After playing 30+ hours in the last couple of days, I’ve finally finished Front Mission 4. If there’s one thing I can say about the game, it does provide the hardest strategic challenge I’ve felt from an SRPG for a long time. I don’t think anything I’ve played recently even comes close to FM4’s difficulty. The fact that there is a lot of customization that goes into the wanzers, and the fact that each part has it’s own HP, gives the game soo much depth.

One of my favorite things about the game is its attention to detail. For example, when you’re attacking someone with a gun, not only does the game focus on the flight path of the bullets from the wanzer, but it will also take into account which hand the gun is being fired from. This matters since path may have obstacles in its way whilst the other one does not.

The thing that makes the game really challenging is the focus on the parts of wanzers. Most parts of the wanzer are pretty important. If a part is destroyed, you can’t use anything that is associated with that part. For example, if the legs are destroyed, you can only move one space. If an arm is destroyed, you can’t use a weapon attached to that arm. And if the body is destroyed, the wanzer as a whole is destroyed. Since you usually have only one engineer on your team at a given time, you usually have to make decisions about which part to fix (and which wanzer) at any given turn. Since you usually have more than one damaged wanzer at a time, you really have to weigh your options when you decide what to heal.

The one complaint I have about is that some of the story in the game seems like filler just to have more battles. Actually, the very last mission felt like that, which kinda sucks. The second to last mission feels like a real last mission, and then I’m surprised that there is still one more mission left to play. I thought it was pretty silly of them to do that since the last mission doesn’t add anything new, really (in terms of story or difficulty.)

Another complaint I have is that the difficulty of the game is really uneven. Like, for example, the last two or three missions aren’t very hard at all. They were actually pretty easy (I did run out of ammo the first time I tried the 3rd to last mission, so I had to retry it with better equipment.) The hardest missions are around the middle part of the game. Actually, I had to retry one of the Wagner missions a couple of times before I could finally get the hang of it. It would have been nice if the difficulty levels of the game were in a nice steadily increasing slope, though.

I would definitely recommend Front Mission to fans of strategy games (and not just strategy RPGs.) This title has more of a focus on actually strategy than other SRPGs seem to (I’m looking at you Disgaea.) Hey, and if you’re a fan of SRPGs, you should take a look at Front Mission to get a challenge.