Completed Let's blow shit up with giant robots like it's 2112 - Front Mission 3

[Kuattro]

Update 10 - The Shitty Update

Spoiler

On the way back, after our plan has failed rather miserably, we are forced to stop in Zhenyuan since Emma is "exhausted", which is Japanese for "we still have more plot to introduce with our magic plot wand". The first person we come across as we enter town, a woman called Lixian, invites us to her home to rest a bit.

I'm not going to transcribe all the dialogue because there's quite a lot of it and most of it is irrelevant, so I'll give you the bullet points.

• About 8 years ago, a plane crashed in the city. She found in the wreckage a young boy, having been "covered" (don't ask questions) by his mother, and therefore alive. His name was Kwang, and she adopted her.
• A bit later, at the bar, Li, the guy that was part of the RRF, admits that he was tasked with the mission of shooting down said plane, because it was carrying a VIP, namely, Ming Huang Jiu, the vice-chairman of the DHZ at that moment, and that they wanted to assassinate.
• The assassination was ordered by the vice-chairman assistant, Jie Bo Liao, who is now the actual chairman of the DHZ.
• All of this was during the time immediately after the death of the former chairman, Bai Tai Luong. Once he was dead, there was a conflict between Ming, who was a capitalist and wanted to establish a capitalist economy and maintain the commercial ties that the DHZ had with the USN; and Jie, who was a socialist and wanted to establish a socialist state. The death of Ming and the ascension of Jie also cut the ties between the DHZ and the USN, so that the latter became, just as the OCU had been from the very beginning, a rival of the DHZ.
• So, Kwang being the son of Ming means that he now can take his father's mantle, because this is apparently a medieval feudal kingdom, where being the son of an influential politician means you're automatically "it". Or the contemporary USA.
• Any way, there's a lot of crying, finger pointing, Li asks Kwang for forgiveness and this is conceded, and then Kwang decides that, yes, he will "accomplish his fate", and will join the Hua Lian rebels in dethroning, quite literally, Jie, because that's what the country needs, a 16 year old who has lived all his live in a little village with no formation nor known qualities; to what Lixian doesn't really agree but hey, what's she going to do about it right?

That's about 15 minutes of dialogue and running back and forth between Lixian's house and the bar (yes, we're alcoholics) condensed to the best of my abilities. Now back to the regular transmission.

Back at Guangzhou there's a lot of rejoicing because yes! That's exactly what they needed! A teenager nobody knows anything about! Now the revolution is assured to triumph!

Then we receive a transmission from a certain Guan Lei, who is apparently a USN spy that Li has been in contact for a long time. They meet at Foshan, where Guan Lei introduces Li to her daughter, Ran Fong, and charges him with protecting her, should something happen to him. Obviously immediately something happens to him, because he has been stealing classified material from the DHZ military, so he gets shot in front of Li (but not in front of his daughter, the Japanese have some class). He has then to take Ran Fong, and run from the DHZ military intelligence agents that want to kill them all. He flees to an ancient temple, where he tells Kazuki NOT to come and help him, which I interpret as Li's being a master of manipulation and reverse psychology, because obviously telling Kazuki not to do something is the perfect way to ensure he will do exactly that. We also meet again with our old friends the Wulong, who where casually passing by. And there we come into play.



Well that was interesting.

Turns out Guan Lei gave his daughter a necklace which turns out to be a microchip, with instructions to show it to Li. After Yun fiddles with it a bit, it turns out to contain information about Tianlei, a DHZ's "mobile fortress" (imagine the first thing that comes when you read the words "mobile fortress" in a Japanese context, and you have probably imagined EXACTLY how that looks like). So it doesn't take a genius to connect the dots and understand that we couldn't point the RRF's base of operations because it was mobile. And since it is Kazuki who deduces it, it's definitely not a genius who does it.

There's a list of engineers that worked on Tianlei, and all of them are dead except for one, obviously assassinated by the DHZ. The one that's still alive is a certain Zhun Xi Liang, with the only information that he lives in Guiyang.

Before we leave the rebel base, though, we are informed that there's been a military coup in Japan (remember all I said about we hearing about Sasaki again? Yep, there it is). But first we take care of our business here, then the rest of the world, I guess.

At Guiyang's bar, we meet...

"Randy", the bartender. Once more, please don't ask.

And our man, drunk as a skunk, scared to death that we are there to kill him but, once we explain the situation, he totally sobers up and agrees to help us. Turns out that only the daughter of the former director of the Tianleng project knows the password to the files we need to access, since her father sent it to her, encrypted, in case something happened to him. So we start the journey towards Kunming, but in the way, we run into a sad pantomime with which we will obviously end up involved.



With that taken care of, we finally get to Mei Ling (the daughter), we manage to decrypt the files and access the map of Tianlei, her and Zhun promise each other love eternal (because of course), and we are finally getting somewhere, I would say.

We start preparing the assault on Tianleng, which would free the route to Shanghai, by going shopping, because the Guangzhou shop has now a couple new weapons that are upgrades to the ones we had. We also refurbish the Wanzer of the pilots we haven't been using, because in Tianleng's assault we'll be using all of them. Kwang gives an Inspiring Speech that lasts all of ten second and boils down to "Good luck lads, break a leg!" which apparently is proof of his insuperable leadership, and we finally get to see the face of an enemy.

"Bal, what's going on with MIDAS?"

"No, that's Chairman Jie, who as you can imagine, is not so much an enemy as a fucking idiot with more ego than intelligence who's going to get fucked over at the first opportunity. Not that Bal is much different... oops."

"We have one of the scientists in custody. The other one will be captured soon. The original MIDAS is lost, but we can have them build another."

"That's obviously how your typical Belarusian looks like. Bow-tie and all."

"Then my country will rule the world."

"What about you? I hear Ming's son is still alive."

"It doesn't mater. We have Tianlei and the Rapid Reaction Force. Once the Imaginary Numbers go into mass production, our military will be invincible."

So plan's as follows. We divide into two squads, one takes on the RRF and eliminates them, and then the other takes Tianlei's elevator to the bottom floor, fucks up the power generator and everything goes boom.

Since the "eliminator" squad will be fighting in the surface floor of Tianlei, why exactly do we need two squads anyway, instead of everyone doing everything? Doesn't matter, as plans go, this isn't even the stupidest one they have concocted, so let's just go with it.

Tianlei passes through a very narrow valley, which gives us the perfect opportunity to drop a big chunk of rocks on it in order to immobilize and assault it, so that's exactly what we do. And then the real dancing begins.



With the coast clear, our "sabotage" team can then infiltrate (for a certain meaning of infiltrate) Tianlei and fuck it up. We get on the elevator, descend onto the first floor, and find this.

Four Shangdis, against my four Wanzers, in CQC. Have you ever seen a documentary about lions hunting in Africa? Well what followed was more or less that, only with oil instead of blood. As I said, the Shangdi 1 is an excellent sniper/gunner, but always with other, more sturdier Wanzers as support so that they take the shots while it guns them down. Without a wall between them and the enemy...

Yeah.

Exactly.

As expected. Basically, they get surrounded one after the other on all sides, and pounded into submission or destruction.

