What if your life had to be so efficient, to the point where having a pointless conversation with a fellow colleague of member of the opposite sex added 10 years to your life. Where every resource was so precious, only the highest members of society, contributing to the well being of the rest deserved them, while you slaved away your life as a Sinner to secure these precious resources. This is the basis of Freedom Wars.
The story and society that are present in Freedom Wars, showcased by gorgeously colorful Anime visuals, is what gripped me right from the very start. It's a bleak world, where humans are constantly at war with one another to ensure survival. Various organizations around the world called Panopticons enlist Sinners; humans deemed unworthy of free choice, to fight for various resources to ensure their particular organization has the highest rank. Sinners are stripped of any and every freedom you can imagine. Laying down while falling asleep will add 10 more years to your sentence. Taking too many steps in your room cell will add another 10 years to your sentence. Considering that every Sinner starts with a million year sentence, those look like small punishments in comparison, but they help establish the kind of strict and totalitarian system that governs over your life every minute of every hour.
The game does a pretty great job at slowly introducing various systems to you, from the basics of combat, which is fairly fast paced, to how specialized equipment works. In fact, I'd say the game spends a little too long with these introduction, making the beginning feel somewhat slow, but once you're past the formalities, the game picks up steam relatively quick.
It's a shame that the game relies on the whole "I just fell too hard on my head and thus I have amnesia" trope, essentially resetting your sentence and placing you at the bottom tier of lowlife Sinners. However, it does give you the opportunity to truly shape your game persona and customize it with a plethora of options. Aside from customizing your character, you will also customize an Accessory, an AI robot companion that serves to be your watch dog and keep you in line when you run astray. Your Accessory will also be where the major bulk of your added life sentence will come from. These AI partners will accompany you on various missions, and like during the tutorial, will instruct you on the myriad of combat and equipment options.
The bulk of the game will be spent taking on missions for your chosen Panopticon, of which there are 50, spread all around the world. Since I'm on the East Coast of USA, I chose New York to be the Panopticon I represent. These missions will include various objectives, ranging from rescuing important citizens, gathering resources and of course taking down giant robots.
It does fall into the Monster Hunter genre, however it tips more on the scale of faster paced games like Soul Sacrifice and Ragnarok Odyssey. Combat feels super fluid and rarely sluggish. Of course there is a plethora of weapon classes that each change up how you approach combat. Then there are Thorns, an item which can aid the player and their teammates in multiple ways. For example, the base Thorn starts out as a means for traversal. Aiming it on a wall can allow you to zip to that location and then make a secondary jump from there. It can also latch on to enemies, allowing you to boost yourself to their location and get a few good hits in, or stagger them by pulling the Thorn toward you. Knowing when to use these different techniques in different enemies is the key to success. Other Thorns allow you to latch to your friends and assist them by healing, or creating a shield to lower damage done to your character.
You can also carry two types of weapons into battle, a close range melee weapon and a long range gun. You're able to freely switch between the two, and once again knowing which enemies are vulnerable to what type of weapon will delegate how fast the enemies will be dispatched.
The one thing that seems to be more counter-intuitive during combat is the game's lock-on mechanic. Though it does help in certain situations, especially when trying to latch on an enemy with your Thorn, it doesn't always work how you want it to. For example, if I start to aim towards the enemy's upper body, it latches to their arm, but let's say I decide that I'd rather lock-on to their leg and drag them down on the ground and incapacitate them for a bit, I can't simply drag my reticle down. Instead, it keeps switching between top layers of body, forcing me to disengage my lock-on and then aim for the lower body. That wouldn't be the worst option, if the game wouldn't constantly try to lock-on to the same spot where I was previously locked-on. Thankfully, due to the Vita's dual analog stick setup, free-aiming is a much better solution to this process and makes the game way more enjoyable that way.
As you complete missions, you'll gain points as well as knock off years off your life sentence. There are various Tiers of Sinners, with each one having less restrictions than the one before it. That means the more you rise in rank, the better mission spoils you'll get to keep instead of donating to the cause, the more clothing and accessories you'll get to buy, and hell, even allow you to perhaps sleep laying down one day. It's a neat progression system that always has you striving to unshackle yourself from a previous limitation, be it game changing or strictly superficial.
As is standard with the Monster Hunting genre, the game allows you to team up with other players online or locally, and tackle missions co-operatively. It's an appealing feature especially for later game missions that become quite long.
The game looks absolutely phenomenal, especially given its rather small install size. The graphics look sharp and crisp, not to mention silky smooth. What's more, I got the chance to play this on both the Vita and the PSTV, and I'm inclined to say the game is meant to be played on the latter. It scales beautifully to a large display, and the already gorgeous visuals look pretty stunning, even on Vita's sub-1080p resolution
All the audio is in Japanese with English subtitles, which I prefer regardless, but if players hate a lot of reading, then they'll probably hate this aspect of Freedom Wars.
Freedom Wars embraces the Monster Hunter inspirations, but layers its own style and mechanics on top of it, allowing it to differentiate itself from Capcom's monster franchise. It not only plays great, but looks phenomenal as well. Even gamers who don't care for the Monster Hunting genre will find a lot to like in this action packed title.
