With the recent popularity of Titanfall and the Transformers movies, robots and mecha are getting their well-deserved spotlight in gaming and movies. It’s hard for a hardcore mecha fan such as myself to pass up a game with mechs. Recently I bought Dai-2-Ji Super Robot Taisen OG Saga, which is really awesome but not the game I am reviewing. I am reviewing Liberation Maiden, developed by Level 5 Studios. Creator Suda 51, famous for many crazy and highly stylized titles lends his creativity to the 3DS with the download only Liberation Maiden.
The story is that Japan’s president, Shoko Ozora must don her mech partner “Kamui” (Note: She pronounces it as “Cam-oi”, which makes me go into a bit of rage over the pronunciation but it’s not too bad), to rid the country of an invading alien race. It’s nothing too major or all that original. For what it’s worth it’s a simple story. Not that it’s a bad thing really. Simplicity is okay from time to time.
Gameplay is very interesting. It requires a player’s left hand to be control the movement and boost of “Kamui”. The touch pad is for executing attacks, locking on, and activating a special attack for bosses. As a mission starts your task is to purify the area of alien corruption. Doing so gives you a nice indication with a green blooming flower animation and a real-time show of greenery returning to the land. Lock on is performed by tapping and dragging the reticle to lock on to multiple targets then releasing the stylus will shoot small projectiles. These projectiles are also part of your shield. Adding a sort of frantic shooter mechanic to the game, it makes you think about how much you want to use your projectiles and save up shield for an enemy attack. Enemies are pretty stale. You never actually see what the aliens look like, mostly they consist of battleships and flying types of enemies. There are bosses which have little variety, mostly in the last half. But the first half they are screws you have to shoot down their shields and reveal their core to use “Kamui’s” “Sacrifice Drive”, which is basically a last resort attack where a player must roll their stylus in a circle to drill Shoko’s way through the core. There is also a beam sword, which acts more like an area-of-effect attack to take out a group of grunts. It’s not all that useful because you have to aim it pretty precisely. It’s cool to use but not all that effective.
Liberation Maiden does make full use of the 3D, everything feels epic especially in the last boss battle which is challenging but loads of fun. The soundtrack is pretty cool, and it feels like playing a short mecha anime movie. So I have to give praise to Suda 51 for that.
There are a few things I found annoying, one is that there wasn’t much variety for the missions. Go to a set place, clear the area, bait out the boss, defeat boss, rinse and repeat. Also, there are only 5 stages in the game. Which gives a certain empty feeling, when you’re finally getting into the game and it just ends. Enemy variety is very poor. There really isn’t much strategy or anything of the sort to it.
For what it’s worth, it’s a game worth picking up. For the price of $7.99 and about an hour or two of gameplay it’s actually fun. I enjoyed my time with Shoko and “Kamui”. With all of the bigger licensed games on the Nintendo E-Shop taking up the space, this game is a gem among them. I would say it’s a definite buy if you’re in the market for a game to quickly pass the time and get some value out of. I really hope Suda 51 can make a sequel with a lot more variety maybe even an upgradable version of “Kamui”.
With all that’s missing and even with a slight empty feeling, the game serves as a good experimental title, it is certainly fun which is the main grab of the game. Easily a worthwhile purchase for mecha anime fans, even for the curious ones who have seen it in the E-Shop, it’s a good title that leaves you wishing for more.