Freedom Force vs. The 3rd Reich

"Really an expansion, not a sequel....but that's hardly a bad thing"

Graphics: 7/10
There are slight improvements over the original, but nothing too drastic. But graphics aren't what makes this series great anyway.

Story: 9/10
The story has a bit more of a serious tone throughout the last half of it, which was a nice change of pace from the heavy 1960's "corniness" (and I'm a guy who loves that stuff). In this one the story is heavily inspired by actual comic stories, mainly the Dark Phoenix saga from the X-Men comics. It seemed a bit more epic than the first game.

My only real complaint as far as the story goes is that in the first game the new characters were introduced some way into the story and then you recruited them, while here a lot of them just show up out of nowhere. You get to see their origin but not how they came to meet and join the Freedom Force. I guess it's just assumed that they joined some time in between the two games.

Sound: 8/10
The sound was nice, nothing too spectacular. A few of the voice actors were different. Off the top of my head I think Minute Man, Liberty Lad, and Alchemiss all had different voice actors. Which isn't a bad thing since they did their job well and the change is probably only noticeable if you played both games back to back like I did. The music is pretty standard stuff, not much different from the first game.

Gameplay: 9/10
This is where you see the improvements and you realize this is a sequel. The power gauge (MP) is improved over the first in that it gives a clear indication of how much power a specific attack is going to use, which is a big plus.

Another thing that I felt was an improvement was that each character has two attacks or abilities that don't use any power, so you can basically take El Diablo and just spam his Tongue of Flame blast from the air without having to worry about using too much energy and having to land to regenerate. It made the game feel more like you were controlling super heroes instead of knights and mages.

Something that I'm glad was changed for the sequel is in the first game you could attack enemies who had the ability to fly, and either right after you hit them, or before you hit them they would take off and fly to another location and begin firing a projectile or whatever at you, and by the time you reached them again they would repeat the process, this got kind of annoying at times in the first game, thankfully it no longer happens. Although there is something a bit similar with the ape-man enemies, there were several times with projectile using characters like El Diablo or Alchemiss where I would have them attack, but the apes would run away and the attack would miss, so basically you end up having to guide them to a spot really close to the enemy first before commanding them to attack, which can just be a bit annoying for an arm chair general like me.

The new characters and their new abilities like possess and polymorph add a little extra depth to the combat, but aside from that and the aforementioned changes combat is pretty much the same as the first game.

Overall: 9/10
I enjoyed this one more than the previous game simply because of a few minor changes. Although I was disappointed that it was quite a bit shorter than the previous game. Fortunately the possibility for the sequel is there, and hopefully the game will sell well enough to merit one.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/20/05