I recently picked up this old snes tactical rpg and I have to say it has some seirously addictive gameplay. If you have never played it I highly reccomend it. If I wasnt preoccupied with a medieval game I would totally clone this and ripp off the core mechanics.
I didn’t really like Front Mission. The pace is really broken, combat cutscenes really kill it and I didn’t feel I had much control over my stuff (how do I attack or defend particular parts??) or that there was any sufficient variety to make teams interesting. I didn’t play it much though, hated the pace.
(My favorite is FF Tactics by far, I still pick up the GBA version for a couple fights from time to time.)
You can only target specific parts with weapons other than machine guns. I am sure you can do it with missiles, rockets, and rifles. That’s one of my favorite parts of the game target the legs and cripple their movement target the arms and cut off their ability to use their weapon systems or target their head and their targeting system goes kaput and watch them try to shoot you at point blank range and miss. It starts off slow but gets better as you progress upgrade your mechs and level up your pilots I played all the way through it in a few days. (pro tip: there is a secret over powered rifle you can find in a certain base once you get that your set)
FFTA was good so was FFTA2 for that matter lets not forget about Tactics Ogre Knights of Lodis. Once you get the ring that lets you warp across all the terrain its over and I always liked the idea of the medal system where your characters earn medals/bonuses for completing things in combat like dodging 3 attacks in a row.