feels like i played this alongside my six year old self. we did it lil' buddy, we finally beat the one game we had no chance in hell of finishing without a gamecube memory card

as with sa1, there's really no point in arguing about this series since the detractors have long made up their shitty minds. sa2's an interesting beast though because it manages to excel just as much as its predecessor... in very different ways!

the speed stages are great, albeit nothing like sa1's. maybe you prefer these more linearly driven, setpiece-focused levels, but i might be partial to having a spindash that can blaze me across entire courses in a matter of seconds. i like going places i shouldn't and being rewarded for it. there's some of that here, but it's not nearly the same. that said, there's no city escape or final rush in sa1 so we'll call it a draw

treasure hunting is improved tenfold. i definitely prefer the newly limited radar system (it makes finding shards early super satisfying) and the overall increased difficulty. especially after knuckles' previous story was an absolute cakewalk. rouge is basically knuckles on hard mode and i generally prefer her side more for that. love her music too, though i wish it was more lyrically driven to better contrast knuckles

shooting's a more mixed bag. tails reps one of the best stages but also most of the worst. eggman on the other hand for the most part lives up to gamma's gameplay well enough - especially once he gets his booster. there's def a sense of flow to these that i feel a solid chunk of people don't give deserved credit because they just wanna go fast and grind rails

...which is a sentiment i don't completely identify with because i feel sa2 is more than the sum of its parts. the narrative is genuinely great and actively shifts moods and gameplay styles accordingly. you're always listening to a banger, you're never on the same sort of stage for more than a few minutes at a time - and you're always pushing closer to one of the greatest fuckin' finales you'll ever find in video games. the quality of direction really skyrocketed here. the last episode's preview alone completely solos every single scene in sa1

one strange oddity though: there's a surprising lack of shadow gameplay here. maybe the devs weren't so confident in him as a newcomer and didn't expect him to be such a hit?

if they knew what was good for them, sonic team would've just made a whole ass game where you play as shadow the hedgehog...

EDIT: after careful deliberation (replaying the shit out of everything) i've decided that i have 0 significant issues with this game. i'm not even standing by what i said about the speed stages before. they're all fuckin' fantastic and i think i might actually prefer these to sa1's (granted i need to spend some more time with that game too for confirmation)

on top of all of what i've said - i've still barely scratched the surface of the chao world content and that on its own is pretty impressive for being in an already tightly-packed game to begin with. how the fuck did this get made in two years?

i also learned last night via the extra video that city escape was inspired by sonic team constantly receiving parking tickets while living in san francisco. that's worthy of some merit on its own

and maybe this is cheating to mention since it's largely battle rerelease content, but i don't care: the multiplayer is some of the most fun i've ever had with a 2-player game

you know what - fuck it, 10/10

EDIT 2: got all 180 emblems. basically a perfect game

It's hard for me to describe how much this game goes hard in words, this game just fucking rocks. If you think you know your way around mecha games throw it all out the window. These mechs are huge, hulking beasts that move slow as hell but pack a HELL of a punch, an uppercut from your mech can literally flip a guy and a punch can send it flying through buildings it's awesome and you can buy tons of new moves to make your robot even more broken. The voice acting is bad but that only added to my experience, I loved every minute I spent playing this. It's not a "so bad it's good" game like others might say, it's just super fucking good!

It should be illegal to make a game with combat this good.

While this game is sick as fuck, it does make me appreciate just how special Rabi Ribi’s exploration and progression actually is. Tevi does have fun exploration and a little bit of nonlinearity but for much less of the game than what Rabi Ribi allowed. Everything else Tevi offers makes up for it though. Great music, diverse environments, fun movement, hilariously absurd customization, and one of the best boss casts this industry has ever seen. I will say that the story was really testing my patience, especially when it hit me with a plot twist that I genuinely cannot believe was written in the Year of our Lord 2023, but the characters are kinda charming so I could tolerate it.

This is a game that I think falls so short of its potential. It just feels so unfinished, like it was rushed out to be a ps5 exclusive and never touched up on layer. I really wanted to like it more, the gunplay is super fun and I absolutely loved how the guns feel unique and use the adaptive triggers in cool ways. I also really liked 2 or 3 of the levels and thought some of the writing was charming.

However... thats really it in terms of nice things I can say about this game. After about 3 hours it really feels like you've seen it all. Every enemy encounter really feels the same with no new mechanics to mix anything up and only new weapons breaking up the flow a bit. Cool new gadget, too bad every encounter still consists of jumping around mindlessly spamming and blowing up enemies with no variety.

Speaking of variety, this game has the most embarrassingly bad enemy variety I've ever seen in a game of this scale. After 2 hours it feels like you've seen every attack an enemy can do. Nothing ever feels new or threatening. Bosses all pretty much have the same moveset. It's really one of the aspects that feels the most unfinished.

Regardless of all this, I still can't quite think this game is bad. It's really buggy, has some boring segments, terrible enemies and bosses, samey encounters, but god damn the guns are so fun. If this core gameplay was in a more finished, polished game this could've been like an 8-9/10 for me.

Personally I can't say I regret playing this so I'd still recommend it if you want a fun third person shooter. It just kind of feels like Insomniac flopped short of their full potential to rush out a release with this one.

This is genuinely one of the most emotionally touching stories I've ever seen in a game and my very high rating is primarily for that. Having a story about people at rock bottom trying to claw their way back up, focusing on those in society that often get overlooked or hated made for a great premise. Ichiban is one of my favorite protagonists ever, the rest of the party members are great, and I actually ended up really loving the main villain. Also has one of my favorite endings in a game, shit made me really emotional.

However, from a gameplay perspective I kind of hate this game. I love turn based rpgs but this is one of the worst designed ones I have ever played and I hate to admit that. I could write pages about what I don't like about the combat system but really it boils down to it being slow, not fun or rewarding at all to engage with, and some of the worst level curve and grinding I've ever seen. I could really see the combat turning people away from this game but it's still worth suffering through honestly. In terms of gameplay I'd probably give it a 2-3/10 and I still gave it a 9 overall. This game is a movie, and it's a really fucking good movie. I really hope they learn how to make an RPG for yakuza 8 cuz this one is rough!

Life is really like an RPG, huh?