Freedom Force
Additional Gameplay Information
by Peter Karsanow - hentaihelper[AT}dellepro{DOT)com
v1.01 28 August 2002
Based on info found (or not) in Jortiz's Freedom Force FAQ v0.6,
Nicadeamus' FAQ v1.0 [really big thanks to him!], Unsub's Character
Guide v1.0, and Sherwin Tam's Campaign Guide v0.2.
v1.01 - 28 August 2002, Minor editing to make this suitable for
GameFAQs submission. Warning: I haven't tried the patch to
see if it fixes any of these Quirks or bugs!
v1.00 - 17 May 2002, after finishing the game and posting lots of
Quirks
Jortiz's FAQ has lots of terminology errors, and it appears he thinks
it's 2003 already (game released March-April 2002). After I got past
the few missions covered by Jortiz, I relied heavily on Nicadeamus'
work. Unsub was useful for trying to decide on which characters to
select for missions. Sherwin Tam's was most useful to me in knowing
which powers to use at lower power or avoid.
I attempted to keep spoilers to a minimum, and mark unavoidable ones.
A lot of the "Quirk" entries have been posted on the official Freedom
Force Community Center Technical Issues forum back in May 2002.
Common Abbreviations:
MM = Minuteman
NW = Nuclear Winter
MOW = Man O' War
LL = Liberty Lad
DV = Deja Vu
Prestige Point values are for a "Normal" difficulty campaign, in case
they're different at another level.
Mission #01: "Came a Hero!"
Quirk: You can beat up the Minuteman statue, but you can't destroy it!
SPOILER: To avoid having to run away from the collapsing building, use
the "Strike for Liberty" on the Pistol Thug on top of the roof. You'll
usually knock him off the roof with the knockback. You can then
Interrogate him where he lands. Also, to be nice, wait until there are
no pedestrians near the building so they don't get wiped out when it
comes down. END SPOILER.
Do a quick-save (F11) just before you interrogate O'Connor. Do a zoom-
out and check for baddies anywhere else. The Gangster is a bonus, but
the true secret bonus is the green (XP) canister under the dumpster
near him.
Make sure you knock out the two thugs that surrendered earlier. You
can't get rid of them until you move past what they tell you about, but
you have to go back and tie up these loose ends to get a perfect score.
Interlude:
A perfect run of mission #01 gets you 410 Prestige, 1200 CP/XP.
Buy "Minute Missile" by raising "Eternal Vigilance" to at least level
3, then you can buy the new power. Personally, I later raised this
passive defense all the way, and never used the active defense.
Mission #02: "Strange Visitors" (Parts 1 and 2)
Quirk: You can be run over by moving cars! In fact, they'll knock you
down and push you in front of them until you're knocked out, or they
stop for some reason or turn. Most of the time they'll stop for you,
but in some cases they won't.
Quirk: If you throw a car at a building that's too close, it will
bounce back and hurt quite a bit! (It may even knock you in front of a
moving car...)
Don't miss the Prestige canister barely visible underneath a truck by
the guardhouse on the upper left (northwest) of the compound.
An Experience canister is hidden under a shipping container in the far
upper right (northeast) of the compound; it's the closest one to the
guardhouse.
NO Interlude: A perfect run of mission #02 gets you 580 Prestige, but
there's no chance to improve the characters or examine Mentor before
you charge into "Strange Visitors Part 2".
There are no canisters at all in this part; you just have to take it
slow and easy. I kept Mentor far in the back except for the very
beginning, when it turned into a madhouse with enemies and heroes
running all over for a while. When it calmed down, I then kept
Minuteman running for fuel tanks to throw at enemies from very far
away. Took out Sukhov with one, but I had originally hoped to nail him
with a TNT box...
Anyway, a perfect run of this part gets you 356 more Prestige, for a
total of 936 for this whole mission.
Mission #03: "Skating on Thin Ice" (Parts 1 and 2)
This is the first mission you can use a custom character. You'll get to
use it in both parts [MINOR SPOILER: even though Minuteman and Mentor
aren't available at the start of part 2].
Quirk: Minuteman can "clip" through the fence to attack the thugs
talking about vandalizing a car, but then he often can't get back
without breaking the fence!
Don't miss the pistol thug trying to be a 3-card Monte dealer on a
sidewalk. Minuteman won't talk to him, but Mentor gets some droll
dialogue before a fight starts; the second time, I just had MM whack
him and still got the points.
Part 1 ends when you interrogate the Ice Queen.
My score for Part 1 is 611 Prestige, but I may have missed XP and
Prestige canisters since I didn't find any of those.
Again, NO chance to do anything for the characters between parts 1 and
2.
Also, hero HP and EP always start at full in the next part.
There's an XP canister (good for El Diablo) hidden in a garbage can in
Part 2, You may have to destroy all the garbage cans in the park to
find it. The trigger for this is to talk to the man and woman in the
square paved area to the right from where you start.
This isn't the place where I learned this, or verified it, but here's
the first place you could use it: Thanks to "brikov", who posted it at
gamefaqs.com, for discovering that you can have multiple heroes Use a
canister at once. Just pause the game, have all the heroes that you
want around the canister (close by - do a Move To first), give them all
the Use Canister command, then unpause. You'll see it work if you get
multiple messages in the message window. I verified this myself with
the XP canister in mission #07, but it should work everywhere.
Part 2 doesn't end when you destroy the pumphouse, but when you
interrogate the last Ice Queen that comes at you from the street.
A perfect run of part 2 gets you 780 PP, for a total of 1391 on this
mission. While you get a chance to save the game, unless you gave the
XP canister to somebody besides El Diablo, nobody will go up a level
due to this mission. Also, if you added a (cheap one if you weren't
cheating) custom character at the beginning of this mission, you won't
regain the Prestige cost by dismissing the character now. And you can't
use any custom characters in the next mission anyway!
Mission #04 - "A Nuclear Winter" (Parts 1, 2, and 3)
After two big waves of enemies, part 1 turns into another throwing
exercise to knock out the turrets using snowballs and oil drums. But
the last (far end from your start point) is actually the easiest; just
destroy the big oil tank!
Quirks: The turrets can be stunned, and I was unable to destroy the
turret stands completely.
You can accidentally trigger the Mentor line about unique knowledge
without the target enemy being visible. If you get a red arrow pointing
to a specific point on the far end of the carrier, but you see nothing
there, you got the same thing I did. Just creep closer and you'll see
what the problem is. SPOILER: Use an oil drum to fry it from down on
the ice. END SPOILER
Two troopers are on the highest point of the carrier, and one more is
on a platform opposite from the last turret. Mentor was able to
alternately enrage the two until one was left with only 3 HP;
unfortunately, El Diablo got frozen in mid-air trying to take him out,
and took 13 HP falling out of the ice. ARG!
I found only 2 energy canisters and 1 HP canister, all very obvious if
you zoom out. There may be more if you destroy all the fighters and
stuff, but I didn't bother.
Just like the other multi-part missions, you get a status and save
interlude before part 2. I got 560 Prestige, and except for any hidden
bonus canisters, that was a perfect run.
Part 2 has 4 obvious energy canisters, only 1 HP canister, and a bunch
of snowballs and oil drums and TNT boxes just waiting for you (or an
Ice Queen) to throw.
Quirk: The ships can't be damaged.
End part 2 by "Investigate" on Man-Bot. A perfect run is 1040 more, for
a total of 1600.
Part 3 begins rather quickly; you should send El Diablo up to see what
all the screaming is about, while Minuteman and Man-Bot deal with the
locals and then provide backup. Mentor should either throw light items
that go boom, or mess with people's heads like he usually does.
Quirk: At least 4 of the street lights don't actually cast light onto
the ground surfaces; there's nothing below them to show the light
that's supposed to be up there. In fact, it appears the lights
throughout the game were pre-rendered onto the surface textures,
because they don't change if you destroy the light poles.
Quirk: Damage decals don't come back if you reload a saved game.
Quirk: If you're running an ATI Radeon video card like I was, you may
think that Irrational should have put some street lights on the
street. Try turning off the W-buffer in Control Panel / Display /
Advanced / Direct3D to make it noticeably brighter. Others may have
to fiddle with the gamma controls in the display properties.
The trick to this part is not to trigger too many enemies at once; MM
or El Diablo should creep up and stop whenever the voice says something
about spotting enemies (it differs from hero to hero).
Take it very slow and easy until you get close to the bomb and truck
where Nuclear Winter makes his last stand.
