Well, I managed to somehow make it to the beginning of the end game, so now is as good as any to give my two cents on this game.

Regarding bugs, the reason why some people have crash issues with this game has to do with the latest windows 11 update version 24h2. This system and Easy Anti-Cheat do not get along and will cause games that use kernal level anti-cheat protection to crash. Be advised before purchasing this game and check your Windows version.

Onto the game.
TLDR:
Whether or not you like this game is entirely dependent on whether you like monster hunter type games or not. If you are a fan of that genre of games, this game is going to be your kind of shaz. If you don't like MonHun games, this game is a pass.

Regarding the remaster. I've got this game on the Vita. The port is a pretty good one. They updated the graphics. The story is the same. The controls were pretty intuitive to use with my xbox controller.

Sound is decent. People complain about the A.I "voice acting", but those idiots never played the original freedom wars. There is no AI voice acting in this game, that is just text-to-speech and it was in the original game too. A valid complaint regarding sound would be the use of English voice acting for your accessory even if you swapped the game's audio to Japanese. This is annoying, but not game-breaking.

One change about this game is the fact that they reduced the randomization involved with crafting weapons. You don't need to spam crafting or mess around with plots to get the weapon you want anymore. Instead, get the weapon and slot in the modules you want to modify it to your needs. They also adjusted the modifications for the game (m class modules are roughly equal to s class modules in the original, but they added XL sized modules to compensate). How this affects growth rates of the weapon (remember late-bloomers?) is currently unknown. Also, elemental weapons were adjusted. You can no longer have two max elements on one weapon anymore. Elemental weapons now restrict you to use only one element on an elemental weapon. Impact (green) weapons restrict you to half of the total elements of an elemental weapon, but you can have two elements plus impact. Be advised.

The game could use some updates, but all the complaints about the game crashing are likely to be almost 100% user error. Do your research before updating your OS. Steam literally tells you this game uses EAC, which requires kernal level access to the OS. I suspect that once this issue is fixed, more people will buy this game and online play will hopefully get better.

Overall, a pretty good game. I liked it, but it has some small issues here and there. I liked the randomization of weapon crafting in the original, for instance.
Overall score: 8/10
-Pretty good. it's worth considering.

Great game but can't possibly recommend it in its current state. Multiple freezes, crashes, FPS drops, stuttering, and performance issues on high-end machines. I'm running an RTX 4080, an I7-13700KF, and 64 gigs of ram on Windows 11. Not sure which of these things is causing the issue, it seems many people on older machines are having no problems. Either way, I don't feel the abysmal performance on modern machines is excusable. This review will remain negative until the issues are fixed or until an explanation is given.

I will start this off by saying, I'm a vita veteran of Freedom Wars and I really love the gameplay and aesthetics of this game and though I am writing a negative review, this is only because of the serious lack of QOL improvements this port has.

To say there are no changes would be disingenuous though. They simplified the facility system and the controls on controller feel a lot more natural than they did on the vita.

The real problems begin setting in after about Code 4-5, where the NPCs AI becomes near non-functional at points and 90% of the time, the bigger enemies are usually focussed on the player.
Now, this can all be avoided by just playing the multiplayer HOWEVER there are some missions that you cannot complete online.

Theres also an issue with NPC sinners where at points its like you're fighting someone with Aimbot and the AI could use somewhat of a nerf in that regard.


I hope future updates can turn this review into a positive one as I did enjoy the original Freedom Wars and I have enjoyed revisitting it through this port, but if you're gonna call it a remaster, more quality of life adjustments are a must.
I can't recommend it to people unless its on sale until some of these problems are ironed out.

There is also the elephant in the room that is the games performance issues, but I can't speak on them as I only ever encountered 2 crashes in all of my playtime.

I really loved the original release and im glad to say this one is as good but with better controls and performance!
Out of all the games in this gendra, this one particularly stands out to me because the guns are guns for real. You're taking down huge robots with rocket launchers and miniguns as well as your melee options.
I also really like the system where weapons do damage for as long as they are inside the hitbox, making the positioning of your swings a huge part of playing well.

There are a few strange changes compared to the original, but most seem to be for the better. Making a fully upgraded weapon then was essentially a pipedream and it seems pretty "easy" now.

You cannot pick up a 3rd wdapon on the field to use now. It was pretty cool and i somewhat miss it.

On the positive side again, this time they brought back the custom tts options for your accessory that was cut in the original global release. You can make your android say anything!

EDIT:

I finally got around to test the deadly sinner addition and wow. Its such a breath of fresh air to have. I 100% reccomend it im already having much more of a blast with it.


P.s.
I just noticed it said received for free for some time. it was very much not.

Honestly a great remaster of the original game, with better graphics and gameplay.
At times voice acting delivery can be a touch stale but otherwise great.
Also, the ""AI"" is meant to mispronounce words, its just a text-to-speech more meant to be scuffed, it fits into the messed up post-apocalypse setting

I want to love this port, I really do.
But the Switch version is better in every. Single. Way.

Easy Anti-Cheat is tacked on where it isn't needed, and the game crashes incessantly.
Honestly I wish I had requested a refund rather than muscling through this mess, because now I've locked myself in. But here we are, 10 hours of gameplay, probably one or two of those replayed because of problems I'll note below.

The game itself is good. I'm an OG Vita player, and this is one of the few "Hunting" style games I've had enough drive to finish the story for.
This port, however, is horrible. Sometimes while traversing the menus it just locks up. Sometimes while changing areas it just locks up. Sometimes when talking to NPCs... well, you get the idea.
I returned to my cell to save every time I did something I felt was worth saving just so I didn't lose progress. And I had to play the intro three times before I could even get to that point.

Save your money and get a console version of this game if you can. Trust me. This isn't worth the asking price at all for the quality we got.

patch the game ♥♥♥♥♥

- I honestly been enjoying the nostalgic adventure and missions majority of the bosses & limited amount of eliminate/survival/rescue missions as you fight through your freedom each stage to reduce your number of sins, I enjoyed mostly online session to connect with friends & Freedomwars oldies enjoyers like me as we venture through time. I hope we get a squeal of this game with higher graphic in the future.

- Also for those been having issues as this game was crushing alot and stuttering through my PC & Laptop the solution I had to go with for it to stop just by going to the windows Graphic Settings >> Browse >> Freedomwars Steam Files >> Select the application "Start" >> Then Press on Freedomwars in the graphic settings >> Option >> High Performance. Done should be running smoothly, Well that's within my laptop and pc experience.

I've been playing on PC and steam deck with no issues so far.
Bring soul sacrifice delta to PC too!

I put a lot of time into the original Vita version of Freedom Wars back in the day, and when I heard there was a remaster coming out I was very excited. Unfortunately, I can't recommend this port at all. $40 for what amounts to higher-res textures and a higher FPS is a hard pill to swallow. Not to mention, this remaster apparently (i did not confirm this for myself) doesn't have full Japanese VO, despite the original having it. I didn't expect a ground-up remake or anything, but I expected...more than what I feel is the bare minimum, and I certainly expected it to look better than an up-res'd Vita game running on Steam.

Don't buy this, at least not for full price. If you're that desperate to play Freedom Wars again and don't have a Vita, wait for it to inevitably go on sale for $10 or $15. It's sure as hell not worth $40.