Freedom Wars is one of my favorite examples of how elements beyond the gameplay can add to a game. The constant, often hilarous reminders of how oppresive the regime that owns your soul is are not only a great way to narratively justify unlocks, but also add a lot of personality to the game throughout your whole playthrough.
Of course, this is not all the game has going for it, if there's a word to define Freedom Wars that'd be ambitious. The game shakes up the reliable formula of the monster hunting genre adding third person shooting and a hook shot that makes zipping through the maps a reason to play the game all by itself. And that's on top of having online team based PvP modes, a character creator, several different commands to order your AI partners around, the weapon crafting that's to be expected of the genre and a stellar artstyle.
But that same ambition may also be the game's greatest flaw as the core of the gameplay feels like it could be fleshed out further: Both the weapon diversity and complexity are pretty limited, missions will repeat the same enemies, maps and objectives mercilessly, the camera can get pretty annoying to control at times, one hit deaths that get more common as you progress to the game (I understand the revive mechanic is pretty busted but if I have to choose between having a bigger, limited healthbar or being at the mercy of my AI partners not dying on their way to revive me I'll pick the former every single time) and the time management added to the crafting is blatant time wasting to pad out the endgame.
Even with all these shortcomings I would have enjoyed my time with Freedom Wars a lot more were it not for the story. Not necessarily due to how by the numbers it is, but because it drags the pace of the game to a crawl making you sit though very slow dialogue exchanges, slow hub traversal and lots and lots of very slow loading screens. I may finish it someday