Lilac's Story cleared on April 12th, 2023
Milla's Story cleared on April 17th, 2023
Carol's Story cleared on May 4th, 2023
Neera Li's Story cleared on June 7th, 2023
Freedom Planet 2 was a game I was fairly hyped for when it was announced. A continuation to one of my favorite games of all time, that sounds great. It looks better, the gameplay feels better from the demo I played, and from what I've kept up in development, there will be a lot more to do. The game came out in September of 2022, almost seven years after the game was announced in December of 2015. Admittedly, it did take me a good while to get around to even buying the game as you can see, and I did want to replay Freedom Planet 1 to get caught up with the story, and having played Freedom Planet 2, I can confidently say that gameplay wise and visual wise, it is even better than the original which makes it look very underwhelming in comparison.
Freedom Planet 2's visual style moves away from its Sonic the Hedgehog inspiration and moves more towards the Chinese aesthetic that it established in the original game, giving it a highly distinctive look with gorgeous scenery with a variety of locations.
The gameplay has been improved immensely with the three playable characters returning and with the new character... Neera Li. Honestly, with how I felt about Neera in the first game, I had to wonder why she was even picked to be a playable character in the first place and more insulting was the indefinite delay of Torque and Spade being playable in Freedom Planet 1, but I was willing to give her a chance. In fact, I almost planned to play as her first just to get her out of the way, but as I was tipped off, it would've been a terrible idea.
Lilac the Dragon returns with the same moveset that she has. Her high speed, her cyclone, her hard hitting physical attacks, and her dragon boost. But here are some differences. Her cyclone could now combo into Dragon Boost much easier since it no longer takes up energy to use Cyclone which means it is now exclusively for Dragon Boost. Her uppercut can be used in the air for extra vertical distance. Her Dragon Boost can be cancelled early for not only mobility control, but to unleash a blast of power that damages anyone caught in it. She also now gets a Guard which everyone gets, but after pressing guard again, she activates Blink Dash which lets her quickly surge a small gap which is very useful defensively.
Carol the Wildcat remains mostly the same with claws and her pounces, but now she's lost her Wild Kick and is replaced with Jump Disc which lets her hurl a projectile at the enemy which could then follow up homing in on the projectile for extra damage against enemies and for additional mobility. Rather unfortunate since Wild Kick was something I liked about Carol although I guess it was probably extremely busted given how it gives her a longer invincibility frame in a time window compared to Dragon Boost and is able to stand still while doing it. Plus, it may already overlap with the Guard mechanic, anyway. Even still, it could've been repurposed into a standard attack that Carol can do while standing still. She also retains her motorcycle except its more rare than in Freedom Planet 1, but is fortunately unable to be destroyed after a few hits. She can also throw her motorcycle at enemies too.
Milla the Hound returns to be more fluent than ever before, but her moveset does change in the process. She can now fight with physical attacks when she originally had to use a shield blast or a cube throw or a cube blast to damage them, but now she can kick and punch things as well as use her magic to blast enemies. She can fire ranged pellets now from her shield instead of being a small short ranged blast, and rather than charging up her cube and carrying it around, it just appears through the Guard button and follows her until she's ready to fire cube projectiles or use Cube Blast. While I enjoyed Milla's take here, her Cube Blast is such a powerful move that it almost obsoletes everything else in her kit making the rest of the moves, save for the shield, to be situational at best.
Neera Li is the new character, and originally I was expecting her to be the powerful, but "not as fast" kind of character and while she is quite powerful with long ranged attacks, a means of deflecting projectiles, and a damage booster, in a twist of fate, she can actually go fast by spamming the attack button while moving and I swear, she has the potential to go faster than pretty much all of the characters in this game, even Lilac. She's also quite strong that even though the final boss was pretty difficult, I managed to use Neera to beat her in very few tries although I think by that point I was getting it figured out.
As for the other key aspects including the story and music, they took some time to get used to. There was a different style of music compared to Freedom Planet 1, but it's not bad and once you go through the game a few times, you just kinda vibe with it. I will say there were a few instant bangers from the very start which include Zulon Jungle, Sky Bridge boss theme, Globe Opera 2, and Inversion Dynamo. I can definitely say that while not every song can be a winner, the overall soundtrack does match up to the original and some songs are even better than the majority of the songs of Freedom Planet 1.
