Freedom Planet 2: First Footage

[FriendBot]

27 minutes ago, NikoS said:

Just played through the demo with all the characters, i enjoyed practically everything, this coming from someone who didn't play the original. I'm looking forward to play this one. Also, is it worth for me to buy the first one? i mean, does the gameplay mechanics differs a lot from this one?

Freedom Planet 1 isn't too different from 2's demo although Carol doesn't have the throwing disc in 1 and Milia doesn't have as many offensive options as in the demo as well. Lilac is more or less the same in 1 so yeah.

If you liked what you played in 2's demo, pick up 1.

[NikoS]

thanks, i will be grabbing it on steam asap : )

[Junko]

11 hours ago, NikoS said:

thanks, i will be grabbing it on steam asap : )

I personally wouldn't say so. The thing is FP1 starts off well, but it gets considerably worse as time goes on. Levels take too long, bosses actually become bullshit towards the end of the game and the level design isn't particularly good by the end. So I'd just personally say to wait for FP2 but you've probably already bought it now, RIP

[Kintor]

37 minutes ago, Athena Cykes said:

I personally wouldn't say so. The thing is FP1 starts off well, but it gets considerably worse as time goes on. Levels take too long, bosses actually become bullshit towards the end of the game and the level design isn't particularly good by the end. So I'd just personally say to wait for FP2 but you've probably already bought it now, RIP

No offense but it sounds to me like you need to go back to the 16-bit era and play more of the games that inspired Freedom Planet. Not just Sonic the Hedgehog but also games like Rocket Knight Adventures and Gunstar Heroes. You see, a well-designed boss and/or level should kick your ass for weeks before you managed to overcome it. People today rave about the difficulty of Dark Souls and how unforgiving that game is but not so long ago nearly all games of the 16-bit era were just as challenging if not harder.

If anything Freedom Planet is more merciful then it's 16-bit inspiration since you have unlimited continues and can always start again from the last checkpoint. Where as in the old days you had to start from the beginning of the game again once you ran out of a very finite supply of lives and continue. So as far as I'm concerned Freedom Planet has a perfect level of difficulty; and I say this as someone who managed to beat Freedom Planet at launch before the difficulty of late game bosses was toned down in a patch.

[Junko]

19 minutes ago, Kintor said:

No offense but it sounds to me like you need to go back to the 16-bit era and play more of the games that inspired Freedom Planet. Not just Sonic the Hedgehog but also games like Rocket Knight Adventures and Gunstar Heroes. You see, a well-designed boss and/or level should kick your ass for weeks before you managed to overcome it. People today rave about the difficulty of Dark Souls and how unforgiving that game is but not so long ago nearly all games of the 16-bit era were just as challenging if not harder.

 

If anything Freedom Planet is more merciful then it's 16-bit inspiration since you have unlimited continues and can always start again from the last checkpoint. Where as in the old days you had to start from the beginning of the game again once you ran out of a very finite supply of lives and continue. So as far as I'm concerned Freedom Planet has a perfect level of difficulty; and I say this as someone who managed to beat Freedom Planet at launch before the difficulty of late game bosses was toned down in a patch.

 

 

 

No, Freedom Planet is definitely worse designed that at least every 16-bit Sonic game. Gunstar Heroes is a difficulty that's fine to me, there's a difference between bullshit and challenging and Freedom Planet definitely leans towards the former. Shovel Knight, for example, is a difficulty that's good to me, involving progression as the game goes on. Freedom Planet, to me, attempted that and succeeded in making the boss harder, sure, but not in a way that feels rewarding to fight. Freedom Planet does not have good boss/level design in the latter half of the game imo. That's it.

Also, good for you, you beat the game and liked it, but I didn't, lmao. I beat the game nearly two years ago now and didn't really enjoy the latter parts of the game. Don't come at my skill as a gamer because I didn't like something you do.

