Liberation Army - Shooter/Strategy Game Hybrid

Liberation Army is the Gundam game for gamers on a budget. While, it's a bit dated, I don't think this game gets the attention that it deserves compared to other freeware titles like Warning Forever. It's a real-time-strategy/shooting game hybrid that plays like a 2D Dynasty Warriors clone. This game also reminds me of an old dos shareware game called Gladiator. You control a single unit while leading an entire army of humanoid mechs that look distinctly like mobile suits and engage an opposing army on a 2D battle map.

The gameplay is divided into the preparation and combat phase. During the preparation phase, you are shown the map of the next battle showing your formation as opposed to the enemies. You can buy upgrades for your allies, technology, new units, ships and choose the mobile suit pilot who will participate in battle. You can also customize your pilot's mobile suit by changing/adding/upgrading his/her equipment. In the combat phase, you control your own unit while having the ability to issue commands to your allies. Going rambo straight into a swarm of enemy fighters is the fastest way to get killed, thus, if you're thinking of showing off your Seed Mode or Newtype shooting skills, the game punishes you severely. Zooming straight into enemy territory makes it easier for enemy fighters to land critical hits by shooting you from behind. While your own unit is considerably tougher than normal units (with stronger upgrades), and is equipped with one sub weapon of your choice(even includes the beam saber... though it's kinda hard to use without taking damage), it does not have the ability to take down the entire opposing army all by itself. If you find yourself in a corner of the screen surrounded by enemy units with no allies in range, you'd best retreat to save your pilot from suffering too heavy damage to fight in the next battle.

Umm... this is what happens when you try flying in solo. The one being focus-fired on near the upper-left of the screen is me

Your territory grows in percentage as indicated in the preparation phase every time you win a battle by either making the enemy retreat or destroying all enemy units onscreen. The focus of the game is on slowly gaining ground and destroying enemy ships that deploy more enemy units while keeping your own ships protected. As your territory increases, the difficulty level also increases, with elite enemy mobile suits equal to your own joining the battle, each equipped with their own special subweapons. Luckily, you also earn powerful allies called escorts with their own special weaponry depending on the number of battles you've participated in. That aside, the AI for your escorts is not very good at dodging enemy bullets nor as powerful as the special enemy units, so you'd best not rely on them too much.

The battles seem to go on forever as I've yet to reach anything that indicates that there's an ending to this game. This gives Liberation Army a high replay value but unfortunately, after the novelty has worn off, it can get a bit repetitive.
The graphics are nothing special but work well enough for this type of game. Up to 600 units can fight onscreen at once, which effectively gives you the feeling of being inside a great gundam or macross type war. There's also a variety of midi tracks included in the game and you can manually replace them with your favorite mech-anime theme if you want. Surprisingly, the character art is a bit subpar for a japanese anime-type game as I've noticed that some of the facial proportions on the character portraits are a bit off. Luckily, it's not too noticeable and is not something that will distract you from having fun with this game.

The version of Liberation Army reviewed here is freeware visit the author's homepage here.
http://www.infoseek.livedoor.net/~koushi_okada/

The game has been completely translated into English by Aeon Genesis
http://agtp.romhack.net/project.php?id=libarmy