I was really looking forward to Front Mission Evolved, the third-person-shooter take on Square-Enix’s giant robot themed tactical RPG series. As a huge fan of Front Mission, I was eager to build my own Wanzer (the series’ name for its brand of pilotable robots) and ’live’ the action that I was only able to watch and command in previous games. FME delivered on that idea at first; the controls were great, the ability to customize your machine was nearly as in-depth as it is in the other Front Mission games, and all the basic components of an amazing game seemed to be there. It’s a real shame that they made too many major mistakes, ones severe enough to dash most hopes.

Rather than the in-cockpit view of MechWarrior games, Front Mission Evolved gives you a third person view and a control layout somewhat similar to the Armored Core series; there are some significant differences, but generally speaking if you’re familiar with Armored Core or similar games then Front Mission Evolved won’t be hard to understand. Rather than in-depth ’Mech sim’ controls, you simply have the basic concepts laid out on your gamepad; one analog stick aims, each bumper and trigger controls a shoulder or hand-held weapon while the face buttons manage activities like jumping, short evasion lunges, and using your Wanzer’s special backpack - more on those later. While Wanzers themselves are pretty slow in most cases, they’re capable of some impressive agility in short bursts of movement and this leads to a neat combat flow: You often move from one piece of cover to the next, only to emerge in a sudden display of agility when you think the time is right for your attack. Thanks to good controls, this works very well and can be a lot of fun.

Customization is a big part of any Front Mission game, and it remains true in this one. There are obvious things like giving your Wanzer the paint job of your choice (in pretty significant detail, to boot), but also equipping a variety of weapons, chassis parts, and backpacks to make your machine fill a certain role. Want to be long range fire support? Grab a sniper rifle and missile packs along with fast legs or an agility backpack (or both) so you can move around and help your team. Want to be an all around, general purpose combatant? That’s entirely possible; a shield or melee weapon, machine gun, your choice of missile rack and backpack will let you be very versatile. You can’t fit everything on one Wanzer though, so you must make trade-offs. The most significant of these would be with the various backpacks, which have wildly differing abilities. The agility pack makes your Wanzer much faster when it skates and dodges around, but you better hope you’re good at evading attacks if you go that route. Perhaps a repair pack is better in letting you fix up yourself and nearby allies, or a power pack letting you carry more heavy weaponry may suffice. It’s a great idea, and on paper it works. ’On paper’ is the operative term, however.

Where things go wrong is when you leave the customization screen and actually start playing. The single-player campaign is... decent. It lets you play a wide variety of missions in all sorts of terrain, even visiting famous locations in the Front Mission universe like Fort Monus on Huffman Island. Most of the time, the campaign does feel reasonably like Front Mission in what sort of situations you face and it is decently enjoyable. The problem here is the plot is ridiculous, bringing seemingly mystical powers into a series that has primarily been about geopolitical war. Worse, Front Mission Evolved has segments where you get out of your Wanzer and fight on foot in a very basic shooting mode. While it’s true that infantry have a role in Front Mission, the spotlight has always been on the the giant robots and their pilots; why add such basic and pointless ’infantry stages’ to the mix? Still, the campaign is decent and would be okay for a single play-through on a rental.