 

[Tracker_TD]

My experience with Freedom Planet was a clunky mess that certainly drew inspiration from Sonic, Rocket Knight and Gunstar, but then executed said inspiration into a mismash. It was far from a fun time, and the bosses stick out in my mind as particularly poor.

I'll never understand folks who put it on the same level as the Classic series; it isn't as carefully considered as those games at all. 

All that said, I'm really hoping this sequel's better. There's a demo out, innit? I'll have to give that a go. I like what they've done with the aesthetic for the most part, so there's that. 

[Kintor]

21 minutes ago, Athena Cykes said:

No, Freedom Planet is definitely worse designed that at least every 16-bit Sonic game. Gunstar Heroes is a difficulty that's fine to me, there's a difference between bullshit and challenging and Freedom Planet definitely leans towards the former. Shovel Knight, for example, is a difficulty that's good to me, involving progression as the game goes on. Freedom Planet, to me, attempted that and succeeded in making the boss harder, sure, but not in a way that feels rewarding to fight. Freedom Planet does not have good boss/level design in the latter half of the game imo. That's it.

Also, good for you, you beat the game and liked it, but I didn't, lmao. I beat the game nearly two years ago now and didn't really enjoy the latter parts of the game. Don't come at my skill as a gamer because I didn't like something you do.

Like I said in my last post, you need to get more perspective on just how difficult the games of the 16-bit era actually were and why Freedom Planet isn't even the most challenging platformer of its kind. Like with Rocket Knight Adventures, which has some extremely challenging bosses and even a late game section where you have to navigate a tower with tight corridors before an instant-kill wall catches up with you. Furthermore, besides Gunstar Heroes another 16-bit game from Treasure called Alien Soldier has even greater difficulty, the game is nothing but a boss rush mode with some of the most insanely creative and difficult battles that Treasure has ever created. All of which helped to inform Freedom Planet and make it the great game that it is today.

[JezMM]

3 minutes ago, Kintor said:

Like I said in my last post, you need to get more perspective on just how difficult the games of the 16-bit era actually were and why Freedom Planet isn't even the most challenging platformer of its kind. Like with Rocket Knight Adventure, which has some extremely challenging bosses and even a late game section where you have to navigate a tower with tight corridors before an instant-kill wall catches up with you. Furthermore, besides Gunstar Heroes another 16-bit game from Treasure called Alien Soldier has even greater difficulty, the game is nothing but a boss rush mode with some of the most insanely creative and difficult battles that Treasure has ever created. All of which helped to inform Freedom Planet and make it the great game that it is today.

You shouldn't need the perspective of other games to appreciate Freedom Planet if it was as universally good as you're suggesting lol.

I also feel the fact that they patched the bosses - as in they adjusted them on normal mode, they didn't just add easy mode and shepherd people in there if it's too hard for them etc, shows the developers themselves admitting they got the boss difficulty "wrong" and it needed fixing.

[Kintor]

18 minutes ago, JezMM said:

You shouldn't need the perspective of other games to appreciate Freedom Planet if it was as universally good as you're suggesting lol.

I also feel the fact that they patched the bosses - as in they adjusted them on normal mode, they didn't just add easy mode and shepherd people in there if it's too hard for them etc, shows the developers themselves admitting they got the boss difficulty "wrong" and it needed fixing.

Seeing as how Freedom Planet is aimed at the retro revival 2D market a certain amount of knowledge about 16-bit games is assumed. After all, Freedom Planet is made for people who remember the ultra-hard 2D platformers of old and still continue to play those games regularly. Of course, anyone without that experience from 16-bit era is still free to play Freedom Planet; they'll just have a hard time of it then most as they try to beat the game.

That's the beauty of the 16-bit era, nothing is handed to you on a silver platter, try as you might with all your skill and it's still never certain you'll beat the game. Freedom Planet is in good company with its level of difficulty, bizarre complaints about its difficulty (like those seen on this page) fail to understand the challenging kind of games that inspired Freedom Planet in the first place.