Quirk: Canisters don't get destroyed.
You still can't damage the ships in part 3. There's an Ice Queen
standing on one that may get slightly moved so she's nearly invisible
while standing almost entirely inside the ship.
Quirk: There is a range to an enemy where you will suddenly see the
enemy appear on the map. A little further in, and this might depend on
the hero involved, you should get a voice indication that the hero has
spotted the enemy. Usually further in than that, the enemy will notice
the hero and react. I think the range at which you can damage the enemy
with thrown objects is at the "hero notices enemy" point, although I've
had several cases where thrown snowballs do nothing at all to Frost
Warriors or Ice Troopers.
Ice Queens are effectively stronger than Minuteman; they can lift up a
2640 pound shipping container! (MM can't.) It turns out they have the
Heavy Lifting attribute.
Quirk: Objects in the game are really weighed in kilograms, that's why
you see values like 110 and 220 pounds. Some of the values are a bit
off, but in most cases it doesn't matter.
There's a health canister under one of the shipping containers near the
street, close to the other one visible under a pile of snowballs.
If you're careful, you can whittle down the enemies and leave the big
guy for last. SPOILER: I was able to bean him with an oil drum before
the cinematic started, making it a lot easier to take him down when
combat resumed. END SPOILER
Quirk: Any objects picked up by heroes before the cinematic starts will
be gone when it's over.
As Nicadeamus says in his FAQ, have Minuteman run for the bomb and
leave NW to the other heroes. You have to Move To the bomb before the
cinematic, then Examine after it, and once Minuteman speaks Move To
again, finally Disarm. I won't tell you how many times the bomb went
off on me because I thought you were supposed to run away, or destroy
the bomb, instead of the second Move To.
I got 1310 Prestige from this part, but the game gave me 2160 for the
previous 2 parts instead of 1600, for a total of 3470. Something
doesn't add up. And somehow I missed credit for 3 Ice Queens, because I
only had 2/2, yet I remember there being 5 just like Nicadeamus's FAQ
says. I had El Diablo cover the map before going after NW, just to make
sure there was nobody else lurking.
Interlude: Before going on, you should have at least one hero go up a
level from all this, and you've got 600 CP to allocate to the one(s) who
do. Sadly, Man-Bot doesn't get any this time, and neither does any
custom hero you added earlier.
Quirk: If you view the melee attack by an Ice Queen, she doesn't
rotate. I wasn't able to find a consistent pattern to which attacks
rotate and which don't, although melee attacks usually don't and other
attacks usually do.
MISSION #05 - "In The Nick Of Time" (Parts 1, 2 and 3)
Part 1 is Mentor and Man-Bot; it ends when you interrogate the thug who
runs then gives up. You should look for and defeat the 3 other pairs of
bat thugs in the alleys. Before you really start, have Man-Bot go and
use the XP canister. Last thing you should do is have Mentor go and use
the Prestige canister (100 bonus) in the opposite corner of the map;
Man-Bot takes too long to go that far.
Quirk: You don't have to talk to the Police Chief. As soon as one of
the heroes gets close enough to the scene, the police and robbers start
a shootout. The police can actually take down the robbers and destroy
the vehicle by themselves. You don't miss the 20 points either!
Quirk: Nick Craft can lose this mission for you by being run over by a
car, even though other civilians knocked down by cars often take no
damage.
Although Nicadeamus says there are only 4 thugs with guns, I got scored
for 5. I didn't actually see them; the police took care of them all for
me!
A perfect run of this one gets you 420 Prestige.
Part 2 is El Diablo solo; I found the easiest way to take out the
multiple gun-toting enemies on the roof of the cinema was to grab the
flagpole.
Quirk: I nearly lost some points because one civilian insisted on
runnning in front of cars several times. I even spotted him running
into stopped cars, going "Oof!" and falling down, but not taking any
damage.
Quirk: The last two gun thugs ended up in the alley behind the cinema,
along with Nick Craft. I only saw one at first, so El Diablo jumped
down and started punching. The first one went down quickly, then I was
surprised by a second one who was practically standing inside El
Diablo!
A perfect run of this one is another 226 Prestige; I don't know why
this strange number, as I didn't think I missed anyone.
Part 2 ends when you interrogate the gangster.
Part 3 is everybody, although Minuteman is in trouble at first. This
one, you supposedly have to hurry to defeat the enemies - especially
the big guy - in a hurry. Part 3 ends when you talk to Nick Craft after
all the enemies are defeated.
Quirk: I got 206 Prestige from this part, but again the game can't add
and gave me 1066 more for the previous 2 parts instead of 646. Now that
this has happened twice, it looks like the game is giving you twice the
Prestige for the first part of a 3-part mission.
Interlude:
Quirk: If you're like me and had Man-Bot get the first XP canister, and
El Diablo get the second (or else you skipped that one), Man-Bot gets
600 XP for his, and El Diablo only gets 300!? Or maybe this is again
the double-counting bug at work...
Apparently, the game gives each character 600 CP when they go up a
level, 0 otherwise. Part of the decision-making process during the
training phase is deciding to save up for the expensive new powers and
attributes, or just maxing out what you already have first.
Quirk: On Man O' War, the Electric Arc and Pressure Punch don't rotate
him either. Maybe really short (<2.5 seconds) animations don't rotate
the figure when you view the animation...
Quirk: The hit men (and gangster from mission #01) aren't in the
database of enemies now. The gangster is added later after another
appearance in the game, but the hit men never appear, even after you
see more of them later.
MISSION #06 - "Prehistoric Panic"
Minuteman is unavailable for this one, and El Diablo must be included.
You can finally use custom heroes again! If you got everything so far,
and didn't spend any of it, you should have about 7400 to spend; that's
enough to get you only one of Man O' War or Sea Urchin. As Nicadeamus
says, Speed is of the essence in this one; Sea Urchin is the only
built-in character fast enough to chase raptors and take them down
without running out of energy. El Diablo is just a mite too slow on the
ground, and you can't easily have him fly about flaming things without
running out of energy or destroying too much stuff. Finally, you can
only pick 3 characters as Alchemiss is made the 4th (or 1st unless you
rearrange them) once you start.
You should have little trouble finding the XP canister and Prestige
canister, but read Nicadeamus' FAQ to get the XP one.
Except for custom heroes, only El Diablo can get to the rooftops in
this one, and there are a lot of things (enemies, canisters, and one
special object) up on rooftops in this mission. In some cases, you'll
have to get raptors down so the rest of the group can efficiently fight
them.
Some of the raptors are apparently given the goal of going after
civilians. After Alchemiss did a Repulsion on one that hurt a male, it
went after another male near where it landed, and took him out before
the heroes could get to it: -25 points! Just wounding somebody, or only
partially destroying a building, has no penalty.
Quirk: I spotted one light pole in the park, near the statue and the
Prestige canister, with the base up in the air. It caused some strange
effects, like Man-Bot's head disappearing when he walked under it;
while Man-Bot had a Wield command for it, he didn't do anything. I've
seen some posts on the Community Center at the FF site that complained
about the characters being effectively drawn under the map terrain, but
this is the first time that I noticed an object at the wrong altitude.
Make sure you've taken out all the enemies on the map before you have
Alchemiss attempt to close the portal. If you haven't gotten all the
raptors (thugs are ignored for this), red arrows will appear to show
you where any you missed are hiding.
When Alchemiss tries to close the portal (you must use her Close
Portal command on it), the biggest of the bunch will appear nearly on
top of her. But with everybody ready, you can take it down rather
quickly.
Maximum prestige for this mission depends on how long you want to stand
ready in front of the portal, waiting for random raptors to arrive. The
values in the Nicadeamus FAQ are close to the minimum. It's easy to get
a few hundred more points, but it's boring to wait, and annoying to
chase raptors around before somebody (in my case Sea Urchin) can
finally put it down. You get 100 for the Prestige canister from the
park. I got a total of 1505: 14 Raptors * 20, 9 Wild Raptors * 30, 10
Tough Raptors * 40, 5 Thugs with Bat * 5, 5 Thugs with Gun * 12, & 1
T-Rex * 150. If you don't wait around, you should get about 1245
Prestige.
Interlude: Again, the new team member - Alchemiss in this case - gets
"Non-Squad" XP for participating. El Diablo got 300 extra XP for the XP
canister. If you can, get Electron Beam for Mentor if you haven't
already.
