It’s hard to believe that it’s been ten years, but the original Freedom Planet released all the way back in 2014. And now, in 2024, we finally have access to the sequel (sort of, as it technically came out on PC a while back, but just released on consoles).
If you recall, I wrote an article on Freedom Planet a bit ago, where I went into detail about how awesome the game is and how it evolves from the Speed Platformer formula established by Sonic back in the 90s. I raved and praised the game in that article, and concluded by giving it a 10 out of 10 score. Freedom Planet has also shown up in other Top 10 articles of mine, like in lists about my favorite indie games, and lists about my favorite bosses.
Suffice to say, but I adore Freedom Planet. The sequel had a lot to live up to in my mind. Of course, I’ve never been someone to rigidly hold onto nostalgic beliefs and refuse to open up to new things, so it’s not like I stubbornly crossed my arms and tried to hate Freedom Planet 2 the first day I sat down to play it. If Freedom Planet 2 ended up being better than the original, I was fully prepared to shift my lists of favorites and embrace it!
So…is it? Well, that’s a bit of a complicated question…
Freedom Planet 2 is, in large strokes, very similar to its predecessor. It wears its Sonic influence on its sleeve, although by this point the series has mostly established its own identity. You zoom and loop-de-loop through fast-paced levels, while also taking the time to beat up enemies and poke around corners for secrets along the way. These levels are huge and sprawling, but with the lack of bottomless pits, spikes from nowhere, and deathly time limits, there’s a refreshing amount of freedom and fun you won’t find in a Sonic game.
There are differences between this game and the original, however. For starters, there’s a world map. Instead of playing through a linear storyline and then a level-select menu after game completion, you can run around and double-back to previous levels, bosses, and areas whenever you want. It lends a sense of scale and immersion to the world, though it gets a bit exhausting crossing the map during the post-game to finish finding collectibles. A level-select menu would’ve been a nice addition on top of the map itself.
Still, I think the main reason that the world map exists is to serve as a way to implement hub areas into the game. In each major region of the game (Shang Tu, Shang Mu, Shuigang, and Parusa) there is at least one (and two in Parusa) hub areas. In these hub areas you get to run around, talk to NPCs, progress the story through cutscenes, and shop for items (more on those later). Arguably inessential, but they are fun diversions between levels, and I liked seeing the world fleshed out. The NPC designs are quite good too, and their writing is consistently funny and interesting.
The other big change in Freedom Planet 2 has to do with our core heroines and how they control, and the newness starts with the very fact that there are four playable characters now instead of three. Joining our previously established trio of Sash Lilac the Water Dragon, Carol Tea the Biker Cat, and Milla the Superpowered Dog, we now are graced with the presence of Neera Li the Icy Warrior (an antagonist-turned-supporter from the original).
Every character has been updated in substantial ways. Lilac can cancel her dragon boost, uppercut in mid-air, and cyclone without using her energy bar. Carol’s motorcycle lasts until Carol herself perishes instead of having its own health, and Carol has this slick new discus-throwing move. Milla has more health, and can summon and utilize her cubes more easily. Neera is totally new, and uses a bunch of slick ice attacks and a sky-high double jump.
I have played the original Freedom Planet start-to-finish as Lilac about eight times, once as Carol, and I never even finished my Milla run. And yet, by golly, Freedom Planet 2 has made me fall head-over-heels for Carol’s playstyle. Her frantic and non-stop attacks, her throwing disc, and her epic-as-heck motorcycle? It’s just so much fun! Honestly, it was Neera who I had the hardest time clicking with, as I couldn’t fully appreciate her icy kit. Her double jump and air dash are super fun though!