[Tracker_TD]

33 minutes ago, Kintor said:

Seeing as how Freedom Planet is aimed at the retro revival 2D market a certain amount of knowledge about 16-bit games is assumed. After all, Freedom Planet is made for people who remember the ultra-hard 2D platformers of old and still continue to play those games regularly. Of course, anyone without that experience from 16-bit era is still free to play Freedom Planet; they'll just have a hard time of it then most as they try to beat the game.

 

That's the beauty of the 16-bit era, nothing is handed to you on a silver platter, try as you might with all your skill and it's still never certain you'll beat the game. Freedom Planet is in good company with its level of difficulty, bizarre complaints about its difficulty (like those seen on this page) fail to understand the challenging kind of games that inspired Freedom Planet in the first place.

Gunstar Heroes is my favourite not-Sonic Mega Drive game. It's tough, but also ludicrously fun.

Freedom Planet's issue from what I played isn't difficulty, its problem is being a bit shite in comparison. 

[JezMM]

27 minutes ago, Kintor said:

Seeing as how Freedom Planet is aimed at the retro revival 2D market a certain amount of knowledge about 16-bit games is assumed. After all, Freedom Planet is made for people who remember the ultra-hard 2D platformers of old and still continue to play those games regularly. Of course, anyone without that experience from 16-bit era is still free to play Freedom Planet; they'll just have a hard time of it then most as they try to beat the game.

 

That's the beauty of the 16-bit era, nothing is handed to you on a silver platter, try as you might with all your skill and it's still never certain you'll beat the game. Freedom Planet is in good company with its level of difficulty, bizarre complaints about its difficulty (like those seen on this page) fail to understand the challenging kind of games that inspired Freedom Planet in the first place.

Doesn't matter, if people don't enjoy it they don't enjoy it, and taking a "pearls before swine" approach to that criticism won't endear anyone to the game.

It's fine to like the game for it's difficulty, but looking at people simply recounting their personal experience with the game that the handling of difficulty didn't gel with them and felt cheap and calling that stance "bizarre" is just disrespectful, especially when they've got the developers' patch on their side as evidence that it was a real, widespread problem.

 

For me, I liked the game overall and I think I managed to beat the game on normal difficulty pre-patch, but I definitely found the final bosses exhausting in a way that made me think "finally, I'm never fucking doing that again" rather than "man I feel so accomplished I finally did it, that was fun!" when I beat them.  However overall I find the bosses kinda clunky and unsatisfying, you're just kind of "surviving" while slowly chipping away at their health whenever you can for every single one, there's no "tightness" to the boss combat because every boss needs to be able to be balanced to be passable with all three (now four) characters, so they all just take "generic" damage rather than having a particular, tightly designed strategy like you get in a simple one button platformer like Sonic.  Not quite my cup of tea, personally.

[Kintor]

58 minutes ago, JezMM said:

Doesn't matter, if people don't enjoy it they don't enjoy it, and taking a "pearls before swine" approach to that criticism won't endear anyone to the game.

It's fine to like the game for it's difficulty, but looking at people simply recounting their personal experience with the game that the handling of difficulty didn't gel with them and felt cheap and calling that stance "bizarre" is just disrespectful, especially when they've got the developers' patch on their side as evidence that it was a real, widespread problem.

What I find disrespectful is the way that Athena Cykes tried to discourage NikoS from buying the original game, in the Freedom Planet 2 thread no less. The challenge that Freedom Planet and games like it offer is what makes them fun. The 16-bit era was time of brutal platformers, when even the slightest mistake at the wrong moment could mean certain death. But such things are not to be lamented, rather the right approach is to try again and find a way to beat that game; even if it takes weeks, months or even years to do so. That is the promise that Freedom Planet brings back to gaming, at a time when new platforming games are in scarce supply. I personally think more games should follow Freedom Planet's example and offer a similar style of difficulty.