Quirk: The Unsub character guide for FF mentions that you see the text
box for "Flier" if you let the cursor stay below the last known
attribute (including those you haven't bought yet) for a hero.
Actually, it depends on what you've been looking at already; I got it
to show me the text for "Nimble" once, and I've seen others.
MISSION #07 - "Here Today, Gone Forever"
This one is designed to force you to move quickly from "fire" to
"fire," as it were. You have to take Minuteman and El Diablo, and have
room for 2 others. Because the ants don't move too far from the
anthills, you can get by with Man-Bot in this one, but he may show up
at the very end of dealing with one anthill just in time to start
moving everyone towards another one or two.
Quirk: Both Man-Bot and Alchemiss refused to go through a narrow alley
with two crates in it; they tried to go the long way around the
building instead. I guess heroes don't know how to jump on top of
crates or edge past them. Later on, I saw Deja Vu running on top of
parked cars, but I guess a 2-foot-high wooden crate is an
insurmountable obstacle unless you have the Jumper attribute.
You can lose lots of Prestige due to the actions of the ants, or
accidental/side-effect damage by the heroes. Remember that completely
destroying a building, or knocking out a civilian, is what costs you
Prestige; no penalty for partial destruction or wounding.
As Nicadeamus says, you can get any number of ants to come out of an
anthill, so the amount of Prestige you get is determined solely by how
quickly you destroy anthills, and how much effort you expend in killing
ants vice the anthill. Note that any live ants nearby are removed the
moment you destroy the anthill, and you apparently don't get any credit
for them.
Quirk: Man-Bot got apparently run over by a bus during one run of this
mission. I didn't notice it was moving because of the way I was popping
from one character to another; and then I thought for a while an ant
was carrying it! At one point, Man-Bot was hidden from view inside the
middle of the bus, then he was suddenly catapulted out of it and flew
over the just-closed anthill to land with about 80 HP missing. Ow!
Anyway, watch out for vehicles moving around during this one; they will
often drive right over an anthill you just closed, or will drive right
into (and crash in front of) an anthill that just appeared. Often, the
heroes are safest on the sidewalks or running right down the middle of
the street on the yellow line.
Quirk: I've seen multiple busses driving around with the exact same
amount of damage done to them; I don't know how that happened, as they
were apparently nowhere ever near ants.
The XP canister is actually inside/under a water tank on a rooftop; El
Diablo picking up the tank made the green glow immediately go away. I
was able to get it by carefully zooming in and moving around using the
arrow keys until I could actually select the canister and Use it.
The game engine moves the ants around even if you don't see them, so
don't be lax in tackling the ants. Because of Prestige penalties, the
variable number of ants you can get rid of, and the damage that can be
done to the city, I can't give you a minimum or maximum value for
Prestige earned on this mission. In several tries, I got from 315 to
645.
This mission ends when you destroy the biggest anthill. Luckily for me,
Man-Bot usually ends up the closest when it appears, as he is slow
getting to the next-to-last one on the far side of the city.
Interlude:
You may wonder what's going at the Freedom Fortress, but just train up
your characters and save the game as usual.
Quirk: I finally decided to mention that when you train a hero, then
return to the screen where you can select heroes to recruit or dismiss
or train, you get no picture of the hero and the "old" CP and
recruitment values. Select the hero you just trained to see the updated
values and restore the picture.
Whine: It would be nice if custom characters could "buy back" the "bad"
attributes that they started with. For instance, to make a custom
character cheap enough to recruit with limited Prestige, you might add
things like Beserker and Weak Minded; some of these could be removed
for either the cost you paid for them, or some small multiple above
that, as the character advances. This would be like the procedure in
the Champions RPG of "buying down Disadvantages."
Quirk: Custom characters can only buy one new Attribute each time they
train.
Mission #08 - "City of Darkness"
El Diablo isn't available for this one, and Man-Bot is mandatory;
choose 3 others to go underground, including your custom heroes.
Quirk: If you damage The Ant when you see him the second time, say by
throwing an explosive mushroom at him, he won't sustain the correct
amount of damage. I saw a "78" appear above him in the explosion, but
he showed 10 HP remaining just before he disappeared. I'm not sure you
could actually kill him, say by having somebody strong like Man-Bot or
Minuteman throw a mushroom, instead of Sea Urchin like I used. He's
probably rigged to not be killed no matter what you do, though.
SPOILER: In the second city cavern, break the wall to the next area by
throwing a mushroom at it; odds are you'll take out one of the 3
Soldier Ants hiding behind the rocks. END SPOILER
The Blue Darkmen have the ability to go invisible, but they have to
turn visible to attack. Be quick on the pause key! They also have some
kind of electric defense, which even affects Man O' War. MOW is
definitely _not_ the best character to deal with Darkmen.
Quirk: The heroes can detect those ants behind the wall, even if you
can't see them. I got both Mentor and Man-Bot to say their "I sense
enemies" line when picking up mushrooms near the rocks.
Quirk: When The Ant shows up a third time, he's back to full HP, even
if you damaged him before. OK, OK, he's there to push the story, not be
an enemy. But why does his status bar say "Mysterious Mimic of the
Emmet Empire"? BTW, when I got MOW to throw a mushroom at The Ant, it
did more than enough damage to KO, but all I saw was Stunned, and his
HP stayed at 10 even after a few more hits from Sea Urchin and MOW; The
Ant just delivered his line and dug a hole to escape again.
Now, I don't know if The Ant will simply escape again when he appears
on the street in the third city cavern, but I again beat the snot out
of him with MOW & Sea Urchin, and again he escaped. Warning: he's a
fast mover compared to the other enemies!
SPOILER: After destroying the wall out of the third city cavern, you
see before you a tunnel with a veritable chain of those exploding
mushrooms. If you happen to have something to throw in there to set one
off, you will get to see an amazing chain reaction that will eventually
blow up the rocks at the other end of the tunnel. I counted at least 4
KO's in there as well, but 5 or so more Soldier Ants came out, 1 or 2
at a time, over the next minute or so. I was also lucky that one
mushroom survived at the very end. END SPOILER
SPOILER: If you wiped out the tunnel like I did, and then the
procession of Soldier Ants after that, then you'll find only one last
enemy in the final city cavern. And that's The Ant, again. But this
time he'll stay down. END SPOILER
This mission ends when you Interrogate The Ant.
Why the last city cavern has several energy canisters is beyond me, as
I had only one short combat here. Once again, my originally
questionable decision to bring Sea Urchin on this mission paid off, as
I doubt anyone else could have beaten The Ant so quickly, although
throwing a mushroom at him first certainly made a big difference!
Quirk: Man-Bot refers to "The Shadow" in the final cinematic, but I
don't recall hearing either she or The Ant use that name earlier. So
how did Man-Bot know what to call her?
Underground buildings (at least 2 of them when I did this mission)
getting destroyed doesn't have a Prestige penalty.
I got 1150 Prestige from this mission, which includes the 100 bonus for
the Prestige canister.
A simply awful FF joke:
Q: Which member of Freedom Force would make the best TV dinner?
A: Mentor, because he is "ready to serve" and "for the good
of all"!
Interlude:
The Ant joins Freedom Force for no Prestige cost.
This time, you train in the tunnel, with an annoying background sound
something like a filling bathtub.
Quirk: When you hover the mouse pointer over the word "Training...", it
says you can "Improve Your Character's Stats, Abilities and Powers";
but you can't improve Stats, only Attributes and Powers.
Quirk: Luckily for you, Shadow is in the database; I guess The Ant told
Freedom Force all he knew about her and more. You should therefore
choose heroes with Acid or Radiation attacks for this mission.
Quirk: When you select anyone/anything in the database, you see the
rotating animated figure. When you're viewing the selected whatever,
you see the rotating animated figure. But when you back out, you see
nothing animated or rotating until you select something else; you
should at least see what you had selected earlier.
Mission #09 - "Where Shadows Fall" (Parts 1 and 2)
You have 4 characters, but one of them must be The Ant, and you can't
have Alchemiss; I think custom characters can be in every mission after
#06.
SPOILER: You should pick a strong character like Minuteman or Man-Bot;
you're going to need to knock down some columns in part 2. END SPOILER
In Part 1, Alchemiss will warn you of an ambush in the first city
cavern just as several Blue Darkmen appear. You are supposed to take
out a specific one that is running for the next cavern, which I was
able to do with a thrown mushroom, but you'll still run into Shadow in
the next room.
