Front Mission 1st: Remake

Front Mission from 1995 was among the first tactical RPGs in which the player doesn't control individual characters but giant combat machines called Wanzers, assembled from a head, torso, both arms, and legs. Each part has its own health and takes damage separately, so you can literally shoot a weapon out of an enemy's hand or slow its walking speed by hitting its legs, and it was exactly this mechanic that made the game an unusually sophisticated tactical puzzle for its time - one where it's not just about how much damage you deal to the enemy, but which specific part of the machine is worth targeting first. The story, set in a fictional conflict between Zaft and O.C.U. over the island nation of Huffman, dealt with politics, betrayal, and personal loss among individual pilots, and was told on the SNES with surprising gravity for the genre at the time, with dialogue unafraid to let side characters actually die in battle.

However, the original never officially made it to the West and remained for years the domain of importers and emulation fans, who had to piece the story together from fan translations. The remake by studio Forever Entertainment breaks down that barrier: it translates the game into English and other languages for the first time, reworks the pixel-art sprites into 3D models with a top-down view, and adjusts the controls for a modern gamepad, but the core of the game - turn-based battles with damage to individual Wanzer parts, along with the network of upgrades and equipment purchases between missions - remains practically unchanged. A clearer equipment management menu makes it easier to navigate the dozens of weapons and add-ons, which were easy to overlook in the original due to the limitations of the interface at the time. The Switch also suits the remake thanks to portable play, which fits the pace of the individual shorter missions and lets you play out a single battle on the tram ride home without losing the benefits of the turn-based system, where there's no need to rush your turn.

Why play it: It's the only way to play the beginning of the entire Front Mission series in a language you understand, without needing to hunt down the original cartridge or an emulator, and without losing what made this mech-based tactics game exceptional on the SNES thirty years ago.