to dive into Front Mission 3 and watch The Office. I decided on a whim that I'd start a rewatch of the series while playing FM3 because I did something very similar when I played Front Mission 4. Now the show will forever remind me of giant robots.

Dilaudid (Day 345)

I think once I finish Front Mission 3 I'm going to go ahead and move on to PlayStation 2 as my next console. I have five or six games left still to complete on the platform and I expect I'll enjoy most of them pretty well. My new video card should make emulating these games a lot easier than before. Since I've played so many strategy RPGs recently, I feel I'll probably play something more traditional, which leaves me with the option of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne or Digital Devil Saga. Of the two, Nocturne definitely seems more intimidating, but I also think I could probably think of a lot to say about it.

Other than the two Digital Devil Saga games and Nocturne, I also have a slew of Nippon Ichi strategy RPGs left to complete on the PS2. I think I lost interest in them initially because they weren't really all that different than Disgaea and there's only so much I can play a game like that without getting burned out. I've never successfully played two Disgaea titles in sequence and the same is also true for any two games by the developer. Actually, I've never finished any of their games except for those in the Disgaea series. I've actually finished all four of the main games in that series, although I haven't yet played Disgaea D2.

It's possible I may write some of those games off if I revisit them and decide they're not for me, but there are few strategy RPGs that I can't at least give a playthrough. La Pucelle: Tactics predates Disgaea and therefore features some prototypical elements that would later become refined and expanded upon in later NIS titles but it still seems valuable as a frame of reference. Still, after juggling Front Mission 3 and Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem, I'm ready to move on to a slightly different genre.

I'm told that Nocturne is a very long and difficult game. The last time I played it, I struggled with my sense of direction. I had a hard time actually figuring out where it was I had to go. I expect this time I"ll keep a walkthrough close at hand so as to avoid losing interest as I progress. I love the art style and atmosphere of the game and have historically enjoyed Shin Megami Tensei games--though admittedly I've only finished games in the Persona series. I've heard from multiple sources that Nocturne is one of the best in the main SMT series so it would likely be a great game for me to invest seriously into finishing.

I've definitely been splitting my focus lately though, and my progress on my backlog has suffered as a result. I have complete confidence that I will finish both Fire Emblem and Front Mission 3, but I'll be doing so a lot later than I'd originally planned. Fire Emblem in particular is taking a tremendous amount of time because of my questionable decision to play the game on hard mode. I haven't hit any huge roadbumps in FM3 and to be honest the pace is a lot faster than FM4, so hopefully that'll be done in the next few days.

This Year (Day 343)

I have finished Borderlands 2! Next on the agenda for co-op will be Divinity: Original Sin but I won't be able to buy that until Friday. Until then we'll probably continue to play Borderlands 2 here and there. I don't expect to hit the level cap or anything, but maybe I'll still jump on from time to time to progress. I like the game a lot, but I can't see investing too much more time into it. I'm in the mood to go out and conquer as many games as possible, as should be patently obvious from the content of this blog over the past few months.

That still leaves me with the two single-player games I'm currently playing to finish. I made some progress on Front Mission 3 today and I played a bit of Fire Emblem last night. FM3 is going smoothly for the most part, but they did just throw a mission at me that requires me to split my eight-man roster into two different squads. Since I've only been using the same four characters for the majority of the game, this prospect is a little troublesome. Some of those characters have really outdated equipment and not a lot of proficiency in their weapons. If this becomes a common trend in the game, I might have to invest a lot more time into training, which will certainly lengthen the game.

In the case of Fire Emblem, I'm regretting more and more my decision to play the game on hard mode. It has been a nightmare just to get to Chapter 10x, where I am now. I've had to sacrifice a couple of playable characters that I otherwise might have ended up using until the end of the game. This is the kind of gameplay decision I do not relish being forced to make, but the difficulty made it close to impossible to go any other way. Combine this with a series of missable items that are required to make it pass chapter 20 and you have a recipe for frustration.

Still, I think that once I start promoting some of my units, things will start to go a lot more smoothly. Many of my higher level first-tier units have several capped stats already. Once they reach the next tier and get those stat bonuses, they'll become quite formidable. I'm hoping that my myrmidon avatar will gain a lot of strength as a swordmaster, because she is actually lagging behind in that department despite possessing incredibly high skill and speed.

I probably won't be able to start playing Divinity for real until Saturday night, although I"ll probably buy it the day before. I've heard some really good things about it and I'm excited to give it a try--but we've committed to playing the game co-op, so I'll have to wait on him before I really dive in.

Kobaia Is de Hundin (Day 335)

ANOTHER GAMEPLAY VIDEO?!

Front Mission 3 is next on the agenda and I've already clocked about 4 hours of gameplay. I've played a pretty significant amount of it before but for reasons that I can't recall at the moment I completely stopped playing it and ended up eventually losing the save data. I'm surprised that I didn't finish it the first time because so far I'm taken aback by just how fast paced the gameplay is, especially for a strategy RPG and especially for a Front Mission game.

My favorite part

 I loved Front Mission 4 (and liked the original game a lot too) but if there was one thing that frustrated me about it, it was its relentlessly sludgy pace. Missions were very long and laborious and combat animations were slow and needlessly lengthy. In addition to this, the combat preparation phase was incredibly involved and time consuming. I can forgive that aspect of the game though, because that was a big part of what I found so engrossing about the game. The level of strategy present in choosing the right parts, weapons, pilot skills, and computers was intense. Unfortunately these parts and components were quite expensive and the funds acquired from standard missions was seldom enough to cover them--which meant I had to do simulation missions to acquire additional funds before I could move on. These simulation missions were often just as long as standard missions.

Kazuki's wanzer in all its purple majesty

In Front Mission 3, missions are very short and focused, at least so far. Animations are concise, effective, and satisfying. Destroying enemy wanzer parts awards you medals which contribute to upgrading the proficiency of your weapons. You'll also frequently learn new combat abilities while in combat. I like this method of learning new abilities because you get to see the effect of the ability just as soon as you learn it. It's exciting when something new activates in combat because it strengthens your pilot's options in combat immediately.

As far as I can tell, Front Mission 3 doesn't have traditional levels and instead determines the strength of your wanzers based on parts, upgrades, pilot weapon proficiencies, and combat skills. I have to wonder why Front Mission 4 returned to the traditional level system. It really did introduce some cool new mechanics (I particularly liked pilot links) but I sort of wish it had retained some of the features introduced in its immediate predecessor..

I'm not far into the game just yet so I've probably displayed some ignorance on its mechanics, but I'm really enjoying it so far. I expect it'll take me some time to get through it, but I don't imagine I'll hit any roadblocks since I'm enjoying it quite a bit.