In the second room, The Ant will summon 2 Giant Red Ants when Shadow
plus several Darkmen appear. Take advantage of their
sacrifice/distraction to take out the enemies. Be careful of moving too
far forward; several Purple Darkmen lurk behind the far row of
buildings and can throw damaging attacks through the buildings as far
as the middle of the street.
You may wonder what happened if you damage Shadow; apparently she goes
invisible and flees beyond the second wall of rocks. Nicadeamus' FAQ
says you must defeat Shadow in the second cavern before you can proceed
to the third, but I found that I didn't actually have to defeat Shadow,
just do some damage to her.
Don't forget to get the XP canister before going beyond the rocks to
the third cavern.
Quirk: When you enter the third cavern, and get close enough to the
open doors, a cinematic sequence will run. Anything the characters have
picked up will disappear when the sequence is over. "Sandman" confirmed
this, saying that it applies to ALL cinematics in the game.
You should get 595 Prestige for part 1, for 9 Blue and 7 Purple
Darkmen. No penalty for destroying underground buildings.
Nicadeamus also said that The Ant must pull both ropes on either end of
the stone doors to open them. It worked for me with The Ant pulling one
and Man-Bot another; guess they just both have to be pulled.
Open the doors and move to the opening to end part 1.
In part 2, you can either try to take down the 4 columns while staying
close to the center, or go running around to each one. I barely
succeeded with a combination approach: Man-Bot and Sea Urchin ran to
each column and knocked it down, The Ant kept doing Shoves to Shadow
and any Darkmen that came near to keep them busy, and Mentor stayed in
the center taking down Darkmen with Electron Beam. I nearly lost
Mentor, but once Man-Bot got to a column it came down very quickly. I
had Sea Urchin and The Ant run for the 2 Prestige canisters when there
were opportunities; such as when Shadow accidentally blinded herself.
My score, including 200 for the 2 canisters, was 965 for part 2, for a
total of 1560 on this mission. But I somehow missed several Darkmen
(got 8/11 Blue at 30 each, and 3/5 Purple at 35 each), probably because
they didn't move close enough to be triggered. Apparently, there is no
damage penalty for the 4 columns. I only took out Shadow once while the
columns were still up, but when she came back The Ant wore her down and
she was easy to defeat once all the columns were down.
Quirk: People in 1962 didn't say somebody "had issues".
Mission #10 - "Looking for Trouble" (Parts 1 and 2)
Before Part 1, you pick 2 characters to go along with Minuteman and
Liberty Lad. But only LL plays in this part.
Quirk: Liberty Lad can hang in mid-air if he's stunned by one of his
own Stun Grenades while jumping. He'll complete his movement when the
stun wears off.
I think that some hilarious (to me, anyway) dialogue between two thugs
when you first spot them, involving high-energy physics, is in this
part of the game.
Quirk: When Liberty Lad stunned and attacked a Gangster, then jumped
back up to a rooftop, the Gangster ran around the corner of the
building and began firing at a policeman standing half a block away,
instead of running back and forth under LL like I expect. What's worse,
the policeman took some damage, but just stood there during several
bursts of gunfire.
Quirk: Liberty Lad can run right through the small "top of the stairs"
structures first seen on the top of some buildings on this map. He can
also run through the billboards standing on some buildings.
Quirk: You can return the second purse to the lady standing at a corner,
then talk to her and be told her purse was just stolen. What, again!?
Quirk: The crooked cop that tells you to go to Homer's Electronics is
wrong; the sign says "Homer's Electrical Store".
Nicadeamus missed the first of the secondary objectives: Retrieve the
purse from the purse snatcher (40pp).
As Nicadeamus says, use Stun Grenades to even the odds; hell, I used
them to shamelessly take advantage of them! Nearly all the enemies in
this part will just mill around aimlessly after they come out of stun,
if LL just jumps back up to a rooftop after taking out one or two of
their number. I used this principle on as many as 6 thugs at once.
SPOILER: There's a situation with 2 pistol thugs plus a patrolling
gangster. I followed the gangster, and took him out far enough away
from the pistol thugs that they didn't notice, then went back for the
oblivious pair. END SPOILER
Quirk: One gangster stationed near a corner is near a building whose
rooftop is apparently high enough to put him out of Liberty Lad's
"sensor range". I had LL move to the corner of the building, heard
nothing, told him to jump down preparatory to crossing the street, and
suddenly heard LL speak plus a gangster voice. The gangster began
running, and soon it was over; but LL didn't say anything until he got
down to the ground, as if the top of the high building put the gangster
on the ground out of range.
I got 470 Prestige for Part 1, plus 2 XP canisters.
This part ends when LL hides in the truck.
In Part 2 you are introduced to Law and Order, then Microwave. Order is
not under your control, and will usually go around destroying
warehouses until knocked out, or just close to it. For me, he stopped
moving when thugs with pistols whittled him down to 17 HP. So, I had to
do the last warehouse and a half on my own.
SPOILER: Maybe it depends on which warehouse (the 20 HP kind only) that
you destroy last, but Pinstripe and Microwave, plus 3 Gangsters, showed
up for me in the area near the guardhouses near the last warehouse. You
could set up your heroes, except for the one destroying the last
warehouse, in that vicinity to get an advantage in the final combat. In
fact, by carefully leaving the part of the warehouse near the
guardhouse for last, you won't have a hero miss the fight. END SPOILER
Quirk: Order is restored to full HP during the cinematic when Pinstripe
appears, but your heroes aren't.
This part ends when you take down Pinstripe.
A perfect run of this mission, including getting the Prestige canister
on top of the warehouse in Part 2, should get you 1711 Prestige.
Quirk: That Prestige canister can hang in mid-air if you destroy parts
of the building underneath.
Interlude:
Unless you added a lot of custom characters, or used a Prestige cheat,
this should be the first time you have more than one full screen of
heroes.
Quirk: The "Up" and "Down" buttons don't indicate if nothing will
happen when you push them. You just have to try, and try the other one
if you're already at the end of the list.
The 2 XP canisters in Part 1 should have given Liberty Lad a total of
900 XP for the mission. Liberty Lad should get Danger Sense right away.
It's your option, if you can afford it, to get Law & Order and/or
Bullet or wait. You'll get Microwave on the team for free regardless.
Mission #11 - "Wanted - The Minuteman" (Parts 1, 2, 3)
Surprisingly, Minuteman and Liberty Lad have to go on this one; you'd
think MM wouldn't want to confuse everyone by fighting himself, but
maybe he just can't stomach letting others ruin his rep. And again
Alchemiss is unavailable for some reason; must be more studying or
something.
Part 1 could _almost_ be handled by just MinuteMan and Liberty Lad (as
long as LL isn't swarmed by enemies and dodges nearly everything). But
you'll be glad if you have some other heroes along. Although in my case,
I thought Microwave moved too slowly to get involved in most of the
fights.
This is the first map that I noticed subway entrances and the "Wok n
Roll" sign.
Quirk: After KOing one thug on a rooftop, the money bag appeared inside
the building, down at ground level. I wouldn't have noticed it, except
for the red arrow pointing to the bag inside the building. And even
though Liberty Lad didn't leave the rooftop, I was able to have him
Retrieve the bag, and I watched it disappear with him still up on the
roof. It also happened with a second bag.
Watch out for the thugs in this one. Not only do they have more HP (35)
than you're used to, they can also jump up onto rooftops.
Don't forget the XP canister in an alley near one corner of the map.
Part 1 ends when you Talk to the Bank Manager, who will only appear
after you've gotten both bags.
A perfect run of Part 1 gets you 400 Prestige.
You'll only have 3 heroes in Part 2; MinuteMan is removed.
As Nicadeamus says, take out the male clone from a distance; he
explodes when you Talk to him.
There is a health canister under one of the shipping containers near
where you see the Minuteman clone.
Part 2 ends when you interrogate the Minuteman clone. Your total for
this mission should now be 880; 400 of it is for Part 1.
Part 3 is a bit tougher, but only because the cops and civilians get in
the way more.
One trick that I learned from the FF site forums is to disable or stop
the cars so they won't run people over; even a mailbox or something in
the street will stop them, but you may have to damage a car until it
changes graphics for it to stop moving otherwise.
Get the Prestige canister in the alley before talking to the chief of
police at the station.
SPOILER: Before talking to the chief, put 2 of your heroes near the
yellow crosswalk in front of the station. That way, when Deja Vu shows
up in that vicinity, you'll be ready. END SPOILER
Quirk: Actually, the above spoiler can be defeated if you press the Esc
key during the cinematic when Deja Vu appears. He will then show up in
the alley next to the police station.
