One of my favorite things to do is getting into Genres or Subgenres that I haven’t experienced yet and it is one of the things that make the gaming industry as interesting as it is the vast array of ideas that combine together into making a new subgenre that the industry lose their minds over, this year I got into the hero shooter and I love it but for a long while I have been wanting to get into Hunter Games, popularized by Capcom’s super hit Monster Hunter that came out on PS2 in 2004 the game blew up on PSP and popularized the handheld some may even dare to say it saved it from being devastatingly owned by Nintendo’s Juggernaut DS, but the Hunting Games was the differentiating factor on the PSP. the mad popularity of the game spawned a bunch of clones this being the gaming industry, each one of these clones try to do something different at least but they all feel the same with nearly identical menus and mission system to very close camera movement and buttons layout, one of these clones is Sony’s PS Vita exclusive Freedom Wars.
Freedom Wars is a bit different than the other clones mainly due to the fighting mechanics, the characters come equipped with a rope like weapon that is called “Thorns” and you use them to pindown and tear apart the monsters limb by limb and in that aspect the game really shines it is really fun to fight these giant monsters that you need to chop it to pieces, you also go in with a ranged and melee weapon while you will use the melee weapon for most of your fighting the ranged one is mostly used to get rid of the smaller enemies that accompany the big monster that you need to take down, the smaller enemies are one of my least favorite parts of the game because they are annoying and fast and sometimes they do overwhelm you and that was one of the common criticisms of the game at launch which I think later Sony patched the game to make it easier for them to die but it is still a pain in the ass.
For me the biggest draw back from the game is the focus and emphasis on Story which is lackluster at best and it takes away a big chunk of time to go around it and at times you are restricted by it because your progress depends on and that might be the case in most RPGs and open world games but it doesn’t work really well in this type of games due to the fact that it is not a good story and you will not care about any of it. the other mechanic of the game is the introduction of Years, the characters of the game are all in prison and your character in particular is sentence to 1,000,000 years in prison, by doing missions and performing tasks you will reduce you sentence but personally I find this to be a pointless thing because even if you get to zero you will still be in the same cell doing the same stuff it is nice to make it interesting but it is not a big deal.
Now to the worst part of the game, in a way the Hunter games are all depending on one loop which is going hunt a big bad monster come back home make something from its bones and shards or whatever then go hunt a bigger bad monster to make something stronger from his shards or bones, Freedom Wars’ weapons and crafting sucks so bad you wouldn’t care or notice it for the first 10 hours, the only enemies the weapons make a difference at is the other prisoners that you against they die easier but the big monsters barely make any difference, also the game doesn’t have armor you will unlock a new set of outfits with every level you go at (8 total) and they all suck, seriously for a game genre that thrives on you making a character that plays and looks the way you want Freedom Wars really fails. the game has other things going for it like the world leader boards which if you play now you wont care about it since it is not that active, Online PvP and PvE but you probably won’t find anyone to play with so there is also that.
I didn’t spend that much time with Freedom Wars around 45 hours and I lost interest in the game soon after that, it is a shame because an original good Hunter game could work really well on Vita since the console is obviously build to support it, Freedom Wars might not be that game but it is good enough.
My next entry is going to be God Eater, currently I am going through the first game and it is a much more obvious Monster Hunter clone but it does come with some nice tweaks.
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