[ Phase 01: Freedom Gundam ]

ZGMF-X10A Freedom. Kira "Jesus" Yamato not included.

I figured my first review should be for a unit that everyone’s familiar with; the omnipresent, reliable Freedom. Whether you love the SEED franchise or hate it, you can't deny that the Freedom is a solid unit in SDGO. It can handle most missions up to about a Normal difficulty with relative ease, provided it has the right teammates working with it, and it functions well enough to get by in Beginner PvP. It's the unit that you'll most often see pilots around Deckhand-rank using, because it's dead easy to get and very simple to master.

When I first started playing, SDGO NA didn't have S-ranks yet. So by the time I got my Freedom, I'd grown accustomed to running around in my Gelgoog and spending most of my time trying not to die, and I was reluctant to switch, even if it was an S-rank I'd be switching to. I got my Freedom well after the fact, so I probably haven't used it as much as most other pilots have. But having watched friends start playing the game and move almost directly from their Training-MS to Freedom with few stumbling blocks, I noticed one thing above all else when it comes to Freedom. It seems to me like Freedom plays very much like an upgraded Training-MS. It's straightforward, with few tricks up its sleeve. What you see is what you get. The learning curve on it is very forgiving, which is probably why it's handed to new pilots on a silver platter.

I'll be the first to admit that Medium-range units (or Scissor-types prior to G-Gen) have never been my cup of tea. There's only very few Medium-range units that I can truly say that I love, like my Wing Zero, Brave Common Test Type, and obligatory Blaze ZAKU Warrior. Maybe that has to do with part of my trepidation towards using Freedom more. Or maybe I just didn't like Kira. Huh.

That being said, Freedom is pretty well-rounded, but it suffers from something I like to call Generic Scissor Disorder. Prior to G-Gen, when units still had Rock Paper Scissors properties, each unit filled a very specific niche. Paper-types were long-range units with stellar vertical boost duration, but terrible horizontal boost duration; Rock-types were close-range units with great vertical boost but could jump about as well as their namesake. And then we had Scissors, which fell somewhere in the middle between the two. Better vertical boost than a Rock, but not as good as a Paper; better horizontal boost than a Paper, but not as good as a Rock. Their weapons could reach farther on average than a Rock's (assuming that Rock isn't named "V2 Assault", "TYPE-E Exia" or "Neue Ziel", that is), but not as far as a Paper's. They just sort of fell into this weird sort of grey area where they can do everything acceptably well, but they really don't shine in any one particular area. A jack of all trades, but a master of none. For Freedom, it's forgivable, since new pilots kind of need that sort of genericness to get used to the flow of the game and to master the controls.

I do, however, like Freedom's weapon set. It has surprisingly nasty melee skills for a non-melee unit, with a five-hit knockdown not often seen on Medium-Range units, and its guns, while straightforward, are pretty reliable. I feel like perhaps it's begging for a Close-In-Weapons-System (CIWS) of some sort, but then again, I think you'll find me saying that about quite a few units, especially ones from the Cosmic Era, where your local hot dog cart was liable to have CIWS installed.

In PvP, Freedom works okay for a couple of runs here and there, but because everybody and their pet goldfish has one, everyone knows how it works and everyone knows how to counter it. So unless you're a rookie fighting other rookies, Freedom probably won't get you very far.

As far as its skill set goes, it packs Phase-Shift Armor, which is a nice skill that reduces damage from solid-state weapons, and Neutron Jammer Canceller, which lets you run around like a bat out of hell when your HP is low. Phase-Shift is a nice touch in PvP and several missions, and Neutron Jammer is just fun, but there are better units out there that run it and pair it with something a little more useful. While Phase-Shift is handy, it would be put to better use on a unit that's designed to take hits, or if Freedom were more tanky. Using custom parts you could in theory bulk it up a bit, but it would probably be a waste, since those parts only work in PvP, and it's in Missions that Freedom could do with some extra staying power.

So the long and the short of it is this. Is Freedom a good unit? Up to a certain point in the game, yes. Once you start getting into Normal and Hard-difficulty missions though, or start getting serious in PvP, then perhaps it's time to switch it up and build something with a little more potential. If you keep pushing it past that point and continue to lean on it, you'll find the game will get very difficult for you very quickly without the help of pilots with access to more versatile units.  Out of the three S-ranks you get from quests early on in the game, Freedom is definitely the easiest to use well in any situation.

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