The story, meanwhile, I had to think about it and I'll admit, I enjoyed it and from a technical standpoint, it's definitely a better story than its predecessor. It has a much better pace where cutscenes don't usually go on for a long time, and the ones that do, like the 12 minute series of cutscenes was placed in the beginning of the game's second half instead of being as early as after clearing the 2nd stage and by that point the game expects you to get invested enough in the characters to appreciate a moment to slow down and reflect. The humor is so much funnier too. I busted out laughing watching Carol zooming out of the magister halls, Serpentine and Aaa's argument in the Zulon Jungle, and Carol annoying her sister. And the story still retains its dramatic edge which I was initially concerned it would kinda lose in response to people's reaction to how dark the original game got. While there weren't any visually shocking events on that caliber which to be fair is because Brevon is not present, there were some notably dramatic themes that expand on the world and what we know about Avalice's lore. We're talking about dark truths that ancestors do not want the future to know. I think my concern with this is that we aren't really visually shown in any capacity what happened. I'm not saying to make a flashback and see it all explicitly happen, but I feel like carvings and drawings would at least go a bit of ways and I think they have a few opportunities on that front while the heroes were at Parusa. Instead it's mostly just text of what happened that I called into question if any of these "dark truths" even happened the way they did until I listened to the entry log recordings that explained the user's perspective of the events. I think I recall seeing a Youtube video where someone complained about Freedom Planet 1 breaking the "Show don't tell" rule, but going off that logic, Freedom Planet 2 breaks it even harder. I'm not going to go story elitist by saying that because I don't think it's binary and actually overrated, but in this context, some visual implications would've helped add to the impact of the story.
But like with the predecessor, the thing that makes the story for me is seeing the characters. 3 years had passed, so some things may have changed. Lilac and Carol haven't exactly changed much from how they were in Freedom Planet 1. Lilac is still as heroic and caring as she once was while Carol is the same humorous albeit still kinda annoying at times, but to the stories credit, they sometimes use her obnoxiousness to their advantage. Milla had got a lot more confident than she used to be and has even had some moments of being badass, especially when playing her side of the story. Neera Li has mellowed out compared to Freedom Planet 1, but I still don't really vibe with her character. At least her voice is not as pretentious, and she does have her moments at least.
I also really love a few of the side characters, my favorites are Serpentine, making a return from Freedom Planet 1, going from a henchman of Brevon to being a menace in his own right. He has this perfect mix of humorous, crazy, and genuinely menacing and hard to take on. It's reminiscent of Dr. Nefarious from the Ratchet and Clank series who stands as one of my favorite video game villains of all time.
Aaa is another favorite as he's just chaotic and hearing him scream never gets old.
Mayor Zao is the same as he's always been, just over-dramatic in a comical way.
And overall, I appreciate them expanding on what we know of the characters such as Lilac's origins, Milla's origins, and Carol's sister relations which interesting enough had been alluded to for a long time when she had a dialogue mentioning it in Freedom Planet 1 that was scrapped.
So once you're done with the game, what do you do? Well, you can go around talking to people across hubs to learn about the lore of Avalice, partake in Battlesphere challenges, get Rainbow S by not taking hits, and just explore for treasure and other collectibles.
To say this game did not waste its seven years of development would be an underestimate, they really gave their all to make an incredible 2D platformer not deserving anything but the best gameplay and visuals. That's a Rainbow S rank from me.
Milla's Story cleared on April 17th, 2023
Carol's Story cleared on May 4th, 2023
Neera Li's Story cleared on June 7th, 2023
Freedom Planet 2 was a game I was fairly hyped for when it was announced. A continuation to one of my favorite games of all time, that sounds great. It looks better, the gameplay feels better from the demo I played, and from what I've kept up in development, there will be a lot more to do. The game came out in September of 2022, almost seven years after the game was announced in December of 2015. Admittedly, it did take me a good while to get around to even buying the game as you can see, and I did want to replay Freedom Planet 1 to get caught up with the story, and having played Freedom Planet 2, I can confidently say that gameplay wise and visual wise, it is even better than the original which makes it look very underwhelming in comparison.
Freedom Planet 2's visual style moves away from its Sonic the Hedgehog inspiration and moves more towards the Chinese aesthetic that it established in the original game, giving it a highly distinctive look with gorgeous scenery with a variety of locations.
The gameplay has been improved immensely with the three playable characters returning and with the new character... Neera Li. Honestly, with how I felt about Neera in the first game, I had to wonder why she was even picked to be a playable character in the first place and more insulting was the indefinite delay of Torque and Spade being playable in Freedom Planet 1, but I was willing to give her a chance. In fact, I almost planned to play as her first just to get her out of the way, but as I was tipped off, it would've been a terrible idea.
Lilac the Dragon returns with the same moveset that she has. Her high speed, her cyclone, her hard hitting physical attacks, and her dragon boost. But here are some differences. Her cyclone could now combo into Dragon Boost much easier since it no longer takes up energy to use Cyclone which means it is now exclusively for Dragon Boost. Her uppercut can be used in the air for extra vertical distance. Her Dragon Boost can be cancelled early for not only mobility control, but to unleash a blast of power that damages anyone caught in it. She also now gets a Guard which everyone gets, but after pressing guard again, she activates Blink Dash which lets her quickly surge a small gap which is very useful defensively.
Carol the Wildcat remains mostly the same with claws and her pounces, but now she's lost her Wild Kick and is replaced with Jump Disc which lets her hurl a projectile at the enemy which could then follow up homing in on the projectile for extra damage against enemies and for additional mobility. Rather unfortunate since Wild Kick was something I liked about Carol although I guess it was probably extremely busted given how it gives her a longer invincibility frame in a time window compared to Dragon Boost and is able to stand still while doing it. Plus, it may already overlap with the Guard mechanic, anyway. Even still, it could've been repurposed into a standard attack that Carol can do while standing still. She also retains her motorcycle except its more rare than in Freedom Planet 1, but is fortunately unable to be destroyed after a few hits. She can also throw her motorcycle at enemies too.
