Ms. CC, The Virtual Fashionista: Freedom Wars. Abductor Hunting and Character Customization...For the Greater Good!

Amongst the games I've been playing is Freedom Wars on the Vita. I kept seeing mention of it on the various nerdy sites so I picked up the physical release...For the Greater Good. I am surprised that Iris Ophelia hasn't mentioned it on New World Notes, since it's Japanese and has plenty of character customization. I googled and she actually does own the game. I didn't even know she had a Vita since she seems to focus her portable game attention on cutesy-kawaii games for the 3DS.

The Basic plot is:

It's the future and the world is a Crapsack Dystopia where everyone lives in city states/prisons called Panopticons and the Panopticons compete for scarce resources. (Panopticons are a style of prison in RL, the more you know!) You, are a "sinner" a prisoner born into servitude to your Panopticon and The Greater Good! Apparently you weren't just a rank 1 sinner at one time, but you lost your memory and got reduced in rank and your full sentence returned to you. Your sentence... 1 million years. You're going to die in your cell "sinner" unless you agree to take on missions.... For The Greater Good. You'd better, because without taking on missions, you won't even have the right to lie down in your cell, doing so without earning the Entitlement gets 10 years added to your sentence. Of course, if you refuse to lie down your cute but creepy anime-style Mean Robot Overseer will add on 10 years for refusing the gift of leisure. He or she...you get your choice, will also add years for walking more than 5 steps at a time, talking to Sinners of the opposite sex, and talking to actual Citizens among the many many things you can be penalized for.

Once you go on missions, you fight other Sinners and giant robot enemies called Abductors who have captured valuable Panopticon Citizens...Monster Hunter style. Yes, it's a Japanese game and has many of the "quirks" Japanese games have these days. UI that needs work, grindy gameplay, japanese only voices and control quirks. To be honest, the controls only suck until you become able to change the controls a bit into the game. They're actually MUCH better than Monster Hunter...once you can change them into something REASONABLE for a 3rd person action game with guns and melee. They did leave in the option for that silly impractical "Monster Hunter Claw" for the Japanese gamers. If you're not at least a little bit of a Japanophile, you probably won't like it. Personally, I find it more fun than Monster Hunter for darn sure. And it actually has proper online play instead of just being limited to ad-hoc wifi.

Here am I in my cell with my Mean Robot Overseer, aka my Accessory. Behind me on the viewscreen is the mascot of the Dystopia, Percy Propa (Propa-kun in Japan) Those two things with blue glowy dots at the top left and center of the screen are monitoring cameras...they don't watch you even though the Accessory watches you 24/7!

There's a ton of character customization. You have to earn most of the clothing with entitlements, but you get to choose your characters body, face, eyes, hair at the start from quite a few options. More than I expected from a Japanese game. That also applies to your Accessory. Male or female, tall or short, hairstyle, cutesy girlish or slightly more mature like mine.

You have to earn color palettes too!

My Mean Robot's outfit is cuter than mine. You know, as much as everyone complains about lack of resources and how people are a drain on society...all the Sinners have their very own Mean Robot.