YMMV / Freedom Wars

• Anti-Climax Boss: Abel and Red Rage. While Abel does have a unique moveset, he can be killed very easily by shooting him while backpeddling just like every other run of the mill melee sinner (or blasting him with the flamethrower and keeping him in stunlock), and Red Rage is functionally identical to any other All-Purpose Biped, save for being slightly more aggressive and regrowing lost limbs.
• Awesome Music: Despite its flaws, this game still has some rocking soundtracks:
  • Bugat
  • Cascade
  • Jerusalem emphasizes On High's divine yet oppressive nature to epic proportions.
  • Last but not least, the game's cinematic theme song, The Price To Be Free.
  • The DLC Panopticon Idol Songs are cute and upbeat enough to motivate Sinners.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: When playing online, expect to see everyone equipped with Barbara's Easy Blaster and the Exodus, due to their borderline Game-Breaker power, and the most commonly used elements to be Ice and Will'O.
• Demonic Spider
  • The Chains released by Peltatum-class Abductors. They're hard to hit, persistent and will keep on getting resurrected if you don't destroy the wing they came off of.
    • Additionally, they're so numerous and fast that they can easily keep knocking you down every time you get up, effectively stunlocking you to death.
  • Hostile Sinners become this in any high rank operation. While they aren't very durable, they spawn infinitely and can chew through your life very quickly as soon as they get in range to start attacking you.
    • The Warriors From On High (especially the ones from Spec Ops 304 and Retribution 106) are somehow even worse than regular Hostile Sinners. Not only do they have the same precise aiming and weapons, such as the AAW-M2, the Pulsar, and the Godforsaken AR-7/L, they have Healing Thorns and loads of health, which makes killing them a chore if you didn't kill one Warrior fast enough while the other Warrior is charging up a healing Area of Effect. Their existence is enough to distract you from the Abductor that you're also trying to kill, and you won't see it until it's too late. You'll learn to hate On High and their Warriors even more...
  • Fittingly enough, the spider-like Special S-Type Abductors called Paradoxas. Starting off, they're merely annoying, firing webs that can immobilize you and leave you at the mercy of any other enemies abound, and launching missiles willy-nilly. Once they Turn Red, though, they become faster, more aggressive, and bigger pains in the ass. Thankfully this stage makes them more vulnerable, but their speed and aggressive nature are to be reckon with.
• Game-Breaker: The game has plenty of powerful weapons and efficient techniques:
  • Three words: Barbara's Easy Blaster. It's light, does extremely high damage per shot, fires and reloads ridiculously fast, and deals impact based damage, making it very effective in breaking Abductor parts, with its sole drawback being a requirement to stock up on plenty of Ammo Packs to keep your damage consistent. Combined with the Will'O element, it is capable of both destroying Abductor parts and exploding them for massive damage.
  • The Exodus. It's a spear obtained at the end of the main scenario, and it is the only spear that deals impact based damage, making it superior to other spears in terms of damage and part breakage. Its charged light attack hits multiple times and can quickly destroy Abductor parts. Alongside Barbara's Easy Blaster, it's one of the most commonly used weapons both online and offline.
  • While not as fast as the Exodus, the Gration is a very powerful drill-spear with slow yet devastating focused attacks, making it ideal against Abductor legs, pods, and arms. Ditto with the Hyuga, but instead of raw power^note  Gration has a base damage of 2,583; Hyuga has a base damage of 2,272 , this lance has Impact damage ^note  15 by default; 35 when upgraded with Red Rage parts and the second strongest critical multiplier out of the other spears ^note  Hyuga has a critical multiplier of 6.4 while L-6E1 has 7.6 .
  • The Creamy Screamy, especially when upgraded to the Will'o path (or at least added with 88 Will'o points), turns it from a Utility Weapon into an elemental rocket launcher. The Will'o damage from the web-gun is not only strong against Abductor components, it makes the Peltatum class abductor and its Satanic Chains a complete cakewalk, as one web-shot on any part of the Chain will instantly drag it down, giving you and your friends free hits to kill the little bastard! To make it even deadlier, its damage-per-shot can be drastically increased with quick-firing.
