Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Revolutionary"

I am not afraid to state that Square has done it. Again. The unique talent of creating lengthy adventures, filled with plenty of danger and excitement is one of the main reasons I'm so attracted to many Square's games of RPG and TBS genres. Not to mention the high replayaility value. The hole FM3 story is divided into 2 scenarios, each of whichcan easily keep player's attention for about 50 hours.g gigantic robots known as wanzers which are operated by skilled pilots. Powerful nations defend their interests through advanced mechanized machines. FM3 is a story of thrust, friendship and revealing the true motives of ambitions for power and dominance. The story has also some twists, so think this is a trivial save - the - world thingy.

Battles are the part of the game when all things start to get interesting. Each battle consists of phases. There are 2 types of phases - player's phases and enemy's (computers) phases. In each phase opposing player has number of turns equal to the number of units he is currently controling. In each turn player's or computer's robot is able to perform one or numerous actions depending on the amount of AP (Action Points or Ability Points or something). So this means that every action costs particular amount of AP. So, if you are not performing highly capacitative action, you may launch more attacks than you normally could. All weapons are divided into 3 categories - piercing like machine guns, heat inducing, like flamethrowers and missles and impact delivering like shotguns. Besides players can set a resistance to weapons from particular categories and shift them between battles. Like in every tactical game, player must make use of terrain on which his figures are on. Every attack's success rate is displayed as a percentage. This means that wanzer, which is located on the hill, will have a higher rate to cause damage than that aiming on it from below. Normally there are several obstacles on the battlefield, which, no doubt, are placed there to make players to make use of their brain's gray substance. The attacks success ratio as well as the HP of different wanzer's parts can be improved at special workshops. Better weapons are bought there too. The game also offers great opportunities for wanzer customization - each of them can be built from parts of different wanzers.

I want to mention thrilling soundtracks during battles and just before them, because some enormous - looking enemies make your heart beat rise, right? Besides exciting music rhythms fit perfectly with the atmosphere of the story twists.

Graphis are nice - all wanzers look great despite some minor flaws with environment visualisation.

In conclusion, I want to reccomend this game to all people, who prefer to think out their actions, not acting spontaneously and to all those, who simply enjoy great storeis and cool robots. This is not a game, it is a GAME. I mean it.