And they still only give me gold the fuckers (the extra turns were spend surrounding surrendering Wanzers so that we could capture them without destroying them).

But we walk away with two of them, so fuck 'em, eh?

We go down another level and...

Well, hello

there! Fancy seeing you here (not really, she's RRF, so obviously she would be in the RRF's base). Women, always coming back for more.

Funny thing, she is, I think, the only enemy we ever meet that carries a flamethrower (she's also the only playable pilot that specializes in flamethrowers, when she joins you in Alisa's story).

Not so funny thing, this fight is also shit.

Basically, is the same as before, only this time a Shangdi 1 has been substituted by her in a Tieqi 4 with a flamethrower. Now don't get me wrong, the Tieqi 4 is an excellent gunner, with enough power to be heavily armed, while enough HP as to be able to keep close to the front lines and use a machine gun.

But the only support she has are three Shangdis, so, yeah, it's going to be carnage down here.

Hot! But useless, because she gets surrounded and ganged upon to the brink of death.

And here I was, trying to remember if Wanzers piloted by named characters can be forced to surrender (I don't think they can, but I really wanted that Tieqi 4), when this happened.

We are starting to see end game skills, the ones that will really murder those 1000+ HP Wanzers in a breeze. In this case, Firing Squad will call on two ranged allies that are in range, to fire at the same target you are firing at. On an intact Wanzer, the results can be spectacular. On a half dead Wanzer...

Yeah, I think we might have killed her thrice.

After this, the two remaining Shangdis are brutally forced to surrender.

We took two turns less than the last one, what do you know?

And as always, booty is GOOD.

We make it to the bottom floor of the fortress, we sabotage its power generator, and now we have 25 minutes to get out of there before it blows up.

On the way out, though, we find an RRF officer that declares his intention of keeping us busy there until Tianlei blows, taking us all with it. Obviously we do not intend to comply.

Four Wude 3s could be problematic, since they are sturdy and pack a punch, literally (well in this case a spike-punch), but since they are not supported by gunners, we can attack them from range and then respond to their attacks with our shields. In the end, so, we don't have a lot of trouble, other than a countdown which, if you take too many turns, becomes a Game Over. We'll beat it easily, so no sweat. Now all that remains is seeing if we manage to capture some Wudes, because as I've said, they are very, very good Wanzers. And Marcus actually managed to put one of them in that sweet spot with a counter-attack, when suddenly...

Again, an end game skill that deals massive damage by hitting the enemy over the head with your shield. It can bring down even the sturdiest of Wanzers in one hit, and in this case...

It does 729 damage, obviously pulverizing both the Wude and my hopes of taking it with me.

It was all academic anyway, because we managed to bully the last remaining enemy into surrendering.

So we managed to go home with another platinum chip...

... and with our Wude.

And we also got to see Tianlei blow up. And we get the green light to start our invasion of Shanghai, which will commence with an attack on Wuhan, and we're tasked with taking the supply depot there and stopping the massive counter-attack expected. But that, is for the next update!

Before I go, though, for the lovers of the Network part of the game, we manage to gain access to the files in the JDF Intelligence web, which confirms that the operation to steal MIDAS (as seen on the game intro) was definitely a JDF operation, that the JDF is looking to reproduce and mass produce MIDAS, and that the original plan was to dupe the OCU when they demanded MIDAS to be surrendered to them and instead they were going to give them the prototype they had created, but the plan was probably scraped when the prototype went boom (again, the accident seen at the beginning of the game). BUT, it turns out that the one detonated in Batangas (and that we sadly didn't get to see because I'm stupid and missed that update) was also a prototype, although a more advanced one. So, the original MIDAS is still out there, probably at the hands of the JDF Intelligence. Basically we've been on a giant wild goose chase.

Not only that, but we actually discover that the JDF Intelligence has been working closely with the CIA (and not the FAI), that Lukav is apparently working with them also (these are files from LONG ago), and that the CIA is following Isao Takemura, Kazuki's father.

There's also some orders sent to army divisions loyal to the JDFI to fight the Coup D'etat forces only with outdated equipment, and keep the newer equipment in reserve.

And finally, there's some orders for the Mobile Assault Force (the JDF's SF, again, loyal to the JDFI), who received the Shunyos we saw at the beginning of the game, as we will see very soon, to assassinate Isao Takemura and all his HQ.

Basically, we've been bamboozled, and we better finish whatever stupid shit we have to do in the DHZ and return to Japan because MIDAS is still there, and our enemies, which may be back home, are very keen on using it.

 

[lightbane]

There's something wrong with the audio in your videos, it sounds too low. Besides that, keep doing the good work!

 

[Kuattro]

There's something wrong with the audio in your videos, it sounds too low. Besides that, keep doing the good work!

Yes, Windows is reducing the recording volume when I open OBS. I've fixed it (I think), so hopefully next updates will have correct volume.

 

[BrotherFrank]

When i dug up my ps1 a few years back, this was one of the first games i replayed <3
This was actually my gateway drug into mecha stuff as a kid, after this i gave armored core a try and thus was born my fondness for giant robots.

Anyways, boo for not picking the alternate path of the story I always preferred the cast of the Alisa storyline myself (Liu>Dennis).

And FM3 was the only one in the series i played alas, i remember the sequels either being unavailable to me or panned critically.
So whilst im here... Whats you bros opinion on Front Mission Evolved? It's on steam but the mixed reviews make me wary.

 

[lightbane]

It is an action game that tries to be "generic mecha shooter" and Front Mission at the same time, failing at both. The story is also over-the-top and quite silly (the intro starts with the Russians deploying a super-microwave satellite that vaporizes New York IIRC) and not in line with the rest of the games. Might be worth a single playthrough.

As for Slavs being evil incarnate in FM, that's standard in... Most Japanese (and some non-Japanese) games actually. Japs are quite racist and it shows, although it gets worse in the FM comic.

 

[Kuattro]

And FM3 was the only one in the series i played alas, i remember the sequels either being unavailable to me or panned critically.

Well, I'm closing in on the ending (three updates left, I would say), so you might very well see FM4 soon. Probably not, but one can always dream.

So whilst im here... Whats you bros opinion on Front Mission Evolved? It's on steam but the mixed reviews make me wary.

Nothing much to add to what lightbane has said other than, as I pointed at the beginning, I firmly believe that FM Evolved was what killed any possibility of seeing anything else Front Mission related, at least until Square gets really desperate for money and Final Fantasy stops carrying them which might be never.

What did Front Mission fans need? An action shooter! What did action shooter fans need? A mediocre game with a setting they don't care about! It's a winning combination. It will work!

 

[BrotherFrank]

I see :/ I was naively hoping to hear something along the lines of FM evolved didn't sell too well or it was controversial somehow..
In my defense though, the idea of turning a slow paced tactical rpg into a fps was so retarded i didn't even consider the possibility.

Anyways heres hoping to a FM4 lp!
Random questions whilst im here:
I was never crazy about the story tbh (especially as a kid) but seeing as how all the FM games take place in the same setting , im assuming theres some grand overarching story that connects all the games in the series no? Do the cast of a past FM game ever make a cameo in later games? Even if the protagonist of FM3...meh to put it lightly, the side characters were cool.

