Hawk Freedom Squadron, Read this Before You Start, Review

Backstory

This review is at least a year in the making.  I started playing Hawk Freedom Squadron more than a year ago.  I stopped playing when I obtained Gambit (probably one of the most awesome plane in the game if not the best, imho) and pretty much cleared out most of the levels.  I recently re-installed the game just to see what kind of additional content Hawk Freedom Squadron is offering.  Boy, I wished I re-installed a whole lot sooner.  Soooo much more new content.

For the folks who would rather watch than read my review, you can see my review below and enjoy!

Review of Hawk Freedom Squadron

Alright!  For the folks who would rather read, today we are going to go over:

• Review of Hawk Freedom Squadron
• Poor Man’s Strategy to Optimize the Heck out of your Hawk Experience Without Paying a Dime

If you ever played Raiden the arcade game back in the 90s, this game is a lot like that.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the game developers drew inspiration from Raiden.  The graphics style has a tinge of cuteness to it, akin to Fortnite, which I think is one of the many reasons why this game is still very popular.

My Gaming Experience with Hawk Freedom Squadron

The game offers a lot of customization elements so you can tweak to your gaming style.  For example, each plane has their own bonus attributes and overdrive (plane special move).  You can further enhance certain stats to your plane by equipping items.  As of this writing, you can equip up to 6 items:

• 2 engine slots
• 2 shield slots
• 2 weapon slots

Lastly, you can equip up to 2 Brobots (sidekick to your plane) to help you in defeating your enemies.  Each Brobot has their own unique bullet style, special move, and bonus attributes to enhance your plane.  Again, lots of ways to customize your gameplay.  All in all, at later stages, you will have:

• 3 special moves to draw upon (1 from the plane, 2 from your 2 Brobots)
• 1 counterstrike move (mini special move, if you can get your plane to S rank or higher)

You’re probably wondering…  “Hey, this is kinda like Diablo but for a shoot ’em up airplane game!”  You’re correct!  This game offers quite a bit of Diablo-esque elements to it, which I believe is still one of the many reasons why it is still so popular today even after more than a year of the game’s release.

Best Stage to Farm (or Grind) for Coins and Brobot Experience

Got a lot of questions on what stage is the best to farm or grind for coins and Brobot experience.  In my opinion, stage 123 is my go-to stage when it comes to farming for coins and Brobot experience.

Couple of things I like about stage 123:

• Lots of crates to blow up, which increases your chance for loot boxes to show up especially if your luck is high.  I once got 7 loot boxes in 1 playthrough.  Of all the grinding, I have gotten two rank 5 blue items from chests.  Blue items sell for 5000 coins if you don’t want to black box it in the game.
• No boss and mini-boss.  There’s only 1 semi-huge helicopter at the beginning of the stage.  Fairly easy to defeat.
• Lots of atom bombs – makes it very easy for you to defeat all the enemies in the screen

If you combine it with the right items, you can easily make 2,000+ coins and 13k+ Brobot experience per run.  My personal record is about 3,500-4,000 coins and 18k-ish Brobot experience per run.  I also have VIP 5 status in the game, which gives me another 100% on coins.

Here is my personal setup:

• Sparrow plane with custom skin – this will give you +18% coins from the plane and another +50% coins from the custom skin.  At the time of writing this, Sparrow custom skin is the cheapest  (note, you will need to have 100% armor for the 18% bonus, much easier if you have a force field when you evolve Sparrow to rank SSS)
• Dodgy Brobot for luck increase 30% (starts at 10%)
• Undine Brobot for luck increase 10% (probably increase to 30% once it completely unlocks???)

If you want to watch a side-by-side comparison of stage 123 with and without coin+ gears, you can view it below:

Poor Man’s Strategy (Overall Strategy)

If you just started with this game, and don’t know how to optimize your time and gaming experience… Look no further!  Here’s a list of recommendations that I hope would help you in your Hawk Freedom Squadron journey.  NOTE, this poor man’s strategy is for folks who have limited or no budget to spend on this game.  Having said that, I highly encourage you to spend a few bucks at least so that the game developers can get pay and feed their families.  So here are my suggestions for optimal Hawk gameplay:

• Buy the monthly subscription – I know this is not exactly poor man’s way of doing things, but getting the subscription will give you a total of 1500 crystals and unlimited Verdium, credits needed to play each level.  With the subscription, you can play to your heart’s content without worrying about recharging your Verdium.  Also, this makes farming and grinding way way easier.
• Use crystal only if you have to – only use crystals for the things that require crystals only, for example, evolving your plane to a higher rank, it’s a waste to use crystals on respawn and increasing your plane level since you can use coins for that.  Coin is a farmable asset vs crystals.
• Stash up on your free Brobot Experience – use free Brobot experience for the bots you want to level up quickly and haven’t gotten the time to use them in battles.
• Open your daily chest – It is about 2 chests per day, you just have to endure a 30-second ad for each.
• Do your daily quest
• Do your Team Up, Trials, Assault, and Contest when available
• Buy cards for the specific planes first before buying Unicards – The cost is much more economical when purchasing cards for a specific plane vs Unicards (cards that can be used for any planes).  Unicards does have its advantage in terms of applying to other planes, but cost wise is not ideal.  Recommend you exhaust your specific plane cards first before purchasing Unicards.
• Same logic for Brobot cards – please refer to point above
• Priority, get Brobot cards first before plane cards – If you have a currency constraint on whether to get Brobot or plane cards, get the Brobot cards first.  Quantity wise, Brobot cards are much more rarer than plane cards.  Chances are, you’ll max out on your plane before you’ll max out on your Brobots.
• Best plane and Brobots combination – This is very subjective and depends on your gameplay.  My opinion is to get the Gambit plane ASAP.  For Brobots, you can’t go wrong with Legatus and Kraken.  Get those Brobots unlocked ASAP.  I’ll be doing a video review on this combination further explaining why.

Conclusion

I enjoyed this game quite a bit.  This game has a lot of replay values compare to most games out there.  If you have a little cash to spend, I highly recommend getting the 30-day subscription, it will really jumpstart your Hawk gaming experience.  Hope you enjoy this review and until next time!

You might also like…

My review on Hawk Freedom Squadron Sentinel Level 240 Rank X review

Strategy on completing the Invasion Event in Hawk Freedom Squadron