Having liked Gods Eater and Monster Hunter series sooo much I had high hopes for this game. It was good at first but it's in the end game that I found this game wanting.
This game sole focus is in combat but the game's premise has shown so much potential that I have put hope in it. Only to find it misplaced. But perhaps this what the game tries to deliver. There's no rest, or in this case, reward for the wicked. Not to spoil your grind in reducing your sentence to zero but it's futile. Don't expect more from it. Much like Monster Hunter and games similar to it, it's just a grinding machine. This review would just end here if I just take this game for its story but despite of the bad points there are good points. It all depends on how the game maintains its stronger points.
Story's too cliche. You start of as an amnesiac. In the near undisclosed future, Earth has dried up and people are fighting for meager scraps/resources. Class are divided into citizens(higher caste) and sinners(lowest of the rung). Citizens are people who are essential to the survival of the human race. Essentially, they're engineers. Sinners are considered as a burden to society. They're leeches sucking off precious resources that are better off with citizens. And yet they act as protectors of the citizens. And this is where you start. Under some absurd law that does not allow you to lose your memory(see even memories are treated as an asset) you are sentenced to 1 million years of servitude. As a sinner, basically what you do is a sin. Run around for more than 5 seconds and you get additional years to your sentence. Sleep in your bunk? Let's add more years for you. Not sleeping? Additional years coming right up. This is absurd and makes it funny. The only way you'd get to reduce your sentence is participating in combat missions or by donating resources. By earning entitlement points(FW currency) you can use it to upgrade your teammates gear, unlock stuffs, and earn the fundamental gaming rights to run(among other things). This is the potential that I'm speaking off but sadly it's half-baked. There's some mumbo-jumbo about you being a catalyst for things to come but it's a hard sell. And the end story will just leaves you hanging. There's no direction at all. Complete it with one-dimensional cliche characters and you got yourself a shallow story.
The gameplay shows some initial promise. It's fast-paced at times. Perhaps the great part of combat is battling against an Abductor. This are giant bio-like mechs employed by hostile and ally sinners alike. Usually, you'd battle against them. And it is very satisfying to kill them slowly. You can severe/destroy/break almost all parts of Abductors from head to toe. You do this by your weapon or using a whip-like weapon called thorns. There's a strategic implication to it since destroying a specific part of the Abductor can rid of it its most powerful arsenal. You can also earn resources from specific parts which you can donate or craft weapons/items/augmentations. But as the game wears on it all becomes too repetitive. Whereas games such as MonHun and GE are also repetitive and story's shallow there are things that sustain them. MonHun is more technical which makes it better IMO. GE 2 has more flair. Fundamental moves like dodging are useful and the AI are at least decent compared to this one. Freedom Wars' AI will help you for a while but they'll feel more and more like randumbs as you play retribution missions.
Playing online is more fun and you can actually get to choose where you reside. Although it doesn't affect the main story it's there for competitive purpose. There are co-op and versus play. If you're tired playing with the idiotic AIs you can have someone to help you out with missions.
Freedom Wars is a decent game with a "been-there-done-that" vibe to it which is actually not a bad thing but perhaps it's my disillusion with the game progression that left a bland taste in my mouth.