From our other sites
The story
The download version of “Front Mission 3” on the Switch Store dropped to ¥400, sparking discussion on 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (Geha) board.
Alongside speculation that the discount might be a pricing error, posters brought up the poor Steam user reviews for the remakes of the first two games, criticized the rough translation and presentation, and swapped notes on their fondness for the older spin-off “Alternative.”
What people said
Seems like they set the discount rate wrong.
Classic Nintendo.
Keep starting these every time there's a killer sale.
Maybe I should get used to SRPGs first.
It's Fire Emblem (correcting your spelling).
Was it a bad remake on the level of Tactics Ogre?
The system seems about the same as the original, but the new graphics, controls, and skill presentation all seem to fall flat.
Also heard the Japanese translation is rough — broken line breaks, lines just left in English instead of being localized, that kind of thing.
If you want an FM fix, just play Kōran (lit. "Steel Storm") instead.
Kōran's pretty trashy too, honestly.
The story's good, though.
It's not so much that 3 itself is bad — it applies to this whole line of licensed-out FM remakes in general.
It feels like they just built it to spec with zero love put into it.
The systems are basically a straight port, and in some spots the controls actually got worse.
Even the animations feel like they just slapped on a "raise your hand" motion because the spec said so, without understanding why that motion belongs there.
It's like that the whole way through, and it genuinely gets irritating.
I love old-school games like that — Battle Commander, Langrisser III, that whole vibe.
Front Mission Alternative's graphics were incredibly well done for a PS1 game.
Yeah, I really wish I could play Alternative on something handheld, out and about.
3 just feels way too dated at this point… I mean, the price is the price, but I can't work up the motivation to play it again.
The guy who made the Front Mission series was Toshiro Tsuchida, and he left Square Enix a long time ago.
Masami Hashimoto is the Left Alive guy — different person.
Well, Hashimoto was also the producer on 1, 2, and Alternative, so he's not totally unrelated either.
Good on Square Enix for following Capcom's lead with a bold discount like this.
This isn't Square Enix, by the way.
PS Store
The publisher's pricing guy: "Ahh, whatever, close enough."
Then again, its high reputation always had some nostalgia goggles baked in.
I like it, but once you get past the tense, resource-tight early game and it turns into everyone slapping the same optimal parts on the same unit build, I did think, "eh, this is just average."
The first game was basically a pattern game that started with stun guns and long-range fighting.
On top of nostalgia goggles, the ratings get boosted by fans of Amano's artwork too, so it's a mixed bag.
The bugs were way too bad.
I gritted my teeth and kept playing despite being irritated the whole time, but the second it started freezing every time I opened the map, that was the last straw — I quit and sold it.
No idea if it's been patched since.
Why not just buy it from your phone?
Looks like a pricing mistake, so it'll probably get fixed.
No way this gets "fixed," don't worry.
It's not actually a mistaken price.
Coin-sized sale prices like this happen all the time.
Background and Key Points
Front Mission has been in an odd position for years — Square Enix outsourced the mecha-tactics series to Forever Entertainment for a run of remakes covering the first three games, and the results split reception hard: solid critical takes on the story but consistently poor Steam user scores and complaints about stiff presentation. The ¥400 price for Front Mission 3 reflects that roughly 90% discount on the Switch eShop, matching a similarly steep cut already seen on PlayStation, which is part of why posters leaned toward “pricing error” rather than a planned promotion — Nintendo eShop discounting mistakes have a minor history as a recurring meme on this board (“Classic Nintendo”).
Where the thread actually splits is on how bad the remakes are and why. It’s not a simple “good game vs. bad game” debate — several posters agree the underlying tactical systems held up reasonably well, while the disagreement is over whether the presentation failures (rough Japanese localization with leftover English text, broken UI, weaker animation and controls than the originals) are dealbreakers or just surface-level flaws layered on a decent core. There’s also a side thread of nostalgia-skepticism, where posters push back on the first game’s reputation, attributing some of its acclaim to nostalgia and to Yoshitaka Amano’s character art rather than the game itself.
What outside readers likely won’t know: the remakes weren’t made by Square Enix’s original Front Mission team. Series creator Toshiro Tsuchida left Square Enix long ago, and although producer Masami Hashimoto worked on the original 1, 2, and Alternative, the remakes were developed by an external studio — a detail the thread only partially untangles amid confusion over the unrelated Left Alive team. That outsourcing, more than any single bug, explains the “built to spec without understanding why” criticism raised in the thread. Also unaddressed: fan demand for a port of the 1999 PS1 spin-off Alternative remains unmet, despite repeated requests here and elsewhere.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and summaries of the 5ch (Hardware/Industry [Geha]) thread “[SWITCH] Front Mission 3 ¥400 [90% OFF].”
Leave a Reply