Freedom Planet

Freedom Planet. It’s fast paced action platformer inspired by old Sonic games. You can see that inspiration in the art, plot, gameplay and OST.  So let’s start with plot summary.

We begin at place called Shuigang. Local (anthropomorphic animals) attacked by weird looking liquid aliens in exoskeleton suits. Shuigang’s guard are quickly overwhelmed . The alien’s big boss shows up. He’s big, green and mean his name is Lord Brevon. He confronts the emperor of Shuigang and after dodging an attack from the king Brevon decapitates the emperor. And emperor’s son saw the entire scene but was not quick enough to help. We then see how Brevon and his army wind up on this planet. They crashed and now they need source of energy to lift their big space ship of the ground. I assume they had the technologies to locate the big energy source stones on this planet and Shuigang was the closest one. Two others big kingdom left one is Shang Mu and the other is Shangfei. Not to mention this planet already had energy crisis.

 After that we switch to another alien being chased by Shuigang’s army in the sky. His ship gets hit and crashes on the same planet. Switching to another party. This one a pair of hoodlums: Half dragon Lilac and wild green cat Carol. They live in a big tree house and earn their living by hunting monsters, thieving and doing all sorts of odd jobs. One night they see an object crashing from the sky, Lilac wants to investigate but Carol’s not so sure. Lilac dashes forward while Carol sees Shuigang’s fleet flying in the same direction Lilac just run off and sprints to help her friend. After they find the alien and deal with Shuigang’s goons and the Brevon’s right hand man(snake Serpentine) the aliens introduce himself as Torque the shellduck he’s one of space police. As you can guess he’s there to stop Brevon from getting his hands on the Kingdom’s energy source also to bring Brevon to justice. Worse is if the things go south he would be forced to destroy the energy source. So Lilac vows to make sure that the energy stone isn’t going into Brevon’s hands.

Now about the gameplay. You have your average Sonic level only average level in Freedom Planet can take up whole 20 minutes to finish. You can go fast but not too fast. Also it’s not a bad idea to explore the surroundings especially with Carol since she can wall grab. Lilac can attack with her strong dragon braid and use dragon boost move to obliterate anything in her path. She can move in all directions with this move. Carol can scratch, pounce by pressing double jump, and her signature move is “Wild Kick” a flurry of high and low kicks. Also Carol can find a can of petrol that will bring her bike to ride around. Both girls (there will be 3 girls in total in this part) can also obtain crystal shield of several colors to soak couple of hits. So run around, collect crystals, beat enemies, solve puzzles, collect side items such as chests and gallery cards, beat the boss and finish a level. 

 Now few things that a have a gripe with. Bosses most of times are too big just like the area you fight them in. So bosses often go off screen to attack you which can be annoying. Plus their parts that they attack you with, they “gain and lose” their hurt box. Combine that fact with fast paced gameplay and bosses going constantly off screen and you get an unpleasant boss fight. Tolerable but… that didn’t change in Freedom Planet 2. Also for reason there are limited lives if you lose them you have to start level from the beginning. That thing somehow got changed in the second game to a slightly better variant. 

Should you play it? Yes, of course it’s good enough to play both games. And it’s way more comfortable to play with a pad then on a keyboard. Oh right! The OST. It is very good part of the franchise in both games. OST of this game can be the sole reason to play them. Also most of the game has light hearted teenage humor and couple of serious tone moment. There are also 2 more characters to unlock one is post game. Well that’s about it.