Taking Liberties?
King Louis has died in mysterious circumstances. Now that Paris has no ruler, four factions clash to win the City for themselves. Play as Rene – a Parisian with an obscure past, whose close connection to supernatural beings places him right in the middle of the intrigue. A story-driven, top-down rogue-like set in an alternate-history, Lovecraftian version of the French Revolution. Play solo or Co-op and influence the fate of four unique factions in their clash for power.
Liberté is not what I was expecting when I first loaded it up. It’s a rogue-lite set during the French Revolution but with Lovecraft monsters roaming around. It’s a deck-builder hack-n-slash that has some decent voice-acting, nice artwork and an interesting story. But what about gameplay?
It does get a bit repetitive early on and there isn’t as much variety in enemies or environments. Combat lacks polish but is passable, while the progression system leaves a lot to be desired and requires a lot of grinding. It feels like it’s been artificially extended this way, which doesn’t help when you’ve already got bugs impeding your progress.
The visuals are average and they literally stole the Lord of the Rings movie font for chapters and names. The music is pretty good though and as already mentioned, the voice-work and artwork is as well. There are no differences in performance between the Xbox Series X and PS5 versions that I tested.
The Verdict
Liberté does some things well, but it never reaches its potential due to limited areas and enemies, glitches and unnecessary grinding. It has its fun moments, but it can become predictable and repetitive very quickly.