Franchise insult meets mediocrity
I love mechs, I think mech games are awesome, I am a fan of the Armored Core, Mech Warrior and old Front Mission games. Front Mission Evolved tries to be all three of those at the same time, somehow manages to fail at or not include everything they did vastly better and ultimately does nothing new and nothing that hasn't been done before. Include graphics that would seem dated in the early 2000s, a story so awful it makes badly dubbed D grade anime seem better written and you have a recipe for one of the worst games I've ever played.
Well ok, the mechs are fun to use to a degree, theirs a simple satisfying joy to driving the walking tanks known in the franchise as Wanzers but apparently the developers didn't realize this and instead decided to focus more time on a terrible poorly written, god-awfully voiced and frustratingly short and cliche story and then went a step further on the path to stupid design decisions and included way-to-long on foot shooting sections that make even the worst of third person shooters look merciful in their awfulness when compared to the bad mid-90s style of gameplay demonstrated in these sections.
The game is pretty standard when it comes to customization, you get guns, rockets, missiles, shotguns and so forth. Mech parts come in different types with weight, power and armor determining how you play and you can paint each part as you would a car in a racing game.
Its unfortunate that upon playing the game itself you find yourself either bored or frustrated with either its very simple gameplay, very linear levels, very short campaign with bosses who all essentially do the same thing or cringing every time you have to listen to a character talk.
Lastly a broken, uninteresting and terribly unbalanced multiplayer mode was included and the second last boss is quite possibly one of the most frustrating boss fights I've experienced since fighting Bohan in Heavenly Sword, in that not only could I not defeat him with the games best weapons but I couldn't even get close to doing so. Oh and the PC version is poorly optimized and so will lag even on a machine that can run Crysis maxed and the menus have that annoyoing 'made for console' feel to them.
Strangely though, none of these problems even compare to the biggest most insulting thing about this game and what I can sum up with in just two words; franchise insult. Absolutely everything that made Front Mission what it was is completely absent, save for the mechs. Its not just that they made a third person shooter instead of a tactical grid based rpg, but having a story that even I could say I could do a better job of writing is just insane. A Front Mission game without a good story and interesting characters is like a first person shooter without guns.
In summary all I can say in response to this is why, why Square? why did you do this? why did you allow this abomination to be made? Its an insult to Front Mission fans, an insult to fans of mech games and an insult to anyone unfortunate enough to actually pay for this game.
If I didn't get my point across enough then I'll finish with this; Front Mission Evolved isn't even worth pirating.