Freedom Wars Remastered was provided by Bandai Namco for review. Thank you!
I have always loved handheld gaming ever since I first got my Game Boy Advance almost 20 years ago. I have many fond memories of my handheld experiences, but when I look at all of the devices I had, a few really stand out to me. Towards the top of this list was my PS Vita, the successor to PlayStation's PSP and the first device to make me feel like handheld gaming didn't always have to have compromises. That made reviewing Freedom Wars Remastered even sweeter since it was one of my favorite games on the PS Vita. And while the Monster Hunter-esque Action JRPG still retains the charm that I felt from all those years ago, the outdated mechanics can make the gameplay feel a bit rigid.
For some context, Freedom Wars was originally released on the PS Vita back in 2014 and is one of the best-selling games on the system. In the Remastered version of the game, we have higher resolution textures and cutscenes, higher framerate support, new battle actions like canceling actions with thorns and increased movement speed. There are also some nice new features for those who have already played the game before to keep things fresh, like Modules being a separate entity that can be synthesized freely, a new higher difficulty mode, and online co-op and versus multiplayer.
I am a sucker for weird, futuristic sci-fi stories, and Freedom Wars Remastered has exactly what I was looking for. The Earth's resources have been exhausted, setting up a war between different Totalitarian city-states, known as Panopticons, for what's left. You are born in one of these Panopticons and charged with the "Crime of Living," which gives you a 1,000,000-year prison sentence and the mark as a "Sinner." The only way to reduce it is to pick up a weapon and fight for your Panopticon to contribute to their resources.
It's an intriguing setting that I found myself wanting to dive more into, especially as the story develops. As you are knocking off years to your sentence, you will save a girl from a highly technologically advanced city in the sky and participate in a war with a rival Panopticon with a legendary Sinner. It does start to get a little confusing towards the middle of the game, but I still liked the lore and how the world of Freedom Wars is structured. However, there are a lot of reused areas in missions, and it would have been nice for some variety.
However, the game's presentation is a mixed bag. The world looks great, and I think the set pieces of the prison and the areas we go to fight look vivid and detailed, but it still has some aspects that remind me that this is an 11-year-old game. Some of the areas' textures don't hold up, edges still pop out a bit, and the UI is very dated. Navigating through menus can be a bit cumbersome as a whole, especially when trying to figure out where to go to take on missions, claim entitlements, or even just customize yourself or your accessory. There are three different menus to go through with all three different options, and it can be a little obnoxious.
It's also a bit tedious to get around the hub world in the beginning, but it does get a lot better once you can fast-travel and unlock more entitlements that allow you to stand still for more than 10 seconds and run around for more than 15. The entire point of the game is that you are a prisoner and have to unlock the privilege to essentially exist, and it's an awesome mechanic. I do wish some of these privileges were unlockable sooner, but as long as you are playing, it won't take too long.
Freedom Wars Remastered's gameplay is like a faster-paced Monster Hunter, and it still mostly holds up today. You will run around different contained areas to take part in a variety of missions. These can be as simple as fighting off humans from other Panopticons, reclaiming innocent citizens to bring them back home, or destroying massive robots that are attacking. As you go through your mission, you will find and gather resources, which once done, you can donate to your Panopticon to get your sentence reduced even more, though you will need to keep some to upgrade your gear.
To take on the enemies, you will bring two different weapons and can choose between an assortment of melee and ranged weaponry that has different effects, modules to modify the weapons, items like grenades and first aid kits, and Augmentations to modify yourself with effects like extra attack or increased chance of rare drops. You will also have a Thorn with you, which can be used to latch onto objects or enemies and bring yourself to them to attack up close. There are different types of thorns that have different abilities, but regardless of the choice, I had a blast using them.
With the different weapons, modules, and augmentations coming into play, there's a solid amount of customization to equip yourself with the right tools. I also found upgrading your weapons and gear pretty straightforward as well, though I do wish there was a way to easily see where you need to go to get missing components to upgrade specific weapons. Regardless, I still enjoyed using the Facilities to upgrade and synthesize new modules to make my Sinner as powerful as possible while gearing them up for my preferred playstyle.
