Front Mission Rebuilt

When someone mentions the words "strategy role-playing game" (SRPG), I think most people imagine Final Fantasy: Tactics, or maybe Triangle Strategy.  Those are both excellent examples of the sub-genre, but only one side of the proverbial coin.  The other half is a more sci-fi take on the concept, and nowhere is this better represented than with the Front Mission series.

It all began with a game for the Super Famicom.  I actually played it many years back in Japanese using an SNES emulator.  At the time, my knowledge of the language was pretty limited so I couldn't really follow the story.  Thankfully, the gameplay was fairly intuitive.  The player has control over an ever-increasing roster of characters who go through a liner set of missions gaining upgrades in the form of better machinery and weapons for the mecha they pilot (referred to in-game as "Wanzers").  Later, I got to play Front Mission 3 and 4, but never had a chance to try out the second entry in the series due to it being Japanese PS1 exclusive.  Fast-forward to now, and it looks like Nintendo Switch owners will finally have the opportunity to play a remastered version of the original entitled Front Mission 1st.  The second game is also getting the remaster treatment, but won't make it's debut until sometime later.  I'm not opposed to this plan though if you happened to have a Nintendo DS there was a chance to play the original with a proper English localization.  

Looking at trailers for Front Mission 1st, it's easy to notice the audio and visual upgrade.  Rather than pixel art, the wanzers are rendered as fully 3D models - a feature that allows for more dynamic camera angles in battle.  Character portraits also received upscaling that is so faithfully adapted they look like HD versions of the originals.  The musical score has been rerecorded and sound effects have obviously been improved as well.  As far as I can tell, gameplay appears to be largely unaltered.  That's fine by me, but I wish more effort went into giving the wanzers a bit more flare when engaged in combat.  I would love to see more detailed damage modeling and some eye-popping particle effects, as well as the weightiness one would associate with giant robots bashing away at each other.  As is though, it all looks a bit bland presentation-wise.  I assume that it's too late to apply much in the way of additional visual enhancements to Front Mission 1st, but maybe the Front Mission 2 remaster could receive a boost to its visuals before going to market.  Given that it's the entry in the series I really want to play, here's hoping that will turn out to be the case.