FREEDOM WARS Remastered

I came into Freedom Wars Remastered the same way I approach any new shooter-adjacent action game: sceptical, controller calibrated, ready to clock the movement ceiling inside the first twenty minutes. What I did not expect was to spend the next thirty-plus hours hooked on a ten-year-old PS Vita game that runs like it has something to prove. The setup is dystopian window dressing done right. You play a Sinner serving a one-million-year sentence inside an underground fortress called a Panopticon, and the only way to chip that number down is to go out on missions and fight colossal mechanoid enemies called Abductors. Pick your two weapons from six types, three melee and three ranged, covering everything from knives and swords to hammers and shotguns, then pair them with your Thorn before heading into an operation. The Thorn is the thing that separates this game from every other hunting-action title in the genre. It comes in three flavours: Binding, Healing, and Shielding. The Binding Thorn lets you latch onto Abductors and swing yourself up onto their bodies to hack off limbs while they thrash around. The remaster also added Thorn Cancel, a technique that lets you break out of attack animations for faster repositioning, and that alone pushes the movement ceiling up meaningfully compared to the original Vita version. It is not Monster Hunter Rise quick, but it is fast enough that a decent mouse or a well-tuned analog stick actually matters. The multiplayer is the core value proposition here. You can run co-op operations with up to four players against Abductors, or go head-to-head in a PvPvE format that pits two squads of four against each other and the monster at the same time. That structure should be a great hook, and in bursts it absolutely is. The reported performance issues in online sessions are real though: some players documented slowdowns even on desktop hardware, not just handheld. Bandai Namco has pushed several post-launch patches, so the situation has improved, but go in with realistic expectations on netcode stability rather than assuming a clean 60fps lobby experience. Your Accessory, the AI companion you can kit out with weapons and voice lines, helps carry solo sessions and fills gaps when you cannot find a co-op partner, but is not a substitute for a live squad on the harder operations. Where the game ages less gracefully is in mission variety and enemy design. The Abductors look distinct but the encounters blur together after a few hours, and the mission maps are clearly products of handheld hardware constraints: compact, preset, not particularly dynamic. The upgrade loop for weapons involves module attachments that you swap in and out, which has more depth than the original Vita system, but critics are right that end-game gear options feel thin once you have cleared the campaign. The audio mixing is another persistent issue, with music overriding dialogue in cutscenes in a way that no amount of settings-menu fiddling fully fixes. The story sets up themes it ultimately underdelivers on, and the ending is a cliffhanger for a sequel that has never arrived. On the technical side, the PC version runs at up to 4K with 60fps and updated textures. The visual jump from a 544p handheld original is obvious, even if facial animations and some cutscene work still show their age. Controller support is solid, the game does not require keyboard and mouse, and cloud saves work. There is no 16:10 resolution support and no HDR, which are minor irritants for ultrawide or HDR monitor owners. For anyone wondering about a Steam Deck session: playable, but configure your settings before going online. New mode Deadly Sinner cranks the stakes by making infractions hit harder and sentence reductions smaller, while unlocking exclusive cosmetics. It is a smart way to give returning players a reason to engage again without touching the base difficulty in a way that breaks new players. Character and Accessory customisation, including writing custom voice lines for your AI partner, adds a personality layer that most games in this space skip entirely. The honest summary: if Monster Hunter-style hunting loops are already in your rotation and you want something that plays faster and weirder, with a PvPvE mode that few games attempt, Freedom Wars Remastered delivers that. If mission variety and map scale are what keeps you in a hunting game long-term, the Vita DNA will frustrate you inside twenty hours. Fred, Scout Team