Freedom Wars

First Impressions - So far, So good

So, I picked up Freedom Wars on a wimp. The gameplay videos looks good and I am itching for a monster hunting game. After a few hours of playing, I can say that it is really worth hyping for.

Plot

Let's start with the plot. It is fortunate for me to report that there is a story in Freedom Wars, and it's not bad. The writing is cliche and does not really break new grounds. It is really typical anime plot whereby you are there to save the world with the power of friendship, bla bla bla. But, it is the setting where Freedom Wars really kills it. It goes something like:

The earth is basically ruined due to shortage of resources. Humanity now live in Panopticons, a "city" where some people live as a prisoner with a million year sentence from the moment they were born. In the game, you fight as one of the Sinners, who committed a sin by simply living, and must reduce your one million years sentence by going on suicide missions against other Panopticons. 

The 1 Million Year Sentence at birth

You really have to hand it to the Japanese to be able to come up with such brilliant and unique setting. It's really sufficient to provide a decent backdrop to the whole game.

When you start the game, you need to choose your Panopticon among the 50 randomly chosen cities around the world. The choice does not really matter as you can play with anyone from any Panopticons, but there is a leaderboard of some sort to rank which are the top Panopticons, but I am not sure how the leaderboard system works since I have not touched multiplayer yet.

Gameplay

Typical of many hunting games, gameplay consists of mainly combat and crafting. There are some conversation choices, but so far, choices does not affect the story at all. 

Combat

Combat is amazing. Although the weapons feel a bit samey, the thorns more than made up for the lack of weapon variety. Equipping different thorns makes up for the lack of distinction between the different weapon classes that are generally present with other hunting games. Jumping on Abductors and hacking away parts of their body still feels great after a few hours. I have heard that there aren't that many variety of Abductors in the game, but so far I cannot say that it's not fun. Battle do get a bit clusterf*ck-y, especially if the arena is small. At low health, the Abductors hit some sort of enrage threshold and start spamming attack. If your team is stuck in a small space, you will die pretty quickly. 

The main enemy in the game, the Abductors. Yes, you can jump on top of it and hack away parts of the enemy.

Another interesting addition that Freedom Wars adds into the combat are accessories. They are sort of the felines that you encounter in Monster Hunter games. They act as a companion the battle, acting as a distraction and support character. Outside battles, they act as your personal assistant and jailer, recording your progress, relaying messages and giving additional years to your sentence when appropriate. This causes me to, embarrassingly, develop sort of a bitter sweet feeling towards them as they will be the character that you interact the most during your playtime. 

Crafting

Crafting is handled differently in Freedom Wars. They are on a timer, like much mobile games. They will continue to tick down as long as you don't terminate the application. This gives me mixed feelings about the game. On one hand, I like it because this give some sort of resource management aspect to the game, in that you need to time your upgrades so that you will not be stuck using inferior equipments because your best weapons are being upgraded. On the other hand, it seems to be unnecessary clutter as you will just assign the upgrading to your different facilities as you end your play session anyway so that when you come back, they are all done. Also, some people seems to be bothered by the RnG aspect of crafting in this game. The fact is that the final stats of the weapon that you craft is randomly assigned and so far, I have not encountered any way to make the odds of obtaining a superior version increase. Take it as you may, but I am not really bothered by it. 

Graphics

An in game screen-shot as seen on the Vita TV.

The graphics in this game is easily one of the best on the Vita. Despite the sub-HD resolution that the Vita has, the graphics looks amazing. I did notice some jaggies, especially during character close-up shots in cutscenes, but they are hardly noticeable unless you are looking for it. Also, I think Sony does balance particle effects and graphical flare during combat as battles look bombastic, but not too cluttered.

In game on the PSVita.

Sound

Music is amazing, if not lacking in variety. There are a few tracks for the few locations in the game, but each of them sounds great. Weapon sound assets too sound really great. The sound, combined with the excellent visuals, makes the attack feel really powerful, especially when you can pull of a large hit with the great sword on the enemy Abductors. 

Bottom-Line

If it's not obvious by now, I really enjoy Freedom Wars. I will continue to play it and will write a full review once I am done with it. However, so far, I feel that it is really really good.