Freedom Wars

The game is a third-person battle action game, and features local and online multiplayer functionality, both co-operative and competitive, for up to eight players. The game features a grappling whip that the player can use to zip across the battlefield and pull giant enemies to the ground. Different classes of thorns also grant various special techniques, such as traps, healing, and shields. Players fight alongside androids known as Accessories which provide combat support during missions; the player gives a set of commands to their Accessory that they execute, which include holding a position, collecting materials, or rescuing civilians.

The game features a system known as the "League of Panopticons", where players are separated into 47 Panopticons within the Japanese version of the game, with each representing one of Japan's 47 prefectures, and 50 Panopticons representing select global cities within the Asian and western localised releases. Each Panopticon competes with the others in development, where players set out to seek natural resources and invade other Panopticons. Developed Panopticons have the capability to place other ones under their control, and leaderboards are used to compare each City-State. Within this mode, criminals fight amongst other criminals from rival Panopticons.

Freedom Wars takes place on Earth, in the year 102014. The world surface lies in ruins and is no longer capable of supporting life. As such, humans live in underground cities called "Panopticons", where they struggle to research how to be able to live on the surface once more. A Panopticon functions as an artificial nation in the form of a city state that provides security for its inhabitants, in exchange for contributions each inhabitant is obligated to make towards the state.

This system forms the overall societal structure of each separate Panopticon, which were created following the disintegration and demise of countries. Due to lack of resources, each Panopticon has developed conflicts with others, and large portions of the populace are forced into serving sentences in order for these cities to maintain effective control. All inhabitants of a Panopticon are constantly watched by the state to ensure they abide by the draconian laws put into place, essentially forming a collective of dystopian surveillance societies at war with one another.

A teaser trailer for the game was released on May 16, 2013, which led to the assumption that the game would be named Panopticon. On May 21, 2013, the game was revealed to actually be named Freedom Wars. Development for the game began in March 2011, two years before it was first announced to the public in 2013. According to Junichi Yoshizawa, development was distributed amongst the various studios involved; Shift was allocated the task of game and character design, in addition to storywriting, whilst Dimps was responsible for programming, graphics and direction. On June 12, 2014, the first playable open beta test of the game was released on the Japanese PlayStation Network.

During the SCE Worldwide Studios keynote speech at the 2014 Taipei Game Show, producer Junichi Yoshizawa announced that the game would have a simultaneous release in Japan and Asia, and would also be localised in both Japanese and Traditional Chinese. Sony Computer Entertainment later announced in April 2014 that the game would be localized for a western release. North America and Europe both have physical retail releases of the game. A Korean language localization was also announced and later released on August 7, 2014.

Freedom Wars received "mixed or average" reviews according to aggregator Metacritic, with a score of 73/100. Famitsu gave Freedom Wars a review score of 35/40. 4gamer notes in their play trial that the game provides tightly packed content with plenty of customisation options. A review by Inside from Japan praised the game for its graphical and overall performance, in addition to the amount of detail placed into the game, however did find that enemy infantry often seemed overpowered during higher missions, raising the difficulty level of the game during these later stages.

Destructoid called Freedom Wars the biggest PS Vita release in 2014. IGN's Colin Moriarty writes that the game features plenty of content to keep the player occupied, and never forces them to play alone or online, allowing the player to choose their own pace progressing through the game. Hardcore Gamer rated the game 3.5 out of 5, describing it as a solid action RPG with good premise and deep themes, albeit feeling repetitive at times. PlayStation Universe gave Freedom Wars an 8.5/10 score, noting that the narrative and customization were positive aspects, even though the endgame relies on a large amount of grinding. PS Nation notes that the singleplayer and multiplayer modes are enjoyable overall, and that the game plays well on a PlayStation TV device, giving a score of 9/10.