Front Mission 3 Remake is the latest remaster to modern platforms in the acclaimed Wanzer war series by Square Enix. Taking control of the determined older brother Kazuki, his dear sister has gone missing, and he will do whatever is necessary to find her and bring her to safety. The story escalates as he and his friend Ryugo are wrapped up in a multinational power grab for a very monstrous super weapon called the MIDAS.
Tactical mech combat, surfing the net, hacking, decoding, and the satisfying destruction of blowing down military machinery every step of the way is the name of the mission. Join us in our Niche Gamer review as we share our war story serving under the USN’s 3rd fleet.
Front Mission 3 Remake
Developer: Forever Entertainment, Squaresoft
Publisher: Forever Entertainment
Platforms: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: June 26, 2025
Price: $34.99
Tile-based strategy combat has always been an absolute treat as far back as the early 90s with entries like Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. What if that combat was done through the use of Mobile Suits? Front Mission 3 would serve that wish.
Similar to FromSoftware’s Armored Core series, every Wanzer you control is fully customizable. The back, body, legs, and arms are suited with a weapon in each grip as well as shoulder weapons for more explosive longer longer-reaching results. Shoulder weapons typically involve missiles to devastate the more out-of-reach enemies, or blast down pesky helicopters.
Flying units such as helicopters tend to be far more evasive, so missiles are, in most cases, your best answer to them. Once you go toe to toe with an enemy Wanzer, however, a lot gets calculated between each attack. First of all, each body part of a Wanzer is capable of being hit.
A frustrating feature is that the player gets no say in which part will be hit, causing single-hitting weapons like a missile or sniper rifle to completely miss an undesired mark on the enemy Wanzer. There have been endless cases where an enemy Wanzer had single-digit health remaining on their body, which would take it off the board completely.
Dennis the sniper had a very unfortunate “Irving moment” which caused his shot to hit the legs, giving the enemy the chance to let out one more attack, fragging one of my other characters near death. What’s strange to this very obvious frustration is that it was adding to the very touch-and-go enjoyment I was getting from battles.
When my attacks like with shotguns would line up just right, each pellet would destroy each of my target’s parts, yielding me precious metals to upgrade my Wanzer’s capabilities. Progression itself, from slaying your enemies, comes in the form of a few different rewards.
The most obvious being weapon EXP. This was rather confusing at first since a weapons rank begins at “A” and as it increases, the Letter becomes B, then C, and so on. Common sense would make anyone believe that having an A as a rank would be far higher than typical gaming osmosis would suggest.
Front Mission 3’s combat takes a much deeper dive into its RNG by adding a skill system that allows your pilots to acquire new attacks from equipped parts on your Wanzer. This surprised me as these skills would sometimes allow me to completely obliterate my targets in a single turn if lucky enough. It can be a little frustrating as they can’t be selected for use at will.
If your pilot learns tackle, they will execute it right then and there if you use a melee knuckle. It can then be added to your Wanzer’s Memory bank, or “CPU,” so that future attacks may trigger it. There have been some battles, however, where they seldom ever get triggered, causing battles to become much more touch and go as they make that much of a difference.
Outside of battle, expect to do a lot of surfing on the game’s “network” system, which will be your outlet to the game’s very impressive world-building. Talking to NPCs, or simply progressing through the story, will get you more website links, and in some cases, website links will include downloads that unlock various features.
Some features would involve hacking tools and programs to leak and reveal delicate military and even government information. In many cases, this game felt very educational about how government and military internet security can be.
One particular character that joins your cause fairly early in the game, Yun, is a master hacker. Similar to Ed from Cowboy Bebop, she uses her hacking program using cute emojis to assault military digital securities to great success. In some cases, surfing the network has also led to some cute easter eggs like new wallpaper and even optional training simulations to train up and earn more money.
The flow of Front Mission 3 is very straight and to the point. Kazuki and his unit of Wanzer pilots will stick to the mission of securing the MIDAS, with some plot twists along the way. They just don’t make games like this in the modern era anymore. The music in all its 6th-gen PSX glory will have you thinking of it during work, especially the training simulation music.
If there’s anything negative, especially to newcomers of the franchise, it’s definitely how frustrating the RNG can be in battles. A perfect example of this is having your Wanzer freeze up, which seems to be a random chance of any attack doing this to you, losing a full turn of activity.
In addition, when being locked up this way, your Wanzer will now become a sitting duck and a desirable target of all the many enemy units to bully you. What’s even more frustrating is having your pilot forcefully ejected from your Wanzer, only to be stomped the following turn, eliminating that unit from battle. In turn, these random occurrences can also happen to enemy units.
The player will feel the waves much more aggressively, as you are always limited to 4 units, and the enemy tends to consistently outnumber you. Losing even one unit due to these circumstances will feel very arduous. It’s incredibly satisfying to force eject an enemy pilot out of their overpowered Wanzer, killing them a turn later with another friendly unit.
Designing and customizing each of your Wanzers is a fun little time sink as well. It’s possible to color them, slap a texture on them, even give them a name if you don’t care for their model’s initial moniker.
I wish you could overlay designs with ones you like, as you’ll be often forced to mismatch parts that don’t match, for better gameplay and performance results. This is especially true if you are aiming for certain skills within each part.
Front Mission 3: Remake is a lovely surprise in 2025. Anything that generally comes from Squaresoft’s golden era typically does only one thing, and that’s to amaze you with the potential they had many decades ago. Sometimes it feels like a bat to the head playing this, thinking what else Squaresoft is capable of.
Thankfully, we are still getting remasters of their once-known greatness. Front Mission 3: Remake is a fantastic remaster of an all-time classic, and is no exception to that very clear and objectionable fact that Squaresoft no longer exists, and we are left with Square Enix, a mere shadow of its former self.
Front Mission 3 Remake was reviewed on Nintendo Switch using a code provided by Forever Entertainment. Additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy is here. Front Mission 3: Remake is now available for Nintendo Switch.
