Freedom Wars is Studio Japan's take on the Hunter genre, similar to games like Monster Hunter, Soul Sacrifice, Ragnarok Odyssey and Toukiden. Released exclusively for the PlayStation Vita, it is one of Sony's last big first-party game for the system. Freedom Wars is set in the future where there are two classes of people: Sinners and Citizens. Resources are scarce, therefore as Sinners, who provide no contribution and are a waste of resources, they are forced to be put into a 1,000,000 sentence and need to work it off. Whereas citizens are of a much higher status/rank and contribute through their ideas and research. You play as a Sinner, going on operations to reduce your sentence. The story starts off with you losing your memory and reverting back down to the lowest of the low, a Code 1 Sinner.
Through your contributions, you will eventually work you way back up to a Code 8 Sinner. There are a lot of customization options for the appearance of your Sinner, you can keep with the default or model it however the way you want to. In the story, Sinners have a lot of restrictions and the game plays into this. In the beginning, there are some ridiculous restrictions which adds years to your already long sentence. Breaches such as taking more than five steps, being silent for too long or running will cause the screen to go red and a notice popping up informing you of your offence and penalty. It sets the mood of the game well, and as you progress, you will be able to earn points to lift these restrictions and gain more freedom.
You are put into a Panopticon, which is a city that you get to pick at the beginning. The list takes cities from all over the world, from New York to Athens to Amsterdam and Bangkok. The story is mysterious from the beginning but starts to drag before too long since it doesn't reveal much and is padded out with too much filler. The ending is not satisfying and after you've finished watching it, you reflect back on what happened in the game and you feel as if the sequence of events are meaningless. The story doesn't have substance despite it being intriguing and having so much potential, hinting at mysteries and bigger things at play. You will spend the bulk of the game fighting. The key draw here are the giant known as Abductors.
As resources are scarce and Panopticons fight against each other for it, they created Abductors to abduct citizens and it is up to the Sinners to destroy the Abductors and save them. Each Abductor has various body parts which you can lock on, there are three main types of parts: ones that you use to drag the Abductor down to the ground so your forces can attack relentlessly; parts that you can sever off such as guns and arms which prevents them from using those attacks again; and pods which you destroy to get the citizens out. Naturally, Abductors have a huge amount of health and require a whole team to defeat. Each Sinner is paired with a robot called an Accessory who are there to not only keep an eye out for you to dish out the punishments when you break a law, but also to fight alongside you.
Most missions allow a team of four, which means a total of eight in your team when you count the Accessories. In terms of battle mechanics, you are allowed any two weapons, these can be light swords, automatic guns, rocket launchers, spears, whatever. Each weapon has a different type of playing style and it's up to you to find what you like. Everyone is also equipped with something called a Thorn, these are the vines that's attached to each character's arms. They are used to travel (think Spiderman) or used to latch onto enemies. It's quite unique and gives the game a good flair. Unfortunately, the controls take some getting used to and it is a byproduct of the Vita's hardware. You feel as if the Vita doesn't have enough buttons for the control scheme to work properly, while you can change to a different set of controls, each set compromises something.
In the default control scheme, you cannot dash and move the camera at the same time, change to something else and aiming to use your Thorn is a pain. There is not really a sweet spot and will definitely take some time to get used to the controls. The same buttons are also used for several different things so you might want to grab an item drop off the battlefield but find you're chucking a grenade or using a health pack instead. The control scheme also does not lend well to fighting against the smaller enemies as aiming is a pain. An aim-assist system would help a lot here and you can't button mash your way through as the attacks are not fluid enough. So when you are forced to fight human soldiers, especially a crowd of them at once, it is annoying and you may get overwhelmed. The combat is too clunky to be useful against these soldiers as aiming sucks and your health goes down too fast.
Despite the hunting missions being the most fun, the game's pacing is horrendous. The story forces upon you some mundane fetch quests in which you have to go to several maps to receive pointless dialogue. The forced stealth missions feel very out of place and slow the game right down. You are left wondering why you are playing something like this when it is clearly so boring, broken and not what the game should have been. What's worse if that if you end up dying on a story mission, you might not be able to skip the preceding dialogue and are forced to sit through it again. It can become tedious and painful, it's a poor design choice. On the other hand, the graphics are excellent and the music suitable.
There are some weird design choices in the game, weapon upgrading uses real time, which is a pain and belongs in a freemium game. You use items dropped from defeated enemies to upgrade, modify and create new weapons but the stats and effects are randomized so it is annoying to get the perfect traits for a weapon. There are three main menus which ends up being clunky. Changing you appearance, getting out of your cell and selecting missions are all on different menus which you access differently (talking to the AI, pressing the Start button and examining your Cell wall). Towards the end, there are some difficulty spikes but it is still manageable. What is not is the final boss who is a #*$&#& %*(&# with unfair disadvantages put against you.
The final boss spawns multiple enemies which constantly attacks you, not even letting you get up before you're hit again. The enemies gang up on you and overall, it feels extremely unfair and artificially difficult. You know you have a problem when 90% of your players complain the final boss is too hard. Sure, you can go online and get help from players (which ends up finishing the mission in less than 10 mins) but when it is so hard to beat solo, it sours the whole game experience. While the game had difficulty spikes before it, none are as bad as this and it has got to be one of the worse decisions a game has ever made. It is this final battle where you regret playing the game and want to refund the whole accursed package.
So after you get destroyed by the final boss for the sixth time, you wonder if it would have killed the developers to implement a selectable difficulty mode? Some would just have wanted to enjoy the gameplay and story but now there is an artificial in-game barrier. On this basis, I cannot recommend Freedom Wars because it is atrocious in this aspect. They should have either weakened the boss, toned up the AI or have it as an optional super hard boss. Other than that though, the game is really fun as they nailed down the scale, theme and atmosphere of the game. The rush that you get as you are working together to defeat a huge enemy is fantastic, you will get lost in the moment since you're so intent of getting that Abductor down. Freedom Wars nearly succeeded, but there are way too many minor issues and the disadvantaged offline experience holding the game back, a lot. It is undeniably fun but prepare to shake you head at some of the poor design choices.
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