My previous feeling about Freelancer before its release (I didn’t play the CTT).
I had the opportunity to play Freelancer few hours. I completed the first two Showdown of a campaign (So, I only played 7 missions overall) but here is my first impression of this gamemode:
Pros:
- Overall, this gamemode is a refreshing way to play Hitman. New objectives, new random targets, safes, couriers… I appreciate the way that you need to come close to your target undetected, try to find a disguise, seeking for tools or weapons and leave the mission the task accomplished. We have still the Hitman’s spirit but in a new interesting way.
- The safehouse looks great. My mastery is still too low (6) to discover the house, but the pictures of it make me good vibes. Absolutely not in Hitman’s core, but decorating 47’s home is unexpectedly cool.
- Preparing the mission: choosing meticulously the destination of the campaign. Looking for alerted territories, saving some maps for Showdown… It allows a lot of freedom in mission preparation.
- A small thing (purely cosmetics), but having Deluxe items is a cool thing for Deluxe owners (a way to “award” Deluxe owners, but without gamechangers).
- Mastery tracks. Even though Freelancer is composed of 100 mastery levels, each level requires only 5000 XP and XPs are “easily” obtained and rewards are good (at least 250 XP for specific action and even 1000 for killing head of Syndicate IIRC). Therefore, it wouldn’t be tedious to level up Freelancer mastery.
Cons:
- The Suspects system. Maybe I still do’t understand how it works, but it quite difficult to identify the head of syndicate. The two showdown missions I succeded is mostly by luck. In the first one, the suspects were alerted and I killed the first suspect I saw (and it turned out to be the good one) and same for second showdown (where after trying to identify the suspect and killing some innocent suspects, I ended the mission by killing the guy just before he leaves the map - by luck, it was the good one).
I probably need more trains on that feature. To be honest, I still don’t understand correctly the different clues. Maybe after being used to that system, I would find this system more affordable. - Some challenges are either very hard or grindy. Challenges like GOAT or other feel very grindy (not a fan of it). In addition, challenges like finish a campaign in hardcore mode is surprising. IOI ultimately removes SASO challenges in Master mode in H3 (despite being present in H2), but they introduced such challenges in Freelancer. I have completed Hitman 3 at 100%, but I will not likely unlock all challenges in Freelancer.
- 47 earns a lot of money after every mission and he’s the best of the best. Nevermind! 47 is not able to get coins or a silenced gun. I know that it’s part of Freelancer to conserve precious equipment… but coins could be a “normal” loadout for a mission.
- After reading some posts, it sounds like you can lose your tool equipment if you fail a campaign. Sounds brutal for me, but at least, it will force me to use tools more often as they are not eternal.
- Losing gears is understandable, but losing half merces after failing a campaign is quite too much I think.
My wishes:
- The possiblity to unlocks some Freelancer tools in the main game. I would appreciate using “water can” and “gas can” in main missions. IOI can introduce them like previous items, with challenges tied to the main game.
- Alerted territories in H3 maps have more cameras at locations that sound more appropriate. Would be good to include those changes in Master mode of the main game.
- No introduction of new challenges in Freelancer mode (there are enough of them).
- Golden objectives are random. I would appreciate if we get at least the possibility of choosing SA objective for each mission.
- Addition of SA tracker on Freelancer.
Conclusion
I appreciate this mode, even though it is not perfect. If the missions are pretty fun, I’m not a fan of Showdown mission with suspect system.
Thank you IOI for Hitman game 