Front Mission Evolved Review

 Seen at E3 in 2009, Corvianking reviews Front Mission Evolved.

I’ll admit. I’ve never been the biggest fan of Square Enix. I’ve liked a couple of the Final Fantasy games enough to do the level grinding required to get through to the end, and I thought Project Sylpheed was an underrated game. In general though, when I hear “Square Enix is making a new game!” I’m not the most entranced of individuals. 

The trailer for Front Mission Evolved really hooked me though. Maybe it’s because it featured one of Square Enix’s trademark cutscenes, which I must admit are (almost) always done beautifully (there were a few in Sylpheed that were a bit over the top, even for Square Enix). Maybe it’s because I’m a sucker for mech games — I was one of many who were very upset when the decision was made to shut down Chromehounds’ multiplayer servers. Regardless of the reason though, over winter break I found myself bored and in Gamestop, generally a horrible combination, and there on the shelf in front of me was Front Mission Evolved. “What’s the harm?” What indeed?

What can I say? I don’t care if it’s a sign of me compensating for something, I enjoy the idea of stepping into a giant robot and doing damage on a global scale. In that sense, Front Mission delivers. You want giant robots fighting other giant robots with a whole host of customizable parts and weaponry? You got it. The single player delivers it in droves, tied together with the typical “power with a price” storyline that you see appear all the time in Square Enix’s games. Let’s face it though, I didn’t get the game for the story, I got it to blow crap up, and I had a blast doing it.

It’s nothing groundbreaking, nothing new, but it’s a well-done game. The parts you attach to it define your mech’s characteristics, and customization can get pretty in depth. The real fun is on the battlefield though. It wasn’t a particularly challenging game, as most bosses can be defeated using the classic “shoot, run to cover, shoot, run to cover, shoot” strategy that’s gotten so many of us gamers through so many tough battles.

The single player was great, I have no complaints about it, but the multiplayer mode is horrible and I have nothing but complaints about it. First, and I know this isn’t the game’s fault, there are no players online. It’s incredibly annoying to sit around for almost five minutes waiting for the game to find you a match that most likely is going to be populated by players that are vastly more experienced than you, and in a game that grants significantly more powerful weapons to higher level players, your crappy mech is going to get one shot killed a million and a half times before you even manage to scratch your enemies. The matches are short, annoyingly so, and perhaps its because of that short length that the game won’t allow you to join a match that’s in progress. Nope, you have to wait around at the multiplayer menu for a match to end. If the board is full up though, most players know that they’re going to have to wait forever to get into a new game if they quit, so the board stays full.

I feel like it could have been more fun if Square Enix had put just a little more thought into it before releasing the game with a multiplayer feature, but they didn’t, and it isn’t fun, at all really. It’s frustrating as hell, and I honestly nearly threw the controller. I don’t get frustrated at my games to that extent, ever. I recognize that they’re video games and if I have a problem with them I should return them. I honestly almost threw my controller at the screen of my father’s very nice new TV though, and that would have been bad.