• A mech(wanzer) pilot named Elsa fights off an attack from unknown invaders in Germany, while a young soldier named Darill retrieves a mysterious cargo whose plane crashed in South America. These two fateful events will set the stage for intense futuristic

• Squad-based tactical fighting as you lead teams of wanzers in strategic combat

• Outstanding new graphics - Spectacular visuals will leave you dumbfounded -- it's practically cinematic

• New tactical features like the Link System bring a new dimension of multiplayer strategy to your game

Unfortunately life has a way of playing dirty tricks. Oh sure, the graphics are much improved over FM3 with greater detail and far smoother animation. But the colors are downright bland! Also, many areas in the game appear overly dark, making it a challenge to view the screen easily unless the lights are off. I suspect the developers were going for realism here.

The length of the game disappointed me as well. For the amount of time spent working on your characters' skills and statistics the number of actual plot-developing missions is minuscule. There are only 29 stages in all! By comparison, FM3 contained a staggering 128 stages played out through two scenarios! Admittedly, FM4's stages are bigger and take longer to complete, and there are simulator battles to play. But FM3 had simulator battles, too!

Now that the bad is out of the way let me let you what was good about FM4:

Graphics - already touched on this. MUCH better than FM3 except for the colors & lack of lighting.

Sound - the most refined part of FM4. Heavy, realistic, perfect. Great use of bass!

Music - very appropriate for the events onscreen. High quality.

Speech - the main characters now speak in select cut scenes and the voice-overs are extremely well done. The accents and voice tones are very accurate to their respective nationalities. No bad acting here!

Battle System - more involved than in the last game. The Link system adds a fun new level of strategy to the gameplay. New specialized backpacks increase combat options.

Customization - a slight increase in variety of weapons and parts. Better colorization options but the blandness + darkness at times makes it almost moot.

Control - takes some getting used to, but adequate. In a tactical, non-twitch game like this it's not a detriment.

Battle Maps - daytime shifting and weather effects add new depth to missions. Battlefields are significantly larger than in FM3.

Character Skills - no more randomness in acquiring new battle skills to help towards victory! Instead characters buy skills they want as they become available! The challenge is getting the funds needed to afford them.

And finally, FM4's greatest improvement over FM3...the chaotic E-mail/virtual net system is gone!

I'd have to say FM4 doesn't match the gaming experience FM3 gave. Don't get me wrong...it's a fantastic game for as long as it lasts. The plot is solid. Just don't expect as huge a jump in quality as I did or you'll be disappointed.

7 of 7 found the following review helpful:


Fun game for turn based strat fans  Jun 24, 2004 By Andrew Hamada
For those who've never played a Front Mission game before: Enormous mechs. Tons of weapons, armor and computer options. Turn based strategy. The Front Mission series alone incorporates all three, and thus has a collection of players devoted to it. If you don't like all three, however, the chances are slim that you will fully enjoy this game. The game has much more serious involvement than your average turn-based strat game: even by the end, you will continually be discovering new ways to customize and operate your wanzers. There's no way to jump into the game and immediately be good at it: "trial and error" is a phrase you will get used to, and very quickly at that.

For those who've played previous Front Mission games: The game, while remaining fundamentally the same, has changed in enough ways to mark it as an entirely different approach to the same ideas. The most obvious change is the Link system: it introduces a new variable when deciding where, when and how to use your wanzers and forces you to take the enemy's linking abilities into consideration when choosing your defensive tactics. With enough AP and the right positioning/turn order, a single wanzer can attack upwards of 6 times in a single turn (the highest I've seen is 9, with a shotgun). The other marked change is in the way characters progress: no more gaining proficiency with a weapon through repeated use. Instead, you purchase upgrades to your computer system through a pre-planned route, which may be expanded upon by purchasing computer upgrades in a store. If you stick to the pre-planned route, you will find your characters locked into a set path based on the skills they receive: lots of shotgun abilities and evasion skills obviously points toward a lightweight, evasive wanzer armed with shotguns. The benefits and detriments are obvious: the game starts you with a fairly balanced team that works well, but also makes it annoyingly tedious to change the fighting style of ANY of your wanzers. Expect to repeat simulations like crazy in order to fully customize your team.

OVERALL RATINGS:
Graphics: 6/10. The FMV is nice, but the in game graphics are reminiscent of very early PS2. Character portraits, while animated, are still portraits. Animation is, however, smooth, and almost all the cutscenes are accomplished with excellent use of the in-game engine.

Sound: 8/10. The voice-overs aren't spectacular, but are more than acceptable for a video game and help to fill out the characters' personalities. The music is very well done, although there wasn't nearly enough variation. The actual sound effects are fantastic: metal against metal, etc. is very accurate sounding.