Quirk: Although any "real" police getting KOed before Deja Vu appears
will get you a message and lose the secondary objective, afterward it
won't.
Because Deja Vu can create clones of himself, each worth 400 PP, until
he's KOd, there's no telling how much Prestige you can earn from this
mission. However, you should get at least 660 from this part, plus 1280
from Parts 1 and 2 (there's that double-counting-Part1 bug again). If
you stomp Deja Vu right away, you'll get only 400 for him and 400 for
each of the 3 clones that you beat (if you let him appear in the usual
spot); otherwise, it's however many you can stomach...
Interlude:
I followed Nicadeamus' advice, and tried playing the final part of the
previous mission several times, chasing Deja Vu all over and just
beating up his clones (after DV himself was down to about 20 HP). My
version of his Deja-Hunter cost me about 7000 Prestige, but I got over
8400 one time - enough to afford "Deja-Killer" and also Law & Order
too! Deja Vu finally went down to some police bullets, but surprisingly
not from the cop who had been firing at point-blank range for a while;
it was one of the 3 cops that had chased him a whole block and went
down an alley as a group.
No new characters this time, but you should have enough Prestige now to
easily afford at least one of the built-ins.
Quirk: Minuteman gets XP and can be trained although he's not
available.
Quirk: Dwight Arrow is supposed to be a U.S. pilot flying in Vietnam,
but the first acknowledged U.S. air attack on North Vietnam wasn't
until 1964.
Mission #12 - "Deja Who" (Parts 1 and 2)
You get only 3 characters to start with in Part 1; one must be Liberty
Lad, and Minuteman is unavailable for obvious reasons.
Watch out for enemies hiding under trees or in bushes.
Quirk: You can't do more than half (100) damage to the statue in this
part, or those in Part 2. Why the game lets you attack them at all is a
mystery.
Part 1 ends after you free Minuteman and then Talk to him. I got 710
Prestige here.
Part 2 starts with a surprise grand melee; the only tough part for me
was that Order went beserk and nearly blew up everyone by hitting the
male civilian.
Quirk: Order's beserk status was removed by the cinematic that you get
when somebody KOed the cloned MM. Since this can happen during combat,
it's kind of disconcerting to have the status disappear.
While any hero(es) can scour the park for clones, only LL can
Interrogate them. Some of the ones who give up will heal back up to
full if you wait, but they won't fight back after you Interrogate
them. Make sure you KO them to get all the Prestige.
If you really want to solve the puzzle, instead of just triggering MM
clones and beating them for the Prestige, look closely at the pedestals
and you'll see numbers.
I was able to release and fight all the fakes, I guess Nicadeamus
missed something somehow.
Don't forget the XP canister under a tree near a corner. You may want
to let Eve use it, as she won't get any XP for this mission otherwise.
Part 2 ends when you free the correct MM.
DO you want to see the Freedom Flyer? Just wait, you'll see it in a
little while...
With the 710 from Part 1, you should get a total of 2350 Prestige from
this mission.
Interlude:
Eve automatically joins the Freedom Force.
Last chance to create a Deja-Hunter/Killer! Mine used the "Black Widow"
version of Alchemiss that's available without downloading any skins,
and the "Shadow" voice. Compared to Nicadeamus' specs, mine had lower
STR but higher ENG, and cost about 7,000. I also used the name "Deja-
Killer", because I tweaked mine from Nicadeamus' recipe. This character
became the only custom that I used more than once in the game (my first
custom was a really cheap thing immune to cold to use in mission #3).
Mission #13 - "Seeing Double"
Pick 3 characters to go along with Eve, just not Man-Bot. If you
created a Deja-Hunter custom character, this is the perfect time to use
it.
Quirk: I spotted several out-of-control dynamic shadows on several
buildings. The first is, from where the heroes start, forward and to
the right; it's a stone portico on a rectangular college building
facing the "quad". The shadow moves around as your viewpoint shifts.
The two domed buildings on either side of the one with the cloning ray
also have small dynamic shadows that move about.
This mission should be tackled in 3 parts. First, work your way around
the map taking out clones, but be careful not to be shot by that
cloning ray. This just makes it easier when you are hunting Deja Vu
clones later. Second, destroy the shield generators and then the
cloning ray itself. This triggers the appearance of Deja Vu. Chasing
him and taking out his clones, and eventually him, is third and final.
If you're using a Deja-Hunter/Killer custom, you can hide below the
Cloning Ray's pedestal (i.e. below where it can shoot at you) and throw
acid attacks at it to knock it out.
Even if you do use a Deja-Hunter/Killer custom, Deja Vu can get out of
control by jumping up and down between the ground and rooftops, and can
create several clones in a row. Sometimes the clones show up at the
other altitude. And the clones can run fast enough that even a SPD 9
character can chase one for a while just constantly swinging at him
without actually attacking. Note that if you build using Nicadeamus'
recipe, a level 1 acid attack won't work often enough unless you over-
power it. But that costs energy, which the recipe has as ENG 1. I
therefore strongly suggest that you lower STR and raise ENG. If you're
lucky, you will only be using the acid attack on the real Deja Vu once,
and you won't burn off all his HP with it. After that, you'll be
chasing Deja Vu around, and then using the melee attack (because it's 0
energy), or the acid attack if a clone gets too far away. I was lucky
that one use of an acid attack took the original Deja Vu down to only 8
HP, so the clones had only 4, making it very easy from then on.
Quirk: Clones that appear in the black area off the map were ignored by
my Deja-Killer custom until they moved a bit into "fair territory".
Quirk: There's no way to tell a hero to just follow somebody. You have
to constantly change the movement destination. Clicking on the person
will actually instruct the hero to carry out the default attack (which
is sometimes what you want to do), but not when you're trying to follow
around DV and only attack the clones...
Quirk: You can left-click and drag to open up a translucent window on
the screen. It has some interesting size constraints, but doesn't seem
to do anything. The window will disappear when you let up on the mouse
button. While at first I thought it was supposed to let you select
multiple characters, it doesn't.
Quirk: Eve either had a rare miss, or she decided to shoot the original
Deja Vu instead of holding fire because the clone she was originally
told to shoot had just been KOed by my Deja-Killer. Probably my fault
for assuming that the game would avoid attacking because the targetted
enemy was gone.
Well, this is another mission where you could get any amount of
Prestige because of the nearly infinite Deja Vu clones you could knock
out. The minimum would be something like 1585.
Interlude:
Hopefully, you got enough Prestige that you can afford Bullet. That's
the last of the built-in heroes; the 3 others available if you have the
EB pre-order disc or modify your init.py file are something else. I
don't know when those 3 are supposed to get recruited, but none of them
showed up now or before the end of the game when I modified the init.py
file after already starting a campaign. The 3 are in the Multiplayer
list if you want to look at them, though.
Check out the stats on the Cloning Ray in the Database! It's a good
thing that I took out the shield generators first, or I guess I would
have been wasting my time trying to destroy it otherwise.
Mission #14 - "Robots on the Rampage" (Parts 1, 2, and 3)
You have to take Man-Bot, and you can't take Mentor. Well, you should
know that you're going up against giant robots. Man O' War should do
well; Minuteman and those vulnerable to radiation should stay home. I
started off with Man O' War (Flier, but nothing else added over
starting powers), Sea Urchin, and El Diablo. They did extremely well in
part 1, keeping the destruction down to 3 complete buildings and 2 more
partials. I sent El Diablo over to grab the XP canister on the rooftop
without too much regard for him needing the XP; he's useful, but all he
managed to do in the first part was turn two destroyed buildings into
smaller rocks.
Nicadeamus and I both got 9 robots, but the screen after part 1 says
"9/10"; if somebody knows where another robot might be lurking, let us
know!
I got only 375 Prestige from part 1: each building destroyed is a 20
point penalty.
Part 2 is another exercise in fighting "fires" as quickly as possible;
as soon as you beat one group of Mech-Men, another seems to appear,
sometimes right behind you! I found it helpful to usually use Man O'
War as the initial attacker, El Diablo to throw in Inferno when the
fight wasn't too close to the large building you're trying to protect,
Man-Bot to Transfer to keep the other two going and Focus once in a
while, and Sea Urchin to throw acid bombs when she got a chance and
dart in to finish off the blanked or stunned robots with low HP. She's
the only one that took serious damage, when one robot took a swing at
her that flung her quite a ways.