 

[Tracker_TD]

14 minutes ago, Kintor said:

What I find disrespectful is the way that Athena Cykes tried to discourage NikoS from buying the original game, in the Freedom Planet 2 thread no less. The challenge that Freedom Planet and games like it offer is what makes them fun. The 16-bit era was time of brutal platformers, when even the slightest mistake at the wrong moment could mean certain death. But such things are not to be lamented, rather the right approach is to try again and find a way to beat that game; even if it takes weeks, months or even years to do so. That is the promise that Freedom Planet brings back to gaming, at a time when new platforming games are in scarce supply. I personally think more games should follow Freedom Planet's example and offer a similar style of difficulty.

 

We get it, Freedom Planet's hard. Its difficulty is handled poorly and a by-product of poor design (as Athena actually said), unlike, say, Gunstar Heroes which is satisfying as hell. I can recommend Gunstar to folks regardless of its difficulty because it's one hell of a time. I can't say the same for Freedom Planet because it isn't much fun. 

Warning people may to hold off on buying a naff game isn't disrespectful in the slightest; it's looking out for folks and their wallets, innit. 

[JezMM]

Lol this varies from person to person of course but to me the idea that I, someone who is old enough to have grown up with 8 and 16-bit games, still has the free time required to spend months and months playing the same content over and over trying to beat one game... Yeah that's a very cute idea lol.

It's fine, but save that stuff for hardcore difficulty settings, which can be marked as only recommended to dedicated players who want that nostalgia kick.  FP was flawed in it's difficulty balancing for the recommended mode at launch.

And people are free to recommend or dissuade someone from buying a game as they see fit, just as you are.

[Kintor]

Just now, JezMM said:

Lol this varies from person to person of course but to me the idea that I, someone who is old enough to have grown up with 8 and 16-bit games, still has the free time required to spend months and months playing the same content over and over trying to beat one game... Yeah that's a very cute idea lol.

It's fine, but save that stuff for hardcore difficulty settings, which can be marked as only recommended to dedicated players who want that nostalgia kick.  FP was flawed in it's difficulty balancing for the recommended mode at launch.

And people are free to recommend or dissuade someone from buying a game as they see fit, just as you are.

Honestly, you underestimate the active retro collecting scene that is still active to this day. After all, one of the salient points to understand about the 16-bit era is the phrase 'arcade perfect', this is about the drive to ensure console perfect ports of arcade games but it also influenced fundamental aspects of all game design. It will take months and even years to beat many 16-bit games but it's not a constant struggle, when these games are designed to be played in short bursts of a couple hours at a time. So you find the time when you can, always striving to get better at the games, until one day you have a breakthrough moment and finally beat that particular level or boss that has stood in your way for so long.

Plus, it certainly helps when you have more than one 16-bit game you're focusing on at any given time. If one game is giving you too much grief then put in a different cartridge or CD and play something else for a while. This philosophy has informed the retro collecting community, there's always more games to find and play, some that can only be played on their original hardware and remain real gems for their respective systems. Personally, I've never stopped collecting old Sega games and hardware. Just on my Mega Drive/Mega CD/32X I have 106 games at last count; including some extremely rare ones like Knuckles Chaotix and Mega Man: The Wily Wars.

So, the fact that Freedom Planet has challenging gameplay is wonderful news. The solution to that problem is to keep playing. Feel the burn! Find even more challenging games to play at the same time! Fortunately, Steam also has a great host of similar 'arcade perfect' style games to choose from. Give the hardcore Shoot-em-up Crimzon Clover a go, if you dare. Try the beat-em-up Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, for that certain Golden Axe vibe. Or if you're in a particularly masochistic mood you can attempt the remake of Assault Suit Leynos, which was originally a Mega Drive game and notorious for its difficulty even amongst it's 16-bit peers. Once you have done all this you might finally understand Freedom Planet and what it represents. 

