As with the previous remake, Front Mission 2 is a complete visual upgrade. That’s not very surprising since the original game was on the PSX as well. The story however remains fundamentally unchanged from the original Japanese release though. You play a group of three characters from the OCU (Oceania Cooperative Union) who are stationed in Alordesh. Unfortunately for them, there’s been a coup d’etat and the Alordesh military has taken over the government. Sentiment has turned against the OCU whose heavily industrialization of Alordesh caused a decline of economic prosperity. As members of the OCU, it’s time to get out of Alordesh, save any of your forces you can, and stop the Alordesh military on the way out of the country.
Front Mission 2 features a fairly mature plot for an older PSX game. Told mostly from character dialogue and portraits, the game paints a grim picture of potential military conflicts between foreign powers who are ostensibly allies. Combat in the front mission universe consists of planes, tanks, and giant mecha called wanzers. Wanzers are fully customizable and feature a variety of armor and armaments. They’re in line with most mecha that have been a staple of Japanese games, anime, and manga for decades, but the wanzers in Front Mission are clearly more militaristic than in for example the Gundam series.
Front Mission 2: Remake, much like its predecessor doesn’t look like a PSX game anymore. The detail level is excellent with some zoom capabilities to allow you to see the newly updated wanzer visuals more clearly. New camera controls highlight the visuals from multiple angles allowing for a more detailed view of the battlefield. Combat remains unchanged from the original PSX version of the game however. Wanzers have a limited range of movement and armaments on arms and shoulders consisting of machine guns, clubs, rocket launchers, flamethrowers and more.
As you try to escape Alordesh you will gain additional comrades with more armaments and abilities to supplement your core team but the enemy wanzers and vehicles scale up, leaving you slightly outgunned each time. This leaves you reliant on tactics to survive but unfortunately, that’s where Front Mission 2 falls a bit short. Just like Front Mission: Remake, wanzers have destructible limbs and parts but as before, you cannot actually target individual limbs, leaving combat as a game of roulette where both your own and enemy wanzers end up in a battle of random attrition and you hopefully do more damage than the enemy.
This approach to tactical strategy prioritizes placement and ordinance, forcing you to spend time in the upgrade menus between each stage in order to maximize your combat effectiveness. Even with effective choices, placement can be non-intuitive however. Sure, you can use cover to your advantage to a degree, but staying undercover means either being in a direct line with enemies who outgun you or potentially being out of range of combat. With wanzers only able to move a handful of squares, keeping your attack groupings spaced but nearby becomes a necessity and the only way you’ll survive is through flanking maneuvers. Sadly those attacks don’t give any noticeable bonuses and without body part targeting, you’ll take that last shot that should wipe out an enemy and shoot their arm instead, leaving them open for a counterstrike just when you’re weakest. It’s a frustrating design that can foil even the best of strategies.
Fortunately for those players that have played a few SRPGS, combat is not that difficult either. It’s painfully random, but at the same time, the overall strategy on each map is not that deep. Simply keeping in one or several groups and paying attention to the enemy range is typically enough to keep you alive on most maps, especially near the beginning of the game. As you slowly work your way out of Alordesh, things get a bit dicer though and you’ll end up taking a deeper look into the wanzer modification menu. Each unit can have arms, legs, and torso replaced independently. Backpacks can be added as well so you can carry a variety of items including those that repair or boost your mech. There are paint options as well which help you to easily distinguish your units at a glance.
Modifications cost you money and weight though. Adding the most powerful weapons to every mech won’t work even if you have the cash because stronger armaments are heavier as well. Instead you’ll have to balance power with speed and slowly upgrade bit by bit, making your core mech more powerful until you can boost the carrying capacity as well. Tossing in a few items that repair damage might not hurt either as combat is so random that you can quickly end up entirely crippled by losing a key weapon to a single enemy volley. Unfortunately, the modification screens are not particularly intuitive and it’ll take some time to learn the menus, jumping in and out of various submenus and trying to decide what will be most effective for the next level before having a clue which opponents you may face. Changing up loadouts becomes a risky affair couched in the tedium of a slow and unresponsive selection screen and a bit more load time than there should be.
Load time is actually a key factor in Front Mission 2: Remake as the original game had some outrageous load times. Things are much improved here on the Switch but that’s not to say that there is no load time present. There absolutely is and you can expect to see some loading between levels, between selections screens, and between conversations. In fact, the load times are just slow enough to bog things down a bit, especially when you’re trying to mod your wanzers. If it’s slightly irritating now though, imagine what the original PSX version of the game was like. This is a clear improvement even though there are areas of the game that are definitely not well-optimized.
