FreeStyle Football

FreeStyle Football Review

By, Baruch Spinoza

You don’t have to like football (soccer) to enjoy FreeStyle Football, one of the zaniest sports games on Steam besides its spiritual predecessor FreeStyle 2: Street Basketball. At face value, this game’s got charm. The menu has its own catchy rap theme song; “It might be the same game but we got different goals—I’m just trying to have fun, YO,” which has been stuck in my head since I closed the game; and characters tout an edgy cartoon art style. Plus, it borrow its mechanics from more straightforward football games but also adds a twist in the form of a level grind. It’s a good free-to-play choice for a lazy day when you and some friends want to kick back and play football against randoms on the internet.

How It Plays

FreeStyle Football’s controls have more in common with a realistic sports series like FIFA than you might think. In fact, if you’ve played any other football title you’ll probably excel at FreeStyle. You have to know your controls and have a keen map awareness: where your teammates are and where your opponents can snag a shot. Knowing when to pass is paramount to winning, and it can’t be overstated—though plenty of players love to try their luck against the moody AI goalies. Though there’s one dramatic difference that sets FreeStyle apart: each player controls a single character, rather than jumping between players on their team.

When players know how to play, and you don’t, you’re in trouble. The game can be a bit daunting for new players as they try to juggle each of the three passes, three tackles, realizing when to shoot, when to pass, and remembering to press S to intercept a ball or else it’s going to pass right through their body like it’s a spectre. You don’t need to be Lionel Messi to excel, but it’s clear when an opponent or a teammate has more hours than you. So long as you remember it’s a team-game, and don’t try and run solo, you can contribute to your team’s victory. Otherwise, you’ll just be helping it lose.

Controls

By default you’re playing with the arrow keys and WASD. It’s a bit of a rough scheme, as anyone who’s played similar games can attest to. I personally felt a delay between when I moved my character and when they responded so that each of my keyboard playthroughs gave me a sense of sluggishness though my server ping hovered around 20ms. But plugging with a controller makes gameplay feel far smoother. Though I recommend running through the tutorial again since FreeStyle doesn’t autodetect controllers and display tooltips for what button does what, as it does with keyboards.

Skills

As you play you’ll gain experience and level up. Leveling up unlocks new skills for purchase in the cash shop, and some of them are game changing: what would be considered skill shots in other games. Beyond the curved kick at level 3, you can level up and teach your character to back step to avoid a tackle or a quick recover from a slide tackle so you’re face doesn’t hit the turf and you can keep moving. It’s clear. Higher level characters operate at a slight advantage, though effective matchmaking and a healthy playerbase should alleviate any unfairness.

Then there are the sweet freestyle moves that become available as you level, what the game derives its name from. These are skills that are automatically activated as you go about playing, really just stylizing your typical moveset. Backflipping a power kick doesn’t allot any advantage beyond looking badass as you do it. All the tacked on skills are pretty about looking cool (akin to cosmetic gear in an MMORPG). And what’s the point of playing a multiplayer game except looking cool while you do it?

Characters

All of FreeStyle’s character designs have a slick gritty appearance that looks like they were drawn by a Christian hip-hop group. And that’s fine. They look great: an edgy Saturday morning cartoon aesthetic, designs you would see graffitied on the brick wall of a South American city. It lends itself to running on any modern, as it should considering it released over two years ago in Korea. And you can dress up your characters. Of course you can. What would a game be without cosmetics? One thing about FreeStyle though that differentiates it from more traditional sports games: what you’re wearing determines your character’s stats.

Yes, clothing gives you stats; something Nike and Adidas wishes they could prove scientifically. And there’s a difference between in-game currency clothes and cash shop clothes. There are a few cash-currency items that have more stat slot attached to them than any in-game currency equipment. Though items only last for 12 days so it’s not a permanent buff. And the stat differences are minor enough: a single player can never overpower an entire team.

Cash Shop Prices

Cash shop coins are not cheap. 3000 coins sell for $30. To put that in perspective. The Defensive cash shop character Dirk costs 2900 coins—he’s a $29 character. Meanwhile Ginger the MF character costs 3900 coins. It’s not cheap if you want to collect it all. Keep in mind, you don’t need to spend cash money to excel in FreeStyle Football unless you’re gung-ho on maximizing your character’s stats.

What you lose by not spending cash is a whole bunch of cute and neat aesthetic costumes. You can’t rock the Daft Punk lookalike helmet, the Prankenstein Monster suit, the Freddy Kruger glove set, etc. Basically, without spending cash you can’t look cool. Sorry. The most you’ll afford with the in-game currency is making your character look like they just ordered clothes from GAP or Old Navy.

Team Game

FreeStyle Football’s biggest issue is present in any team-based sports game. People are selfish ball hogs and that lends itself to a somewhat toxic community, though I’ve only encountered a few spurts of whining. But they forget, the most important aspect of the game, and the main way you’re going to have fun, is if you work with other players. So that means you want to jump into FreeStyle with some friends, ideally sitting on voice chat, so you can set up plays and dance around the enemy team to win. No matter how good you are alone, you can’t win alone.

Final Verdict - Good

FreeStyle Football is easy to learn, difficult to master; the casual player’s football game. It does suffer from some latency issues and server instability, but makes up for it with familiar controls, zany characters, and a style it can call its own. If you’re interested, get some buddies and work together as a team to pass the ball and score goals. Winning will feel all the more rewarding. FreeStyle Football is a good casual football game you jump into every now and then when you want a random pick up and play game, well worth jumping into on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

FreeStyle Football Screenshots

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FreeStyle Football Videos

FreeStyle Football Links

FreeStyle Football Steam Page
FreeStyle Footbal Steam Greenlight
FreeStyle Football Official Site (Korean)

FreeStyle Football System Requirements

Minimum Requirements:

Operating System: Windows XP SP3, Vista, 7, 8, or 10
CPU: P4 2.8GHz
Video Card: Geforce 6200
RAM: 2 GB
Hard Disk Space: 2 GB

Recommended Requirements:

Operating System: Windows XP SP3, Vista, 7, 8, or 10
CPU: P4 3.4GHz
Video Card: Geforce 7600GT
RAM: 4 GB
Hard Disk Space: 3 GB

FreeStyle Football Music& Soundtrack

Coming Soon!

FreeStyle Football Additional Information

Developer(s): JoyCity
Publisher(s): JoyCity

Steam Greenlight: September 01, 2014
Release Date:February 22, 2017

Shutdown Date: December 21, 2017

Relaunch Date: September 13, 2022 (as FreestyleFootball R)

Korea: June 10, 2014

Development History / Background:
FreeStyle Football is developed and published by JoyCity, the same company that developed and published FreeStyle 2: Street Basketball. The game was initially released in Korea on June 10, 2014. FreeStyle Football was posted to Steam Greenlight on September 01, 2014, and fully released through Steam on February 22, 2017. FreeStyle Football shut down on December 21, 2017.

FreeStyle Football relaunched as "FreestyleFootball R" on September 13, 2022.