 

[Kuattro]

Update 11 - The I'm Running Out Of Things To Call These Update

Spoiler

I'm going to cut to the chase, because I can see the end of the LP from here and I'm very keen on getting there.

As I've said, all the chaos and hell we've created has now created a clear path all the way to Shanghai for the rebels, so we're definitely going to take it, and of course, we're definitely going to be taking point. Our objective is taking a supply depot in Wuhan while other rebel units take the rest of the city, and from there, we'll make the final push to Shanghai.

The first order of business is smashing our way through a bridge, which obviously, is going to be heavily defended.

Very heavily defended, in fact. Yes, that is a Wanzer. Or something like that. It's big and scary, anyway. But you'll see it's not as bad as it looks.

Some missileers, two melee, a lot of tanks, and the Nilong 1, which is the name of that thing. I said it's not as scary as it looks because, even though it packs quite an (assault) punch, it only has a "body", no legs or arms or anything, so it should be easy to take down fast.

It's a long and slow battle, with the enemy slowly chipping away at us, specially Kazuki, with us blocking everything we can with shields, and not using a lot of skills because, as I've said before, my pilots are allergic to them.

We go right to take those missileers out, killing all tanks in the way, while Emma engages in a useless missile duel with the other (I can't wait until she gets Salvo, not long now).

The Nilong decided to join the party, and as you can see, I was in for a world of pain.

He declared, unawares of his impending doom.

Uh oh.

He didn't even get to hit me once. I wonder how much money did they spend on that monster.

Any way, that's possibly the most interesting thing that happened in that fight, other than me realising that I REALLY should give Kazuki legs with way better evasion and a body with better damage reduction if I'm going to insist on making him a point man.

Not bad.

So, with the bridge under our control, we make way to the supply depot, with the plan we had devised ready to be set in motion. Namely, since the depot is in a castle (that apparently we can't just blow up with the big, heavy, incredibly armed robots we are piloting), we are going to use a hill that's next to the castle to build bridges and get in there.

Who the hell builds a castle next to a hill from where enemies can fire at its courtyard?

We're there, on that hill, and on the left, the castle, with three gun emplacements on the walls, and a fuck ton of missileers and one of those crabby fuckers with grenades in the courtyard. First, we need to keep the engineers alive for a couple of turns until they've built the bridges.

Which easier said than done because these people insist on going into battle in the flimsiest of Wanzers.

I swear if they had managed to kill them by turn 2 I would have quit the LP on the spot. But it didn't happen, so here we are.

Turn 4, bridges are built, engineers retreat. There we go.

And by there we go I mean shit all while being under heavy missile bombardment, since the useless little shits that are my pilots managed to miss the same guy FIVE TIMES with 75%+ chance to hit, three times Dennis (obviously), and two for Emma. And then she had to reload. So that's three turns that half of my squad did NOTHING, while allowing a missile wielding psychopath to take pot shots at Kazuki.

The result of that was obvious.

He definitely needs an upgrade. The Lenghe body has a lot of HP, but 5% damage reduction is shit. And 20%something evasion in the legs doesn't help at all. Not to mention his shield only being able to deflect four attacks, but that's won't have a solution until the next shop.

Any way, Kazuki down. Fortunately the thing was almost over.

Also, I HATE grenades.

We didn't exceed the allowed number of attacks, even with that shit show with Dennis and Emma. Maybe they're not THAT tyrannous.

With Wuhan taken, we need to advance on Shanghai, and the enemy still heavily outnumbers us. So once more, the strategic genius of our people wags its tail and shows us that there's nothing that can be solver with a bit of imagination, a healthy suspension of disbelief, and the conviction by the game writers that the players aren't really even reading the story. We're going to divide the enemy forces with a small decoy squad accompanied by inflatable Wanzers. Yes, inflatable, you read it correctly the first time.

Then the real main force can advance virtually unopposed towards Shanghai.

And they say Asians are smarter on average.

The preparations get interrupted though, when an enemy recon plane comes around. We shoot it down, but the pilots are made of steel or some futuristic alloy and survive the crash, so we are tasked with eliminating them.

Without Wanzers.

I'm not even going to put images of it. What was it, where they afraid that the players were starting to get tired of giant robots and decided to shake it up a bit?

We kill them all anyway, and then we can get on with it.

We divide our group in two squads once more, one that will act as decoy, lead by Emma, and the other that will be pushing for Nanjing, and then Shanghai, lead by Kazuki.

The decoy squad takes the first blood. Nothing interesting really, just some missileers, some shotgunners, a couple infantry snipers and a pair of helicopters. The only difference is the terrain, we are fighting in cannons joined by land bridges, but as always, the terrain is as much of a hindrance to us as it is to the enemy, whom we are free to engage one on one, well, small group on small group, with local force superiority. Us having better Wanzers and better skills, it's not much of a fair fight.

Emma is tasked with the helicopters, as she's long range an they are flying where no one else can reach.

And the other three take care of the Wanzers. We've upgraded all of ours, which now have better evasion, damage reduction and shields, so their missiles are virtually harmless. But our bullets aren't.

So that happened.

Kazuki meanwhile lands on Nanjing, where we get to meet one more (and last) time the three amigos, the other two are going to show up later. For now we kill (yes, kill) these three.

They haven't really changed that much, and our new, refurbished Wanzers outclass them in any possible way. They added four armoured cars to the fight just to even things. It didn't really work out.

Again, there's not really much to show, so let this serve as a summary of it all. No, he didn't even get to fire his grenades once.

It was over before it even started.

Back with Emma, we discover enemy reinforcements advancing on Nanjing which could really ruin Kazuki's day, so we decide to throw ourselves at them, Kamikaze style, in order to delay their advance.

Turns out that, for all the talk the squad has about them murdering us, they're nothing special. Some missileers, some armoured cars, and a grenade vehicle, which has to die in the most painful possible way of course.

We take care of it as fast as we can, and that's really it. The rest is pretty standard, Emma engaging the helicopter, my Wanzer destroying the all-missileer opposition, and easily avoiding damage from their missiles with shields.

I'd show you images, but it's nothing you haven't seen a dozen times in this LP. So I'll just skip to the end.

Kazuki gets to Nanjing, and the city turns out to not have been evacuated and still full of civilians. There's a big hullabaloo between Kazuki wanting to stop fighting, pack up and go home, and the rebels telling him to fuck off because this is the only chance we'll get of doing this. I think we're supposed to simpatize with Kazuki, but the rebels end up sounding like the only reasonable side, this IS war after all, and if we go home now we'll only be lengthening the civil war and even more civilians will die. Better to end it, whatever the result is, today, than have many more years of horror, I say.

Anyway, a woman who we met not five minutes ago and wants to "protect everyone" flies in in a helicopter and we have to protect her and her subordinate as they evacuate civilians for a couple of turns.

Two of those big ass spidery Wanzers we say so long ago, some shotgunners and some tanks is all they can muster to fight us (remember, we have divided them with our clever inflatable Wanzers ruse). We go first for the spiders, since they have two missile launchers so they're the main menace both to us and the helicopters.