[Junko]

1 minute ago, Kintor said:

So, the fact that Freedom Planet has challenging gameplay is wonderful news. The solution to that problem is to keep playing. Feel the burn! Find even more challenging games to play at the same time! Fortunately, Steam also has a great host of similar 'arcade perfect' style games to choose from. Give the hardcore Shoot-em-up Crimzon Clover a go, if you dare. Try the beat-em-up Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, for that certain Golden Axe vibe. Or if you're in a particularly masochistic mood you can attempt the remake of Assault Suit Leynos, which was originally a Mega Drive game and notorious for its difficulty even amongst it's 16-bit peers. Once you have done all this you might finally understand Freedom Planet and what it represents. 

2

I mean... Freedom Planet isn't even trying to invoke those games, it started as a Sonic fangame and even after becoming its own IP,  it continued to take design after Sonic games. Mainly Sonic CD that I noticed and all the Genesis games are better designed and easier than Freedom Planet.

[Kintor]

7 minutes ago, Athena Cykes said:

I mean... Freedom Planet isn't even trying to invoke those games, it started as a Sonic fangame and even after becoming its own IP,  it continued to take design after Sonic games. Mainly Sonic CD that I noticed and all the Genesis games are better designed and easier than Freedom Planet.

The point is that I play Sonic games but I also play the likes of Golden Axe, Thunder Force and Mega Turrican. After all, variety is the spice of life. The funny thing about challenging arcade influenced games (of which Sonic and Freedom Planet both belong) is that the best way to manage the difficulty is to take on multiple challenges at the same time. Get stuck in one game? No problem. Just play another one of your challenging games for a while. I mean, Freedom Planet is already on Steam. A lot of the challenging games that compliment it, like those I mentioned, can be found for dirt cheap prices and that's not even considering the frequent Steam sales. So basically, bulk-up your collection of games and go nuts! That's the 16-bit way.

[JezMM]

Fair enough if that's your gaming style, but sounds like a lot of investment to solve our problem which is "Freedom Planet's bosses felt unfair and thus just weren't that fun for us".  *shrug*

[Solly]

Haven't played Freedom Planet myself but this discussion about its difficulty has caught my interest. A friend of mine played it a couple of months ago and he was telling me that the end-game bosses were really overbearing, so to hear that he was playing a patched version of them is kinda funny. But yeah, difficulty can be really hard to balance, and there's a difference between something being "tough" and something being "bullshit." If the game turns things up too quickly, or the player doesn't feel like they're able to reasonably react to a challenge, that's usually indicative of a problem. 

As a side note, this idea of fetishizing the 16-bit era as the reign of brutally difficult games is really strange to me. I don't think tough games really went everywhere, they just became a little less mainstream, and exist more in the form of difficulty settings and indie titles. But on top of that, I thought the 8-bit NES era was more well-known for having brutal games? Castlevania 3, Ninja Gaiden and the original Ghosts N' Goblins come to mind, the latter being a series that prided itself on its difficulty. 

[Kintor]

8 hours ago, JezMM said:

Fair enough if that's your gaming style, but sounds like a lot of investment to solve our problem which is "Freedom Planet's bosses felt unfair and thus just weren't that fun for us".  *shrug*

Freedom Planet doesn’t the problems you claim, the only problem here is your attitude toward the game. Remember it's all about being 'arcade perfect', this include the way that you approach gaming as a whole. Just as how an arcade has multiple cabinets in the same place, each of which you might only play once in a day before moving on to something else in the arcade. The same is true in the 16-bit era and especially of the Mega Drive games that inspired Freedom Planet. Having multiple challenging short burst games on the go at any given time is simply good practise. As for any concern about the expense of the 'investment' don’t' forget that this is Steam we're talking about, all the other games I've mentioned in this thread can easily be found with huge discounts if you wait until a Steam sales.

[JezMM]

1 hour ago, Kintor said:

Freedom Planet doesn’t the problems you claim, the only problem here is your attitude toward the game. Remember it's all about being 'arcade perfect', this include the way that you approach gaming as a whole. Just as how an arcade has multiple cabinets in the same place, each of which you might only play once in a day before moving on to something else in the arcade. The same is true in the 16-bit era and especially of the Mega Drive games that inspired Freedom Planet. Having multiple challenging short burst games on the go at any given time is simply good practise. As for any concern about the expense of the 'investment' don’t' forget that this is Steam we're talking about, all the other games I've mentioned in this thread can easily be found with huge discounts if you wait until a Steam sales.

