I remember trying to play the DS remake of this game some time ago and not really liking the mechanics. I came to the same conclusion many did when coming back to this game after playing front mission 3-5, missiles be OP. Let me tell you, yes long range is powerful and good but it's hilariously weak compared to what short and even melee can do once you get them going. Thanks to that little revelation and just actually enjoying the story this time around I had a blast with FM1. Only time I can think of when a game has dual campaigns like this and I was able to sit down and just bang both of them out back to back.

For some negatives the combat is fairly simple once you get down to it, the weapon types lack much variety and I'm fairly certain half the assets in this game were bought from a unit store or something similar and aren't all scaled to each other properly at all. Makes the game feel like a heavily modded fan remaster at times but for the most part this didn't detract from the experience much.

I liked it, I really liked actually being able to fully follow the story for once, I feel like I genuinely understand the base setup for front mission now and look forward to replaying the other games with some understanding of what on earth people are talking about.

As a remake of an old, old game, it inherits a lot of what made older games both great but also limited them. But a few options here allow you to cut through the worst time sink issues in gameplay (faster movement speeds, instant movement speeds, etc). Something is lost with charm moving from the 2D sprites to the 3D, though, but it still looks good and they tried hard to preserve the feel and atmosphere of the original game. The story is kind of good, but again, old game... old games like this were written, uh, they sure were written I guess.


This is surely better than just an average 5, it's fun! Above average, a good 7 imo because it does a lot of classic stuff that's just good fun and there's a lot of effort/variety here. Arena mode has a completely different rock-paper-scissors system in it, and the field combat has its own completely different feel to it... but it is dated and very simple. Easily exploited, and you end up building most all your Wanzers similarly. The game also VERY much tries to push you to CQC since it's free retaliations and such... I want to shoot! But yeah. It's still fun though, I personally feel a seven is appropriate, but 6-6.5 would be more appropriate for people who don't love this kind of gameplay. You'll know if you'll like this kind of game well before you read this.


The graphics are... good. Well above average, but you do lose a lot of charm in the environments, Wanzers, etc. The preserved sprites are GREAT! But then they didn't do much with the different towns when you visit them... in fact they are all the exact same copy of each other as per shop, bar, etc. That'd have been one of the cool areas they could have used new technology to introduce variation.

The in mission stuff is all good, each level has been LOVINGLY recreated in an absolute 1:1 manner. It's actually shockingly accurate to the original game, the team really went above and beyond with how true to the old game they tried to be. But... it lacks a lot of graphical technologies that could have pushed this game, likely held back by the fact these graphics were overhauled for the switch which has about as much graphical capability as a graphing calculator at this point.


The old sounds work GREAT. The old songs are okay, repetitive as heck as they are short loops but they capture the old spirit of the game. The team here actually took the old tracks, and REDID THEM COMPLETELY while making them sound similar. It was intelligent to do so, updating the sound a little bit to have more complexity was very smart. They offer both versions though so if you prefer the old, they are there still.


So... it's a nintendo game. With Nintendo game writing. It's not exactly offensive but it's nothing to write home about. Some of the characters seem like they could be cool/interesting characters, but you get about 6 lines of dialogue with them each. It'd be a 5 if not for the fact it did try and say a message and it stuck the landing at the end, really cool ending in this game's main campaign. It'll make you smirk.

But otherwise, you get so little dialogue and character building beyond Royd and... the pilot of Primrose, I forget her name. In fact I forget pretty much everyone's name in this game, there's SO LITTLE dialogue in this game. But there are some cool payoff moments with the... pilot of Primrose, wtf was her name... the blonde woman, the colonel's daughter. Royd's dead fiance is one of the worst and most boring aspects and was hamfisted in. You get zero time with her and the character mopes about it the whole game and there's absolutely no healing or growth from that event so it sort of ends up in that weird area a lot of Japanese games end up with, with a brooding character who never advances and feels stuck the whole time. It's supposed to be a literary device to establish a clear motive to drag the character through the story... but we're beyond that these days and you SHOULD have better motivations.

It kinda ends up having Royd feel like a background character in terms of depth when he is... the main damned character. But the crew is likeable enough and leaves me wanting more story, more content, etc. THere's just a severe lack of story and development and dialogue... makes it hard to care for what's going on.

PROS:

• Retro fun gameplay
  
• An honest and accurate recreation
  
• Good graphics
  
• Completely redone soundtrack that sounds like the old one
  
• Multiple game play modes
  
• Retro sprites are amazing
  
• The ending has a cool satisfying moment
  
• The crew sticking with you is cool

CONS:

• Music that while good, is repetitive
  
• They didn't update the store/bar/arena locations in each town to have separate art
  
• Some of the charm is lost in translation from 2D to 3D
  
• Characters are shallow (though likeable enough... I guess)
  
• Story is paced too short and too little earn its massive twists/payoffs

All in all, enjoyable and a very well done remaster/remake. Honestly this is what SQEEEEEENIX should have done for FF7. The old fans are happy, small updates service new fans and make things more digestible. They worked hard to keep this true to the original and I respect it... leading to what I'd say a 7.5, which is a SOLID rating for me. Well above average which is 5, and 5 can still be an enjoyable game just... average. This game is much more than just palatable and the team deserves a good rating. It's a definite buy.

Localizers love to change dialog and add stuff that was not there, even if it sounds shoehorned.
Overall, it is an improvement of the original game despite the dialogue changes to fit better for, as the Critical Drinker says, "Modern Audiences".