Freedom Wars Remastered

Genre: Action-RPG

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local Wireless), 2-8 Team Competitive (Online)

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Review:

(Note: This review has been directly sponsored by a kind donation from Jamie and His Cats. Thanks again for your generous contribution!)

This is a strange time for videogames, with two of the three major platform-holders gradually opening up their game libraries to other platforms. While Nintendo retains a tight grasp on its own properties, it has now benefitted from multiple games that were major first-party exclusives on competing platforms.

One of these, Freedom Wars, was a major release on the PlayStation Vita in 2014, but in 2025 it has now been remastered and ported to PC, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch. This should be great news for pretty much everyone, not only because Nintendo Switch owners can get their hands on a major title from a platform a lot of them missed, it also means that this unique title is no longer shackled to a game system that was, let’s be honest, a big flop. Hey, the Vita had its share of great games, but so did the Wii U and you don’t see me calling that thing a success.

Freedom Wars is set in a post-apocalyptic future where different nation-states called panopticons are competing over dwindling resources, with all of them virtually enslaving the majority of their populace. Freedom Wars has some amazing social commentary on capitalism, prison labor, the devaluing of human life, classism, and religion, that feel all the more prescient as many of those elements strive to control more and more of our daily lives, with a world that’s fascinating enough to draw you in to see more.

Players’, via a custom-created character, take the role of a “sinner”, an unfortunate who seems to have lost their memory due to unknown circumstances. Evidently, this is seen as a terrible crime by their panopticon, who demotes them to the lowest of the low of their prison-like population, required to work their way back up the ranks from the bottom. With even the slightest actions limited under threat of penalty of extending your sentence, the “freedom” you’re fighting for in this game by taking on tasks to reduce your sentence and restrictions is a very literal one.

Generally these missions take the form of brief expeditions into hostile territory where your panopticon is fighting with another panopticon to recover literal human resources, upper-class citizens kidnapped and used as pawns in these nations’ struggle for dominance. As such, you’ll generally be aiming to secure these hostages… er, citizens… either by collecting them before an enemy team can do so, or by ripping them out of the bellies of two story tall robots called Abductors with compartments containing these valuable human prizes.

There’s a bit of mix of genres at play here. The fights with Abductors are strongly reminiscent of games like the Monster Hunter series, where your team is working in concert to topple a massive enemy, often by ripping parts off, wearing it down, and pinning it to the ground while your team wails on it. Meanwhile, fights with other teams of enemies can feel like many team-based competitive shooters, lending this game some nice replay through online co-op and competitive play.

In both modes, you’ll be fighting with both melee weapons and firearms in third-person, with the former being stronger but opening you up to more risk in close quarters, with the latter being weaker and requiring you to hunt down ammo pickups every now and then. The gameplay for both of these is nice, though some battles can get a bit grindy. These are additionally complimented by a “thorn” grappling hook that makes for interesting opportunities both for traversal and combat.

One of the things that makes this a compelling gameplay loop is the way resources work. When completing a battle and bringing home loot, you can opt to keep it yourself to either outfit your character or use as components for upgrading your equipment, or you can trade it in to your panopticon for points to give you added freedoms and new options and abilities, meaning you’ll be weighing that sweet new gun you got against the trade-in value that might give you access to talk with someone you need to communicate with to progress the story, or simply to be allowed to do basic things like running for more than a few seconds without a penalty.

The presentation here is mostly quite good. This game uses full 3D visuals with an anime character art style, with players fighting in some interesting-looking post-apocalyptic landscapes. This is joined by some decent anime-esque music befitting the game’s futuristic setting, and good voicework for the human characters. There’s also a text-to-speech synthesizer for the game’s “Accessory” AI characters, though it’s prone to mispronouncing words on occasion.

When it comes to complaints, I do feel like the game’s combat areas are smaller than I’d like, and missions are relatively short. Also, while combat is good, the controls can be a tad clunky, resulting in melee attacks pointed the wrong direction, and just overall I’d like the combat to feel smoother. Both of these may be due to limitations of the platform the game originally comes from, both in terms of power and controls.

Still, even with its issues, Freedom Wars is a superb game that mixes solid Action-RPG gameplay with enjoyable progression and some captivating world-building. If any of that sounds good to you, I definitely recommend you give this one a try.

tl;dr – Freedom Wars Remastered is an updated port of the PlayStation Vita Action-RPG with solid action-focused gameplay, good progression, and a fascinating post-apocalyptic world steeped in social commentary that really draws you in and makes you want to see more. It seems limited by the platform it originated from in a few ways, but overall this is definitely worth a look for Action-RPG fans.

Grade: B

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^{This month’s sponsors are Jamie and His Cats, Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Johannes, Jaka, Jared Wark, Gabriel Coronad-Medina, Francis Obst, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}