I picked up Freedom Planet because I like Sonic games and it looks like a Sonic game, that's literally all there is to it.  It provided what I expected of it with a few extra good things I didn't expect and a few extra bad things I didn't expect, frustrating bosses towards the end of the game being in the latter category.  That's all there is to it.  I'm not gonna go do video game homework just to make 6 or so bosses in a game I have mixed feelings for fun to play.  Like, I'm sorry but... I don't care?  That's just not my style of gaming and sure as hell one that I don't have time for if I want to keep up with my creative output, life responsibilities, and current games.  I'd have to ditch one of those things to make time and that isn't happening lol.

If they were truly going for the audience you think they were, that's not inherently flawed.  BUT, I'm just saying, Paper Mario, Overwatch, Papers Please... all examples of games from genres that are not my taste at all, and yet they managed to hook me in anyway despite that.  If Freedom Planet is the kind of niché game you claim it to be, I can fairly well categorise it as "niché only" rather than aiming for a broad appeal, since it didn't make me go "hey I normally hate this kind of oldskool bullshit difficulty but they make it WORK here" coz they didn't lol.

But as said multiple times, the fact that they patched the difficulty of these bosses down suggests they WERE going for the broad appeal, and thus the boss difficulty was flawed on normal mode.  Which is allllll I personally been arguing this whole time, that one thing.

[Kintor]

1 hour ago, JezMM said:

I picked up Freedom Planet because I like Sonic games and it looks like a Sonic game, that's literally all there is to it.  It provided what I expected of it with a few extra good things I didn't expect and a few extra bad things I didn't expect, frustrating bosses towards the end of the game being in the latter category.  That's all there is to it.  I'm not gonna go do video game homework just to make 6 or so bosses in a game I have mixed feelings for fun to play.  Like, I'm sorry but... I don't care?  That's just not my style of gaming and sure as hell one that I don't have time for if I want to keep up with my creative output, life responsibilities, and current games.  I'd have to ditch one of those things to make time and that isn't happening lol.

If you bought Freedom Planet thinking it was a pure Sonic clone then you clearly haven't played enough 16-bit platformers. Lilac's charged jump is straight out of Rocket Knight Adventures. The epic and challenging boss battles are straight of a Treasure game like Gunstar Heroes or Alien Soldier. I mean seriously, the late game bosses in Freedom Planet are actually pretty easy compared to something in late game Alien Soldier or Rocket Knight Adventures, while still putting up a decent challenge for veterans of the 16-bit era. As such, Freedom Planet is true to the games that in inspired, where this kind of challenging gameplay is essential to the experience.

As for your complaints about 'homework' - you’re on a video game forum, buy some more games! In this digital age of massive sales and easily accessible content there's no reason at all why any discerning gamer shouldn't have a respectable backlog of games. After all, arcade influenced games (like Freedom Planet) are designed to be played in short bursts. It's both easy and natural to juggle games like Freedom Planet, alongside things like Crimzon Clover and even the Metal Slug ports. In keeping with the arcade spirit these games are best played together. A half an hour here, two hours there, between a couple of different arcade style games, this is the way that Freedom Planet is meant to be enjoyed.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Okay, let me chime in on this, because I see both sides being inconsiderate to each other on the game.

I'll start by saying I absolutely love the first game, and I played through all three characters on Hard mode all the way up to Brevon's final fight -- I then proceeded to play Final Dreadnought 4 no less than 20 times, mostly as Carol, but sometimes as Milla and Lilac, just to fight Brevon again, which I wouldn't put as any worse than fighting the Death Egg Robot with zero rings back in the classic since at least you take more hits to die. (You might call that masochistic of me, but I just enjoy difficult and colorful games *shrug*)

I'm not sure what to say of the level design compare to Sonic classics (except CD, because that was definitely ass), but one could make a stronger case for enemy placement in the latter half of the game being a pain--anything after, if not during, Jade Creek can make one rage. Every game is going to have a few hated levels, and for me that was Pangu Lagoon (FUCK those damn wasps, man!), Battle Glacier 2, and Final Dreadnought 2 up there with stages Metropolis Zone, Labyrinth Zone, and Sandopolic Act 2, among others. 