I got 1175 total Prestige for parts 1 and 2.
Part 3 might seem even tougher, but the objective is apparently lost
only if all 4 corner statues _and_ the spire are destroyed, as the
robots destroyed one statue on me without stopping play. Just work your
way around, quick as you can, and that will put an end to the Mech-Men.
If at all possible, try to keep heroes up in the air; that way only the
Flame Mechs can easily target them. You won't believe how much
knockback one of your heroes will take if a regular Mech-Man connects.
As always, even though you should get 425 Prestige for completing Part
3, the game reports 1550 from "Previous Mission" instead of 1175, for a
total of 1975.
Interlude:
Quirk: It's possible for a hero to appear to gain more than one level
in a mission! I managed to get 900 XP for El Diablo because he got the
XP canister in part 1 of the mission. Given the bug that I described
earlier, the 300 XP for the canister was doubled, then El Diablo got
the normal 300 XP for being on the mission. Voila, 900 XP, and I was
lucky that he must have been at least half-way to the next level
because he got 1200 CP in the hero listing. Except that when I went to
train, he had only 600+ CP. Bogus!
Quirk/SPOILER: The stats for Mr Mechanical are in the Database already!
Looks like you'll need to power-up Man O' War and Alche-Miss for that
one, and keep everyone away from those big feet. END SPOILER
If somebody has gotten to this point WITHOUT recruiting Bullet, can you </pre><pre id="faqspan-2">
let us know if he still appears in the Mission Briefing?
Mission #15 - "Destruction Production"
Minuteman puts himself on the squad for this one, and for some reason
The Ant doesn't want to go underground this time. I used Bullet for
quickly running over to Override Turret, Man O' War for robot-
electrifying fun, and Man-Bot for Transfer and Disruption of everything
that isn't a railing (leave those to Minuteman - sorry!). After the
fact, Bullet and Minuteman were only useful for throwing things.
Quirk: I was able to get Man-Bot to shoot at the left turret in the
first room without it shooting back (because every time I tried to have
Bullet run to Override, he got shot), but then I couldn't destroy the
console later.
Quirk: If you zoom way out (you may need to alter the init.py file for
this), you can see little bits of other rooms that you haven't gotten
to yet, or even Blank status coming off robots you can't see.
Override Turret seems to only work for one shot, so keep doing it
unless you want somebody attacking the turret to be suddenly shot at
point-blank range, or a robot attacking the turret to suddenly not have
it as an enemy. In fact, because of the way the consoles and turrets
are arranged, the only turret that I could get any use out of was the
one to the right in the first room. All the others, you can't get to
the console without getting shot. SPOILER: So you might as well exploit
the slight gap between the turrets having a "Medium" range, and any
heroes that have a longer range attack. Those turrets shoot extremely
quickly, so you're not going to get them unscathed otherwise. END
SPOILER
Quirk: You can't destroy or damage the doors between rooms; they just
automatically open when a hero gets close enough.
Quirk: "Houston, we have a problem" is an interesting phrase for Bullet
to say, but it wasn't until 1970 and Apollo 13 that it would make any
sense - not 1962.
The enemies can usually be taken out one at a time; the significant
exception is Flame Mechs, which usually aren't afflicted with Blank and
can shoot at fliers. You won't find much to throw until the later
rooms, so Minuteman will probably be your least valuable squad member.
Quirk: Some of the robot bodies remain behind when you destroy them or
what they were on. This affects 3 out of the 4 in the repair room.
Quirk: I'm not sure if this was the graphics starting to go haywire,
but my two fliers (Man-Bot and Man O' War) sometimes ended WAY up in
the air when flying from one room to another, mostly the last 3 rooms.
And somehow they could fly _over_ the door, instead of through it.
Maybe changing the zoom settings did it?
The mission ends when you destroy the 4th generator. You fail if you
destroy the reactor instead, but you'll usually only miss 60 points for
the primary objective. The only difference is that the game won't let
you save the game, encouraging you to try again.
The enemy list for the mission is strange: 24/23 Mech Men (I guess it
counted some hidden in storage boxes) for 840, 5/5 Flame Mech for 250,
and Flame Mech (yes, again) for 50.
Anyway, your Prestige total should be 1420, which includes 100 for the
Prestige canister. I cheated by having all 4 heroes grab both the XP
and Prestige canisters, so I got 1720 total, and 600 XP for each squad
member afterward.
Interlude:
By the way, if you have enabled the console in your init.py file, when
you press the "u" key in the game it will toggle a display of some
rendering engine stats, e.g. FPS, # of objects, etc. After a while, it
just becomes annoying when you're typing in save game names.
If you plan to take Man O' War on the next mission, I strongly suggest
that you plus-up his Storm Bolt attack if at all possible; having it at
level 5 instead of 3 makes a significant different in how fast you can
take down a giant robot.
There's an entry for Mr Mechanical the giant robot in the Database
already (although it should have appeared after mission #15 instead of
#14, given that you find giant robot parts in one room). Choose your
characters and train them accordingly.
Mission #16 - "The Madness of Mr Mechanical"
You have to take Microwave on this mission, and can't take Man-Bot.
Well, the tin can was originally going to be one of my choices to fight
a giant robot, so I had to improvise instead. And that meant trouble,
no matter what I tried. My first try was Man O' War, Alchemiss and Sea
Urchin: Sea Urchin got KOed, and really couldn't attack the giant robot
on the ground or go toe-to-toe with Mech-Men. Second try, I pulled out
my Deja-Killer (who had been taking a break since #13) and gave her
about 900 CP of ranged Electricity attack, plussed-up Man O' War's
Storm Bolt to level 5, and left Microwave to mind the Freedom Fortress:
the giant robot came down much faster, but Microwave didn't do as well
as Sea Urchin against the Mech-Men - Microwave survived but only took
down 2, and couldn't run/fly away if they came after him. Your mileage
may vary, but I _really_ didn't like Microwave in the squad on this
mission.
Yay! We finally get to see the outside of the Freedom Fortress! Doesn't
it remind you of the building from "Men in Black"? Or the HQ of the old
Justice League cartoon? There must be a lot of stuff underground,
because that building doesn't look big enough...
Unless you're really good at using Microwave's Teleport power, he/it
moves too slow for this mission. The giant robot moves too fast for
Microwave to keep up, making most shots miss because the target moves
out of range. SPOILER: Maybe keep Microwave around the Freedom Fortress
to fend off Mech-Men. Why Nicadeamus doesn't mention these is unknown,
but I guess they can lose the mission for you if you don't take down
the giant robot in a hurry. END SPOILER
This mission ends when the giant robot is KOed, or I guess you could
fail by letting the Freedom Fortress be destroyed. Unlike most other
missions, there are no breaks to explore the map without penalty.
You should get 260 Prestige for the objectives; as long as a target
building isn't completely destroyed, you get the points for saving it.
As Mr Mechanical is at the controls, usually all you have to do is hit
the giant robot enough for it to say "I'll take care of you first", and
it forgets about the building while it chases you instead.
Another batch of points is for the enemies: 350 for Mr Mechanical (the
giant robot), and up to 6*35 for Mech-Men attacking Freedom Fortress,
thus up to 560 more. Take off 20 points for each city building
demolished during the robot rampage, maybe add for the Prestige
canister under a crate in an alley, and you've got a variable total
that I can't predict for you. It probably doesn't matter if you got a
lot from Deja Vu clones earlier, anyway.
Interlude:
Why the Museum of Ancient History? I guess we'll find out...
Quirk: For once, the Database doesn't tell you anything about the
upcoming enemies when it should; if Mentor is already a traitor to the
Domain, why not tell Freedom Force about the expected soldiers?
Mission #17 - "History Lesson"
You must bring Alchemiss, and Mentor stays behind. Guess he didn't want
to risk being a special target of the invaders, or maybe he was afraid
his disguise might fail.
Quirk: The physics model is apparently working even during the
cinematics, because somehow my custom Deja-Killer got knocked down by a
taxi before the screen "zoomed out", Alchemiss even opened her mouth or
the objectives appeared. Not fun to have to start the mission damaged.