Since we've upgraded our Wanzers,

they have crazy evasion and everyone has an incredibly hard time hitting them. We don't even need to use shields most of the time.

We take them down, and this is half in the bag.

Still, in their wisdom, one of the helicopters decides the best way to evacuate civilians is to fly straight into the enemy lines, and gets downed.

You can appreciate in the lower left this was not the sharpest pilot in the rebels.

But since you have to lose both helicopters for Game Over, we are not worried, and next turn the other one bugged off. We killed any enemy that remained, and with that, we took Nanjing.

Almost there!

We receive communication that Emma's squad, having attracted the ire of half the enemy army, is now surrounded and about to be destroyed. Kazuki goes ballistic and demands the rebels stop their offensive to help her, to which the rebels, once more, tell him to stuff it.

And again, I don't really understand who I'm supposed to be rooting for here. I mean, hey, it's Emma, we've known her since the beginning of the game so of course it would be a bummer if she were to die, but she knew the risks and she volunteered to be the decoy, and I'm no strategic genius, but isn't the task of decoys exactly what she's doing, that is, diverting a sizeable part of the enemy force to allow your main attack to have an easier time? Are we supposed to stop a full offensive, and the possibility of winning the war, just so we can save a single squad of soldiers?

Any way, Kazuki flies into such a rage that actually helps him reach Emma's position at Mach-3 in no time, so something good came out of it. And now we have to save the damsel in distress.

Part of the enemy force: A missileer, a grenade vehicle and an armoured car. Not shown, another missileer, two more cars and a helicopter. Because if something didn't stop us the first time, try it again until it works. Again the main problem is the terrain and the bridges that join the different landmasses, but since that divides the enemy and they are incapable of rallying, while we can easily do that, it helps us and fucks with them.

Once more, we take care of the grenades as soon as possible, having taken care of the car and the missileer on the way too. Then we turn back and kill the rest of the enemies, while Linny (our second missileer) kills the helicopter from afar. Not a lot of history in this fights, to be honest... the ones on the next update will be more interesting, I swear.

We get treated to a small scene where Lukav recommends the DHZ military to let the rebels into Shanghai, and then surround and destroy them with superior numbers. Ourselves, though, having separated from the rebels, decide instead to use the chaos of battle to infiltrate Shanghai, get to the Ravnui Embassy and complete our objective.

I couldn't in good faith skip over this rare moment of insightfulness shared by two of the comic relief characters of the game in a quick aside, which makes me thing that some of the writers, at least, were trying not to hit something (or someone).

"Kazuki changes his mind pretty quickly."

"Yeah. He's a simpleton."

Indeed he is, young ladies. Indeed he is.

So, the plan is, we get to Shanghai airport, we take the railway there, and we go straight to the embassy. Only, once we get there...

It's Pinky and the Brain! (Pinky because of the hair, get it? Hey, it took me this long to get that).

Nothing fancy. Ignore the weird named launcher, it's just that it is European. She has Salvo though, fortunately, we'll still not find out what it does. Hopefully we will see it in the next update, when we use it.

And nothing here too.

A couple of armoured trains like the ones we found in Futai Tunnel, they have missiles and grenades, but this they will not get to use, and those, with our defences and shields, are more a little pest than anything else.

Also, there are some armoured cars around, but at this stage of the game, who cares?

Since we don't like Salvo, we neutralize her by the second turn by blowing up both her arms, and then we turn on the cars, randomly killing armoured cars if they get in the way, while the other fella goes on a romp on the back of the map without shooting anyone. Fine by us.

As we are busy with the trains, he decides to get close and start taking shots at us. So we ask him nicely to mind his own business and leave us to ours with the trains. And that was the end of the Wulong mercenaries.

And also of the last train, who decided to give up and run away before we could finish him off.

And that was that!

We get on a train, and we head for the Ravnui Embassy. Next update, Embassy, Bal, Lukav, Alisa, Imaginary Numbers, Borscht, Babka, potatoes in general, and all the rest of it. That should be much more interesting that the sad fights we've had on our way to Shanghai. At least I hope so.

 

[Kuattro]

I was never crazy about the story tbh (especially as a kid) but seeing as how all the FM games take place in the same setting , im assuming theres some grand overarching story that connects all the games in the series no? Do the cast of a past FM game ever make a cameo in later games? Even if the protagonist of FM3...meh to put it lightly, the side characters were cool.

Oh boy, is there!

Fortunately, the same people who translated FM5 and most of FM2 already did quite a lot of the job for us.

I'd recomend going here and scrolling down to the Recurring Characters section, because there's quite a lot of it.

 

[lightbane]

BrotherFrank , sorta. There is a story that follows from FM1-5, with the last game taking a more general scope, for good and bad, as it works for those who know the series, but it also makes it somewhat disjointed.

As for FM3, I loved that giant dildo missile whose only way of attacking you is by ramming, in spite of how non-sensical it sounds. Then, Kazuki demonstrates he's a massive psycho and betrays the rebels and everything they fought for. The reason? Because someone reminded him that Allisa could be in danger.
Remember that sob story about these two rebels? Dead. All of them, with no exceptions. All the time you spent fighting? Pointless.
The game gives out that message, yet the best part is that Kazuki doesn't give a fuck.

 

[Kuattro]

Update 12 - The Full Disclosure Update

Spoiler

The train leaves us at the embassy's gates, and we are immediately thrown into combat with the Real Numbers (which are not Imaginary Numbers, get it?) guarding the gates.



As I said, much more interesting fights. Still easy, but at least interesting. We are not even that much overleveled.

Kazuki gets us into the embassy by the tried method of punching the doors with a robot's fist until they blow up.

And once inside, we get cowardly ambushed by plot.

"Kazuki? Emma!?"

"Alisa!"

"Alisa!?"

This is starting to sound like a farce. "Father? Aunty Nora! Vicar?!"

"You recognize me!?"

"Emma! Run! You can't come here!"

"That's enough."

"Lukav!"

"Welcome back, Emir. How long has it been? 10 years?"

"Bal... Let Alisa go!"

"I'm hurt, Emir. I think of you and Alisa as my daughters."

"You only use people!"

"I won't let you use Emma or Alisa again!"

"I made them! Why do you care what I do with them?"

"They're real human beings with consciences!"

"That's right. Imaginary Numbers are my finest creation. Not defects like you."

"That's enough, Bal!!"

"Calm down, Emir. You must be confused. Your "parents" tried to steal my finest achievement. That's why I had to kill them."

"I don't want to hear it! They didn't have anything with them! We ran away carrying nothing..."

(Insert flashback where, once more, Emma reminisces of the tragic incident where a Ravnui helicopter mistook the car she and her parents were running away from Bal for a pigeon, and shot them up. Emma managed to run to the forest, where the helicopter pursued her, because you don't let juicy pigeons get away, not in Belarus where they only have potato to eat, and was instead shot down by a U.S. Army Wanzer).

"! No..."

"Emma!? What's wrong?"

"Emir, you're very perceptive."

