Have you have been searching for a tough 2-D platformer designed with care, classic 16-bit to 32-bit era sensibilities, and a superb soundtrack? Is so, look no further than Freedom Planet. Despite the similar character art direction to those familiar with the Sonic the Hedgehog series, Freedom Planet is its own beast sporting elements from a number of classic games perfectly blended into its own unique entity. Featuring the sense of speed from classic Sonic the Hedgehog games with combat focus from Megaman X and a boss design approach reminiscent of Gunstar Heroes, this game will provide a unique sense of challenge rarely found in games anymore as of this writing.
The game offers a number of character each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and special traits which will make you think differently as to how you would approach the same situation. For one small example, Lilac has a direction amiable airdash, Carol can either wall jump or drive up the wall on her motorcycle, and Milla has a flutter jump that is most useful for tricky platforming segments. This isn't to imply all the characters go through all the same, carefully crafted stages and encounter the same challenging boss fights however as some stages are limited to few characters or even exclusive to a single character. These stages can be enjoyed accompanied by a fleshed out story in Adventure Mode or if you are looking for just gameplay you can just select Classic Mode.
Other features this game has to offer include a time attack mode that not only includes your standard ability to replay stages and tally the top results, but it also houses a series of obstacle courses that are designed around breaking all the targets in the fastest time possible alongside a snuck-in mahjong minigame in the time attack menu's on the stage select screen. The game also features collectable in-game cards scattered across most of the stages, incentivizing the player to approach and explore each stage utilizing the branching paths of each stage or explore them in creative ways with each character. The options menu also sports a variety of different difficulties, which is great news for allowing the game to be accessible or challenging depending upon your skill level.
The story itself in this game gave me the impression that it is one of those "Either you will love it or you will hate it" sort of situations. At its core, the story is about trio of friends and their ally from space stopping an evil space tyrant from stealing a precious valuable from the planet on his way off the planet. The story contains cheesy dialogue and a decent amount of humor as you'd expect from the story given its cartoon styling but the story also manages to have some shockingly dark moments, almost jarring by contrast. The narrative managed to make me personally care about the cast and their struggles, but as I previously stated your mileage may vary on the story depending on your personal tastes.
To summarize, Freedom Planet is an absolutely fantastic game and it deserves to be in your library if you are a fan of 2-D platform games or a fan of classic style games in general. This game has plenty of content to keep you busy for hours on end and provides a unique sense of challenge that will make you want to replay levels to test to see how much you skills at the game have improved. You will not be disappointed.