From D.E.H. Software comes The Fight for Freedom, a real-time strategy title that puts you in control of one of seven different planets in a battle for total domination.  Most of the standard elements to be found in an RTS game are present, like the ability to build units and upgrade them if you have the proper facilities.  However, this is about as far as it gets.  The Fight for Freedom doesn’t really cover any new ground, and what it does cover it does very minimally.  The Fight for Freedom is an extremely simplistic RTS that doesn’t really excel in any areas.

In the Fight for Freedom, you take command of one of seven different planets.  Each of these planets has its own environments and attributes, but these don’t actually come into play overtly through the gameplay.  You start out having access to a few different kinds of buildings and worker units.  As you build different buildings, you will gain access to various weapons and airborne fighters that can attack enemy planets.  Various workers perform different tasks to make your military run more efficiently.  For example, the more Builder and Engineer units you have, the faster you can build additional units; and the more Scientist units you have, the more R & D for Nuclear Weapons you can accomplish.

Aside from military units, you must maintain the financial aspects of your planet as well.  In order to get funding for your militaristic endeavors, you have to set a tax rate that allows you to have all the money you need and still keep your people happy.  This is very simplistic, as for every 2 percent that you increase taxes, your job rating goes down 10 points.  You can also negotiate and make temporary allies and treaties with other planets in order to destroy someone else in the meantime.

The gameplay is pretty uneventful and dull.  Once you engage war on another planet, you simply unload everything you have on them until their shields are completely depleted.  Then you hit them with more until their planet is destroyed.  Then you move onto another planet.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  No real need for a strategy other than build up as many troops as possible and unload all you can onto your enemies.  In fact, launching missiles and fighters at other planets is a random endeavor, seeing as how your fighters/missiles will either randomly hit their target or be shot down.

The Fight for Freedom isn’t much fun to look at as there really isn’t much in the area of graphics.  All of the action is told through poorly rendered, thumbnail-sized FMVs.  You have an onscreen assistant that says what action you are currently doing, and that’s about it.  The menu choices look too similar, and it’s pretty hard to tell which unit is which.   A lot of these FMVs are just plain weird, though.  One such nonsensical video portrays a man in a business suit sitting all by himself on a rock with a rainbow around him (Which doesn’t really have anything to do with the game).  Uh, yeah…weird.

The sound isn’t much better than the rest of the game.  The voices and effects sound like they were recorded at way too high of a volume and sound distorted and annoying.  The music is also wildly inappropriate, and ranges from slow, melodic flute music to romantic piano music, not what you’d want to hear when enemies are bombing you.

The Fight for Freedom is a very simplistic game that doesn’t do anything new, and what it does it doesn’t do particularly well.  The “action” (and I use the term loosely) is slow and boring, and can be unnecessarily frustrating, especially when your planet gets completely obliterated out of nowhere.  Anyone looking for a decent, cheap RTS game should pick up a budget copy of Starcraft.

Gameplay: 3.3
In terms of RTS gameplay, The Fight for Freedom doesn’t really do anything particularly well.  The action is dull, the battles are almost completely randomized, and the slow-pace is practically devoid of any fun whatsoever.

Graphics: 3.9  
The graphics aren’t so much graphics as they are poorly rendered thumbnail FMVs.  Plus, the menu icons look so similar that they degrade the gameplay.

Sound: 3.5
The music is quite inappropriate and doesn’t reflect the onscreen action at all, and the effects sound pretty lousy and distorted.

Difficulty: Medium  

Concept: 3.0
The Fight for Freedom fails to cover any new ground, and doesn’t really succeed at what it does
 

Multiplayer: 3.3
The game features an online mode that allows you to face other people with the game, but any fun you’d have playing through it is limited by the shortcomings of the game itself.

Overall: 3.3
The Fight for Freedom is ultra-simplistic and not really any fun.