  • The Caliburn is probably the most heavy-hitting great-sword, if not, the most destructive melee weapon in the game in shear power. The Caliburn not only has the second highest base damage out of its class and other melee weapons ^note  Caliburn's base damage is 2,823, while Mimas' is 3,067, it also has the highest critical chance out of all the other great-swords ^note  Caliburn's critical rate is 10.5, while Aftershadow's is 8.1 . Combine the massive raw power with the high crit rate, and you got yourself a massive blade that decimates everything in its path. Just get use to the slow attack speed, and this bad boy will nuke whatever you're trying to kill.
  • Despite its short-range and long firing start-up, the Aldering averts Video Game Flamethrowers Suck with a sick burn, as the flamethrower stunlocks every small enemy, including and especially hostile Sinners and Accessories. The Aldering also has the highest ammo capacity in the game ^note  Aldering carries 767 ammo per clip, and a maximum ammo capacity of 4,602 , along with excellent damage output.
  • Quickfiring is Difficult, but Awesome, since it requires proper handling of the controls, but doing so allows you to dish out awesome damage. The only guns that can exploit this technique are the SR-42, AR-7/L, Dragonfang, and the afformentioned Creamy Screamy.
  • Running Retribution 101 with both Contribution augmentations will cut your sentence by at least 17,500 years, which is also converted into money. Since Retribution 101 is usually beaten under 2 minutes, this is an efficient way to reduce your sentence and farm money at the same time.
  • To make weapon crafting and weapon mod farming much easier, you can exploit the weapon duplication glitch as seen in this video. Not only can you dupe weapons, you can also dupe combat items and augmentations!
• Goddamned Bats: Drones as a whole are not threatening by themselves, but they can be a pain in the ass if you're dealing with the more threatening Abductors or Sinners.
  • The Mobile Drones are the worst kind of Drones, as they're basically a robotic lovechild of Bullfangos and Vespoids. They love to charge at you at the worst times ever, especially if you're in the middle of an attack combo or you're charging up your thorn. The Melee Drones and the Armoured Drones do this too, but thankfully they're much easier to hit since they stay on land. However, the latter drones are kinda durable, hence their name.
  • Marksmen Drones wittle your HP as they snipe you from afar. It gets more frustrating when you're charging up a melee attack on a downed Abductor, and the Marksmen Drone messes up your positioning by pushing you away from the Abductor. Thankfully the Marksmen Drones can't stagger you unlike their cousins, but still.
  • The Carrier Drones not only fire lasers to interrupt your actions, but they can abduct your Accessory. Carrier Drones are also the most durable Drones, as they can take more hits than an Armoured Drone. Thankfully, they go down quickly if their red eye is attacked, most preferably with a weapon that deals projectile damage or piercing damage.
  • Enemy Accessories aren't as agile or threatening as Enemy Sinners, but they can still get on your nerves if you're not careful.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The afformentioned weapon/item duplication bug is straight up this.
  • During online Player Versus Environment missions, massive Abductor explosions can drastically darken or brighten the map's lighting. This makes the area look even more awesome to look at.
  • Hosts with weak wifi signals can create lag spikes that make the Abductor teleport. The results are both entertaining and frustrating.
  • Sometimes, after a player delivers a citizen, the citizen can be stuck inside of that player's body from another player's perspective! As a topping on the cake, the citizen is still moving inside of the player's body...
• Moe: Aries M, Beatrice, and Ann are pretty adorable. Even your character and Accessory can be this too. Juliette can be this too, thanks to being a kind citizen who averts the usual Ungrateful Bastard behvaior towards the Sinners. Hell, the Panopticon Idols too, which is Invoked In-Universe, so that they're given lively personalities to make them adorable and even more human-like than their normal peers.
• Older Than They Think: When the Ibara Hookshot was revealed, Attack on Titan fans complained about how the game was ripping off Attack on Titan, despite the fact that the game started development in around 2010, before Attack on Titan was even a thing.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The real-time item crafting and randomized stats and modules on weapons are near universally agreed to be one of the most annoying features in an otherwise solid title.