"The most perceptive of all my Imaginary Numbers."

"!? Emma, explain everything to me!"

"Me and Alisa."

"?"

For fuck's sake.

"My mother and father stole Alisa and me from the laboratory!"

"No!"

"That's right. You and Alisa and Lukav. I made all of you."

"!? You're lying! We're real humans! Tell me that's not true, Emma!!"

"..."

"Emir, you were saved by the USN. Did you think that was just by chance?"

"The USN knew I was an Imaginary Number. They used me..."

"Right. And you made MIDAS for them."

"..."

"What the..."

"I lost MIDAS, but I can make it again with the two of you in my custody. You were destined to come back to me."

"Stop! Using Emma and Alisa like puppets...! You're a monster!!"

"Shut up! You'll never get out of here alive. Lukav, finish them!"

"!"

"Kazuki, I can't let you have these sisters."

"Why, Lukav!? Bal's only using you, too!"

"That's not true. I'm the one using him. A defect like you can never use me."

"What is this, Lukav!?"

"Bal, you're only a defective human in the end. You've outlived your usefulness. I am perfect. I was made to rule this world."

Yep, there it is. It's Nazis all over again.

A Lenghe proceeds to punch through the wall, Lukav takes both Emma and Alisa and flees, and then everybody sets in pursue as, once more, a Benny Hill episode.

We though, being the unluckiest sods ever, have to fight our way out of the embassy, instead of doing like everybody else and just going away.



Once the fight's over, we receive the news that the Hua Lian have been defeated in Shanghai, so it looks like Lukav's plan was solid. So now that the DHZ military isn't distracted any more, we need to get the hell out of there before they come for us.

We decide to hide in Buxi, where Guan Lei, the USN spy with the daughter and all that, had a hideout. Once there, Moneymaker hacks the DHZ military web to discover a large number of troops mobilizing towards Yancheng, an old abandoned nuclear silo. And since we discover Bal's also going that way, we know where Lukav is. Before we leave though, Dennis receives an e-mail from the USN telling something that he doesn't really like, but we are not told what it is, yet. So cloak and dagger!

In the meantime, Emma gets an e-mail from Ken, one of her co-workers at the Alaska lab, telling her to be careful, because the military has just shut it down and taken all documentation related to MIDAS. We also get treated to a scene at Yangcheng where Lukav receives a message from Sasaki, the military dude from Japan. He tells Lukav the JDF has "agreed to his plan", and that they should send the scientists (Emma and Alisa) to Japan. Seems all pieces are getting in place.

We get to the missile base just as Bal and Lukav are having a tiff, and Bal orders Liu to kill Lukav just before the DHZ military shows up, accompanied by the Chairman, and they end up blowing up Bal because they are with Lukav now. So long, sucker!

Liu goes ballistic seeing Bal die, so he also get blasted.

In the end, it's only us remaining against the Imaginary Numbers and the DHZ military who are looking for a fight. So we fight.



All of that dealt with, we rush to the inside of the base, although Dennis doesn't seem very keen on meeting up with Emma. I wonder why.

We go in, find Emma and Alisa captive, and Lukav, who seems has become a bit pissed with Kazuki (no surprise there), decides finally to get his hands dirty and fight us in the field of battle, instead of behind our backs like a sissy.

Ready to rumble!



So, yeah, I think FM3 has a fundamental problem in it's design. The developers seemed to think that skills are more dangerous than numbers, so a fight with fewer enemies with more skills should be more difficult than a combat with more enemies without skills. Which is what we see in these last fights. The Imaginary Numbers are lower in numbers (he), but with skills like Aim Body, Brace II, Melee III, etc. And that could very well be, as we see in our case, that is, when our skills activate two or three times, we just breeze through the fight like it was nothing, when they don't instead, we need to slowly slug it out, which is when numbers really come into play.

When the enemy has skills but not numbers, it all depends in their skills activating, if they don't, as we have seen, they get crushed, and if in addition our skills do activate, they get pathetically crushed. When they have numbers, instead, they are dangerous, because, and here is the thing, attacks are guaranteed to damage you, while skills are not guaranteed to activate. Which means that six-seven enemies attacking your Wanzers each turn will whittle away their HP, even if skills don't activate; meanwhile, if there are only half of those enemies, if their skills are not activating, your damage output is always going to be higher, and therefore you're always going to win.

We've actually seen this during the LP. The only times we've been in trouble (and we've lost

just two Wanzers), have been when there were a lot of enemies in the field, even though they didn't have any skills. These end game fights, with the elite enemies instead? We're just breezing through them.

And that's why FM3 is easy, because the AI only puts you in trouble when they have a great advantage in numbers, and most times, either the enemy doesn't have that advantage, or the AI is incapable of bringing it into play.

And that's the end of Kuattro's words of wisdom. I'm not saying it wasn't evident before, it's just that now that we are supposedly fighting elite enemies and just destroying them, it becomes incredibly blatant.

Now that I've said that, we'll probably be seeing ALL THE ENEMY SKILLS in the last fights. But that's my life.

We get back to out hideout, and once there, Alisa shows that growing up next to Kazuki has indeed had an effect on her.

"What's up Alisa? Aren't you happy about going back to Japan?"

"What's to be happy about? That I'm not normal? That I was created to be used like a puppet?"

"Alisa, stop!"

"It's all your fault! It's all because you made that bomb! If it weren't for you, everything would be fine!"

?!?!?! It's Emma's fault that you were made in a vat, and if she hadn't made that bomb, it wouldn't have happened??

"Alisa, stop. She's your only sister."

BEAT DOWN INCOMING! TAKE COVER BOYS!

"My sister...? Because we were made from the same ingredients? I'm not human! I'm just a puppet!"

*SLAP*

That's right Kazuki, you keep punching every woman around you if she is being a cunt in general! I like the Japanese way of dealing with feminine hysteria, TBQH. Sadly no one applies that same principle to him, because if the story punched anyone for being a cunt, Kazuki would have been beaten to death twice already.

Everything settles down after Kazuki plays his fists of fury, and everyone decides to go out to drink, except Dennis, who stays back to "coordinate our escape from the DHZ". And we finally get to see why Dennis was so worried about that e-mail he received.

Well that sounds awful but, you know, could it be that things on the internet sound worse that they do in person for lack of expression?

He gets a bit of an internal monologue, about how he has done very bad things for his country in the past, and how if he obeys this order the USN could make Japan a scapegoat and deny any responsibility in all the affair, and in the end obviously he decides to betray his country because when you look like he does it should be an easy decision to just change countries and try with a new identity. We also see in a flashback that the falling out he had with Wei (the journalist who put us on the Ravnui path) was him covering the truth of, well, something we aren't told, to cover the USN's ass.

He shows the e-mail to everyone, and it's decided that we need to leave the DHZ ASAP, before the USN gets word that Emma is still alive and takes matters into their own hands. But now we can't trust them for our escape. Emma is also very keen on knowing what Lukav's was up to with the JDF, and she also informs Kazuki that the leader of the military coup in Japan is his father. To which Kazuki, once again, responds in the calm and reasonable way we have seen him use all through the game.

