Following the demise of her father, Soto is elevated to the role of president of Japan, a country under threat of attack from the Dominion. Harnessed to her power suit the aerial president packs an impressive array of weapons in her fight to stave off invasion...

Liberation Maiden is an anime science fiction game ported over from the 3DS. Created by Suda51, Grasshopper Manufacture and Level-5, the game is visually impressive.

The thing which you quickly realise is that the game lacks narrative depth, but then if you’re going to buy a budget pick up and play mobile game, you’re not going to get War and Peace. Mostly you will find yourself spending time flying around raining death on the Dominion in a wealth of arcade action.

The game opens with an impressive anime scene setter, as good as anything produced by a dedicated anime studio, right away you realise that the game is dripping with quality. When the game proper begins you are given your instructions by Kira, who spots the latest threats and send you on your way.

Your perspective on Soto is usually behind and slightly above. A virtual analogue stick button controls both your direction of flight and speed, situated on the left-hand side of the screen. Soto is encased in a flying mecha which contains offensive weapons, missiles and beam and a protective shield, though with only a limited energy reserve, if you get too trigger happy it will deplete your shield, so a measured approach to combat is advised. This is not to say that you don’t have your own uber weapon in the form of a devastating sword attack, it will take most things down, but takes time to power up.

You will find yourself up against embedded ground instillations, submarines and ships all of which try to take you out of the sky with their own supply of beam and missile weapons. All this hardware is designed to protect the Spikes, large structures buried in the earth. Attack it at its apex and the machine will rise out of the ground exposing its vulnerable core. You get three of these suckers to attack before you get to attack a great Spike. As you destroy lessor and greater targets the remaining land reverts back to its original lush green pastures.

Flying around in a straight line is a tedious way of targeting some of the bad guys so on the lower right-hand side of the screen you have another virtual analogue stick button, which allows you to circle a target whilst firing. Firing your weapons is easy, slide your finger across and a barrage of missiles will be released, hold your finger over an instillation and your beam weapon will engage.

Controlling the game takes a little time to get used to. On an iPad it works fine, but on an iPhone 5 having three fingers covering the screen can often obscure the action.

On the surface the game may seem a little short, I completed it in about three hours, but then each mission has a scoring system and rewards linked to the Games Centre, so if it’s a challenge you’re looking for the game has a lot of replay value.

The open world aspect of the game allows you to return to missions to experiment with differing strategies. Add to this a well laid out control system and the game represents pretty good bang for buck value.

7

Charles Packer