Liberation Maiden (eShop) Review

I’ve had to review three games in the past week (including this one) that have had weird histories or at least scattered release patterns. This one, however, has done the opposite. Originally part of a four game compilation in Japan, Liberation Maiden is a Goichi Suda designed game taken away from the Guild01 compilation and instead released on the eShop separately. Sure, it’s obviously not meant to be a full game, but that is reflective in its price point. So at a measly $12AU, is Liberation Maiden worth, errr, liberating? The answer is (as always) a little bit complicated and definitely not clear-cut.

Liberation Maiden is a Goichi Suda designed game. For those who might not be familiar, this is the guy who brought us No More Heroes, killer7, Lollipop Chainsaw and a few other lesser known titles. Players will be controlling Shoko Ozora, a young woman who is elected as the president of New Japan following her father’s assassination by a rival country. The rival country is invading with power conduits – drill like objects that are designed to steal energy from the country. Donning her trusty mech suit (yes, a mech suit), Shoko heads to the skies of New Japan to eliminate the power conduit and restore order to New Japan.

Yes, the story is ridiculous and over the top, but it provides a nice context for the action that ensues shortly thereafter. Presented in beautiful anime style cutscenes, the story takes a backseat here and doesn’t do much besides providing context to the games events. Nothing really happens beyond the opening cutscene.

Besides the really high quality cutscenes, animated by Studio BONES, Liberation Maiden doesn’t really look all that flash. The character models and portraits are bearable, but the textures of New Japan’s landscapes are very low resolution and kind of blurry at times. It just doesn’t look that fantastic at first glance. With the flow of gameplay though, a lot of these graphical shortcomings aren’t really noticeable and you’ll be spending most of your time dodging all the firepower coming from all angles. The 3D effect is not very prominent here, unfortunately, and with games like Kid Icarus showing us what this kind of game could look like with proper 3D implementation, it’s a tad disappointing. The voice work is pretty good (heck, it’s surprising it was even bothered to be localised) and the sound effects and design are top notch.

Much like the game I keep comparing it to (even though I admit that besides a few similarities, the comparison shouldn’t be dwelled on too much), Liberation Maiden features a little bit of a complicated control scheme that takes a little bit to get used to. The Circle Pad moves Shoko and her mech, whom can move in four directions. Holding the shoulder button (L) allows Shoko to strafe around a target while locked on. The stylus is what you’ll be using to attack enemies, dragging it across the bottom screen as a kind of touch pad and accumulating lock-ons. Once you release your stylus, a series of beams / projectiles will be launched. The catch? The more lock-ons you accumulate, the more your shields will deplete momentarily.

Those who can put together my words might recognise that Liberation Maiden plays quite similarly to games like Rez or the more recent Child of Eden, although the shield depletion mechanic gives the game a good risk-benefit trade off. Despite this, I found the game to be rather easy and not provide much of a challenge, namely due to what feels like creatively bankrupt scenario design. The whole idea of piloting a mech in 3D space while firing off volleys of attacks also recalls memories of the Zone of the Enders franchise, for those of you who might’ve played it.

The biggest thing I noticed, and only after comparing the game to another shooter on the 3DS, is that Liberation Maiden features controls that really won’t gel well with left handed players, so be warned if you are southpaw and yet to purchase.

Liberation Maiden’s biggest downfall is the poor scenario design that I eluded to earlier. Every level takes place in an arena above New Japan, and requires players to purify the land from its invaders by destroying the power conduits (drills which sap energy from the country). In order to do so, surrounding enemies must be destroyed in order to expose the conduit’s core, and make it vulnerable to your munitions. It’s a very simple formula, and I had fun for an hour, but it’s ultimately falls a bit flat with just too much repetition. Players will find a bit of variety in the “testimonials” from the citizens of New Japan that flash on screen every now and then, but they aren’t as entertaining as you would hope.

The most polarising aspect of Liberation Maiden is its longevity and whether it would work as a standalone game (as it’s presented in the West) or in its original compilation (Guild01 in Japan). There’s no easy way to discern who would and who wouldn’t enjoy this, though some factors will certainly contribute. The game itself is incredibly short, taking roughly three hours to complete and consisting of five stages (of which the objectives remain the same). The real crux of the gameplay here lies in the scoring system, which really hints at what kind of game Liberation Maiden is – a score attack shooter.

Providing players with the opportunity to increase their scores through optional sub-objectives (such as carrying out chained attacks, achieving 100% “coverage” of an area or completion of objectives within a certain amount of time), players who really enjoy this kind of thing will love the idea of building upon their own scores. Multiple difficulty levels are also provided for those who might want to continue playing the game following completion and finding more of a challenge.

I guess the main point is this – if you’re one of those people who enjoys score attack games, you’ll probably get many more out of Liberation Maiden than the three hours I managed to squeeze out of it. If you’re not, this might come off as being very bare bones game that seems quite overpriced, for what it is, especially with no online leaderboards or anything. It seems like a missed opportunity with a game that places such an emphasis on scores.

Liberation Maiden is not your usual Grasshopper developed game, no; it’s something that’s notably more basic than anything else the development firm has put out. To clarify – I enjoyed Liberation Maiden for the three hours or so that I played it, but I question whether it was really worth the price of admission considering how little variation there is. I’ve also felt like I’ve played so many shooters like this before, quirky Suda humour or not. This is a hard one to objectively rank – if you like Suda’s work and score attack games, you’ll probably love this. But if you don’t like at least one of these things, Liberation Maiden will probably be something you could safely miss without repercussion. Tread carefully.