Regardless of what character you choose, the game’s many, many levels are an absolute blast to play through. Obviously, running at the speed of light, looping around, and flying through the air will never get old, but repeated runs of each level really help the excellent design to pop. From subtle environmental decisions to cleverly disguised tutorials, to unforgettable stage gimmicks, Freedom Planet 2 has some praiseworthy level design all across the board. Standouts for me are probably the frenetic aerial craziness of Airship Sigwada, the puzzle-based exploration of Ancestral Forge, and the hectic teleporter mazes in Inversion Dynamo.
But there’s definitely plenty to do aside from fighting, as I mentioned earlier. Alongside the hub areas and NPCs, there is also an optional arena known as the Battlesphere. In the Battlesphere, you can tackle 20 different challenges, face down rematches against every boss in the game on an individual basis, and even compete in a silly little baseball minigame. There’s a lot of variety to be found in the Battlesphere, and its something fun to come back to between levels if you need a distraction.
I mentioned shops earlier too, so I suppose it’s time I bring that topic back up!
Instead of a traditional difficulty selector, Freedom Planet 2 uses a variable score system with items. If you equip items that make the game easier, your score goes down. If you equip items that make the game harder, your score goes up. This score exclusively effects an end-of-level ranking that exists only for bragging rights, so you miss out on nothing if you equip the easy items, nor do you gain more from the hard items.
Some of these items can be found tucked away inside of chests in some of the levels, but the vast majority of them can be picked up from shops. The currency you use for shopping comes from crystals and enemy cores nabbed from the levels, giving a further incentive to explore each level thoroughly. The items, in the grand scheme of things, aren’t major, but they can still be fun to mess around with. I enjoy the ability to start every Carol level with her motorcycle thanks to the Fuel Tank item, or challenge myself with a score boost by using the No Revives item.
Honestly, replayability is just the name of the game when it comes to Freedom Planet 2. It’s practically a core part of the whole experience. Four whole characters, a slew of items to mix and match, and par times and higher scoring ranks to chase. It’s a lot. Without such a high degree of replayability, my overall opinion of the game probably wouldn’t be as high as it is now.
See, I was actually feeling a bit middling by the end of my initial Lilac playthrough. I enjoyed the game, for sure, but it left me feeling…strange. I suppose, deep down, what I had wanted was just Freedom Planet 1 again. Or, to look even more introspectively, I wanted Freedom Planet 2 to make me feel like I did ten years ago playing the original. And it didn’t. With slightly-altered playstyles, the new world map, hub areas, and a different way of telling its story, it didn’t possess the magical ability to rocket me back in time.
And, of course, it never could’ve. Nothing has the power to make you feel like your younger self again, not truly. It was only during my second run as Carol that I really began to embrace Freedom Planet 2 as the worthy-but-distinct sequel that it is, and I probably would’ve never even given the game a second run if it wasn’t so gosh darn fun and addicting!
Switching gears a bit, the writing quality and voice acting are both worthy of praise. It still feels like that perfect blend of Saturday Morning Cartoon and anime, mixed with those unexpected but appreciated punches of seriousness. Every voice actor has improved since the original, and the newcomers are great too, like Lindsay Jones (the voice of Ruby from RWBY), and Christopher Sabat (the voice of Vegeta from Dragon Ball). The writing quality is especially noteworthy, surprising me with its depth at a few points (like the villain’s backstory, and this random but uncomfortably realistically racist NPC in one of the towns).
And, of course, the soundtrack is filled with one banger after another…mostly. Honestly, just given the sheer size of the soundtrack (about forty tracks longer than the original game), it might even be better from a logical-analytical point of view. The world map themes and hub themes are great, and the individual character themes are catchy too. And the level themes absolutely steal the show! An amazing song for every amazing level! They’ve really gotten stuck in my head and refuse to leave!
But the boss music…? With regards to bosses, two of my three major critiques against Freedom Planet 2 come into play. The bosses in this game, both in the music department and in the mechanics field, simply don’t compare to the original.