SPOILER: Before anyone goes anywhere, I strongly suggest that you blast
a car to the left of your starting position. That way, there will be a
lot less traffic to knock down Alchemiss or your other non-fliers. END
SPOILER
The aliens that came out of a particular portal disappear (except for
Praetor) when that portal is closed. Alchemiss has to be rather close
to the portal to do it, and it takes a few seconds; so no letting El
Diablo throw Infernos that-a-way! ;)
The aliens will occasionally turn on shields when they think they're in
the middle of a big battle. Surprisingly, although the data says the
shields are movable, the aliens just stand there. SPOILER: Acid attacks
go right through these shields. And getting the aliens to turn on their
shields is a good way to prevent them from even getting close to the
museum. END SPOILER
SPOILER: A Deja-Killer as described by Nicadeamus will do rather well
on this mission, if you add something like an Electrical attack (Direct
or Ranged with Penetrating). Mine kept one portal busy while the other
3 heroes took care of another. The only problem was when an Alien
Sergeant blew up half a building under her; turns out that the aliens
need to see a hero to attack, so hovering over the middle of a rooftop
doing Direct attacks down into the alleys worked like a charm. END
SPOILER
Don't forget the XP canister on a rooftop, but wait until before you
interrogate Praetor to get it.
This mission ends when you interrogate Praetor. In my case, he had been
acid burned several times, but didn't take truly serious damage until
Man-Bot started walloping, and everyone else joined in - even
Alchemiss!
The Prestige from this mission is again very variable, because of the
number of Alien Warriors and Alien Sergeants that can come through the
portals before you close them, and the damage that can be done to the
city. Fulfilling all the objectives gets you 260 points, letting any of
the 19 civilians get wiped is -25 each. The portals usually let in 1
Alien Sergeant and 2 Alien Warriors each time, so you probably have "n"
times 75 and "2n" times 60 points for the enemies, or 195 for each
group of aliens that came through a portal. You don't get any points
for Praetor.
Interlude:
Well, the comic book cover during the loading screen, and the green
stuff on the ground in the background, sort of give it away. You can
expect to need Eve for what's coming up next.
Quirk: The descriptions are identical for the Alien Sergeant and Alien
Warrior, although the Warrior doesn't fly.
Quirk: After you press the "+" to add the 5th level to a power, when
you hover the mouse over the "-" it says "CP RETURN: 0" instead of the
correct value (which you do get back if you press "-").
Mission #18 - "A God Walks the Earth"
You must take El Diablo and Eve, but nobody else has to stay home.
To be assigned the secondary objective of unblocking the police
station, talk to the policeman near the blocked door. Then destroy, or
at least damage further, all 4 vehicles. I had already destroyed 3 of
them before talking, and had to throw the 4th one before it was marked
done.
The sylphs are apparently active even if you can't see them; while I
only saw them take out 1 civilian, the scorecard says I lost 5, for a
larger damage penalty than I got in the Mr Mechanical attack!
SPOILER: Green Sylphs can do acid damage to heroes that hit them with a
melee attack, even if they aren't resisting! At least, somehow one of
my heroes got acid burnt when roughing up a surrendered Green Sylph in
the next mission, and it probably applies here as well.
END SPOILER
Except for one sylph that I found way up in the corner near the XP
canister, you should be led to all the enemies by the arrows. I'd hold
off on interrogating the red sylph near the giant tree until you take
down the 2 Manbulls nearby.
This one ends when Eve (the only one who can in this mission)
interrogates the Red Sylph near the giant tree. Interestingly, the
cinematic also had a male civilian standing next to Pan; guess he
brought his lawyer!
A perfect run of this mission would get you 1340 Prestige.
Interlude:
Quirk: Pan, the Green Sylph and the Manbull are all in the database
now, but the Red Sylph isn't.
Quirk: Eve is still listed as being on the team, and can be trained
even though she's temporarily unavailable.
Mission #19 - "Forbidden Fruit"
As the Mission Briefing suggests, Microwave must be on the team, and
Eve is unavailable. Mentor stays home to polish his dome or something.
The Sylphs have different elemental attacks and vulnerabilities, so
you'll have to be flexible and sometimes just waste attacks against
strong resistances just to be doing something.
SPOILER: Warning! The Silver Sylphs are new, and have a lightning chain
attack that can travel extremely far and affect multiple targets. END
SPOILER
SPOILER: Use El Diablo's Ignition, or Man-Bot's Disruption, or
something equivalent to quickly take down the temples that start
spawning enemies when you approach. You can't actually use those
attacks on the temples, but it's just as effective on the columns
nearby. END SPOILER
If you look very closely at the ground, you can find little spirals at
various locations. These are one-use Stasis traps, triggered when
somebody runs (not flies) over that location. I didn't see any Sylphs
run over them, but it's possible for heroes to accidentally trigger
them while fighting or just going from place to place.
When Microwave collects fruit from the 5th tree, 4 Green Sylphs will
appear at the red arrows. You can't KO them, so just pick one to
Administer Cure to. I don't think you have to beat them up to do it,
but I did it anyway. Warning: my custom character got acid-burned
while attacking one of these passive Green Sylphs with a melee attack,
so the physics engine may let a hero get poked with a spear even if
the holder isn't actively attacking with it.
Don't forget the obvious XP and Prestige canisters before you end this
mission. For once, there were enough HP canisters for me, but I was
also cheating when using them.
This one ends, after an interesting cinematic, when you Administer
Fruit to one of the 4 Green Sylphs.
You can again get a variable amount of Prestige for this mission,
because of the spawn point temples. At least you'll get 200 for the
objectives, 100 (unless you cheat) for the canister, no penalty for
destroying the 6 temples. I'm not sure if I only got 1 or 2 arrivals
from my first or second temple, so I won't even tell you how many
enemies I got. However, don't worry about getting 6/9 or so Green
Sylphs; that's due to the 4 that show up at the very end, when you can
only Administer Fruit to 1.
Quirk: If you try a variation on the canister cheat, and try Administer
Fruit simultaneously to all 4 Green Sylphs, you'll probably get a view
of some other hero next to an unchanged sylph while Microwave talks to
a female civilian.
Interlude:
While previous backgrounds have also been animated, this is the first
one where something interesting happens; you get to see Pan doing his
Lethes (sic) Song and dance, with audio.
Quirk: You can train up the team members that you'd assume are
inaccessible for various reasons, including Eve.
Mission #20 - "Pandemonium"
You can't change your squad from the last mission, but the game shows
you the screen anyway.
Quirk: If you zoom out really far from the start location, you can see
the very tops of 2 pine trees, but everything else (besides your start
room and the one beyond the doors) is black.
There are more stasis trap spirals on the ground: 2 in the first room
you enter, 2 more in the small hedge maze following it, 1 each in the
dais and standing stones rooms.
Quirk: Mentor will call you on the psychic link twice, if you go
through both exits from the first room you enter. I guess the event is
set up to trigger on passing either spot, not just the first one.
Quirk: Enraged Manbulls are rather singleminded; two of them ran right
past Microwave, my only character on the ground. The first was going to
pick up a large rock, I assume the second one was trying to do the same
after the first got pounded while holding it.
SPOILER: The hidden rooms with Manbulls trigger on something involving
how long any hero has been nearby, either walking or flying. So flying
quickly past once or twice won't trigger them, but flying slowly or
walking should do it. END SPOILER
SPOILER/Quirk: One of the wall carvings in the fire room took a shot at
one of my heroes, so I quickly pulled back after getting rid of the Red
Sylph occupants. El Diablo then flew around doing Ignition on anything
and everything. Those wall carvings were tricky though; only one
specific location on the object would let you attack it. I think it was
the nose. Also, although they had 50 HP, when El Diablo did Ignition I
would consistently see a blue 30 damage marker when it exploded. END
SPOILER
Quirk: After the fire room, you see 2 Manbulls at the end of the hall.
When my custom Deja-Killer went after one to acid burn it, she flew
above the blackness that's normally behind the walls, while trying to
"cut the corner" and quickly approach the Manbull, which was moving
away to go pick up a huge rock. After the ensuing combat, I found
damage decals on the top of the wall from where she shot penetrating
bolts through the wall, from above and behind it.
SPOILER: Against the 3 Silver Sylphs on the dais, your best defense is
all-out attack while they charge up their lightning bolts. If you can't
take them all out before they let fly, at least knock down 1 or 2
instead of wearing them all down equally. Remember, even at 1 HP they
still shock you, at 0 they're a statistic. END SPOILER
Quirk: When an enemy starts to spawn at the central "altar" in the
standing stones room, there's a second or two where you can see the
enemy, and it looks like it's getting ready to attack, but you can't
target it. Eventually though, you can.
