After the awesomeness of the first game on DS (I completed all of Royd's campaign), I was eager to try out the third one. All-around a pretty good game, but some sides of it are disappointing.
The series used to have this dark, serious atmosphere feel to it, but now it feels generic and upbeat. Characters are meh, and your main friend Ryogo is some sort of corny metrosexual. Story overall is fairly decent, and so are the real-time cutscenes. Weapon ranges and the damage that they do on the field are elements that are now much more balanced and varied. The music is pretty disappointing, a huge downgrade from the first game's as far as quality goes.
The stats/weapon systems seem to have been dumbed down a lot, much to my regret. You don't have a lot of options for supplemental wanzer parts.
Also, I've completed like two-thirds of the game, and the level of difficulty is extremely disappointing, it's far too easy. Most missions don't really offer any challenge, and it's a far cry from the first Front Mission, which itself still felt a bit too easy, especially since you became way overpowered in the last third of the game.
Great, great series with neat political themes to it, a good serious tone, nice strategy elements and some great set pieces, but it's as if Square lightened it for the first incarnation that made it on western shores.
Contrastingly, the second campaign on the DS remake played from the USN side is VERY, very hard. They're constantly asking you to accomplish some very hard objectives and they pit you against huge wanzers with lots of hit points that have insane levels of defence, so much that your guns are sometimes rendered practically useless.