Milla the Hound returns to be more fluent than ever before, but her moveset does change in the process. She can now fight with physical attacks when she originally had to use a shield blast or a cube throw or a cube blast to damage them, but now she can kick and punch things as well as use her magic to blast enemies. She can fire ranged pellets now from her shield instead of being a small short ranged blast, and rather than charging up her cube and carrying it around, it just appears through the Guard button and follows her until she's ready to fire cube projectiles or use Cube Blast. While I enjoyed Milla's take here, her Cube Blast is such a powerful move that it almost obsoletes everything else in her kit making the rest of the moves, save for the shield, to be situational at best.
Neera Li is the new character, and originally I was expecting her to be the powerful, but "not as fast" kind of character and while she is quite powerful with long ranged attacks, a means of deflecting projectiles, and a damage booster, in a twist of fate, she can actually go fast by spamming the attack button while moving and I swear, she has the potential to go faster than pretty much all of the characters in this game, even Lilac. She's also quite strong that even though the final boss was pretty difficult, I managed to use Neera to beat her in very few tries although I think by that point I was getting it figured out.
As for the other key aspects including the story and music, they took some time to get used to. There was a different style of music compared to Freedom Planet 1, but it's not bad and once you go through the game a few times, you just kinda vibe with it. I will say there were a few instant bangers from the very start which include Zulon Jungle, Sky Bridge boss theme, Globe Opera 2, and Inversion Dynamo. I can definitely say that while not every song can be a winner, the overall soundtrack does match up to the original and some songs are even better than the majority of the songs of Freedom Planet 1.
The story, meanwhile, I had to think about it and I'll admit, I enjoyed it and from a technical standpoint, it's definitely a better story than its predecessor. It has a much better pace where cutscenes don't usually go on for a long time, and the ones that do, like the 12 minute series of cutscenes was placed in the beginning of the game's second half instead of being as early as after clearing the 2nd stage and by that point the game expects you to get invested enough in the characters to appreciate a moment to slow down and reflect. The humor is so much funnier too. I busted out laughing watching Carol zooming out of the magister halls, Serpentine and Aaa's argument in the Zulon Jungle, and Carol annoying her sister. And the story still retains its dramatic edge which I was initially concerned it would kinda lose in response to people's reaction to how dark the original game got. While there weren't any visually shocking events on that caliber which to be fair is because Brevon is not present, there were some notably dramatic themes that expand on the world and what we know about Avalice's lore. We're talking about dark truths that ancestors do not want the future to know. I think my concern with this is that we aren't really visually shown in any capacity what happened. I'm not saying to make a flashback and see it all explicitly happen, but I feel like carvings and drawings would at least go a bit of ways and I think they have a few opportunities on that front while the heroes were at Parusa. Instead it's mostly just text of what happened that I called into question if any of these "dark truths" even happened the way they did until I listened to the entry log recordings that explained the user's perspective of the events. I think I recall seeing a Youtube video where someone complained about Freedom Planet 1 breaking the "Show don't tell" rule, but going off that logic, Freedom Planet 2 breaks it even harder. I'm not going to go story elitist by saying that because I don't think it's binary and actually overrated, but in this context, some visual implications would've helped add to the impact of the story.
But like with the predecessor, the thing that makes the story for me is seeing the characters. 3 years had passed, so some things may have changed. Lilac and Carol haven't exactly changed much from how they were in Freedom Planet 1. Lilac is still as heroic and caring as she once was while Carol is the same humorous albeit still kinda annoying at times, but to the stories credit, they sometimes use her obnoxiousness to their advantage. Milla had got a lot more confident than she used to be and has even had some moments of being badass, especially when playing her side of the story. Neera Li has mellowed out compared to Freedom Planet 1, but I still don't really vibe with her character. At least her voice is not as pretentious, and she does have her moments at least.
I also really love a few of the side characters, my favorites are Serpentine, making a return from Freedom Planet 1, going from a henchman of Brevon to being a menace in his own right. He has this perfect mix of humorous, crazy, and genuinely menacing and hard to take on. It's reminiscent of Dr. Nefarious from the Ratchet and Clank series who stands as one of my favorite video game villains of all time.
Aaa is another favorite as he's just chaotic and hearing him scream never gets old.
Mayor Zao is the same as he's always been, just over-dramatic in a comical way.
And overall, I appreciate them expanding on what we know of the characters such as Lilac's origins, Milla's origins, and Carol's sister relations which interesting enough had been alluded to for a long time when she had a dialogue mentioning it in Freedom Planet 1 that was scrapped.
So once you're done with the game, what do you do? Well, you can go around talking to people across hubs to learn about the lore of Avalice, partake in Battlesphere challenges, get Rainbow S by not taking hits, and just explore for treasure and other collectibles.
To say this game did not waste its seven years of development would be an underestimate, they really gave their all to make an incredible 2D platformer not deserving anything but the best gameplay and visuals. That's a Rainbow S rank from me.