"If he's serious about the coup, I'll kill him!"

We're still stranded in the DHZ without a way to get to Japan though, so Li suggests going to Lianyuangang (Jesus that name), a "Junkyard for battleships", in the chance that we find something that will sail, or at least float, until we get to Japan.



The old goat, thankful for having saved his life, leads us to a rusty LST which apparently is still functional, as long as we accept that he is going to be driving it. Though not before Kazuki, in such a show of hypocrisy that the earth probably trembled and some volcanoes went off, calls him "stubborn old man".

"It's like having two Kazukis in the same room!"

Hey, at least I'm not the only one who realized.

He also points us to the hangar, where there are "some Wanzer pieces", by which he means all the final upgrades and computers, and all the European Wanzer parts, which are some of the best in the game, with great skills like Salvo.

And with that, we leave the DHZ, thank FUCK, and this update too. Next stop, back to Japan, and to the last stretch of the game. We're almost there!

 

[Kuattro]

Update 13 - The Angry (Angrier, if that was possible) KabukiKazuki Update

Spoiler

At the end of the last update, we jumped on an old rusty LST driven by an old rusty soldier we've just met in order to get to Japan.

At the beginning of this update, we find ourselves in an old rusty LST driven by an old rusty soldier on our way to Japan. And we almost made it, before we are met by a welcoming committee, with evil intentions.

Another inconsequential fight, provided you come prepared for it, that is, with long range weapons. Missile ships, and when you blow them missile helicopters, will keep spawning for 9 turns, circling around the LST and bombing you with missiles, and you just need to survive. Even if we didn't have long range weapons, our shields would've guaranteed our survival. As it were, we also had shields, so we took some of them down without practically getting hit, since our legs, as I've said before, are very high evasion so their THC is around 50-60%. No sweat. Let's skip to the end.

After that, we get approached by a big destroyer that looks ready to blow us up to pieces, but in reality they only want to escort us to Sasebo Naval Base, so we kinda agree, otherwise they might kill us all. And there, we find Kazuki's father, plotIsao Takemura. Kazuki reacts as expected.

"What the hell are you thinking!? Why did you start a coup?"

"I thought maybe you'd grown up a little, but you haven't changed."

"What?!"

"Stop, Kazuki!"

Slap him!

"We need to hear his side of the story. May I ask a few questions?"

"Sure. If I can answer them..."

"What was the JDF going to do by working with Lukav?"

"It's true that part of the JDF are in contact with Lukav."

"Wait. What do you mean they are in contact? I thought he died in the DHZ!?"

"Lukav is not dead. He's in Japan. A man named Sasaki planned the coup and the MIDAS project. I was spying on him. But he got me instead."

"And made you a scapegoat."

"That's not all. Sasaki plans on mass-producing MIDAS with Lukav. You went to the Philippines to track MIDAS. That one was just a copy."

"There were 2 copies!?"

See, another of FM3's problems. We already knew that! The game gave us passwords for intelligence websites where all this information was laid out! Where's my reactivity? I understand that they need to take into account that people will not look at the Network side, but still, it's sits very wrong.

"The original is in Sasaki's custody."

"You knew about Alisa's past and Imaginary Numbers, right?"

"Kazuki..."

"So what?"

"Dad! Were you using me!? Did you raise me to be your puppet!?"

"You only think about yourself. You don't care about Alisa or me!"

SLAP THEM!

"I didn't adopt Alisa to use her. I did it because she was my best friend's daughter."

"I don't believe what you're saying."

I SAID SLAP HIM!

Kazuki still goes on a bit about how Isao could have stopped Sasaki, how he wants MIDAS for himself, etc. until Isao, instead of very reasonably beating him like any responsible father would, tells them to get out of the way and let the JDF deal with the JDF. I'm starting to understand why Kazuki grew up to be such a... person.

When we're gone, Isao orders all his forces to disperse, just before Kawada, the Sasebo base commander, enter the room and arrests him. So much for that. He also asks for us to be handed over to Sasaki's forces, but where not there any more. Ha!

We meanwhile end up at an observatory, because why not. We have a bit of a discussion about whether trying to free Isao or not, and while we are busy shouting and bitching and moaning, the enemy surround the observatory and tries to kill us.

Oh if it isn't our old friend. I told you by the end of the game we'd have learned to hate him and the Shunyos they are now piloting.

We start in the middle, surrounded by four pairs of enemies, one at each cardinal point. Before we really get into it, may I direct your attention to that enemy in the upper right? What is that, might you ask?

Well, that's some bad news, coming right at us. More on that, in a second.

The enemies in this fight are piloting two (well, three) types of Wanzer. The ranged enemies have Shunyos, of which we already spoke in the first update. As skills, they have one that reduces your accuracy by two levels, so nothing lethal. Their rifles can hurt though, but between our shields and our anti-piercing defence, we should not have a lot of problems with them.

The other Wanzer type that the melee oriented enemies are piloting is the Kasel M2, again, one we have extensively seen all through the LP, so nothing new. They are carrying Big Busters, which are quite dangerous fists, so let's try to stay away of melee as much as possible, and also use our shields against them. As skills, they have Shield Attack II (yes, they are carrying shields) so again, let's keep out of their way.

This fucker's skills are quite more dangerous. DMG Fix 200 will reduce any damage between 200 and 400 to 200, and that's the range of all our big hitters right now, so that's not good. Arm Smash, we've already seen, and we know how much we like it when it triggers against the enemy, so it stands to reason that we really will not like it if it triggers against us.

And now for the bad news.

Do you remember when I briefly talked about a "Secret Wanzer", packed also with a neutron weapon, obtainable only at a very specific moment, in a very specific way in the Network, and it being a very nice Wanzer?

Do you also remember me talking about how the creators of this game were cunts who's only pleasure is seeing the player suffer and cry in despair (so, your average Japanese developers)?

Yes, well, as it turns out, if you are doing too good in this game for their tastes, which happens if you get more than an arbitrary number of platinum medals before this stage, they decide that, instead of that Secret Wanzer being obtainable from the Network, it will show up in this stage, piloted by the enemy of course.

I present to you, the Hoshun Mk112, the best Wanzer of the game, and the Heavy Pulse Gun, the best weapon in the game, all in the hands of one of the dudes that want to kill us.

As you see, it's not something we want hitting us too much. It costs 15 AP to fire, so there's that.

I admit that my bitterness comes from the fact that I thought this was a way to obtain TWO of this beasts, one capturing it, another one through the Network, but as it turns out, not even there do the creators of this game give you a break, if you manage to capture this one (as I did, through a bit of patience and luck), then you don't get the one on the Network.

I mean, the game is easy enough as it is without having two Hoshuns and two Pulse Guns, but come on, you can't just take it away from me like that, can you?

Yes, yes they can and they do.

Any way, the point is that we need to be mobile and take one group at a time, otherwise we'll get surrounded and killed by a big Pulse Gun. So we decide to move south west to take on only half of the enemy force.

This two or three last updates, I've been cock teasing you about Salvo, and about how it was very dangerous but we wouldn't get to see it yet, and so on. Well, the wait has finally ended, and you get to see it in all it's glory, since it triggered in Emma's first attack.

