Freedom Planet

Review time! So small review section says hey this is a great alternative to Sonic games that has more of a focus on character skills and elements of combat than your typical 2D sonic game, the music and sprites are great, you get three playable characters all of who play differently and the game has a great amount of difficulties that even allowed my autistic sister who was interested in playing herself to enjoy it, (yay steam family share lol) with some great unique stages and enemy types this is a great time of a game dood! Okay bigger review, another tired one here but I'll do my best! So Freedom Planet is what I'll coin as a hog-like! Just kidding! But it is very much done in a sonic the hedgehog visual style and in some aspects gameplay too, the story being you are two gals who were delivering something? But Lilac sees someone in danger and decides to help! Quite the goody two-shoes protag we have here but Carol is having none of it and so depending on who you choose to start with it goes from there dood! I will focus on Lilac for a basic idea of how to play but each character does have their unique traits and gameplay style, Lilac is what I'd call a balanced type, you can jump. double jump float/glide using the X/A button, attack using the square/X button, which can be changed somewhat based on a directional input and if you are in the air or not, test it out a little if ya wanna discover it and how each girl plays and finally the B/circle button is for specials of which Lilacs is a dash which damages enemies and grants temp invincibility, some nice variety there and that's just one character dood! stages have a lot of fun obstacles, thankfully not spikes that suddenly stop you or a copious amount of instant death pits, (bless you Freedom planet devs) although the game is not devoid of that but they don't abuse it and I frankly give big points to games like that, especially if they have a lives system as it seems...honestly cheap at that point difficulty wise, there's even unique gimmicks and areas that only certain characters can go, heck there's two entirely unique stages depending on who you go which is always nice dood. The game has items strewn around, some only one character can get, others are things like shields or gems/jewels that boost your meter if it's empty, I neglected to mention it but meter allows you to use your specials which recharge slowly over time otherwise, there's even collectables which unlock gallery pieces such as music, art and voice clips dood! The games designed in an interesting way to me too, you can either take it slow, take out enemies and search for collectables in rather sizeable stages or do a mad dash to the end, do well with Carol and it's a blast running through for a certain reason, I'll let ya'all find out on that front, it makes it feel like two different games in a weird ways, also there are 4 difficulties, casual you regenerate health (sis was loving it lol) easy I wager you take less damage, there's normal and then hard, the game can be quite difficult even on hard if you don't use skills well but when ya do it's a crazy good time against bosses and enemies dood. The only thing's left to talk about are how there's three mode, story which has all the talking with the worlds characters, (fully voiced and pretty good at that if you ask me) Arcade for those like my sister who don't care or understand so all into the action! And finally time attack mode which I guess is just freeplay? It's like arcade but shows your times essentially which is good if like me you went for the speed run achievements for fun dood. XD That's the gist of it! The game was a real fun time, some of the achievements feel more annoying to pull off like time wasters than fun (seeing as you essentially get one chance on some per level run) but luckily I don't really do those so I just had fun times all around, it's a direction I'd like to see these styles of games take more, particularly the abuse of instant death stuff like Sonic 2D games in particular have and with the accessibility to all kinds of players it's something I respect a lot, I'll be getting onto their second game tomorrow! But tonight was review of the first one, very important dood. ^-^ Thank you for reading and hope ya'all enjoy as much as I did if you buy dood!