Front Mission 3 has been taking up a lot of playtime, glad I have the strategy guide this go-round for referencing mech parts & their associated learn-able battle-skills, planning mission strategies, & for allowing me to avoid the in-game story "email" & "internet" systems unless absolutely necessary, as those two components were a big waste of time during my first play-through. I've been able to find out some good info on the real internet on setting up the pilots battle skill computers & setting up the defensive upgrades based on weapons class, as those were confusing to me when I first played this game, & not even the strategy guide offers a clear explanation of how the battle skill computers really work. The combat system is pretty deep especially when trying to activate skills & combos, & a lot of it is left up to you to figure out exactly what works & what doesn't. Platinum medals for each mission are what people ultimately go for, but if you upgrade your weapons too quickly or too slowly, they will be impossible to achieve. That was another thing that I didn't understand back in the day. I would usually get a 15% penalty off of my mission scores for "weapons levels", & I would think that they were too low, so I'd go beef them up in the sim & never see the penalty go away, since the game was actually saying that were too high to begin with. The problem is that if you train a pilot in the sim with the same weapon that you plan to send them into battle with, it may level up too fast for the games liking, depending on how far along into the story you are. So, you can train with an alternate weapon class when teaching a pilot battle skills in the sim, if the pilots usual weapon-class level becomes too high. Conversely, if you go into battle with very low weapons levels, you'll probably take too many turns to win, you'll get points off for that, & not get a platinum score due to that. The strategy guide helps by letting you know on average where your weapon levels should be for that mission, if you're concerned about getting platinum medals. If you don't care about your grade & just want to win, you can sandbag with higher weapons levels to win more easily, & that's cool, too. I'm thinking that platinums should be easier to achieve during a second playthrough, because the game allows you to retain any learned battle skills for a second play-through after you have beaten it once, meaning you won't have to use the simulator to learn them & be worried about leveling up your weapons too much. I was never able to move my original PS1 save to my PS3 without buying some contraption, so that's why I started a second play-through with no battle-skills. I have the most fun setting up some mechs for combat, others for teaching pilots useful battle skills, then setting everything up for the next battle, & then seeing them activate or combo their skills in battle. The story is about as lame as it was 20 years ago, & the characters are just about as annoying, the secondary vehicle models look like they were done on a Commodore 64, but I just ignore all of that & spend time in the simulator or in battles, & the game is still a lot of fun, & for the most part, still looks really good. There is a glitch where the enemy mechs generally will not activate if you stay 6 or 7 squares away from them. I'm not sure if it's a glitch or meant to help pace the battles, but I have played turns where the enemy will simply sit there & not do anything until I approached more closely. A lot of people online say it's a glitch, so maybe it was officially confirmed, but it's not something that generally detracts from my enjoyment of the game. Most of these battles are hard enough without every mech on the map showing up to attack in one or two turns. In any case, this is a good game for anyone who likes chess & blowing stuff up, & I'm glad that I fired it up again.
