Freedom Planet (Wii U eShop) Review

Freedom Planet is a retro-styled adventure for the Wii U straight out of the Sega Mega Drive era that plays like a love letter to Sonic the Hedgehog and Ristar but takes the right steps into modernity when it needs to.

Freedom Planet started its life as a Sonic the Hedgehog fan project by independent developer Stephen DiDuro before he decided to try steering the game towards being something original instead of simply being derivative of an existing product. The game’s characters were designed by artist Ziyo Ling whom DiDuro found via DeviantArt – a known goldmine of Sonic fan art…ahem – and while the characters were redesigned, you can still clearly see shades of the Sonic characters they originally started as like Cream and Dr Robotnik and while it ultimately doesn’t make any difference to how much fun I had with the game, it wold have been nice to see some greater differentiation in design from their early beginnings, though enemies are refreshingly varied.

You have option of playing as one of three anthropomorphic characters. Lilac, a dragon, Carol a wildcat and canine Milla.Lilac can twirl through the air for extra height and dash through the air to reach higher areas and attack multiple enemies. Carol can climb walls, curl into a spin-attack and ride a motorcycle up walls (yes, that’s right) and Milla can throw green jelly cubes and generate a shield, combining the two to perform a shield blast, she can also flap her ears to reach high areas.

Like I said before, the characters wouldn’t look out of place in a classic Sonic game but their design is fun and their differing personalities are well-defined in both design and dialogue. Each characters’ different abilities change the way you need to approach each level and boss encounter and adds a welcome dose of variation in the way you experience the game rather than just having multiple characters for the sake of it.

Gameplay is a mix of platforming, running as fast as you can through sections of the world – with a decent sense of speed – and slower combat and exploration. The levels – of which there are around 14 – are large, and offer branching paths and hidden areas to find. You’ll find familiar loops slides and ramps littered throughout as well as some character specific items and areas.

Each level took me roughly 10 minutes or more to finish which is far longer than you’d expect with additional exploration taking longer still. There’s plenty to find including special cards that unlock character samples and level music in the gallery found in the main menu. Each level also ends with a boss fight. I was not expecting to die as often as I did during some of these encounters and while some of the bosses were tough to beat. It never felt cheap and it really was just that I needed to get better at utilising each character’s specific abilities as well as the bosses patters and weaknesses.

Graphics are typical 16-bit fare, sprite work is great with nice character and enemy detail. One thing to mention about the enemies actually is how varied their design is across the different worlds. Unlike Sonic the Hedgehog for example, rarely are enemies recycled and their design if often interesting and suitable to the particular theme of the level.

Adventure mode surprisingly features fully voiced cutscenes, I note this because I consider it pretty impressive that a game of this scale has voiced characters rather than just simple text boxes, which it also has.

However, the quality of said voices leaves a bit to be desired, they get the job done but there were more than a few times when the delivery and inclination of the acting felt out of place or just fell flat.

For the amount of levels you get, along with solid gameplay and great design, not to mention challenging and fun. I can comfortably recommend this game, you could do a lot worse than to spend a few hours with a title that would easily stand side by side with some of the best 16-bit platformers of the day.