  • When players get their vertical position changed while charging up or during a melee attack (usually on top of an Abductor), the player's attack gets interrupted, resulting in a net-loss of damage.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The game starts out terrible with all the restrictions and padding. Once fast travel is unlocked, the bad parts become much less noticeable and frustrating.
• Spiritual Successor: In a sense, to Gravity Rush. Both games were produced by Sony's Japan Studio. They also feature solid gameplay and well-designed mechanics that are bogged down by the campaign's incredibly short length. They both also have plot hints that eventually don't lead to anything, at least within the context of the original title, and they both have No Ending. The main difference between them now is that Gravity Rush received a sequel and was ported outside the Vita while Freedom Wars was abandoned.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The game's afformentioned theme song, The Price To Be Free, took inspiration from Peace Walker's theme.
• That One Attack:
  • Ramosa's pounce bite has absurdly long range and frightening accuracy, and when the Sinner gets unfortunate enough to get hit by the pounce, the pounce staggers the Sinner before ending with an uppercut bite, essentially a guaranteed One-Hit KO unless the Sinner has any buffs that increase survivability.
  • Dionaea's charge attack is its most common attack, and not only is it fast, the attack also has a hitbox that's even bigger than the Abductor itself. For example, if the Sinner is behind Dionaea while it slams its wings before charging, the Sinner gets hit. The hitbox also extends beneath its tail, so trying to roll under it while the Abductor is charging still hits you. It's even worse if the Sinner is above a charging Dionaea because the charge attack hits and stuns the Sinner at least twice in a row.
  • The glowing red explosions used by every Abductor sans Peltatum attacks every party member, even if the Abductor in question isn't directly fighting the Player Character.
• That One Boss:
  • The end boss, which is a Peltatum-class Abductor. It floats, so it's always out of reach of your melee weapons unless you can bind it or drag it down. It absorbs damage like a sponge. Worse of all, though, is the "Chains" it releases as its HP dwindles (see Demonic Spiders), which, combined with an attack that draws you and your squadmates together in the same location, spells disaster. The worst part, though? If you lose, you need to fight Abel and Red Rage all over again before you can fight the Peltatum again.
  • Red Rage and the Imitation Red Rage that Simeon tells you to fight. Not because they're hard - they're actually pretty easy in spite of their large damage and health - but because they have regeneration on anything that isn't severed. If you get particularly unlucky and they do something that would knock you off prevent and you from jumping back on in time, you'll need to start back at full part HP and making you spend a few more minutes mashing circle.
  • The CODE7 exams qualify as this; namely Natalia, as she brings along other human enemies to the fight.
  • As mentioned before in Fake Difficulty, Dionaea's wonky hitboxes and its constant charge spam makes its fight utterly frustrating. Combine the wonky hitboxes and charge attack with accurate fireballs and a near undodgable swoop down results in a broken mess of an otherwise cool-looking boss monster. Thankfully, breaking the wings off by the elbow can make the fight a tad easier, since doing so reduces Dionaea's charge hitbox and gives the player more room to dodge. It's a merciful gift when Dionaea and its flunky hitboxes got toned down in Soul Sacrifice Delta.
• That One Sidequest: Anything that requires leg fibers to upgrade. They, unsurprisingly, require you to hack away at an Abductor's legs to gain. Except using a Thorn to attack yourself to a leg and hack away at it is ineffective due to being knocked off whenever it starts moving, while practically every gun that's efficient at damaging non-Abductors isn't going to help you at all. This forces you to use the inefficient dragdown (during which you will constantly be targeted) to get access to its legs without being trampled, and you're only given a short amount of time to damage it. Lastly, the legs never show any sign of being damaged, save for a very slight crack, so you never have any idea on how much longer it'll take before you get it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Pretty much all attempts at telling a cohesive narrative get thrown out the window by the time you reach the endgame, which is a shame because the setting has a lot of potential.