Final Fantasy Tactics vs. Front Mission

[Manhattan Sports Club]

How do you guys compare Square's FM series (the main turn-based entries) vs. their more internationally recognized FF Tactics series? Do you think FM can hold a candle? It seems to be quite underrated here in the States but I want to know who has played it enough to make a judgement?

[kupomogli]

Final Fantasy Tactics. Front Mission 3 is the best one that's released in the west, but even so, because of the randomization of your attack skills going into effect and the randomness of which part is damaged, the game is very flawed. The strategy on the game also isn't very deep, so long as you're good with the mechanics, the game won't be that difficult. The best thing about Front Mission is the story, the storyline to Front Mission 3 is excellent, and depending on your choice there's two different campaigns. I've played the first and fourth Front Mission games, but only for a few missions and haven't touched them since. I just didn't find the games enjoyable to keep me entertained.

FFTactics has a great storyline and great gameplay. FFTactics Advance the storyline isn't bad, but it's not really that great, and there are some flaws in the gameplay, but there are some things about FFTA that are better than the original. Less class variety, but building your characters in FFTA is better than it is on FFT. Leveling up as any class and the character stats are permanent, so you want to make sure you're leveling up as few times as a class that isn't going to be your main as possible. Also building your classes seems to be a little bit deeper with the different race types and the different skillsets on classes.

FFTA2 is the worst FFT imo and it's really because the game doesn't have any direction. Doing quests are how you progress through the game, how you get different classes, etc. I haven't finished it and I did like it for what I've played, but there are some things I don't like about it. The game seems to be built around requiring a strategy guide or a lot of trial and error while playing to get the most of it. Not because it's difficult, but because there are times I've picked a quest and ran it and I've received a new class from the quest, but from what I can remember, your quests reset when you go on a quest, so what happens if you miss a quest that gets you a class or gets you a material you're required to create a weapon type. You're out of luck until you get that quest back and you don't know which quest had an extra class, you don't know what class had the material required to upgrade your weapons. Because your characters gain stats based on class, what if you happen to never get the classes to build your character towards what you want them to be? You're basically leveling your character as some base class that has stats that screw your overall build. Requiring knowledge about the game before you even play is stupid if you ask me, and they probably built the gameplay around this game in attempt to sell strategy guides.

[LaughingMAN.S9]

I had a lot more fun in terms of gameplay with front mission 3 than tactics, but tactics overall is the much better game. Tactics had probably my second favorite story in the series, the combat arguably had more strategy to it and graphically it looked better with better art direction.


Front mission had probably the worst translation in a squaresoft game I have ever seen, the dialog is horrendous. the story you will never fully give a shit about assuming you even bother to follow it and every single character you come across is unlikeable.

All that being said front mission does offer incredible value when you consider i spent over 90 hours beating just 1 scenario. I imagine the entire story is changed if you play the second, I wouldn't know I barely put in an hour before I moved on.

Conversely I've played and replayed tactics maybe like 5 or 6 times. There is also a psp rerelease with an updated translation, animated cutscenes and better graphics so that's also something to consider.


In the end my vote goes to tactics but I really loved front mission 3 for all the positive reasons I mentioned and its definetly worth playing

[Manhattan Sports Club]

I know this will sound farfetched, maybe a bit "apples and oranges", but do you think StarCraft is a better sci-fi strategy series than Front Mission? I know StarCraft has had only two entries vs. the many that FM had, but I hear just the first on its own had a lot of depth to it and supposedly a decent story for its genre. I'm interested in playing it. What do you think?

[LaughingMAN.S9]

I know this will sound farfetched, maybe a bit "apples and oranges", but do you think StarCraft is a better sci-fi strategy series than Front Mission? I know StarCraft has had only two entries vs. the many that FM had, but I hear just the first on its own had a lot of depth to it and supposedly a decent story for its genre. I'm interested in playing it. What do you think?

I don't know how to answer that as they're 2 totally different although related genres. Front mission is turn based and there is no resource management, Starcraft is a real time strategy game with everything that comes with that


That being said, despite the differences, you should definitely play Starcraft. One of the best games ever made in any genre. Never played the second one and barely played online at all but solely for the story and campaign, definitely get starcraft