Review #803: Freedom Wars

 Forever prisoner of the Vita.

 The Vita might not have had a Monster Hunter to call its own, but it sure as hell had a lot of clones, and Freedom Wars was one of the last ones to hit this underrated handheld. Think of Gods Eater meets Attack on Titan with a speck of Danganronpa, in the form of a dystopic bear mascot and you've got Freedom Wars.

 The story is set in a world in which resources are scarce, and if you're not very bright you're a Sinner who must prove its worth to its Panopticon by defeating giant monsters, called Abductors, as well as Sinners from other Panopticons. The story is kind of a mixed bag, you play as a mute amnesiac hero who slowly climbs through the ranks, gaining access to tougher missions. There's a very plain supporting cast that gets some lines here and there, and there's a bigger overarching plot regarding a mysterious waif that warns you about your destiny as her chosen one. It's not very interesting, and at times, the plot gets in the way of the game. Plenty of times before unlocking more missions you'll have to go through a ton of "Go X and speak to Y" sections that drag on for a bit too long, doesn't help that the dialogue isn't very interesting nor is the story. The setting fares a bit better, thankfully, since as a Sinner you have to earn points in order to earn more rights. Initially if you try to even walk more than 5 seconds straight you'll get a penalty in the form of added years to your sentence, and yes, it's kind of annoying, but missions are very generous with the years they take off from your sentence.

 The game plays as you'd expect: Take on missions fighting giant enemies, harvest their parts and use them to craft better equipment and then set out on harder missions. It's a satisfying gameplay loop that has proved its worth countless times already. You can take up to two different weapons with you, with could be a gun and a sword, two swords, or two guns, anything is fair game as well as a few combat items, such as health packs or grenades. You can also pick up to three different NPCs to aid you in missions, they are not completely idiotic, and if anything, they are decent bait and will regularly try to revive you before you waste a continue, plus, their deaths don't remove continues. Lastly, both you and your party have 'accessories', which are androids that you can customize who'll check that you're not breaking rules, but in combat can be customized to carry a single weapon of your choice, and, unlike other party members, they will always put reviving their Sinner as their priority.

 Every Sinner also comes equipped with a Thorn tool, of which there are three varieties: Binding, which is better at bringing abductors down, Healing, which can be used to heal other Sinners and Shield, that can be used to cover yourself as well as your allies. The thorn looks like a thorny vine gripped on your wrist, and you can use it to climb on top of Abductors or to cling on to any wall or floor. Once you get the hang of it, you can use the thorn to quickly zip around the battlefield, and it's quite fun to be honest. Instead of jumping onto an enemy, which can be useful to sever their arms, you could also use the thorn to drag them down in order to gain a few seconds worth of free hits. The more you drag them down the more resistance enemies get to the feature, but the other sinners can cast their thorns as well in order to help you.

 There's not much enemy variety, which kinda sucks. There are both biped and quadriped abductors and artillery abductors, and the game tries to add variety by equipping them with various sorts of weapon pods: Missiles, Grenades, Lasers, Shields and Miniguns, but in the end, they all work quite the same, except maybe when they come equipped with Shields, in which case you must sever those pods first if you want to inflict any damage. Afterwards, you'll fight Flying Tiger abductors, Spider abductors and, during the post game, a guest from Soul Sacrifice. And that's it. Probably, in order to add some sort of variety, they added a few different mission types, such as rescuing civilians, some which may be found inside the Abductors' bodies, in which case you can opt to either slay the Abductor or just focusing on severing the cage and rescuing the civilian, as well as missions in which you only fight other Sinners.... which are the most annoying kind of enemy to fight with Heavy Weapons, since its slow, deliberate attacks are better suited for larger targets. Thankfully, allied Sinners are really good at fighting enemy sinners. There are also some boring stealth missions, which are incredibly easy and incredibly boring. Oh, and the pick-up civilian button is the same as the pick up item button which is the same as the USE item button, which was as annoying as it sounds. Eventually I settle for bringing an open slot on my item pouch I could default to when I didn't need to use healing or to having Heat blades on my inventory, which are used to sever limbs and wouldn't go to waste if I pressed circle while standing on the ground.

 The upgrade system is, quite honestly, completely outta whack. First you need to create Weapon Facilities, since a facility can only work on a single item at a time. There are also Munition, Augmentation and Hospital facilities, and there are about 16 slots I think, and once again, each facility can only work on one request at a time. After you select what weapon you want to craft or upgrade you have to... wait. That's right, the game could have you wait anything from 10 to 22 minutes. What were they thinking? If you have time management civilians rescued you can use them to speed up the process, but still. At least the time counter goes down while the Vita is suspended, but this system is completely idiotic. Why do I have to wait before I can use my new weapon or my upgraded weapon? If I didn't have to partake in the dumb "Go X to progress the story" segments I'd just turn off the Vita for a spell and then return to the game, which is such a horrible design choice. And don't even let me get started on how hard it is to figure out what you need to kill in order to get the material you need. Sometimes it'll be called something like "Carapace: Marksman mk2", which means that now you know you need to kill a Marksman mk2.... but which mission had those? Who knows, screw you. And then you'll get something like "Synthetic generator" which doesn't even begin to clue you in on what you need to kill.

 All in all, Freedom Wars is not half bad, but I think it's far from the best Monster Hunter clones the Vita has to offer. After I finished the Story I played a few post-story missions before concluding that my time with the game had ran out and it had nothing left to offer me. I think zipping around monsters and buildings with the Thorn was pretty fun, and the combat itself is quite decent, but the game could've used more variety and better designs choices when it came to everything else.
 6.0 out of 10