/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.5312178]

What do you think of the story in Front Mission 3? Do you think it still holds up?
Are there any places in today's internet similar to the browser in the game?

[Anonymous No.5313654]

>>5312178
eh

[Anonymous No.5313785]

Rofup x4 nothing personal kid.

[Anonymous No.5313786]

>>5312178
>holds up

[Anonymous No.5313814]

>>5312178
It's fine, I mean weapons of mass destruction and terrorists and rogue intelligence agencies are never going to become irrelevant in our lifetimes. The ideas for settings and structures are still pretty cool. Big robots smashing each other in an awesome war with giant guns and stuff, that's never gonna stop being cool.

[Anonymous No.5313829]

Would be great if there was a gundam game like this.

[Anonymous No.5313864]

I think it still holds up, even if attack animations are a little slow and necessarily loud. Then again, I'm a big fan.

[Anonymous No.5313878]

>>5312178
The Protagonist is a colossal hothead and a dumbass.

[Anonymous No.5313931]

I swear I will play that game one day, it looks so promising but I know that once you deep dive into it you realize that combat is mash x to win garbage, the dialogues are poorly written or translated and its overall disappointing.

[Anonymous No.5313945]

>>5313931
the dialogue is fine and the game does have a lot of power creep but also nobody is forcing you to grind and you can still botch missions pretty hard if you stop paying attention

if you go without grinding it's actually pretty tight and you probably won't get those platinum medals even if you're really clever

[Anonymous No.5313947]

ingame internet feels complicated

[Anonymous No.5313961]

>>5312178
I played this and have no idea what it was about

[Anonymous No.5313985]

>>5312178
Its a comfy game, nice characters, good customisation, well designed menus, dialogues are ok I guess, really well developed internet layer although BBS are kinda archaic.
Sadly tactics wise is behind even the first game in the series and way behind the second when it comes to plot, map size and everything else except style.
It has great art style and settings, which is why it is so comfy.

>>5313945
> the game does have a lot of power creep but also nobody is forcing you to grind
I will keep saying it in every thread whether its FF8 or FM3.
Human brain is wired to seek the most optimal solution, it is designed to be efficient, in particular case of FM3 people try to learn new skills every time they acquire a new part, if you going to make learning new skills an attack roulette and allow them to learn a new skill via VR training then, dont dock points for it in actual mission because you punish people for putting in effort and utilising what they are give to their best ability.

Once you tell people "dont do your best" or start punish them for it, you create discontent, once people start going against their nature of optimising shit just to have any kind of challenge in your game, they will feel discontent which going to gnaw at them because your game will become a walking simulator in which you cant lose unless you tie your hands behind your back.

Which is why FM3 is a shitty game when it comes to gameplay, you just have to go against yourself to not abuse it.
Whats making it worse its the fact this is caused by trying to casualize the series and not because premise was bad, it could have been a great game if they didnt tried to dumb it down for murica.

[Anonymous No.5313998]

>>5313985
How did they fuck up the art style of 4 and 5 so badly? It's almost ps2 suikoden titles tier of generic and bland

[Anonymous No.5314047]

>>5313985
You know there are people who will replay missions even without using the simulator just to get platinum without "lowering the difficulty" right?

There are also people who beat Dragon Quest XI without fighting any non-essential battles.

When I played Devil May Cry 3 the first time I beat it on Hard without replaying any missions and the only style I had mastered at the end was Swordmaster.

For you maybe "doing your best" means fully optimizing everything and min/maxing for every situation, but for others that's really not quite "their best".

FM3 is one of those games where it's actually designed -pretty tight- in a way that's quite interesting because you basically can't get everything in one playthrough, you will miss skills, you will not have enough money, sometimes missions won't go well. It's designed to be playable straight through by a competent player just like FFT or Tactics Ogre and keeps a pretty good balance if you do that.

Then, after that, just like every square game that's ever been made, it has features added on that let you casualize the game if you just want to feel powerful or hang out finding shit out and playing with the systems. The simulator is extra content for people who don't really feel like having to solve all that puzzle shit and just want to hang out with comfy music and watch robots punch each other.

What I'm saying is don't blame the design of the game for not gatekeeping casuals when you yourself are a filthy casual.

