Freedom Planet is pretty much a love letter to Sega Genesis games. It looks an awful lot like Sonic and a large part of its level design is heavily inspired by that series. You have springs, loop-the-loops, and wide-open multi-route stages that encourage both more sedate exploration and speedrunning, depending on your personal preference. But go in hoping to play it like Sonic and you'll find it extremely unsatisfying. The characters don't have the smooth acceleration of Sonic and also seem to be unrealistically adept at strolling directly up walls. This is not a momentum-based platformer. However, take the time to get used to the illogical-but-consistent physics and there's a remarkably fun game here. Once you realize that the special moves and abilities of the characters can be used for very creative traversal of the environments (especially the way Lilac's pseudo-spindash can be triggered in the air, used diagonally, and bounces off of walls), the levels suddenly feel like they have opened up and there are a wealth of possibilities for navigating them. It feels very much like Rocket Knight Adventures. The boss fights are varied and very good, reminding me of Treasure's games, especially Gunstar Heroes. Not everything is good, mind you. I find the voice acting to be extremely grating. The story doesn't seem impressive, but I may just be soured on it because there is no way to turn off voice acting and get the plot told via text boxes. There IS a mode that lets you just play the game and ignore the plot entirely, but you still get the in-game vocal barks whether you want them or not. There's also no way to adjust sound levels - you can only adjust the volume of the music, so you're forced to use the Windows audio mixer if you find the sound effects too loud or too quiet. What kind of a game doesn't have volume controls in 2014? Really?