What Salvo does, is fire all the remaining missiles in the launcher. If there are two, then two. If there are four, the same. And if there are six...

Good luck using that Arm Smash.

After such an auspicious beginning, we keep the pressure on the now reduced south western half of the opposition, while using our shields to protect us from the melee attacks of the enemy,

The other attackers don't move, but shoot at us if they get LOS through all the shitty terrain, although even then they normally have around 60% to hit us, so no biggie. Except the Hoshun, who charges straight at us like a rabid metal monster, so we try to take cover as best as possible, since, even with shields, his attacks really hurt.

In the end, not only do we prevail through good tactics, superior skills, and a shit ton of luck, but Dennis, worthless, stupid, incompetent Dennis, even manages to Arm Smash the big fucker, taking care of his Pulse Gun.

With that done, it was only a matter of killing everybody else without killing him, and then forcing him to surrender (remember, I believed I was about to get two of these).

Which easier said than done. It all ended with the Hoshun surrounded by my Wanzers, and Emma, who's the only one that has a hardblow, punching him silly in the hope of Smashing his legs, because that probably would make him surrender, before giving him the death tap. And in the end, she succeeded.

So that's a Hoshun (and some other crap) coming home with us.

Dennis will get the honour of piloting this new behemoth, and it seems to me line "Declown" is not a good title for this steel knight who bagged us the Hoshun to carry around, so let it be known that from now on, Dennis' Wanzer will be known as the "Incline".

It is decided that we will get killed if we don't get any protection, so we decide to go to Mount Shutendoji, were the 8th Division, loyal to Isao, is located.

On the way, we exchange a couple of e-mails with people we met back at the DHZ. Apparently Huang, the rebel commander, died at Shanghai, and Kwang, the little kid who was Joan of Arc, is "missing". The people at Guangzhou are okay, including the little girl we left there, and Ling, the rebel girl who had lost her brother. Basically, the rebels are pretty fucked, and none of them know what to do next. But that's not our problem any more, so fuck it.

We also see a conversation between Isao and Sasaki where this says that the Japanese government approved the MIDAS project and that it is "a chance for Japan to become a world leader". Pretty standard villainy, in any case. He also orders Kazuki and friends to be left alone, even though Lukav has called for their deaths, saying that he doesn't give rat's ass about some foreigner demands.

We, for our part, get to the 8th Division just as they are about to get attacked by Sasaki's forces.

They're divided in two groups, and even if they're carrying better weapons than us, they are piloting Junyos and Enyos. So yeah, it's a massacre

I like Salvos :D

And I like Body Smash too. It's a Hoshun Skill. We've already seen Leg Smash and Arm Smash, Body Smash works exactly the same way, only it completely destroys the objective's body, irregardless of its HP, instantly killing it. As you can imagine, there's the potential for great fun there.

And I'm not even going to talk about triggering Fire Squad with my other ranged Wanzers, giving me three Pulse shots in a turn with a bit of luck.

The rest of the enemies soon follow these to their deaths, and my only regret is that the Pulse Gun takes 15 AP to fire, so I can't really fire it every turn like I really would like.

We sell the Enyo because who the fuck needs that crap, but on the other hand, who the fuck needs money since we're at the end game and we have our Wanzers built exactly as we want, with maximum upgrades? Choice is an illusion, you see.

I mean after this combat we get the last, best weapons in the game to buy, but we are swimming in money anyway.

Next, the enemy enacts some complicated manoeuvres with which they want us to engage them in combat while a small force circles around us and attacks from the back and bah it's all very complicated, let's just sum it up by saying that it falls on us to again save everyone by aborting an amphibious landing. So there we go.

it's you. Again.

Salvo's still King. And it triggers so much.

The enemy have end game weapons, and they are very skilled in them, so they hit hard. Better stay alert.

The enemy has some aces up their sleeve, too.

Yep, in one shot, he managed to kill the Incline's left arm, blowing up its Pulse Gun. It would have meant that things got very bleak for me (specially after what we'll see in a second), but the Incline carries a Restore Max, which... well, restores a broken piece to the maximum HP of course; so it wasn't such a bummer.

And then this happened.

And then this,

And then (yes, don't tell me you don't see it coming) this.

So yeah, in a single turn the Codexian lost its pilot and stood there like a big pile of useless metal for the rest of the combat. As I said, if I'd lost the Incline's weapon, that could very well have meant the end of the fight for me. Fortunately, the Pulse Gun was back next turn, so we managed to kill them all.

Thanks in part, once more, to Dennis, who managed to pull this out of his pocket.

Body Smash + AP 0 which, as its name indicates, reduces the AP used in your attack to 0, so we can fire the Pulse Gun again next turn.

Meh.

The enemy tries again, this time in a three pronged attack. So we divide our forces in two squads, one lead by Ryogo (I shit you not) will go to Mount Aso and delay the enemy advance there, while the other, lead by Kazuki, will smash the other enemies when they are divided.

The battle at Aso has very little story.

We ambush an armoured column which, as you can see, consists of some tanks, some machine gun vehicles, and a truck, and we slaughter them without anything interesting happening.

The battle at Omuta is marginally more interesting, and also...

Christ.

Pretty standard really. Three Shunyos, three MG vehicles, three helicopters. We should have no problem. And indeed we don't.

Specially since our first attack is, once again, a Salvo. We didn't manage to take him out, but he won't last long.

After that, it's really just a clean up operation. We do get, as I suspected, to see a lot of enemy skills, but they are all just reducing my evasion so nothing that will get me killed.

Really, there are not a lot of things in this game that can stand up to a couple of love taps of the Pulse Gun, specially when the Incline is chaining AP 0 after AP 0 so he can shoot that thing every single turn.

The Shunyos have high evasion so they manage to prevent some of the damage, but hey, there's only so many times you can dodge death, and in the end they too fall, just as the vehicles and the helicopters.

With Sasaki's forces soundly beaten, the enemy wants now to negotiate a cease fire. Why? Because they are awed by our show of force? Well that too, of course, but mainly...

"There's no point in fighting any more."

"I knew you were working with Sasaki!"

Seriously, in the name of everything that's holy, of every living creature under the sun, of everyone, and everything, everywhere, will someone please JUST SLAP HIM! BEAT HIM UP UNTIL HIS MOUTH DOESN'T WORK ANYMORE AND HE CAN'T ACT LIKE THE FUCKING INSUFERABLE BRAT THAT HE IS! GODAMMIT!

Sorry about that.

"Shut up and listen for a change!"

NO. That's not good enough!

"The DHZ fleet began invading Japan."

"It's Lukav."

"Yes. He's using the DHZ fleet to get MIDAS. He was waiting for Sasaki to start a civil war. He never intended to work with us."

It turns out that MIDAS is in Okinawa's Ocean City, so while the rest of the JDF are tasked with repelling the DHZ invasion, us and Isao are going there to take MIDAS back and stop Lukav once and for all. For that, we need first to go to Misumi Harbor, take a special LST that can carry everything we need to the Ocean City, and then just beat that Belarusian vat child up. Pretty easy. Obviously though, we get to Misumi and things are NEVER easy, as we should already know.



