Liberation Maiden Review

Liberation Maiden is an attractive title, featuring elements that may entice shooter fans to play. It certainly has all the right tools for a great time but doesn’t always use those tools in the service of gameplay.

Players take the role of Shoko Ozora, President of New Japan, piloting a mech through the game's five stages while searching for enemy invaders that are protecting energy spikes known as lesser spikes. It's the player's job to find and destroy these so that they may open up and destroy the greater spikes, and once again purify the land. Each mission provides players with fun and easy gameplay as they explore the open terrain searching for enemy targets to destroy with a swipe. However, even with the controls handling well enough throughout most missions and boss battles, there are still moments of frustration with the controls during certain boss battles, especially the final one, on hard difficulty. It can be difficult to tell what’s going on at times and what has to happen to get out of the way of oncoming objects due to poor character movement during that final battle.

This game really isn’t too difficult at all until each boss battle. Even then, it's not that tough. As long as players keep moving, it's fairly easy to avoid being hit by an enemy missile during the regular stages. There's even a useful strafing option to move sideways and face the targets. The boss battles are fairly simple and even lack some appeal outside of a few short moments of intrigue, but at least they feel much more engaging to battle against than the rest of the campaign, which basically feels like search and destroy without having to worry about taking damage.

Liberation Maiden has three difficulty settings for story mode, each sporting its own online leaderboard for high score and time attack. The game can be completed in less than 40 minutes on Normal, though I’ve taken the number #1 spot at 33 minutes time. It's certainly an easy title to replay multiple times and enjoy each replay, whether for a higher score or just to quickly complete the game and claim your top spot on the leaderboards.

I played through the game many times now and found my experience to become more enjoyable every time I played, outside of that final boss on hard mode. There seems to be some problem with how the battle operates and how the character handles. It's not impossible to beat, but only three have done it so far. Even with some issues, however, this game is well worth the purchase and play through, providing hours of enjoyment.

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