[Anonymous No.5314053]

>>5312178
It's pretty good. I still need to finish the second character's scenario.
Pro:Tip - This game really benefits from Mednafen/Beetle's CPU overclocking feature. The original game has a lot of slowdown and the overclock feature helps it to maintain a solid 30FPS framerate and it really makes a difference.
>>5313829
There are 50 billion Gundam games out there.
>>5313878
Yeah the second scenario has a different protag who isn't a big stupid head like him.

[Anonymous No.5314087]

>>5314053
does anyone know how well it runs on popstarter?

[Anonymous No.5314218]

>>5312178
>What do you think of the story in Front Mission 3?
The worst story and characters in the franchise, singlehandedly saved by good art direction and Yamada's character design.
>Do you think it still holds up?
It never did, even FM1 at least tried, FM3 is somehow more broken than 1 to the point that skills at low level are stronger than when they are at high levels, not to mention how it completely disregarded all the progress made with 2, removed arena fights for no good reason and not satisfied with all of this it also made the game maps and missions smaller in scale and scope AND made the game run at sub 30 FPS coming from the 60 FPS of FM2.

This is again, without going into the actual writing and characters, but since the most important part of the game is already that bad I won't waste time talking about the most inconsequential plot and cast in the series, and also how it's horribly handled, or rather, not handled.

[Anonymous No.5314227]

>>5313878
I wonder if this is because of shitty translation or shitty writing.

[Anonymous No.5314249]

>>5314087
It is listed as compatible on all (HDD/USB/SMB) modes for whatever thats worth.

http://www.ps2-home.com/forum/page/popstarter-compatibility-list-f

I can test it out tonight if you really need to know.

[Anonymous No.5314256]

>>5314249
I guess I will just give it a try, its a 600mb download anyway. But sometimes it doesnt hurt to ask in case someone knows, because I've been burned before.. Like with Breath of Fire 4. Initial hour of the game runs smooth as fuck, then you get to the first town and it goes down to 2fps, literally unplayable.

Thanks anyway anon

[Anonymous No.5314359]

>>5314218
All of this is true but FM3 is still a super fun and comfy game. Comparing it to FM2 or FM5 and saying it's bad is kind of unfair because it's not like it's actually bad, it's just that those games are too fuckin good.

[Anonymous No.5314437]

>>5312178
I LOVE all the fm games but they have never had good plots

[Anonymous No.5314457]

>>5313985
>>5314359
>comfy

[Anonymous No.5314524]

>>5314457
>When you are such a sperg, you dont understand lingo on a fucking sperg board.

[Anonymous No.5314697]

Who does /vr/ vote for?

>>5314256
Seems to play fine in POPS.

[Anonymous No.5314728]

>>5314697
only the last two can ever win. You can see some Xenogears cosplay if you don't cheat for Alisa to win.

[Anonymous No.5314790]

>>5314256
>>5314697
Fuck, just locked up on me right in the middle of a battle. Zoom triggered and then everything froze. I dont really use POPS. I have a chipped PSone that I usually play on. Ill try some more and see if it repeats.

[Anonymous No.5316163]

>>5314790
Freezes and save corruption sometimes occur if you are using USB for pops. On Network its typically fine, and HDD as well

[Anonymous No.5316191]

>>5314790
FM3 actually freezes on original hardware as well as every emulator I've played it on.

It's something you sort of just learnt to deal with back then because you sure as fuck weren't going to stop playing videogames.

[Anonymous No.5316285]

>>5314790
>>5316191

IIRC, FM3 have this bug when, if you destroy enemy legs and wanzer after it or do so simultaneously, the game will freeze.
There are certain other bugs like alt route bug but, for whatever reason it all works perfectly fine on epsxe.

I advise using epsxe 2.02, it has all the good stuff like individual mem cards for game and allow you to use other input plugins lillypad and necgon are fucking awesome and its the last version that does not introduce performance issues because for whatever reason 2.05 have those weird frame freezes probably because they tried to make GPU plugin theaded and something went wrong

So, yeah, use epxe because everything else have this bug.

[Anonymous No.5316287]

>>5316285

You can also skip combat animation but its a fucking waste IYAM.

[Anonymous No.5316481]

>>5316285

They must have fixed that for the EU version.

[Anonymous No.5316494]

>>5316481
I mean the bug is on pops and just about every other emu I tried the game on but original ps played it well.

