In the West, despite what anybody might try to tell you when they attempt to disparage the PlayStation Portal, the PlayStation Vita never really got the chance it deserved. There was a time during its early years I remember all my friends talking about how amazing it was but by years 2 and 3 when it became clear the Early announcement of games playing like their PlayStation 3 counterparts would be the exception and not the norm they tended to drift away. Me, recommitting to a longstanding obsession with Japanese titles that just happened to coincide with the release of the handheld, found a happy place for a brief period of time. Titles like Gravity Rush, Persona 4 Golden, Trails of Cold Steel, and of course Freedom Wars, were all there waiting to be discovered if you could look past Uncharted and Killzone not speaking to the bigger picture.
For years Freedom Wars seemed like it would be a title lost to the halls of history, being exclusive to the platform and fading into the background. For those of us who played it, we bring it up from time to time as an example of a great title that was exclusive to the Handheld, which honestly worked in its favor in the long run. Partially a Bandai Namcoi take on the Monster Hunter formula of hunting big enemies that seem to never die, it is easy to forget Namco Bandai ALSO has another title more well known in this field in their God Eater series,l which was also released on the PS Vita. In fairness, Freedom Wars shares more DNA with their God Eater series than the franchise that helped spawn the genre, but Freedom Wars WAS a Vita game, though with no sequel it is easy to question if it was a successful one or not.
In the case of Freedom Wars Remastered, I was able to see it in the context of its status as a Vita title never afforded it, even when compared to Monster Hunter and God Eater which had a presence on the same platform. While these franchises continued out, there was something nostalgic about my time with Freedom Wars that, let’s be fair, needed to break at some point or another, and the push it needed I guess was to be resurrected from the dead as a remaster. I just need to know it had some capacity in the future to realize it had its glaring issues, but I think that speaks to my greater enjoyment of the title more than anything else.
All The Time In The World
If Freedom Wars Remastered reminded me of anything, it was that I always loved the story, which featured a dark sci-fi world. In its opening moments, you take control of your character having lost your memory in combat, a very common trope in JRPGs to give the players a fresh perspective. This could fall into that same trap, but the title manages to circumvent it with its main theme. You are a Sinner, a prisoner fighting in a war between city-states made up of former Japanese cities. As a prisoner, you have a lengthy sentence that gets a large chunk of time added for committing the crime of forgetting your memories, which the state so graciously let you have. Now with a sentence of a million years, the player will take part in missions that offer sentence reductions as you aim to reduce your sentence to zero in a world where there is honestly no confidence they will honor your freedom.
This gimmick takes the form of a slow but honestly, very engaging opening where the player is punished for things they often take for granted in games like this. As a prisoner you gain an entitlement currency you can use to purchase rights to make your life easier. This includes standing still for more extended periods, not responding in dialog for more than 10 seconds, and more. One great example of this is an early fake choice you get. Like many games, your character is mute except for player choices that don’t do much, other than to offer player engagement. You are given an offer to rest which you can choose to take or not take. If you don’t take it, you get 20 years added to your sentence for refusing the state’s generous gift. This funnels you back into the first option which you might think is right… But no. Choosing that sees the player lying down, which they haven’t earned the right to do yet. You guessed it, 20 years to your sentence.
These sentence additions will happen a lot both as part of the narrative and maybe going to the bathroom mid-dialog but they never overwhelm. More often they are not large but as you progress you quickly get to a point where you offset them in a single mission, even the ones the narrative ones that add 500 to 1,000 years. This allows them to never feel like a burden, and genuinely chuckle when they do something you don’t realize you can’t only for that telltale red violation sheet to pop and punish. This being said, making a dent in your initial Million years will take up the brunt of the game. As you progress you level up your character code level which allows harder missions, but you will progress through about 6 before even hitting the 800,000 range of your sentence which feels a bit top-heavy.
In general Freedom Wars Remastered has a big issue with pacing which can be very inconsistent. Other games have figured out that a major story beat that blocks you from missions is fine in moderation, with most dropping several missions between these. If you need to do something to progress it is usually a dialog with a character to do so. Here, unlocking the next mission can involve running around the prison where you are housed, wading through a multitude of dialogs to do so. This occurs between almost every mission, blocking you from the reason you are here. Additionally, many of these long-form narratives are capped off by the most bland missions the game has to offer, with a lot of which being forced stealth sections that, while easy, feel like the antithesis of why you signed up for the game in the
first place.
A Time To Kill
At it’s core, missions involve you dropping into a confined area with a time limit, the goal being to defeat a big mech like Moster that can wreck you with ease. As you attack their body parts they break or are knocked off for the player to pick up. Sound familiar? More in line with Bandai Namco’s God Eater, the heavy emphasis is on combat that can switch between long-range and short-range as you have a mix of guns, with most enemies having Gatling guns or rockets they can bombard you with. These weapons tend to be add-ons to their bodies meaning the player can focus and tear them apart to both gain those parts, as well as remove these attacks from the equation.
