2089: Borderscape Front Mission

2089: Borderscape Demo Report

Since the first generation of Front Mission was launched in 1995, only a few works have been localized outside of Japan, which has also led to the fact that although there are many works in this series, and there are also many derivative works, and even include movies, comics, novels, etc., but the game has not been very successful in overseas markets.

In order to cater to overseas markets, SE also launched a Front Mission: Evolution that was changed to TPS gameplay in 2010. However, the low evaluation caused the series to be silent for 9 years.

After that, SE launched the spiritual sequel Left Alive in 2019, which did not include Front Mission in the title. The game also received extremely low reviews. New players felt that the game was too difficult, and old players were not very interested in TPS.

For series players, Front Mission was basically over in 2008.

Front Mission and the phone

Front Mission launched the last SRPG sequel Front Mission 2089: Border of Madness on the NDS platform in 2008, which is a remake of the 2005 mobile game Front Mission 2089.

What no one thought was that after more than ten years, Front Mission 2089 could return to the mobile game platform with a new attitude, and the dead series suddenly began to attack old players.

This is 2089: Boderscape, the familiar 2089, the familiar Hoffman Island, the familiar OCU and USN, the familiar mercenaries and their machines.

It should be noted that although 2089: Boderscape  is supervised by SE, it is not produced by the original team. The developer of this mobile game is Black Jack Studio, a subsidiary of Zilong in China, which is also the developer of a mobile game, Langrisser. 

Machine Part Mechanism

2089: Borderscape returns to the most classic SRPG gameplay of Front Mission, and also inherits the iconic machine part mechanism.

Each body is divided into four parts: the body, the left and right arms, and the legs. The durability of each part is calculated separately, and the effect produced when it is empty is different.

The arm is the most vulnerable part of the body. When it is destroyed, the weapon corresponding to the arm cannot be used. If it is a dual-wielding weapon such as a heavy sniper, it will be directly unable to attack after one arm is damaged.

The legs of the body are stronger than the arms. After being destroyed, the moving distance will become one block. It has little effect on some long-range specialized bodies, so the legs are generally not the target of priority attacks.

The body is the most solid part of the body, protecting the pilot in the body. Once it is destroyed, the whole body becomes scrap metal. A direct stab in the cockpit of the body is the most direct way to win, but after all, it is a deadly part, so it is not so easy to stab.

When ordinary firearms attack, they will cause damage to random parts several times. Only when the sniper rifle is in the aiming mode can it hit a certain part with precision.

This game has made a little change to the sniper rifle. Selecting the aiming mode will allow the player to enter the first-person cabin perspective. At this time, the player can intuitively select the attack part and see the corresponding weapon for each part, which makes the sniper specialize the body. The performance has been greatly enhanced.

Of course, in the attack phase, it's not just about aiming at the enemy's body. For example, to fight with an enemy aircraft equipped with missiles and snipers, you can destroy the arm in one blow, which can often prevent our melee aircraft from the threat of fire suppression. To fight with an enemy aircraft equipped with a two-handed melee weapon, you can quickly destroy its legs so that it cannot reach our body.

The same mischief also exists in the game called cutting people to stick. Remove the limbs of the machine, and you can see the funny scene of the enemy aircraft holding its head against you.

Machine and pilot customization

The customization of the body is also a gameplay inherited from Front Mission. This work includes four parts of the body, the weapons of the left and right hands, the loading of the left and right shoulders, and the pendant of the backpack can be freely selected.

Parts can be obtained by drawing cards, and the types of parts that can be equipped are related to the pilot's aircraft occupation. In addition to the differences on the panel, different parts of the model also have different suit effects. Matching the suit according to the pilot's characteristics can make the skills play a greater role.

Equipping equipment is obtained by repeatedly playing the corresponding material game copies. The weapons are universal, and players can assign weapon types to each body according to their own preferences.

The left and right shoulders can carry missiles and rocket launchers, providing additional bombing skills, and it is generally more suitable for pilots who specialize in bombing support.

The backpack part has many functions, and the most common backpack can provide different degrees of output for the machine. The repair body can be equipped with a special repair backpack, so that the damaged parts can gain more durability after repair.

The pilots of this game have different occupations and rarities, which are unlocked through missions in the beta version, but how they will be obtained in the official version is unknown.

Each pilot can choose three skill equipment, skills can be unlocked by upgrading the core, and the upgraded resources are also obtained by brushing specific materials.

After the core is upgraded, the chips will also be unlocked one by one, providing some powerful passive skills. Each passive skill must be filled with sub-chips that need to be swiped to take effect. Each sub-chip can also provide a small amount of panel bonuses.

The pilot's training mechanism is not much, but the worry is that the pilot's painting does not match the style of the Frontline Mission series, which is easy to persuade players to quit

Fortunately, the body modeling of this work has a good steel texture, and it has a particularly strong sense of power when moving, which is not inferior to the original series.

For players who are not satisfied with the color, the game also provides a free part dyeing system, which allows players to modify the appearance of their body.

Paid Draw

The closed beta version of 2089: Borderscape only opened one card pool, and every ten times draw will produce 6 random parts and 4 corresponding parts that constitute a complete machine.

Gold parts correspond to epic quality, the probability of obtaining a single part is 3%, and the probability of obtaining a complete machine part is 4.5%, and 10 consecutive times will definitely obtain at least one purple fine-quality part.

If every 5 times of 10 consecutive draws or every 50 consecutive draws do not have epic quality parts, the probability of getting epic quality parts in the next card draw will increase by 0.5%, and so on until the epic quality parts are drawn.

The bottom guarantee mechanism of this work needs to be triggered by 10 consecutive games, and 20 complete machines are drawn, that is, after 20 times of 10 consecutive games, you will definitely be able to obtain an epic quality complete machine through the bottom guarantee.

Summarize

2089: Borderscape is only for the quality of the beta version. Although the painting style is unacceptable, the gameplay experience is quite good.

When Black Jack Studio is making its best SRPG, the level design level shown by it is easy to use, the difficulty is moderate and requires brains, and there are many solutions.

They have also done a good job of restoring the classic mechanism. In addition to the most basic body parts and body customization mechanisms, they also use the pilot skills to integrate the combat support of Front Mission 2 and the round multi-action mechanism of Front Mission 4.