[Anonymous No.5316515]

>>5316494
I remember FM3 freezing on my original psx though, it also made the system run hot as a bitch and I had no AC so that probably didn't help.

>>5316285
I might try this just to finally get a playthrough of alicia's route.

How would anons who've played both compare the two routes btw? Alicia is the one who gets best girl police officer right?

[Anonymous No.5316663]

>>5313878
He's more rational in the Elisa path.

[Anonymous No.5316917]

>>5316663
Fuck meant Emma.

[Anonymous No.5318568]

can anybody recommend to me which game they think is best to start with? preferred playing order or just any general recommendation to start with the series.
I don't know shit about anything.
I see a lot of posts saying 2 is the peak?

[Anonymous No.5318602]

>>5318568
2 and 5 are both excellent and both not in english NEVER EVER

so start with FM1 on SF or DS

most (not japanese) people started with FM3 since it's the first one we got overseas

you could also play gunhazard but be aware that it kind of sucks and is a really long, really boring version of Assault Suits Valken that overstays it's welcome

Leveling up by shooting shit to death with your shotgun is pretty awesome though, just don't expect anything to ever be a better gun than your shotgun, that's mainly why gunhazard gets boring. it's repetitive as all fucking hell. the waifu is pretty good though

[Anonymous No.5318629]

>>5318602
It seems there is a patch to translate FM2? Is there something wrong with this patch? The website mentions about 80% of the game is translated with a few pieces being untouchable from their standpoint.

[Anonymous No.5318631]

>>5318568
Start with 3 because you can only go up from there.
Or start with 1 and play in production order up to 5, Gun Hazard is a spinoff with no relation to the main series, it's a completely alternate continuity but a somewhat competent ASV clone with high production values but worse level design, Evolved does not exist, no, don't ask about it.

2 and 5 are widely considered the peak of the series due to both writing/characters and gameplay, 4 is not bad either but it's ruined by a few odd decisions in terms of gameplay and somewhat erratic writing, still better than 3 though.
Bear in mind that the five main entries all share the same continuity with 1 being pretty much the key entry in making sense of all the events and lore behind the rest of the series as it's heavily referenced and most of its cast appears in other games or is referenced in the news you read in games.
Another thing about the news, a good part of the game's narrative is in there, moreover, a lot of the series' episodes happen more or less at the same time or within a short timespan so it's not uncommon from 2 onwards to find news that actually reference events and characters that will appear in the next installments and viceversa, 2's internet sections for instance already talk about some of the major players in 3 and 5 despite the player not knowing them yet, which in retrospect makes the world narrative more tight knit than average and quite well done, whereas while playing games like 5 you'll see some characters you've met in 2 and see how they changed coming from there.
The exception to this is 3, pretty much nothing that happens in 3 matter and Emma's route is the canon one, which sucks because it's the most fucking boring route in the game and also makes Liu, the only good character in that shitty game, fucking irrelevant.

[Anonymous No.5318640]

>>5318631
>>5318602
Thank you guys for the replies, I guess I'll start with 3 or 1 since they're natively available and continuity seems important.
Can either of you enlighten this EOP if something is wrong with the translations for 2/5 or are they serviceable. thanks a lot though.

[Anonymous No.5318649]

>>5318640
I don't know about 5 but what little I read about 2 seems solid enough, some characters like Griff and Thomas sound a bit different in that translation but mostly due to some japanese speech patterns that are mostly untranslatable in english, I say it's serviceable if you don't know JP and I saw no major mistakes.

[Anonymous No.5318661]

>>5318640
Both translations are good.

[Anonymous No.5318974]

>>5318640
Finished FM2 without crashes or bugs.
Dont know about FM5 translation but people told they completed FM5 without issues as well so, I guess both are working fine.

[Anonymous No.5318978]

> Anon, you need to sneak onto a Top Secret military base in a 25 ton mech.

[Anonymous No.5318994]

>>5318640
>I'll start with 3 or 1 since they're natively available
I would suggest to start with 1, since its fairly good and DO NOT SKIP FM2, its a better game than 3 in most aspects.
FM3 is comfy as fuck but tactics wise its the shallowest game in the series, even when compared to FM1.
Still worth playing for artstyle and lore.