Basically a Nintendo 64 era collectathon but on a OG Xbox disc. It translates the gameplay from the first ToeJam & Earl game very faithfully into a 3D world. The presents are a very fun way to break the game and some of them make the levels feel almost sandboxy in the freedom they give you, although you still have to use them intelligently as presents appear randomly and are limited for every level, even when bought from mailboxes or vendors. To break the repetitiveness, there's also many bonus and secret levels sprinkled around the worlds. I thought the idea of music albums being the main collectibles for reaching other worlds in the game, as well as the way to unlock more in-game soundtracks, was very nice and fitting for the "funkyness" of the game.

I find it interesting just how for as much as Sega was allegedly propping the Original Xbox to be the "Dreamcast 2", out of all the franchises Sega could have granted Xbox exclusivity, they went with some of their weirdest, nicher "core SEGA fan" IPs like ToeJam & Earl, Rent-a-Hero, and Panzer Dragoon. I feel that treatment would have been more important for Virtua Fighter 4, Sonic Adventure 1 DX/2 Battle or for a port of Shenmue 1, but hey, that would be playing it safe. And this just feels right at home with the weirdness of original Xbox exclusives like Mad Dash Racing or Munch's Oddysey.
Kudos to Back to the Groove for remembering Latisha!

It's hard for me to express just how much I love this game. Like even from the demo on the first XBox Exhibiton Demo Disc. I've been with this game since Day 1. I didn't even know this was a series back then, like I just assumed that 3 was a weird symbol.

I can see why a lot of people wouldn't like this game for how weird and annoying it can be with all of its characters and music tho. Still, this came out when I was 5 and I've been doing yearly playthroughs of it since. Sometimes more than once a year.

So much I ended up loving the whole series, got all the cutscenes from this game uploaded to my YT channel on top of beta/scrapped scenes, got the Dreamcast beta files on hand and 4 prototypes for Xbox that were leaked recently. Checked all those for differences. Like I've done everything I can with this game and I still don't get tired of it. Like the amount of excitement I had when I found out Xemu could run this so I could finally stream it for my partner.

Anyways, it's only a little bit like 1 in that you walk around levels, pick up presents to use, and get to the elevator. Just more to it. There's objectives for each level and enemies to "Funkify". Just 2 boss fights and minigames in between. Vinyls that act sorta like stars in SM64. I guess you could call it a collectathon, but I think it keeps itself fresh enough. Every character has their own special attributes, too. Even 3 DLC characters you can get through the 2nd XBox Exhibition Demo Disc. It's repetitive, yes. But, I'm biased and it's fun. At least try it. This one was buried by Sega and they really made sure nobody remembered this series save for the first game. Really did the whole series dirty. And if you do try it and like it, god forbid you tell me you like it. I can talk about this series for Hours.