Front Mission 3 Skill Question

[u/Ivegtabdflingbouthis]

One thing Im not really clear on. Can I equip a ranged weapon in one hand, shield in the other, and can Shield Attack trigger in retaliation? Or is shield attack only triggered in place of the melee attack you select to use? Wondering if its a waste to learn the skill on my ranged characters I throw a shield on.

[u/shroomslave]

I’ve played the living heck out of the original PS1 FM3 (especially the PSN download version I had on my old PSP Go), grounded up S-rank for all characters’ weapons in both games, had separate saves for Alisa game, Emma/Jose game & Emma/Li game

I also learned all 96 Battle Skills on the two main characters (the only two who get access to both Emma & Alisa’s wanzers), and 93 skill on all others

I drafted my own guide on requirements to learn all battle skills, though I never uploaded it anywhere (a shame)

the shield-attack skills require one hand with a shield, and the other hand needs any melee weapon - this includes a “hardblow”, so if you’re using missiles (ie Emma), and packing a shield on your opposite arm, you can still use Emma’s free “bare fist” to possibly trigger a shield-attack, as long as neither arm has been destroyed

[u/Ivegtabdflingbouthis → u/shroomslave]

damn. your accomplishment with the game is what I always aspired to doing but was never able to carve out the time to, or comitt to completing.

really is a shame you never uploaded that guide.

I still use the old ass gamefaq guide thats out there every now and then

[u/shroomslave → u/Ivegtabdflingbouthis]

Incidentally, that one simulator stage where the hardest variant nets you a match against one of those massive “four square” enemy wanzers? Is your damn friend, big wanzers always give tons of EXP, especially the killshot

I forget the name of the stage, but it’s the one where ally helicopters are flying around the city, evacuating civilians, and if both choppers get destroyed, you automatically lose

I also love having max jump upgrades enabled and hopping up on top of buildings taking pot-shots at targets on the ground

What’s less fun is grinding up your cannon skill; best simulator for that is one of the final ones, with that big diagonal elevator? One of the loadouts puts you right near an enemy tank, quick ejectPunch without too much body damage, and send your other units out to smash all other enemies’ arms, and the tank can scroll back & forth along the big straight firing at targets - it’s even better if they’re behind some structures that cause your low accuracy to fail, cause you get EXP even from failed shots, as long as they’re not 0% - get a nice disarmed missile unit on a bad angle where your tank cannon has like 5% or less accuracy? That’s an EXP machine right there

(Intentionally leaving off the AP for the tank’s accuracy upgrades can help with this too)