Enter the next room, and you have to defeat Eve and Pan, except that
Pan can't really be defeated. Have Microwave do Administer Cure to Eve
when prompted, and finally when you defeat Pan again, Eve will resolve
the whole thing. Did you notice that Eve turned the Manbulls into male
civilians?
Quirk: The throne seems a little light at only 110 pounds for something
so large. And several times I commanded El Diablo to Ignition it, but
he did nothing.
This one ends when you get Pan down to 1 HP the second time, and you
won't have a chance to go back for canisters - so take care of them
when you clear out the room they're in.
Again, because of the spawn sites, you can get a variable amount of
Prestige for this mission. At a minimum, you should get 1610, maybe a
little less if the game lets you destroy all the standing stones before
the first enemy spawns. There's no penalty for destroying the temple in
the first room, and apparently nothing else even counts.
Interlude:
Quirk: The "Wall Carving" is in the database now, but it has no picture
or description.
This Mission Briefing has the best cinematics so far.
Mission #21 - "Beginning of The End"
Both Man-Bot and The Ant are unavailable, but you can choose any 4 from
the rest.
I think the secondary objective is impossible, as I had my fastest
flying hero immediately set off to rescue the female civilian at the
crystal to your left, but she was already surrounded by 3 Raptors.
Admittedly, these were already damaged, and fell quickly, but by that
time the fool had already run off into the hills and met 3 more
raptors. This time she wasn't so lucky. I won't even ask you to imagine
what would have happened if she had run the other way into a T-Rex.
Anyway, at this point losing a little Prestige is the least of your
worries.
You really do have to keep a hero or two near the FF HQ, and constantly
check on them while moving the others in the rest of the map. In a few
seconds, several raptors can run in out of the desert and start
wreaking havoc. The 3 police are a slight advantage: if you listen
carefully you can sometimes hear them start to fire when you haven't
been checking, and that can alert you to trouble.
Quirk: It's possible to get rid of the second T-Rex before The Ant pops
up with a message about it and the beacon, which appears when you
approach the crystal and not necessarily the T-Rex.
Your chance to pick up canisters is after you've scoured the map for
thugs and raptors.
SPOILER: I strongly suggest that you have only 1 hero, preferably your
fastest flyer, place the 3rd transmitter, and make it at the crystal
where The Ant talks about the T-Rex. It actually doesn't matter exactly
where your other 3 heroes are, as the game will place them
automatically when the cinematic winds down. About the only choices you
have are: who the 4th hero - who should start heading back to the city
ASAP when the transmitter is placed - will be, and if your heroes are
flying or not.
After a cinematic and a slam-bang melee (Lord Dominion went flying
about as high as a pteranodon thanks to Alchemiss, and by the time he
started shooting he was alone; second time he went even higher but one
of his guards survived a few seconds longer), this mission is over.
If you play like I did, or close to it, you'll get a total of 1800
Prestige. This includes NOT getting the primary objective of "protect
the civilians", and losing 25 points for the silly female who wants to
walk with raptors. But Prestige shouldn't matter much now, as you're
down to the final mission!
Interlude:
Quirk: Lord Dominion and the Hit-man aren't in the database.
Quirk: Again, you can train up the unavailable character; if you've
gotten to this point in the game, you know who it is.
Last chance for training!
Pick 4 heroes who complement each other, and can cover a wide range of
attack types.
Mission #22 - "The End of Time" (Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4)
No XP or Prestige canisters out here, like you need them!
You can walk on the glowing purple edge of a disc, e.g. to get around
behind a building right at the edge of the normal-looking terrain. If
you couldn't, heroes that can only walk couldn't get to the healing
canister on disc I.
Beware of the portal! When you complete the primary objective, the
portal will immediately let off an explosion that does pretty
impressive knockback. On disc I, it threw Man O' War from street level
up onto a roof!
SPOILER/Quirk: On disc II, don't worry about immediately jumping into
combat with enemies encased in ice. Although the game lets you start up
attacks (and you lose the energy), all are cancelled when a cinematic
plays about 2 seconds after your arrival. Then, once the enemies thaw
out, and in some cases end up in odd locations or even damage
themselves, you can begin to fight them. END SPOILER
You must eliminate _all_ enemies, even if they don't bar your way to
the portal, or otherwise fulfill the primary objective _only_. An
excellent example is disc IV, with the ants; if you bring The Ant, the
objective changes to just getting rid of the impostor. As soon as you
do that (Shove works just dandy!), the ants immediately vanish and the
portal explodes open. You get Prestige for the ants, but not for the
impostor, in that case.
Part 1 ends when you enter the portal on disc IV (ants). If you still
care, you should get 980 Prestige unless you have The Ant and got away
with fewer ants at 30 each.
The heroes' HP is restored after completing each part, but no XP or CP
or training.
Again, beware the portal! On disc V (Shadow & the Darkmen - almost a
good name for a band!) one time, Alchemiss was the only hero that
didn't move far enough from the start point. When the portal opened,
she was thrown over the castle wall and almost over the edge!
Quirk: I wouldn't have seen them except for changing the zoom settings,
but on disc VI (Deja Vu) there are 3 oil drums and an EP canister
hanging way up in the air above one of the buildings. They can be
destroyed, but not picked up even by a flyer.
Quirk: In disc VI, it looks like all the Deja Vu clones will disappear
if you KO the original. I think that's what caused me to get "1/4" in
the enemies list later.
Quirk/Bug: Nicadeamus doesn't mention this, but you won't be able to
proceed to the next disc if you've knocked an enemy off the disc
without KOing them first. Which makes that Shove of The Ant rather
useless. I could be wrong, but it's the only explanation that I have
for not being able to move on from disc VIII, because I got The Ant to
throw a few rocks and knock at least one enemy off the disc - had to do
all 4 discs over again!
Quirk/Bug: This one is in the Curtis Burt FAQ, and I ran into it too at
this point. If you have The Ant use his Burrow power, then do anything
with other heroes, you won't be able to bring The Ant back. He can move
around, and even pick up objects and throw them, but can't use other
powers. Doing this may have also prevented me from moving on from disc
8, but I was able to move from disc 7 like this, so...
Part 2 ends when you enter the portal on disc 8. Again, due to variable
Prestige from Deja Vu clones, you will get at least 1040 more Prestige
from this part, plus 400 for each clone, minus damage penalty. Whoopee!
Part 3 is more of the same.
There are 2 HP canisters on the T-Rex disc; look under trees for the
second.
You don't have to destroy the temples, especially if you take down Pan
quickly.
You get no points for the turrets, just the Microwave robots, so you
may have to take out only 1 or 2 turrets to finish that disc.
Part 3 ends when you enter the portal after defeating Timemaster's
temporal twins. Two had one resistance each, so notice them when
assigning targets.
As mentioned before, the Prestige for earlier parts is added
incorrectly, giving me 2880 for the first 2 parts when it should be
1960. Part 3 is worth 2530 more.
Part 4 is the absolutely final showdown. Although you're told to
destroy the conduits first, I wasn't able to do any damage, so I moved
on to the 3 constraint devices on my own. I don't know what the game
does to encourage you to do this instead, although I got a message that
it was a good idea. And of course, THAT is when Timemaster shows up and
really starts the fun.
You can nearly ignore the temporal twins, except maybe to stun them or
something long enough to get past them to the constraint devices. Each
pair vanishes when you destroy the constraint, and you get the points
anyway, so whack away at the device! SPOILER: Note that they do explode
when destroyed, so you may want to have only 1 hero give the final hit
while others run on to the next target. END SPOILER
SPOILER: Timemaster will regenerate while any of the constraints exist,
but you can wear him down if you like, just to keep him from causing
worse damage to the heroes. I found Alchemiss' Vengeance Curse to be
rather useful in slowing down the big guy. END SPOILER
Part 4 ends when you have destroyed all 3 constraints, and then KOed
Timemaster.
Quirk: If somebody has played without recruiting Law and Order, do they
still appear (Law as a ghostly face above Order) in the ending
cinematic?
Even though Prestige is the last thing you need after the ending, when
the credits have rolled you get the usual points screen. You get a
surprisingly low amount of points for this, only 1700.
Quirk/Bug: And yet again, you get the wrong amount for prior parts: I
got 8290 when it should have been 5410, an extra 2880, so the game is
giving me double the first 2 parts when there is a 4th part to a
mission.
Hope you enjoyed playing the single player campaign for Freedom Force!
Pete Karsanow
This document Copyright 2002 Peter Karsanow.
http://www.geocities.com/hentaihelper/p_gmhelp.htm
