Mechanics (Front Mission 1)

The game is centralized on battle with units on a stage. Then use the prize money to upgrade units in a city and fight next one. You can save or load here as well.

Each pilot has a wanzer. Although you can customize wanzers any way you want, it is best to build a wanzer to its pilot’s strength. For example, if the pilot has Double or Switch skills, then put Melee or Short weapons in both hands. If the pilot is good at Long, equip some long range weapons. You walt good defensive parts on a tank, but you want offensive parts on your attackers. Depending on the terrain, you may want the best suitable legs.

After exiting a city, you will have the chance to select a destination. The default one is the next battlefield but you probably want to change that for saving your progress, secret missions (when available for the platform) or upgrade your wanzers/newly acquired skills first between battles. If the destination is a battlefield, you will be asked for deployment. After deployment, you will then control your units. If you missed a recruitable character you can always go back a few cities and recruit.

Each stage has a victory condition and a defeat condition. Most of the time, the defeat condition is losing the main character, but sometimes it could be failing to protect a certain NPC or out of time. If you fail a bonus objective, such as protecting an NPC, you will get less reward.

When the main character’s wanzer is destroyed in a battle, the game usually ends. You can interrupt during a mission. Then you can reset and continue from the interrupted point. The interrupted point will be erased when you create a new game.

You probably want to delay fighting with a boss until you finished other enemies and optionally repaired/resupplied your wanzers. If the mission does not have a time limit that is.

After the victory condition is met, you get mission award and pay the repair cost (if any). Then you go to the next base to prepare for another battle until the game ends.