We finally get to Okinawa, back where all of this began, so we could as well just have stayed here and waited, I think.

Anyway, we need to actually enter the city, and the only way is through a bridge. Then, we need to descend, since MIDAS is located buried deeply under a residential area, in the hopes that no one will be so stupid try to attack and take it and risk blowing that many people up.

Obviously, we are that stupid, and then some. In fact, we have enough stupidity to cover the entire world and still have some left in case some other planet has a sudden scarcity of stupid. So we are going to assault Lukav's position, head on.

He will be waiting for us, he will be ready, he will be entrenched, the opposition will be fierce and we will have to fight every step of the way. But this, my intrepid friends, is the end of the line, this is the final operation, we have the best Wanzers, the best weapons, the best skills, and the best pilots... in the neighbourhood, so we are ready for everything he will throw at us. We will get MIDAS, or we will get death, or preferably we will get MIDAS and give death to our enemies.

So grab your helmets, strap your seatbelts, and get ready, because next update, final update, is the end of the game, maybe the end of the world, and most certainly the end of this Let's Play.

See you there, hopefully.

 

[Kuattro]

Update 14 - The The End Update

Spoiler

Well then, let's get to it.

First things first, we have a bridge to cross.

Isao decides to charge straight at the enemy with the LST so as to "create an opening" for our assault. It didn't have any visible effect on the enemy, but it created drama, so it's all good.

Two shotgunners, two MG vehicles and, up to the north, two grenadiers.

We open, as it's traditional, with a Salvo on one of the shotgunners.

And we easily finish him off. We also kill the other one fairly easily, since the Pulse Gun is still as deadly as ever.

The grenadiers advance and start bombing us, but by then they basically have no support. We charge them, and we end them. In fact, they end themselves, one kills the other while bombing our Wanzers, and the other surrenders. So that's it for the bridge.

Isao has, after all, survived his final charge, so we still have suffered no casualties and can keep our assault on the Ocean City without hindrance. We get into the city proper, and we are promptly confronted by some nasty people.

Well that's big.

And that's even bigger! I know it might not look it from that perspective, but trust me, those are some big Wanzers they are piloting. Look like they're ready for a fight. So we fight.



Down we go then, into the belly of the beast. Or the belly of the city, anyway. There's a maintenance complex underneath the city, full of hallways, tunnels, control centres, pistons and engines, and we need to navigate it until we get to the room where MIDAS is. But first, we have to deal with a bit more opposition.

A handful of shotgunners, melees and rail guns, that is, guns that travel by rails. Nothing we haven't seen before. The only problem is the map, full of boxes, holes, etc. but once more, it is as much an obstacle to the AI, which is incapable of putting all its Wanzers in a single place, as it is to us.

Also we have Salvo.

And Body Smash.

And a Big Pulse Gun. And a lot of other skills.

TL;DR

Also, we're spending a fortune on missile replenishment.

We get, then, to the last leg of the journey. The lower levels, where Lukav and MIDAS is waiting for us. The only problem is, apparently MIDAS has been integrated into the power unit of this section of the city, so taking it out is impossible without separating the whole section of the city, which means having to evacuate a whole lot of civilians, because Japanese wait to evacuate civilians from war zones until the last moment, just in case they can profit from using them as hostages.

We have, therefore, to divide our forces once more, one squad going to help with the evacuation, the other going to the control room in order to begin the process of separating this section of the city from the rest. On the way there, though...



The other squad goes back to the surface level, to take the DHZ LSTs and use them to evacuate the civilians. Of course, the DHZ soldiers are not going to part with them voluntarily, so it comes down to fisticuffs. Thing is, we have the biggest, baddest fists around here, so I don't know why they even bother.

This one doesn't even have comments, so you can enjoy it in blessed silence and reflection. Also I'm getting lazy.



Any way, the evacuation goes as planned, for once, and everybody except Isao and Alisa, who are at the control room preparing the separation of the section, gets on the surface ready to get out of here and forget any of this ever happened. A job well done.

Only... Isao immediately can tell that Alisa is lying when she tells him to get up there because she can finish this by herself. Obviously this wouldn't be a Japanese game without the drama, and as it turns out, Alisa intends to stay there and ensure that MIDAS is detonated once everyone is out of range to prevent anybody from finding it in the future. And of course, Isao tells her then to get out of there and that he himself will stay behind. There's a bit of a discussion about who will commit glorious ritual suicide, and then it turns out it was all pretty academic since Lukav, who is still around even though everyone seems to have forgotten about him, intercepts them on the way to MIDAS and takes Alisa with him.

Isao radios Kazuki telling him the news. Ryogo, being for once the thinking woman, tells Kazuki to get the hell on the LST because they would never get to MIDAS on time charging on foot, as Kazuki intended to do. And it look like everything is about to come to a head. It's us against Lukav, two walk in (well, nine walk in), one walks out (again, not entirely correct, but you get my gist I hope).

As Kazuki says in the video, NO MERCY.

Again, no comments. Video games are a visual medium.



DRAMA.

We receive a message from Alisa, apparently she still had time to write some thoughtful words. I know her brother needs all the thoughtful words he can get.

Name: Kazuki Sender: Alisa

I'm sorry, Kazuki and Emma. Someone had to stay in order to remove MIDAS from this world. I know Emma would've stayed behind if I hadn't lied to you all.

I gained a family when I came to Japan. I was very happy. But you've been alone all this time, Emma. It's your turn to be happy.

It made me so happy to see you again, Emma. I was too embarrassed to apologize that time. I'm sorry.

I feel a little lonely, thinking that I'll never see any of you again. Please don't be sad. This was my decision.

Kazuki, please take good care of Emma. Thank you all.

Goodbye.

Well, I'm glad at least one half of the Takemura brothers grew up to be a well-centered person.

We also get a news report from after the "accident".

OCU Japan announced that the mysterious explosion was a part of the DHZ's invasion of Japan.

Japan isn't ruling out the possibility that the DHZ may have played a role in Japan's recent coup.

DHZ government denies Japan's statement, claiming that the incidents resulted from USN experiments on a new weapon. The USN president denies the DHZ's claim, and plans to support Japan in fighting the DHZ.

Also, one last, ominous message: "All evidence pertaining to the accident was about to disappear with MIDAS.", and a final scene where the USN's president, the FAI chief, and Sasaki, are in a meeting, just before a press conference, agreeing to blame it all on the DHZ, cover up the existence of MIDAS, and that Japan will leave the OCU and join the USN.

Well, that's all from me then. This is how a grimdark game ends, with a handful of unmarked graves, a cover up, and a whimper.

Or does it.



Gentlemen, it has been an honour, and a pleasure.

Maybe see you around for Front Mission 4, although, as I said, I doubt it. If not, then see you around some other time.

 

[lightbane]

And so, Kazuki's insane adventures end at long last! Front Mission 5 only makes a small mention of FM3, probably because how embarrassingly grimderp said plot is. Moreover, you can have the MC be a total perv and listen to Emma giving out exposition while shamelessly staring at her bouncing tits.