Freedom Planet 1 may not be perfect, but it's not that horrendous. And it doesn't take that much understanding to why people put it as good as the Classics--it expands on a few elements that the classics haven't done such as the use of combat abilities and health system (yes, the Classics were known for using one button to attack, but one might like the added variety of abilities here), or does a bit more with what the classic have done like with the elemental shields given we have yet to have a shield that lets us traverse on spikes unharmed. And one might like the lack of a touch of doom for most enemies and requiring them to attack you to hurt you rather than you simply touching them to get hurt, as well as each character having better verticality in a few ways--Sonic could certainly have benefitted with something like a Dragon Boost to ricochet him off walls in case he got stuck in places like Mystic Cave's "fuck your superform" Pit-of-Doom.

And those might offset things like enemies taking more than one hit to die (in which they can die pretty quick, so that's still not a big issue).

But while some might like these aspects, let's not disregard that there are moments that could be better. Final Dreadnought 2 is still a bitch of a level even if you have it figured out,  and Pangu Lagoon's level design and enemy placement is downright sadistic in the worst way possible. Certain bosses in FP1 can be a huge pain depending on your character--Lilac seems to have a difficult time with Mutant Serpentine compared to Carol (or is that just me?) considering that a mistimed dragon boost can send you flying off into a pit and his large range can put all except Milla at an annoying distance, and Final Dreadnought 3's boss has attacks that cover way too much room for you to get a decent hit until you can use your special to go through them. Also, those Shade Troopers are ridiculously tough even as special enemies, as they seem way too smart and know when to open fire when you're vulnerable. And yes, Brevon is especially a bitch given that he'll knife you faster than you can react until you get the pattern down and learn to outlast him first--even tho I liked the challenge he gave, the fact that he had to be toned down kinda says a lot about what even those who liked the game felt about him.

I still rate the game high for the parts I enjoyed, and what it took notes on, putting in on par with S3&K. After beating a level, I can completely avoid any stage I didn't like; I love the multiple characters with their different strengths and weaknesses; I love exploring parts of the game I wasn't aware of; and I love the intensity of certain bosses. But just like S3&K, it has its annoying levels and gimmicks.

Not really hard to look at that and see why one may or may not like the game, guys. Or at least part of it. And if someone new is showing interest, why not at least tell them what they'll be in for if they take it on, regardless of whether you recommend it or not? Is it that hard for folks to try and be more objective? If you say "yes", I'll just tell you to put more effort into it.

[Chris Knopps]

...I'm gonna be the odd man out and say I actually loved Freedom Planet more than Sonic 1 and 2, however NOT more than Sonic 3 and Knuckles which is just the absolute best title in the entire franchise to me.

I loved how fast paced and action oriented the stages are and ESPECIALLY the bosses which are just crazy all over the place. If nothing else I'd say SEGA/ST could learn massive lessons from Freedom Planets scroll-based bosses in a 2D perspective because holy CRAP are you and the big bad of the world on the run. Missiles and other attacks out the yin yang and just...

I gotta say, it makes Sonic look like a real old geezer in comparison to the pace of things.

My only real complaint are the graphics. Freedom Planet was okay but Freedom Planet 2 is looking pretty... In a definite "eeeehhhhh" field to me since the funds should be there now for something a bit more breathtaking, even if from an indie studio.

[PC the Hedgehog]

Freedom Planet was one of the only games I've ever played where I had to switch to easy mode about halfway through because normal was making me rip my hair out. Became much more enjoyable for me after that.