Publisher: SCEA

Developer: SCE Japan Studio

Release Date: 10/28/2014

Available Exclusively On

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The Vita is a strange system, as several developers tried to make various genres stable on the system. With Monster Hunter clone Soul Sacrifice not exactly bringing about that feat, Freedom Wars is the next game to make the Vita a blockbuster hit for co-op monster-slaying fun. Freedom Wars starts out a little strange, just like Soul Sacrifice. I didn’t understand the game for a while, and it seemed like there was something missing throughout the whole adventure.

Freedom Wars tries to bring about an interesting anime-style post-apocalyptic adventure in which people are all prisoners and sentenced to fight monsters that will destroy settlements unless they have some sort of trait that the government can benefit from. Everyone starts off with a lifetime sentence, but it can get reduced based on various accomplishments such as donating loot from battles to “the cause,” fighting monsters, taking part in more missions, and behaving. This is ingrained into the player’s head from the start, as you are sentenced to 1,000 years for walking for too long. Yeah, it’s crazy, and I loved it. If you run for too long, you get your sentence lengthened, so you have to buy an upgrade that allows you to run, talk to other people, and do various other things, which are actually quite cool.

Once you read your sentence, you put your thumbprint on it, and off you go. Now, the game is very slow to start, and this is a huge downfall for these types of games, as Soul Sacrifice suffered the same problem. There’s a bunch of dialog and backstory to get through, a lengthy tutorial—not just for combat—and then getting used to controls and getting through missions. It takes over 5 hours just to get into the swing of things and start chipping away on missions, which is not a good thing. These anime-type games always do this, from monster slaying to JRPGs, and it drives me crazy.

Once you do get into the field, you can switch between melee and ranged weapons. The goal is to lock on to enemies and hack away at a weak point, but your special weapon is your grapple, which can heal or do damage, among various other things. Once you grapple to a weak point, you can hack away at it, and then the monster falls, allowing all the bots and yourself to go to town. It only gets fun when you find momentum and your AI teammates are all getting along and doing their jobs. You also have an assistant bot that always looks out for you that you can customize and assign certain weapons to. Once you fall, you can be revived, but if it takes too long, you lose your life. If you lose all your lives, your sentence is lengthened, and your reward for the next turn is reduced, making this a tough game towards the end. I was able to whittle away at 4-5 star missions, and it started getting ridiculously difficult and repetitive.

Without human teammates, the game becomes frustrating because you can fall in battle, and three bots are right next to you and won’t revive you. There are also issues with the same 3 or 4 maps being recycled over and over again and with the same mission goals. Save these VIPs, destroy all these monsters, etc. It gets really boring towards the 10th hour, and I just stopped playing after a while because I had no reason to go back.

Let’s talk about upgrading and creating weapons. This is so complicated and irritating, as most of the time you can only upgrade or create something with the components you have, and it takes quite a few missions to build up a little variety. See, you have to create and build workshops to assign the civilians you save in missions to reduce build time and create things like healing items, weapons, ammo, etc. You can upgrade these buildings sometimes, but in the end, it’s all just a bunch of filler and nonsense. Give me a workshop to upgrade and create, and leave me alone. It’s always so complex and unintuitive with these Japanese games. From JRPGs to action games, all the way to free-to-play mobile games, There are layers upon layers of unnecessary upgrade menus and fusing and defusing, etc. It hurts the game quite a bit, so I just rely on buying more powerful weapons and upgrading them; I completely skip creating new weapons entirely.

Customizing your character is quite deep, as you can buy new color packs, armor, and accessories in the game with points you earn in missions. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and there are a lot of things to customize here, so players won’t be disappointed. Overall, the game looks quite good with great lighting effects and textures; it’s probably one of the better-looking Vita games out there. There’s a lot of detail here and in the game; it’s just a mess and completely unorganized and unpolished. I feel the developers were trying several different things and couldn’t decide on just one. The gameplay is clunky, with repetitive missions, recycled maps, and annoying AI bots. The story is nearly non-existent, as it takes forever to unfold as you slog through missions after missions just to get a text-cut scene. I would love to see a sequel, but seeing as the Vita is slowly dying, I doubt that will happen.

Freedom Wars is only for people who love Soul Sacrifice, Monster Hunter, or are really patient and don’t mind repetitive combat to get to an ultimate goal. Playing with friends helps, but it doesn’t hide the mess and unpolish in this game.