Adding to this is the thorn tool that players can use to either attach themselves to the enemy for more focused attacks on body parts. These also come in multiple varieties as there is an attack type, healing type, and shield type. In multiplayer or once you unlock several allies to aid you, the goal is to vary these types so the player has a well-rounded approach to their mission. Another ability these tools have allows you to pull the enemy monster over to gain a few free moments of attacks. You will almost undoubtedly do this a lot in the game but it is an unfortunately frustrating grind for a very short window. One player can spam the X button for a long bit while two or three can do it much faster. In single-player this is dependent on a dated AI figuring out they should be helping you which, in a similar case to hoping one revives you, could leave you unfulfilled.
Combat itself in Freedom Wars was one place that failed to recapture my time with it upon initial launch. This starts with the lock-on system the game gives you a tutorial of that just never seems to function right. Then, in combat, all weapons seem to have move sets that supersede their core actions, such as a dash attack that almost always seems to result in your missing the gigantic enemy. Once you do get the combat to flow it runs pretty good, with the weapon sets themselves all feeling fun and functioning in their own way. There is a pretty diverse roster of long-range weapons running from machine guns to rocket launchers you can use that offer varied mechanics to toy around with. Combat never sores to the hights of its peers, but it would be much more enjoyable if not marred by rough patches.
Upgrading is slightly more complicated than other games as well. On the one hand, weapons are earned through loot collected at the end of the mission. There is a double-edged mechanic, allowing you to trade these in for reduction to your sentence which feels worth it early on, but given later stages offering big reductions, this fades to the wayside until you can measure them up to current gear. Everything else is a series of lackluster menus that offer upgrades you can craft with items and parts you find from enemies. The one point where the gimmick of unlocking basic features falls short is heard as these elements are included with confusing ‘in world’ names and explanations. Unlocking more features like additional slots for upgrades also rarely tells you where they are. You will figure it out, but the annoying early-game searching for these can be frustrating. These upgrades rarely offer major boosts too, which can make it feel pointless to search.
In conjunction with this, enemies drop generic items that are compared to other titles with enemy-specific parts. Since you aren’t crafting weapons and armor I guess they felt this wasn’t needed for some guidance of more powerful tiers but it is still a bit frustrating. On the one hand, backpeddling to a specific enemy is rarely needed as many drop the same parts, on the other when you actually are looking for a specific part which can happen it’s a bit more tedious. Grinding, in addition to that, rarely feels worth it given the amount of time it will take you vs the reward.
There is a lot of grinding here too. Combat engagements will start you off with situations that can take 5 or so minutes, eventually building into much longer. You will be hacking and slashing your enemy and watching them run around for periods that can start pushing the nearly hour-long timeframe you have to work with. Where it becomes more annoying is when enemies start overloading on attacks that bar you from any of the more meaningful focused engagements. During one fight the enemy would launch a throwing attack every few seconds, baring me from attaching to attack, while running around which bared me from a full frontal attack with my more powerful spear, which forced me into ranged combat. The issue with that was I already drained my rounds so I found myself running around the field for more ammo. All these factors into the time limit that is ticking away, so at best when you even with an enemy can take you 30 minutes to slay your way through a round, when everything is not gelling, you could win with seconds to spare.
Of course, as you upgrade or master the mechanics there is a sense of pride as you destroy these bests in record time, but the loop failed to compel me as much as God Eater upon my return, making the time feel like looking in comparison. A saving grace here is the game’s varied modes, not just asking you to slay the power monster. While the storyline forced stealth missions bothered me, missions can range from slaying a set number of enemies and escorting a powerful robot of your own. The core missions keep from getting completely stale by switching up, and usually right around the time I really needed them too to pull me forward.
Verdict
There was a time that I would recommend Freedom Wars to anybody, and honestly, nothing about that changed on my replay. The biggest detractor from it, if we are being fair is that Capcom has seen a massive rise in Monster Hunter players in the west and this remaster feels like it would have benefited more from having been released a few years earlier. Its hunts are not as engaging, its mechanics not as enjoyable, and its combat not as fun. This isn’t to say by any stretch that it fails to be enjoyable, as slowly widdling away your years proves to be as enjoyable as I remembered. It is just hard to deny even Bandai Namco, the publisher of Freedom Wars Remastered has achieved another title I might be more inclined to recommend.
If you are looking for another game about slaying big creatures that has an engaging story, either cause you ran out of titles already or you just want to try one off the beaten path, there is still a lot to enjoy here. It features an interesting world to get lost in with an action loop that, while there are pacing issues, manages to be fun despite its flaws. Freedom is something worth fighting for, and Freedom Wars Remastered is certainly worth the playthrough on your way to achieving it.
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Review For PlayStation 5, Also available for PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC
Developer: Dimps
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Release Date: January 10th, 2025
As a Sinner, fight your way through tough enemies to earn your Freedom.
PROS:
+Great story
+Fun gameplay loop
+Varied Mission Structure
+Varied and fun weapons
CONS:
-Grindy
-Pacing issues
-Lackluster menus
-Lock on and Combat hiccups
-Forced stealth missions
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Freedom Wars Remastered