Once you’re properly kitted out, it’s time to get back to the game but between scenes, you’ll have to talk to a variety of characters, both your own and NPCs, to trigger events moving forward. This is a clear attempt at increasing the depth of immersion in a game that is primarily menu management, but if you miss a prompt, you’re left repeating conversations until you find it. There aren’t a ton of options so it isn’t as bad as it could be, but with no conversation log, it’s easy to accidentally miss what a character has to say as well, which can be frustrating. The overall plot and politics of From Mission 2: Remake are solid to be sure, but it’s also easy to forget much of what’s going on and why while you’re playing long, complex turn-based levels, or even if you end up double tapping a button during a conversation.
There’s a lot going on in combat as well and fortunately, there are plenty of options in the Front Mission 2: Remake options menu to account for them. If you love watching wanzers pound each other silly with clubs, guns, and missiles, default settings are great. However, once you’ve been playing for a while the appeal starts to wear thin. Just take a quick trip into the options menu and turn battle animations off. While you’re at it, you can adjust other settings like text speed and notably, turning the fixed camera off if you wish. This allows you to rotate the battlefield in different ways. If you prefer the original isometric approach, no problem. Sadly, the Switch d-pad makes it hard to select square grid options in isometric mode so in fixed mode you can quickly switch to a vertical/horizontal orientation. Putting the game into free camera mode allows you to rotate smoothly 360 degrees, giving players more freedom. However, your camera doesn’t move once you’ve entered the menu system which can directly obscure playfield visibility if you’ve rotated the camera to some angles. During the course of this review, we found that fixed cameras presented fewer issues overall and the isometric viewpoint made things look cooler but was a hassle when it came to making effective combat selections line up.
The cameras do allow you to highlight the improved visuals of the game though, and Front Mission 2: Remake looks quite cool. If you’ve already seen the first remade game, there’s not a big jump in quality but it’s still nice to see modern HD versions of wanzers. Character portraits are crisp and expressive and terrain and playfields look cool, even if they aren’t quite as visually impressive as the Switch is capable of. This is first and foremost a strategy game and the visuals, while good, are clearly a secondary consideration after the conversion to HD. In undocked mode on the Switch, be aware that both combat visuals and text are fairly small and even zooming in doesn’t get you as good a view as other mech games, which is a bit of a shame because the visuals in Front Mission 2: Remake are definitely good and the wanzer designs are excellent.
Sound effects are equally solid with substantial impacts and explosions during combat, a suitably exciting series of background music tracks during combat, and gratifying weapons fire. This is not a fully voiced game and there’s not a ton of complexity to the soundtrack but the music is quite good and well worth keeping turned up. Depending on how long you take per stage, some of the tracks might start to feel a bit stale but the overall sound presentation dovetails nicely with plot and gameplay and is quite complementary. Veterans of the series will notice that this isn’t the same soundtrack from the original too but rather an improved and updated version that is certainly enjoyable.
All in all, the Front Mission experience is a singularly unique one within the strategy genre. There really isn’t anything else quite like it and if you’ve had any experience with the first game or the original release on PSX, you’ll have a pretty good idea what you’re getting into – namely an experience that’s essentially unchanged other than minor modifications (visuals, camera, load times, and a few other minor improvements). The core of Front Mission 2: Remake is entirely intact though and for the most part, you’re finally getting to play the original game in all its explosive glory. That means warts and all come along for the ride, and some players will immediately notice how dated both the GUI and strategy are in comparison with current SRPG offerings. Since this is a reissue of an older game, it’s forgivable, but if you’re just picking Front Mission 2: Remake up on a whim, it might be a bit of a surprise to get something so dated.
You’re getting a solid reissue of a fairly obscure PSX game with FRONT MISSION 2: Remake. At $35 it doesn’t break the bank but at the same time, this release isn’t a premium AAA title and is mostly intended for fans of the series, hardcore mech combat fans and tactical strategy aficionados. It’s as much a piece of gaming history as it is a current game and while it’s wonderful to finally see an official translation of Front Mission 2, there could have definitely been some quality-of-life upgrades that would have improved the game significantly without sacrificing the core of what makes Front Mission a great series. Sadly, those missed opportunities weigh heavily on FRONT MISSION 2: Remake and the overall impression is of a competent and serviceable game that lacks a bit of wider audience appeal. If you’re a hardcore strategy fan, this is definitely a title that will be worth your time, but if you’re a casual player, just be sure you know what you’re getting into.
This review is based on a digital copy of FRONT MISSION 2: Remake provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch OLED system in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well in both. FRONT MISSION 2: Remake is a Nintendo Switch exclusive at this time.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.