Freedom Planet 2

Introduction

Freedom Planet 2 sends four distinct playable characters — each with genuinely different movement and combat options — through a sprawling, boss-dense platforming adventure built around the fast, momentum-driven feel that made the original Freedom Planet a beloved Sonic-inspired indie darling. Developed and self-published by GalaxyTrail after roughly seven years of development, it released 13 September 2022 and sits at Overwhelmingly Positive, 95.8% across the 1,261 English-language reviews this review draws from, having read the full negative sample. That's a genuinely lopsided score, and the overwhelming majority of it is earned honestly — but the small negative sample this review reads in full contains some of the most detailed, specific, and internally conflicted reviews of any game covered this session, worth examining directly rather than dismissing as noise against such a strong headline number.

A sequel that improves the mechanics almost everyone agrees on

Start with what draws essentially unanimous praise, including from reviewers who go on to explain why they still can't recommend the game. Movement and combat earn exceptional, specific credit as a genuine refinement of the first game's already well-liked systems — one detailed negative review, otherwise critical of several other aspects, still opened by calling the game "really good to play, really snappy and fluid" before getting into its complaints. Production values draw their own consistent superlative praise: over 25 distinct levels, dozens of boss encounters, four fully realised characters and a substantial soundtrack, reflecting the roughly seven years GalaxyTrail spent developing it. One reviewer summed up the scale directly: "over 25 fully-fledged levels. Each different than the last... a thick behemoth of a production values, outclassing everything in its genre." Pixel art and animation earn similarly wide acclaim as some of the best currently available in the genre.

The detailed minority report worth reading in full

Here's what makes this game's small negative sample worth examining closely rather than treating as statistical noise: it's unusually self-aware and specific, with reviewer after reviewer explicitly acknowledging the game's mechanical strength before explaining, in real detail, what still didn't work for them. A 27-vote review, self-identifying as a huge fan of the original who once called it "doing Sonic better than Sonic does Sonic," opened by praising the sequel's graphics and gameplay as "really good to play" before describing genuine disappointment elsewhere — this isn't a reviewer dismissing the game, it's a longtime fan working through a specific, considered letdown. Level design and readability draw the most repeated specific complaint: multiple reviewers describe genuine confusion about where to head next, a problem they say the tighter, clearer first game didn't have, compounded in places by pixel art detailed enough to occasionally obscure what's actually happening on screen during busier action sequences.

Story draws a separate, equally specific complaint. Several reviewers, including some who otherwise enjoyed the game, describe the narrative as considerably more bloated than the original's — one reviewer summed up the split cleanly: "Okay Gameplay. Saturday Morning Cartoon Writing." — and a number specifically recommend that newcomers skip dialogue scenes entirely to preserve their enjoyment of the platforming itself. One reviewer's complaint was pointed enough to quote directly: objecting to a wealthy character "who lives in a penthouse" delivering moralising dialogue that felt tonally mismatched with the rest of the game. This is a real, if secondary, thread running through the negative sample rather than an isolated taste disagreement, and it's worth flagging clearly for any reader whose experience of the original leaned more on tight pacing than extended story beats.

Bugs a beloved original mostly avoided

A separate, more concrete complaint concerns technical polish. Multiple reviewers report genuine bugs, collision issues and softlocks more frequent than what they remember from the first Freedom Planet, which itself wasn't bug-free but is described here as noticeably more stable by comparison. One reviewer put it plainly: "it's very hard to play the game without running into soft-locks, buggy collision, and other oddities that make the game feel somewhere between unpolished and lazy" — strong language from a reviewer who, elsewhere in the same review, credits the underlying game with real ambition. A smaller, more specific complaint concerns controller support directly: one reviewer reported that while PlayStation button prompts display correctly, Xbox and Nintendo controller icons show as generic numbers instead of their actual button glyphs — a concrete, fixable interface bug rather than a matter of taste.

Where the achievement data lands

Steam's achievement statistics show a genre-typical, reasonably healthy engagement curve, with several mid-tier achievements sitting in the 55-65% range — consistent with a large majority of buyers making real progress through a game whose sheer scale, more than two dozen levels and multiple playable characters, naturally spreads completion out over a longer tail than a shorter platformer would.

Final Verdict

Freedom Planet 2 is, by nearly every measure this review's sample offers, a genuine mechanical triumph — GalaxyTrail spent seven years refining movement, combat and presentation into something a huge majority of reviewers, including disappointed longtime fans, credit as an improvement on an already well-loved original. What keeps this from an even higher score is that the small negative sample this review reads in full isn't dismissive noise — it's a specific, detailed, often self-aware account of where that ambition outran its execution: harder-to-read level design, a story several reviewers found bloated compared to the tighter first game, and real technical bugs that a comparably-loved predecessor mostly avoided. If you loved the original for its speed and precision, there's an even better platformer waiting here. If you loved it specifically for how tightly it moved from one clear objective to the next, go in aware that the sequel asks more patience than fans of that quality might expect.