There is nothing even close to a bad boss in the original game. The tutorial boss is lackluster, but it’s the tutorial boss. Every other boss ranges from good to utterly fantastic. But in Freedom Planet 2, not only are there not any utterly fantastic fights, there are only a few great ones. And, worse than that, there’s a few outright bad ones. Whether it’s clunky mechanics, uninspiring arenas, or tiresome “wait for an opening” bouts that last too long, there’s more duds than I’d like.
This extends to the music too. Obviously, musical taste is just about the most subjective thing in the entire world, but the vast majority of the battle tracks in this game just didn’t do it for me. Even after my 40-hour journey for the platinum trophy, I could only maybe hum one or two boss tracks (and if you know anything about me and my music-inclined brain, that’s not good). This stands in stark contrast to the original game’s stellar boss themes, many of which I still actively listen to today (and, full disclosure, I’m even doing so right now while writing this).
But those minor issues are only a drop in the bucket compared to the more glaring flaw with Freedom Planet 2: it’s story.
No one is going to give Freedom Planet 1‘s story any sort of awards in excellence, but it does work very well. It sort of has that Mulan energy to it, where things start fairly happy and jokey, but then you get hit in the face with a reality-check that shifts the tone for the second half of the experience. It’s a solidly-written story of two girls stumbling into a plot to destroy the world, and the two of them forced to grow up fast and put everything on the line to save their home. Each stage, and each cutscene, builds this story up and moves the plot forward.
Freedom Planet 2, on the other hand, feels like the filler-padded season two.
For the entire first third of the game, you help out the local city with a few random incidences of crime. There’s no big bad, there’s no compelling stakes, there’s no driving conflict. You just set out on these mini-arcs that, honest-to-goodness, have nothing to do with the eventual main plot, then return to the city to start the next arc. I suppose they introduce various characters that will do more later on, but did that need to take a third of the game?
And then, things start ramping up and getting exciting, and we finally come face-to-face with the main villain (only took eleven entire levels to reach this point…). It’s cool, it’s dramatic, and there’s some nice plot twists. The issue? Immediately after, our heroes escape to a new island continent and do the exact same thing for the second third of the game. As in, completing random little mini-arcs that, while slightly more plot-heavy than the first time around, are still absolute filler in terms of the true main goal of our antagonist and the central plot.
Finally, things turn around for the last third, which manages to mostly re-right the ship and get things back on track. There’s some high stakes, a lot of great character moments, and the main villain finally gets her chance to shine. Then there’s the secret final boss and all that stuff (covered in last week’s article), and the epilogue cutscenes (partially unique to each character) are all great fun.
And, speaking of fun, yes the entire game is fun. The story is even fun, more or less. But it’s inarguably a mess of pacing and unfocused storytelling. It’s not boring, it’s not badly written, and it’s not insulting or anything. It’s just…well, I suppose disappointing would be a good word for it. The original Freedom Planet had an excellent story that did just what it needed to do, and did it well (did it better than it needed to do, honestly). Seeing Freedom Planet 2 stumble in this regard was a letdown.
So, to circle back to my original question: is Freedom Planet 2 better than the original Freedom Planet? Yes and no.
In about 90% of categories, Freedom Planet 2 is either just as good as, or downright better than the original. It looks better thanks to improved visuals and resolution. It sounds better on an auditory scale thanks to better quality. The characters all control better, the hub areas and Battlesphere provide amazing variety, the soundtrack is just as good for the most part and better in some other ways, the voice acting is still great, the characters are charming as always, the level design is even better, and the replayability is through the roof.
But, it has weaker bosses and forgettable boss tunes, and a story that’s a bit of a mess. And, try as I might, I can’t just ignore that, especially the story angle. I am a writer, after all.
So, I can’t give this game a perfect score, but what I can do is stress that the score I’m about to give the game is, like, the strongest and most passionate almost-ten that anyone could ever give. This game truly is incredible, and I’d highly recommend. It is very much in contention for my game of the year at the moment!
9.5/10
But hey, that’s just my opinion!
The Contrarian Corner 