Freedom Wars Remaster coming 2025

 A few times each year, I fire up Freedom Wars (review, still on the Vita PSN for £19.99) and pine for the multiplayer fun while stomping back through the early codes with the solo cast. Every time, it feels a better, tighter, experience. One that was begging for a more accessible sequel. 

Waking up this morning there's the beautiful overnight news from Japan (PlayStation blog, no western post yet - with a dev team interview worth auto-translating at the bottom) that a Remaster from Namco and Dimps is finally on the way arriving early next year. Hopefully the world will appreciate the do-over, and Namco will do the decent thing and work on a true successor. 

Update: The official Twitter feed dropped new key art (above), drawn by Shift, the character designer for the original game. And the original, and pretty brilliant, soundtrack is now up on YouTube for those who want to get nostalgic (JKT_a is my favourite) without going through the pain of those early penalties. 

Further update: It took until November, but Namco Bandai US is finally starting to do some marketing on their Twitter feed (but not a peep from Europe) with a slightly new piece of artwork (based on the previous image). Hopefully a decent campaign effort (including PS5 replacement cover plates?) will get some interest going before the January releases. 

Original continues: The remaster offers a full-HD or 4K output at 60fps, balance adjustments to make it easier to get into and enjoy, an easier upgrade process, while keeping the cool vibe of the original.

 New English voices should help make Freedom Wars more accessible to western audiences. The big news is the game is coming to PC and Switch (30fps) as well as PS4 and PS5, but there's no cross play (yet). 

Most of the fun comes in battling the giant mechs in the wastelands, all in the quest to beat down your million year life sentence that comes from being the lowest of the low in the Panopticon of your choice. There's a demo on the way to get new prisoners interested. 

 

There's no new content, but all the DLC (one of the pains on the Vita was queuing up all the extra combat items, citizen packs and much more in the PSN app). All queued up for a January 9th release in Japan, no western PS blog posts yet to compare notes. 

Until then, the fun for me is seeing all the old players pop up on Twitter, dusting off their Vita and copies for another run. Can you guess what I'm doing on my break today? Note the developer has long hoped for a sequel, maybe this will be the trigger. Enjoy the new trailer...