The actual combat is where I start to feel a little fatigued. The overall gameplay loop is solid, and I enjoyed the battles with the bigger robots and finding ways to cut off their limbs and weapons. I equipped myself specifically with chainsaw-like swords and latched on to the bulging guns and rocket launchers to sever them one by one. I mixed up my loadout with my own rocket launcher and would find myself trying to tactfully use my rockets to weaken the mechanical parts, then go in for the kill with my chainsaw sword. It was a blast.
However, the movement feels very stiff overall. Trying to run around, move the camera, aim my Thorn to latch on, and aiming down ranged weapon sights didn't feel great. It was passable, but it suffers from not having the minor quality-of-life improvements that I take for granted in modern titles. I especially dislike carrying citizens I save to the rescue points. I would always force my Accessory, the partner you take with you into missions, to carry them so I didn't have to. You can't turn when running with them, and if you bump into something, you drop the citizens and have to pick them up to go again.
Some camera angles don't necessarily help much, either, and I often found myself not really sure what was going on around me when a huge robot blocked the camera, and I couldn't fix it in enough time to avoid getting hit.
Overall, there is good to the combat. I particularly enjoy the missions where I fight Abductors, and I don't really care for fighting other humans or smaller bots, but the variety of weapons, tools, modules, and augmentations I can equip give me enough variety to tune it to my gameplay style. I wish more work had been done to make sure moving around and aiming ranged weapons felt better, but it wasn't enough to completely turn me off from playing.
There are also some neat multiplayer features in the game too. There are co-op and versus modes, and you can see your contribution ranking compared to your friends and other Panopticons. It's an interesting way to keep going, and even though there wasn't anyone I could compare myself to, I found myself grinding to contribute more to get up on the leaderboard. This comes paired with solid aesthetic customization options, with more options that can be unlocked by claiming more entitlements.
But Freedom Wars Remastered feels right at home when playing on the go, making the Steam Deck the perfect home for it.
I had no worries about Freedom Wars Remastered running on the Steam Deck. This is a decade-old game released initially on the PS Vita, so this running on the Deck should be no issue whatsoever. And for the most part, that is the case. It runs at a cool 60 FPS and will generally stick there throughout the game. However, I did see some high battery drain in certain areas and when there could be a lot going on in some missions.
To combat this, I do recommend setting a TDP limit of 8, along with a GPU clock speed frequency lock of 1200. This will cap the battery drain at around 12W, but keep it around 9W - 10W most of the time. There is some small spikes here and there, but nothing that disrupted gameplay. You can change some graphical options, like the Shadow quality, but nothing really impacted the battery drain or how well the game performs.
There was a moment or two where I did experience some big slowdown that corrected itself after 5-6 seconds, but it only happened once or twice. I wasn't able to replicate it, but I was using my GPU clock frequency lock and TDP limit, so if you don't care about battery life, you can just leave everything as is, lock the framerate and refresh rate to 60, and enjoy. I did try lower framerates/refresh rates to see if it still felt okay, but nothing felt as good as 60:
I also tested online multiplayer, which has some performance issues here and there. I noticed some slight slowdowns, which continued to appear even when I played on a more powerful Desktop PC. I recommend turning off the TDP limit and GPU clock speed frequency lock to maximize performance when playing online multiplayer.
As for the settings, Freedom Wars Remastered has options for making Locking-On automatic, toggling auto aim and vibration, subtitles, showing damage and icons, the PRP background color, sound volume, and camera speed and inverting.
There isn't support for 16:10 resolutions, but we have solid controller and cloud save support. There are no HDR settings.
Freedom Wars Remastered is a wonderful upgrade over the 2014 original, but there are a couple of components I wish had some quality-of-life changes to get rid of some of the stiffness. Fighting against giant robots and ripping them apart is a blast, and I enjoyed the story and setting of this totalitarian, post-apocalyptic world. However, navigating through menus, moving around, and fighting against the smaller bots and human fodder didn't feel as great, and how often you need to do all of that affected my enjoyment overall.
Playing on the Steam Deck is my favorite way to play the game, and it fits right at home. It does seem like there may be some engine limitations for multiplayer, which are causing some issues with performance, but it's still playable and can be configured to save some extra battery, which I appreciate. Freedom Wars Remastered definitely won't replace Monster Hunter, but the pros outweigh the cons, and I still had a blast playing.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Freedom Wars Remastered is a fantastic upgrade over the original game, but it doesn't do enough to keep it from feeling rigid at times. However, it is a joy to play on Steam Deck.
