It has been some time since we first heard about Front Mission and being a huge mech fans, we always wanted to see it released here. Now that Square is bringing everything over to America, we've finally got our chance and we're happy as can be.

Front Mission 3 involves Kazuki Takemura and Ryogo Kusama, two Wanzer pilots who become entangled in a conspiracy that seems to grow the further away from Japan they seem to get. Depending on which path you take, the player can play on one side of the story or the other. In the end, though, you get to the same conclusion.

The game is deep and rewarding, with numerous wanzer(mech) parts to customize your team. Learning abilities from the parts leads to making the later battles much easier. An in-depth Internet allows you access to a hidden super-wanzer, among other oddities. If you enjoy just looking around, the in-game Internet may take up a huge portion of your game time as the content on certain pages changes as the game continues.

The battle-system involves moving your wanzers around, having your pilots learn new skills to make them more dangerous to the enemy. When you confront an enemy, you can attack, counter-attack and initiate special attacks when the given circumstances happen.

Also, with the two separate story-lines, you can go through the game twice, fighting people who were your allies in the other scenario. In reality, you might have to play through three or more times just to play all of the battles in the game. (There is one place where you can have as many as four series of battles before moving back into the main stream of the story.)

The only real issue here is the lack of top-grade graphics. Most of the scenes have a low polygon count and the people just look blocky and ugly. If you can get past this, you're in for a real treat.

- - kinderfeld