SENTINELS OF FREEDOM Review for Nintendo Switch

For about the past week, I’ve been playing Sentinels of Freedom on the Switch, and to be honest, I don’t have a strong positive or negative feeling about it. Sentinels of Freedom, by developer Underbite Games and publisher Greater Than Games, is a turn-based strategy game in which you play as a variety of superheroes attempting to protect the city of Megalopolis. For each new mission, you build your team, then take to the battlefield and strategically use each hero’s limited number of AP, or Action Points, in the forms of movement, attacks, and abilities to beat the bad guys and save the day.

This game is apparently a part of a wider franchise that started with Sentinels of the Multiverse, a tabletop card game in which each player controls a hero card in order to work together and defeat a villain. From my understanding, some of those heroes from the card game have made their way into the virtual world and are now playable in Sentinels of Freedom. I’m guessing if you’ve played and enjoyed Sentinels of the Multiverse, being able to play as familiar faces would automatically make the game more fun, but since I hadn’t explored the Sentinels universe before, I’ll look at the game for its own intrinsic merit.

Upon booting it up, you’re given very little background or plot before being thrown into a sort of tutorial mission that lets you get a feel for the game, which I liked. After a chunk of combat, you are then given the option to create your hero, and I think this was my favorite part of the game. There is a surprising amount of customization available, with the player first picking their hero’s three fighting themes, then attributes like the origin of their powers, their background, and their personality traits (each of which gives a variety of buffs and debuffs), and finally, their appearance.

From there, you play through a variety of missions that initially seem unrelated but become more and more suspiciously connected as you play on. For each mission, you are given the option to build your team, which allows for a lot of experimentation with different playstyles and creating balance and synergy between your heroes. At the Sentinels’ headquarters, you can change your heroes’ attack lineups in Training as you unlock more by progressing through the game, then test them out individually and with other heroes through the Simulator.

The second best thing about Sentinels of Freedom for me was the dialogue. Although the game was mostly combat with a little dialogue sprinkled in, the conversations were pretty entertaining, and you could choose some funny one-liners for your hero. The writers exposed the plot at a pretty decent pace, and the cutscenes never felt annoying or lengthy; I actually enjoyed the break they provided between waves of bad guys.

The comic book art style was a pretty cool concept, and for the most part it looked decent, but there were a few instances when the graphics could have used some work. I know the Switch doesn’t have the capacity for crazy graphics, but some of the character models in particular left something to be desired. As for the battle system itself, the game makes use of a Pokémon-esque type chart, meaning each attack has a designated type, as do the enemies you fight, and they take damage ranging from heavily resisted to very effective based on what type of move you use. I like that they make you diversify the attacks you carry and strategize about which hero to use at a specific time/on a specific enemy, but it seemed like the resistances and weaknesses were pretty arbitrarily chosen. When I first started playing, I could never look at an enemy and guess which moves would be effective, so I spent a lot of time checking each one, and when I finally started to naturally know what would be effective, it wasn’t because it was logical, it was just remembering those enemies from earlier on.

My biggest critique of Sentinels of Freedom is that it didn’t suck me in. While the developers clearly put effort into diversifying the missions and keeping them interesting, you inevitably ended up in the same few-heroes-fighting-many-enemies scenario with the same relatively simple, repetitive combat system, and that just wasn’t enough to hook me. I would pick up the game, play a mission, then lose interest and go do something else. Also, one small, unrelated thing is that you were often required to interact with objects on the map, and a green circle with a yellow hand and a text bubble saying “Interact” would appear showing that you could do so. There were a couple of instances when all these indicators appeared and I would try to interact, but my hero would simply walk over by the object and then stop, causing me to waste precious AP repositioning and trying to interact again. In one instance, this happened repeatedly with the same object, and it didn’t cost me the mission, but it definitely annoyed me.

If you’ve played Sentinels of the Multiverse or enjoy simple turn-based strategy games, superheroes, and creating and using a character, Sentinels of Freedom might be worth a shot. However, I wouldn’t expect it to be so addicting you can’t put it down—in my experience, it’s best enjoyed in 30 minute to 1 hour doses.

Review Score: 6/10

Check Out the Sentinels of Freedom Trailer:

For more information, please visit the Nintendo eShop – https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/sentinels-of-freedom-switch/

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