Ah yes, Freedom Wars , the seemingly last bastion of the PlayStation Vita, is finally moving onwards from Sony’s retired handheld . With the help of Bandai Namco, developer Dimps (partially made up of members from the original Freedom Wars development team) is bringing the Monster Hunter-style action-RPG to modern platforms. It became a hit as a Vita exclusive in 2014 for its unique persistent world mechanics and dystopian sci-fi premise that made it more than just something that played off its influences.
And I can tell you first-hand that there’s a certain excitement to Freedom Wars Remastered since it’s as true to the original release as you could possibly expect. I had the chance to get roughly four hours of hands-on time with a preview build of Freedom Wars Remastered on PlayStation 5. After spending about an hour with the tutorial to shake off the decade of rust, I jumped back into high-level operations.
In the following three hours, I cleared several instanced missions hunting massive monster-like machines and rescuing civilians from their clutches – and unwittingly tacked on extra years to my prison sentence by acting a fool back in the Panopticon you call home. If you’re not familiar with Freedom Wars, or need a refresher since it’s been quite some time, it takes place in a dystopia set in the far future where the surviving population fights over limited resources. People are either wardens running a Panopticon or prisoners (aka Sinners) stuck in indentur.