The Best Life Sentence - Freedom Wars

(To an outsider, this is a chaotic and difficult to understand box art, to a fan, it is a near perfect summary of 75% of the game)

Hello Sinners of the Internet! And not so- Wait a second... Get ready everybody, because you're going down! It's time to look at a brilliant Action-RPG from 2014 for the PSVita. Aimless chit-chat is a waste of resources! let's get on with it!

Set in a distant dystopian future Freedom Wars is a unique game that sees your fully customization character slammed with a 1,000,000 year sentence for the heinous crime of developing amnesia during a combat mission. In a world where everyone lives in giant complexes (Panopticons) built in the world's major cities, fighting over the few remaining resources as best they can, something like amnesia is a major drain on resources. By completing missions assigned to you by the higher ups, you gain pardons and shave years off your sentence. The game could easily have taken this theme and held it through the whole time, but there's a very solid underlying story surrounding conspiracies and cover-ups that develops later on. After snooping into restricted areas you find a girl that's been captured, and find the resolve to find out the mystery of why she's there. And it gets chaotic as hell.

A surprising amount of customization options, featuring Sin's foundation makeup palette.
Whoa. Gross. I wouldn't even wear clothes in those colours.
But... You only wear red clothes anyway...?

The game's plot is strongly sound, and the whole environment of the Panopticon and the places where fights take place all feel very right and immersive. Dilapidated cities and deserts burying large structures. The atmosphere of a world ripped to the bare bones for all its resources is all right there, and it's great. Atmosphere aside the 'feel' of the game has problems too. See, as you'd expect from a game working with this kind of theme, there's a large number of different missions to clear in order to reduce your sentence. Except pretty much all the missions are basically the same. And oh god do they feel like a grind. In order to fight for resources the Panopticons send in Sinners like you, along with the 'Accessories' that watch over them, to fight against enemy Abductors. Abductors are basically huge towering robots that can take a number of different forms from bipeds to spider-esque tanks, designed to capture and kidnap citizens from rival Panopticons. You'll be fighting them in almost every mission, right from the start of the game. The main problem with this though is that they're basically all raidbosses, albeit with attacks that probably won't oneshot you all the time. After 15 minutes of hacking away at the abductor to finally kill it and move onto the next mission, there's a pretty epic feel of achievement seeing that thing come crashing down at least. Well, until you realize that the next mission is almost exactly the same. Hope you like grinding because that's basically 80% of the game right there.

So the missions all kinda feel the same... At least they always still feel pretty damn epic.

There are other kinds of missions that act as a breath of fresh air at least. Breaking into the restricted areas for example usually take the form of stealth missions. Standard stuff, navigating paths around patrolling guards. Other missions, such as ones where you have to take out enemy Sinners are also much more enjoyable if you want to feel like you're actually doing damage for once. It offers the feel of a more multiplayer online game... Which is great if you like that kind of stuff, Freedom Wars actually lends itself to multiplayer very well. 

Combat controls are logical and responsive, if not somewhat basic. With melee weapons you can do light and heavy attacks, and there's a wide variety guns to fire depending on your situation. We personally preferred light melee weapons, as they are the only weapons that let you directly sever Abductor components which can then be collected to help upgrade your gear. But upgrades often require hard to acquire parts, so it can be a bit of a grind to get a powerful weapon you really want, and believe me, you'll need it. Additionally, going into battle you have a special kind of weapon called a Thorn. It's basically a grappling hook, and it really brings out the best in the game's combat system, allowing you to cling to and maneuver from walls, as well as latch onto enemy Abductors in order to get close for attacks, or drag them to the ground and temporarily immobilize them. Though it adds an astounding level of extra depth to the combat, it has limited use and can be a bit finicky to use, with the collision being so accurate you'll struggle to land it on particularly thin limbs so you can sever them off. Oh and did I mention that all severing is done by spamming the O button? If you'e like us your thumbs are gonna hurt, because those limbs don't come off easy, that's for sure.

The whole 'We're always watching' trope is starting to get pretty old.
It's kind of necessary though... Isn't it?
Yeah... It was disappointing that the Panopticon magazine was just five pages of a 24-Hour Surveillance banner though...

Okay, okay hold on a second. What? I just wanted to go back to the main reason we fell in love with this game, the way it really brings to life the dystopian future of the world that's been created. Oh yes well of course... First thing we did was walk around our cell a little to see what we could interact with... Then we got slapped with a 10 year extension on our sentence! Taking more than 5 steps in your cell is a violation of the People's Charter and a waste of valuable resources! Holy crap! In fact, if you're feeling a bit tired and your Accessory suggests you take a rest, Don't do it! Well, not unless you want another 20 years because you haven't purchased the right to recline yet. Seriously, you have to buy the right to recline... and the right to talk to people, to run for more than five seconds, the list goes on. That's the real thing that gets you thinking. That so much as the most trivial of things is such a waste of resources it's worth years of your life. Just let that sink in a second... despite repetitive combat at times, Freedom Wars has captured a beautiful dystopian society, and took great care in thinking of everything to make it feel as real and unfair as any dystopia should in a game.

... Well...
We uh... Knew the customization offered a lot but...
... (Sigh)

Okay Sinners! That's enough, we're done here, your break time is over! Get back to your pitiful cells you call a bedroom! Whoa... Sin... You're really into the whole Sinner abuse thing aren't you? You sadist. Oh shush, I'm just giving the readers what they deserve for wasting valuable res- Ow! You calling our blog a waste? O-Oh! n-no I wasn't doing that! Uhm... until next time Sinners! We love you all!
Ren Score: 9/10
Sin Score: 8/10