Liberation Maiden

Liberation Maiden is an outstanding on-rails shooter worth its $8 price tag.

Liberation Maiden isn't Suda 51's crowning achievement or anything, but it is a simple, fun shooter with a clever offense-defensive mechanic and several coats of glossy finish. If you aren't bothered by the stick and stylus control scheme, you'll enjoy this hearty dose of anime mech action. Certainly, the remaining Guild01 games have a lot to live up to.

Liberation Maiden is a game that will see you involved in the struggles between mecha. Your mission is to free the Japanese cities.

Liberation Maiden is one of the best games on the e-Shop. The Grasshopper Manufacture's title convinces thanks to a precise control system and well paced rhythm.

Liberation Maiden is a solid shooter with top-notch presentation (the cut-scenes by anime studio Bones are superb) and frantic action. It's by no means the longest game in the world so only high score fiends will get the best out of it, but if you fall into that category this is well worth your £7.19.

Liberation Maiden is not that work of art you might have expected, but it has interesting basic approaches and the gameplay is well done.

With only five stages, it's hard to justify the price tag unless you intend to chase high scores. [Christmas 2012, p.91]

A beautiful shooter hampered only by its being too small for the grand scale it implies. [Christmas 2012, p.96]

Liberation Maiden meets its goal as part of a package and never really goes beyond that.

Ideal for gamers who grew up with this genre. Spectacular, fast, fresh and fun, it offers some great moments, and, even if it's not a AAA game, we think it's a game everyone will enjoy.

Grasshopper Manufacture creates a very competent 3D-Shooter,with high values and an interesting anime style. It's intense, but also very short.

Liberation Maiden has a good quality/price ratio, although with some changes it could have been a much better experience. As it stands, however, it's just a good downloadable action game.

Despite being a fun game, it's very bare, with few levels just relying on replaying for it to get any kind of lasting value. No matter how much you loved the game, though, replaying the same five is not enough for me to give this amazing, fun, beautiful game the high rank that it deserves.

Liberation Maiden is a solid game that is pretty interesting and enjoyable from beginning to end, with good controls and great concepts. However, each of the five stages will take a maximum of 20 minutes and will most likely zip by far quicker than that.

Liberation Maiden, for better or worse, is a brief, fast-paced experience. I found myself laughing at the game's opening, and even though I never became genuinely engaged in the plight of Shoko and New Japan, I enjoyed taking it all in.

Clearly a low-budget game considering its extremely short length and its mediocre graphics, Liberation Maiden is an original and fun shooter nonetheless, which fans of the genre should definitely check out.

Liberation Maiden offers a surprisingly short experience, but if it were much longer the sense of repetition would probably become quite irksome. For all its flashy visuals and instantly gratifying action, this isn't a game that boasts a tremendous amount of variety or depth.

Liberation Maiden may not be Suda51′s best work, but it is nonetheless a solid, albeit limited, game. The presentation values alone warrant the price tag, and the game has a sort of a "big game" feel to it, which is wonderful considering its small price.

Liberation Maiden is a classic shoot'em up with intense gameplay, but it's too short and has repetitive mechanics.

Being extremely short and repetitive, Liberation Maiden asks you too much money for what it really offers.

What hurts most about Liberation Maiden, however, is that just when it feels like it's getting interesting, with a stage that's basically one epic, shifting boss battle, it unexpectedly screeches to a halt, reminding you that you've bought what was originally one quarter of a bigger game.

Play Liberation Maiden because you're after an acceptable arcade shooter, in other words; approach it expecting another wonky blast of Suda51 charm and, President Mech aside, you're going to be a little disappointed.

In pure gameplay terms this is one of Suda51's most accessible and entertaining games for years, but it's badly devalued by its extreme brevity.

It's a smart idea in an enjoyably brisk score-attack game that sadly feels a little undernourished thanks to the brevity of its campaign and its repetitive play rhythms.

Hard to play, unexciting, and a little soulless: though some may find Liberation Maiden's style enough to excuse its other faults, this is undoubtedly Suda 51's worst output to date.