Sentinels of Freedom from Underbite Games is a turn-based superhero strategy RPG on Nintendo Switch. Learn more in our Sentinels of Freedom review!
Sentinels of Freedom from Underbite Games is a superhero-infused turn-based strategy RPG that is presented as a comic book cell shared story on Nintendo Switch. Story cutscenes will be presented as comic book pages, with a ton of dialogue to read as you reveal each new panel. Your adventure will take place in Megapolis, and it will start as your group of heroes tries to save a group of hostages during a bank robbery.
You can play Sentinels of Freedom in one of four difficulty settings: Easy, Standard, Hard, and Insane. Easy is a good option for those of you that might be new to turn-based games. Standard will offer a balanced experience for fans of turn-based tactical releases. If you know what you’re doing and want to boost the overall challenge without overwhelming players. And then there’s Insane, which is a difficulty option that certainly does its name justice since every mistake you make will hurt your group’s chance of being victorious. You can change the difficulty between missions if you want to increase or lower the challenge.
Going hand in hand with the above, you can decide to skip the game’s Prologue if you have experience with turn-based strategy RPG, but this means you’d also skip over the story intro. You’ll move the on-screen with the left analog stick, rotating your view around with the right one, zooming in by pressing in on the right analog stick. Each hero under your control will have a variety of stances and abilities to use in battle, which you can select by using the L and R buttons as needed.
Once you’re done with the Prologue, it will be time to create your own superhero! You can select a theme, variations for its overall outfit, primary, secondary, and accent colors, and more! Themes include Minions, Gadgets, Shooter, Blaster, Tank, Supportive, Leadership, and Interceptor. You can also pick its background between the 20 different options, with each one offering different boosts to specific stats. For example, a hero with an Upper Class background will have been born in the upper echelons of society, which will give it a boost to its overall hit points and movement. Some backgrounds might inflict debuffs, so be sure to check if the benefits are worth it!
The same will apply to its personality since a hero that is cheerful will have a boost to the chance that its vigilance ability activates when enemies move in from the front or sides, but it will take a hit to its overall HP. Pick a stalwart personality, and your hero will be rewarded with a considerable 10% boost to its hit points, but it will also take a 5% hit to its movement. As you can probably imagine, having a hero with stalwart and stoic personality traits – giving it a 25% overall boost to HP – is a great way to set up a hero to be a tank. Oh, and don’t forget to select the power source for your hero’s abilities since this will also affect its overall AP, damage, vigilance radius, movement, and more!
On top of this, you can also pick it’s a more masculine or feminine type of hero, the type of hair it will have, the color of its skin, hair, and highlight, the type of accessories it will have for its head, eyes, and hair, the colors for its suit, what the supersuit is going to look like if your hero will wear tactical gloves if it’s going to rock some radtastic shoulder pads, what its belt game is going to be like if it’s going to have any VFX when attacking, and if it’s going to have ranged attacks, the look of its weapon and even the color of its shots. Once you’ve done all of this, pick a name for your hero, and you’ll be ready to go!
Each character will have a set number of actions points (AP), which will be used when you move around the map. The longer the distance you travel, the more AP you’re going to end up using. But wait, there’s more! AP will also need to be spent to perform actions such as opening doors, as well as for performing the heroic abilities of your heroes. Each ability will have different properties, which you can check in the info box on the right side of the screen so that you can see if it’s the best option for a particular scenario.
Your stance will determine how your abilities will be used in battle. For one hero, this might mean if you’re going to favor ranged combat or if you’re ready to get down and dirty and select close combat for that extra attack boost. For another, it could be between going hypersonic or pushing its speed to the limits. Each hero archetype will have different stances for you to choose from when out in the city, trying to save the day, so be sure to experiment with them so that you can find what works best for you.
On top of these, there are also vigilance abilities to be aware of. Vigilance abilities are abilities that will sometimes be triggered automatically when enemies perform specific actions – this is different from when your hero counterattacks after being damaged. Each vigilance ability will react to melee attacks, ranged attacks, or enemy movement. Once a vigilance ability has been triggered, it will go into effect either as an interrupt or as a follow-up to whichever action ended up activating it.
You should check the info panel to learn more about how certain attack types will be more effective or less effective depending on the defense method being used. Attack deliveries will have names for sound effects such as Thokk!, Ping!, Zaakt!, Foom!, and Spak!, and will be matched up against defense methods with some more discrete names – Soak, Evade, Block, Deflect, and Grit. Bad matchups can make one of your characters waste their time and lose one AP, while great matchups can end up with your hero dealing a critical hit.
Paying attention to the upper center of the screen is going to be a must since this will show the order in which heroes, villains, and henchmen are going to activate during each battle. If your heroes gain the upper hand and can activate in quick succession, then you will be able to make the most of their abilities to hopefully defeat enemies before they even get a chance to activate. If, on the other hand, the bad guys have the initiative and can attack one after the other, you could be in deep trouble!
Sentinels of Freedom is a fun turn-based superhero-infused tactical RPG with different difficulty options that will allow players of all skill levels to enjoy this one. The Prologue chapter does a good job of showing you the ropes before you jump into the action with a hero of your own. I do want to complain about one thing: the game’s text is tiny, which makes it hard to read when playing in Docked Mode, and nearly impossible when playing in Portable or Tabletop Mode. It was not a deal-breaker since I quickly learned what each ability for the different hero types would do, but it might bother some players a bit more. Sentinels of Freedom is out now on Nintendo Switch with a $24.99 asking price.
Disclaimer
This Sentinels of Freedom review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Underbite Games.
