This is a game that I really wanted to love more than I actually do.

In short: this game takes the varied gameplay of Sly 2 and amplifies it to the max. You're constantly changing gameplay styles from mission to mission. While there are still a good amount of stealth segments, it feels like a lot of these start to get lost in favor of adding in new mechanics. While a lot of the gameplay styles are fairly enjoyable, I did find myself wishing that they'd focus on developing a handful of really good ideas instead of effectively throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.

That kinda leaves me in a weird spot when it comes to Sly 3. It's definitely technically better than Sly 2 in a lot of ways, but it's also a much less cohesive experience.

For full transparency: Sly 2 is the game I played the most as a kid. It's not gonna stop me from pointing out some gripes I have, but I'm still super nostalgic for this game.

Anyway, this is the game where the Sly series really develops its own personality. The levels in this game are no longer long corridors. Instead, they're more like little open-world environments that you can properly explore. The camera has also been adjusted to give you a lot more control than the first game (THANK GOD). This shift in level design also comes with a proper rework of what you actually do in the game.

There's a higher focus on stealth mechanics and actually planning out big heists. While there are still platforming sections, they're a much lower priority. Instead, the missions are small tasks each of the characters do in order to build up to the big climactic heist at the end of the chapter. This also allows for much more varied missions since every mission can have you doing something completely different from the last.

Though it's this ambition to try out different gameplay styles that does lead to some unfortunately unenjoyable sections. There are a few standout sections (like the tank segment) where the controls just feel unintuitive and frustrating. While these sections are all pretty short, they're pretty significant in just how rough they are compared to the rest of the game.

Despite that, Sly 2 is LEAGUES better than Sly 1 in just about every way in my opinion.

The art style's super iconic, but it doesn't have much its own personality mechanically.

For starters, despite this game having you play as a thief, there are very little proper stealth segments. Instead, you're essentially playing a more traditional platformer with long corridors for levels. There are definitely stealth elements, but they're more like slight additions to help distinguish the gameplay from something like Crash Bandicoot.

That leads me to some of the jank this game has. Enemy hitboxes are all sorts of messed up and the camera is kind of a nightmare to deal with. While these aren't too bad if you're playing the game casually, they make the Master Thief Sprints absolutely terrible. In short: trying to speedrun a level while trying to work with an unreliable camera and messed up enemy hitboxes that can ruin your run is.. not fun! At least the levels are short so it can definitely be worse.

Buy hey, if you're just running through the game casually and you're not looking to 100% it, it's generally pretty fun!

It's.. fine.

Kaito gets a mini campaign to himself along with a more proper backstory. It's nothing too special, but I weirdly found it a bit more enjoyable than Lost Judgment's main story. Maybe it's just cause Kaito himself is just a really enjoyable character. That being said, the story is annoyingly predictable (though maybe I'm just too familiar with RGG's writing style at this point).

As for the actual combat, I'm not a fan of how Kaito plays. He gets tweaked versions of Kiryu's Yakuza 0 Brawler and Beast styles that just feel.. a bit strange to me. Not sure what it is, but they just feel inexplicably off to me in the way they were ported to the Dragon Engine. I wouldn't go so far as to say they're flat out bad, but I did often find myself wishing I was just playing Yakuza 0 instead.

I don't think that the $30 they ask for is worth it at all for what you actually end up getting, but I think it's a fine enough DLC if you can get it at a discount.

It's a fun lil short story!

The contrast between the cutesy art style and super dramatic voice acting is super funny. Couple that with a pretty ridiculous plot and you've got a really silly but enjoyable short story!

As for the gameplay itself: it's pretty simple, but I did find myself almost brute forcing solutions a lot of the time. Not sure how much of that is me being dumb and how much of it is the game giving you a relatively small amount of clues to work off in detective mode. I think giving players a bit more clues for puzzles could definitely help with this.

Either way, I'd love to see more short stories with the Duck Detective!

I'm gonna preface this by saying that I've never played the original Monkey Ball games so I have no real frame of reference.

That being said, I had a good amount of fun with this game! It was cool to be able to check out this franchise in some form, even if this particular game leaves a lot to be desired for seasoned fans of the series.

However, it is BAFFLING that none of the minigames have any sort of online support. I get that RGG is busy with maintaining the Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise, but I'm surprised that there's never been any sort of post-launch patch.

I've got a real soft spot for this game, but man it's got a lot of issues. This little flash game had an infamous memory leak issue that made longer play sessions a nightmare. Not to mention it also had a bit of a power creep issue that discouraged more unique play styles.

Despite that, I found this game weirdly addictive back in the day. Even when Kabam owned it and refused to do anything with it, I still found myself playing it almost daily. I don't think this is a particularly great game, but it's super nostalgic for me.