Sunrider: Liberation Day - Captain's Edition

Liberation Day is by far the strangest visual novel I've every played just because of its story structure. It returns to the combat game of MoA, which is still very enjoyable, but it completely removes the attack animations. This is a bonus when it's the enemy's turn, but loses a lot of immersion flavor when your own people are making attacks. I consider it a net negative, but they do deserve credit for attempting to address a frustration from MoA. The first 'half' is... basically terrible. You are fully rail-roaded through the story, there are no real choices, and the only sex-scene is honestly just creepy and voyeristic (this may have been intentional, however, because of the second 'half'). You essentially 'beat' the game in this way, and if you stopped here, it'd be an awful experience. HOWEVER... the 'rebirth' gameplay option is essentially a second half of the game you can utilize once you've played through the primary story. Rebirth is purely visual-novel, and is heavily choice-based, though there's really only one 'correct' path per character focus. (some of the failure paths are interesting!) Purely because of Rebirth, LD is actually a pretty solid story experience. The first 'half' provides a strongly negative context that the second 'half' is specifically constructed to help you address. The story bends itself over backward to make all this work, however, and I can confirm I would have preferred if they had just used the branch options for Rebirth throughout the base game, and let it develop in that way as one whole experience, it would have been entirely better overall. SO, if you don't mind experiencing a lot of negative story, and then being able to tackle THAT with more flexibility, you may actually prefer LD to MoA. The whole series is enjoyable! But only MoA and end-half of LD really have any replay value due to other frustrations. Hope this helped! --Cy

All in all, a commendable game. The contrived premise for bringing together a team of Gundum Pilot Waifus is overshadowed by excellent world building and attention to narrative. Even the team of female pilots is explained in the story and the lore well enough to make it more than unusual. Your character, a newly minted captain fresh out of the academy, is okay as protagonists go and only makes a few errors you can fault him for. As for the plot itself, it can be at times draining. It a standard fare Japanese plot of neutral power invaded by one of two larger warring powers in the galaxy (ala Valkyria Chronicles). The story is good, though set aside some weekends if you’re going to binge it – or just set it on easy mode the first time and play through it once and then go at it if you really want to do it again on hard. Don’t go in expecting a Fire Emblem set-up of pick your love interest, the romance plot is railroaded although you’ll be so invested in the characters that you’ll just go along with it. The game’s not exactly a case-study in the creation of expansive fictional cultures, but it does enough to get the job done. Did I like it? Yes. The IP could have stood on it's own without the fan service or the anime tropes all over the place, but that just draws people in. All in all, you can get the first part free and the second part on sale for less than $10. Not a bad deal.

I have been a supporter of the dev in patreon even before the sunrider series came to major platforms like steam, gog and others. I was hooked when I first played Mask of Arcadius, which was the reason why I supported the developer in patreon. I loved its story and more importantly, the tactical battle. It was damn hard, and really got you to think carefully before making your move. I, along with many other people, was really looking forward to liberation day and looked forward to continuing where MOA left off. However, after playing it, I cant help but feel disappointed. "That's it? thats all? Nothing more to the story?" The last game hinted that there were several possibilities you can explore (like which girl's route you wanted to explore more, or wanting to find out more about the factions). Even the choices you make in this doesnt really matter to the story, which is a big letdown. It was one of the things you had to think about during the previous game. It just feels like this was rushed and since I know that when this was being developed, the developer was also developing sunrider academy at the same time (that game uses the same characters but different setting) so that probably contributed to why this game felt so rushed. There were improvements to be fair (combat has improved) but overall I was just disappointed in this and it has resulted in me withdrawing my patreon support for the developer

The first thing I noticed about Liberation Day, after the Japanese voice acting and slightly improved visuals, was that the writing had gone downhill. The characters were flatter, duller, caricatured versions of themselves—stripped of most of the things that made them interesting. I finished the story in a couple days. There were a few interesting twists and turns, but overall I felt disappointed. Sunrider deserved a better sequel than this. Then I tried the [Re}Turn expansion and was quickly glad that I did. The quality of the writing was the best I'd seen yet. It was like switching from grainy black and white images to full HD. Everything popped. The world seemed so much more alive. When I reached the first ending (the bad ending for Sola, in my case) I had to take a break from the game to give myself time to emotionally process everything that happened. That's how engrossing it was. If only the whole series could have been like that.

Summary LIS's potential is clearly there. I'm sure that if they get "bigger", they can make the Sunrider series even better. Full-on anime? Slicker graphics? Multiple endings (instead of a Return style module)? ~~~ Liberation day Graphics - An improvement over the already ok FA / MOA. Tactical: Battlefield still ok, no more Advance Wars-style clash scenes though. VN: Similar art style but somehow feels more polished than the first games Sound - Still on point. The Vanguard Cannon theme really gets you PUMPED Gameplay - Tactical: No more turn rewind mechanic, boo. Still challenging, RNG can be brutal at times. Wish there were more missions so I can better pimp out the ship and ryders. VN: Some choices matter more than others (you can get one more type of ship, which was really useful and fun). Hope Academy's FAP scene mechanic gets implemented in future games, the build up to the sexy time is always fun to revisit Story - Still enjoyable, though the story goes full on sci fi HAM towards the end. The post-FUBAR storyline was interesting, gotta love the silly harem vibe. You'll feel like a stud Replayability - If you enjoy the tactical aspect, yes. Good thing the combat mechanics (lasers, kinetic, missiles, etc) make sense ~~~ [Re]turn Same sentiments but the story was better and it has more replayability. Sola's Happy Ending was my favorite, though the Secret Ending was cool too. Wish future games always have this sort of VN aspect to satisfy different waifu fans (Sola still strongest contender for me)