I do love me some good old fashioned tactical RPGs. Hard to be otherwise, really, given my exposure to titles like the original X-COM and Jagged Alliance, along with more recent titles like Fire Emblem Awakening. However, it’s also left me with a high standard for the genre. If you’re going to give me grizzled warriors going toe-to-toe with vicious foes both human and otherwise, it had better be the right mix of blood, thunder, and personality. Nordcurrent’s newest offering, Chains Of Freedom, wants to hang with the legends of the genre. But it seems to have tried to strike a “middle road” between genre classics which doesn’t entirely satisfy either itch.
Chains Of Freedom puts you in the midst of “The Sovereignty,” a fictional and quasi-Eastern European nation which years earlier fell victim to a strange disease which became known as “EDEN.” If it didn’t kill you outright, it caused horrific mutations, often presenting with crystalline projections and a complete loss of higher mental faculties. Then, miracle of miracles, an immunization regimen was developed. EDEN was contained, and even partially weaponized with the advent of “biocrystals,” castoffs which grant the bearer unusual and sometimes terrifying abilities. But of course, there are those who don’t like the new order that has come out of the chaos, and it’s up to the Sovereignty’s Peacekeepers to ensure such malcontents do not bring back those unsettled times once more. At least that’s the official story…
The visuals in Chains Of Freedom are nicely done but not the best possible. The overall presentation is clean and detailed without being a burden on your GPU. Character and monster designs are certainly distinctive and easily recognizable. There are a good number of special effects which keep the action visceral as well as altering the battle space. Unit animations are fluid and natural. They’re good, just not eye-popping, which is all right up to a point. However, one big pain point is the UI. I’m happy for keyboard shortcuts as much as the next guy, but we have a mouse for a reason. Let us use it effectively. It’s far too easy to misread the Action Point cost of different abilities and tap a key mistakenly thinking that it will execute the action. In a similar vein, the lack of mapping capability adds a level of aggravation which isn’t needed. When part of your gameplay loop involves a curlicue of finding widget A to activate function B, and you’re not entirely sure you’ve fully searched the area, knowing where you’ve been is a big help.
Sound in Chains Of Freedom is, in some respects, much like the visuals. Good, but not great. Sound effects abound, particularly creature growls, explosions, gunfire, and the occasional squelching sound of limbs being blown off. The soundtrack is forgettable, some moody tunes playing here and there, shifting to a combat theme when you’re fighting it out. None of them stand out very much, which is kind of a sin. There should be pulse-pounding rhythms during combat and appropriately toned pieces when exploring. And we just don’t get that. There’s a lot of voice acting, and the characters are distinctive. But at the same time, there’s a tremendous ludonarrative disconnect going on. We’re supposed to be somewhere in Eastern Europe and only a couple of characters actually sound like they might possibly be from there. We’ve got a lot of American sounding voice actors, a couple of (maybe) British sounding voice actors, one guy who might an American trying to sound like a French guy, but very little in the way of regional accents which fit the setting. It feels like the voice director dropped the ball, and it does hurt the overall narrative flow more than I expected.
Mechanically, the gameplay in Chains Of Freedom hews closely to the formula of XCOM-style tactical RPGs, but only in terms of combat. Outside of combat, it’s more along the lines of a CRPG like Baldur’s Gate 3 or Pillars of Eternity, only without a lot of the things that make those games so interesting. You’re on a chain of missions with different chapter titles which recalls linear narratives like Half-Life, yet the pitch pointed towards moral dilemmas and “navigating layers of conspiracy and betrayal.” We’re saddled with characters as the story demands rather than being given an option to build up a party which might have different reactions to the ongoing events. The actual combat sequences aren’t bad, although they’re not entirely seamless from the “walking around looking for stuff” sections. We have the option to craft more ammo and consumables, which is kind of smooth, but also a bit of a pain in the ass because some ammo can’t be crafted, or is only available to be crafted after you’ve reached a certain point in the campaign. There are a variety of weapons available, all fictionalized versions of existing weapons (for the most part). However, none of the melee weapons feel particularly satisfying, much less worth the risk of getting right into an enemy’s face to use. And, like XCOM, there’s times where it feels like you’ve got a target perfectly lined up and you still manage to miss.
The “biocrystal” system which helps give characters different perks and abilities is kind of uneven in its utility. There are some options which are arguably fantastic to have. And there are others which are so terrible even as “monkey paws” that there’s not a compelling reason to slot them. Worse, the upgrade path for the characters being able to hold more crystals is not based on anything the characters do in the course of their efforts. It requires finding one-time use “shrines” which give you the option to add slots, and there’s only so many new slots the shrine will grant. And the whole thing is a pretty poor substitute for a decent character advancement or promotion schema.
I touched on this earlier, but Chains Of Freedom does not deliver on its promises in a narrative sense. It doesn’t give you a particularly nuanced or thoughtful examination of life under an autocratic regime, particularly one which may have arisen from exigent circumstances. It doesn’t give you layers of conspiracy and mystery, just names which are mentioned and end level bosses to be shot till they fall over. It gives you playing pieces you must make use of instead of characters you come to care about, completely the opposite of how the heavyweights in the genre would execute. It completely fails to provide anything resembling a moral dilemma, because in order for there to be a dilemma, you have to be able to make a choice. And we really don’t get any choices outside of combat. Certainly nothing that has us agonizing over the matter. The pacing of the narrative is ponderous and scenarios all too often rely on massed waves of enemies which mysteriously appear from all sides instead of a logical line of advance. There’s enough ludonarrative dissonance and disconnection to put a heavy damper on the fun. It doesn’t feel like the writers and the designers were communicating, with entirely predictable and disappointing results.
Chains Of Freedom can’t quite seem to make up its mind of what it wants to be. CRPG? Tactical RPG? SyFy Original-quality polemic? It’s technical qualities are decent, but its failings are almost too numerous to count. A little more polish, a little more focus, and it could have been a really strong title. As it is, there’s just enough to give it a whirl and see how one might enjoy it. Just don’t expect the sort of longevity and replayability you might find in games which came before it.
Axel reviewed Chains Of Freedom on PC with a provided review copy.