Controls/Interface: 5/10. The controls are great and mostly intuitive, but the interface itself is a mixed bag. The combat interface is pretty intuitive, although at times your eyes will get confused as to which part of the display you should be looking at. Combat between similar looking wanzers gets confusing, especially when linked teammates are all fighting (whose bullets are those?). The non-combat menus are what get really annoying. My biggest problem is the seperation of the purchasing screens from the organization screens and the load times between: you can de-equip and purchase/replace equipment for all your wanzers at the same time, but you can't equip a weapon/part/item you already have from within the same screen. You can set skills, purchase new ones and upgrade computers from the same screen, but if you want to purchase a new skill set, you have to go to the computer store, and at the computer store, you can only see a bare-minimum of information about the pilot you're buying skills for. ANNOYING!

Gameplay: 9/10. Although a beginner could pick up the game and survive the battles, in order to truly progress and make the money necessary to customize your wanzers and pilots, you have to utilize an enormous level of strategy which makes playing the game fun. A dozen different elements make your choices in each phase of combat exciting. There's no way to effectively summarize the gameplay other than to play it, so rent it if you're unsure.

Storyline: 6/10. I've come to expect a level of quality from Square Enix that this game doesn't match up with. While better than the filler that generally occupies turn-based strat games, the story had so much more potential than was actually realized.

Replay value: 5/10. My save file said 36 hours when I beat the game, although at least 3 hours of that was the game sitting around while I ran errands or ate. I did, however, plow through the game with a minimum of grinding (so I didn't do a lot of customization, etc.), so those dedicated to creating the ultimate wanzer team will find they have plenty of time to do so. The catch, however, is that you can restart the game with your old team once you beat it: those who already took the time to maximize their teams will find little to do on a second playing, while people like me still have places to go, so the net gaming time is probably about the same. FM4 is the kind of game you won't want to replay for a month, but will seem fresh and exciting again after that month has passed.

6 of 6 found the following review helpful:


Turn based -a la- F. F. Tactics  Jul 08, 2004 By Just-a-gamer
Front Mission 4 is a brave attempt to rescue Turn Based combat. I'm crazy about it since many games today are real time and my personal favorite is turn based.

Well, if you liked FF Tactics, you'll enjoy FM4. I'ts an RPG which follows two story lines and of course, all the battles are designed for you to equip and tune up your robots. They are not luxuries, they're a must if you want to survive.

PROS: if you like turn based ... HEY ! ... here's one at it's best!.
Long battles makes a lot of time to develop your strategy.
Immersive, wait until you learn how to use the link system ! you'll learn what "UNLEASHING POWER" means!
Sci-Fi, Mechs, Explosions, Story, what else do you want?

CONS: Mixed graphics, everything is amazing but when you try to read gray text over gray background... you have to squint... BR> Some battle situations may end up with a lot of time wasted on moving your units.
A single enemy unit needs several turns to be destroyed.

As in real life, some times you need things to go faster, but you can't do that.

Some times, one hour(+) each battle, is just what you need...

If you are an Action-oriented gamer, try this one, you might lear that strategy is FUN.

PS: If you think this game gets too difficult is probably because you are not going to train on the simulators and/or you are not equiping your units well... take your time ! ENJOY!

5 of 5 found the following review helpful:


You need to love Strategy Turn-based RPG's first...  Jul 06, 2006 By Curious George
If you don't love these types of games you're going to hate FM4. Unlike several other people who played FM3 on the PS1, my opinion is unaffected by playing that particular installment so I can be fair and completely neutral in my assessment.

First off, I am a huge fan of turn-based strategy games especially those of the RPG genre. That is one reason why FM4 appeals so much to me. My pedantic, often times tedious and probably more closely obsessive/compulsive determination to try and perfect my groups wanzers was the thing that I enjoyed the most. You had a huge choice of weapons and load outs available and it was obvious that the makers actually did take the time to design this game. One feature that I liked was the Online Shop that allowed you go back and purchase items that were no longer in the standard Wanzer Shop. That was helpful although I wish they would have allowed all weapons to continue to be available and not just a subset of them.

I loved the ability to acquire new skills and buy skills using the Computer Shop. That allowed me to expand my pilots abilities even moving pilots in a different direction from what they were originally intended to be. The battles themselves did become a bit tedious at times but the Battle Linking system did allow for some nice combos moves that saved my butt more than once during some extremely close missions.

All in all, I think that FM4 is an excellent game. But, the caveat here is that you have to be a hardcore turn-based strategy fan to really appreciate the game. Because of the sometimes long and tedious cutscenes, I gave it only 4 stars for fun but overall its really a 5 star game. The graphics are not sub-par. It's a strategy game people, you have to expect a top down 3D view for that type of game.

3 of 3 found the following review helpful:


Front Mission 4 Review  Feb 24, 2007 By D. Hoehne
Awesome Game for Strategielovers!

This game is awesome for everyone who loves Strategygames or Turnbased strategy. At the same time it has a really neat story and it gives you the possibility to completely customise your gear and inventory of your characters. The Mecha setting might not hit everyones taste, but its still an awesome game.

I love it!

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