An incredible love letter to the Sonic franchise made by people who understand it the most, so much carefully-crafted care put into the level designs, the expressive animations, the placement of items and enemies, a soundtrack that feels like you were teleported into the early 90’s to an era where you may or may not existed in, and just an overall refined movement and controls that flows so perfectly. It says a lot when even the slower, platforming heavy sections are really fun and engaging in Sonic of all things. This is an amazing amalgamation of what highlights the franchise. This is the bombastic art form of what Sonic can be when given the right care and ideations.

This is Sonic Mania.

It improves on the gameplay of Yakuza 3 so much with some really fun combat and mini-games and the new main characters here are sick while having some great moments in the plot but oh my god does the storytelling quality take the ugliest nosedive I've seen in the series. The plot twists are comically excessive and almost predictable (with one twist in particular being really badly handled, you will know it when you see it), certain story aspects aren't as fleshed out as they should be or just had virtually NO build-up to them especially towards the end of the game, Kiryu's overall involvement in the plot, and the story becoming way too convoluted for its own good. The ending just ends up feeling unearned because of these elements so you just end up with an incoherent messy story shooting too high for the stars. It's my least favorite of all the Yakuza/Like A Dragon games by far but at least the soundtrack is baller though.

Also insane how 3/4 of the final bosses are pretty cool but then you end on the worst boss in the entire franchise by throwing an entire squad of enemies who collectively jump and stunlock your shit while the boss keeps shooting you to hell. Straight up stupid ass fight.

Uh-oh! The Sonic franchise suddenly had an identity crisis again after Generations and decided to go a whole different direction by ripping off another game people really liked at the time, this time being Super Mario Galaxy.

To be serious, there is so much wrong going on here that it's almost concerning at this point. There's so many missteps in Lost World that left me frustrated and baffled through my entire playthrough of it to where I felt like even minor annoyances of the game feel outright soul-sucking to get through. This review is gonna be a little different from my previous ones because this was genuinely an awful experience that I cannot fully wrap up in just a few words and in context to my post-06 Sonic run-through, it's something I really want to break down.

So after the major success of Colors and, in particular, Generations (which I thought was great), it seemed like Sonic was finally getting back on his feet with everyone, including and especially, the fans. Having a game that is a celebratory run of the franchise with its most iconic levels and a new take on them depending on if you're playing as Classic or Modern Sonic was a huge refresh the series needed, with so much love and care that was put behind it, and I could fully see that energy that was put into it. It rekindled a lot of faith in Sonic and reminded people that the series and Sonic Team can still put out something great, whenever its blasting through levels at high-speed and learning new paths and ways to get through them with the Boost formula, or having that quick, engaging, and satisfying platforming playgrounds of the Classic levels. With such a strong interest by many to continue the momentum of Generations, what was SEGA and Sonic Team's next step after their anniversary triumph of its iconic mascot?

Completing ditching that entirely and decided it needs to be just like Mario.

Now I cannot talk about Lost World without mentioning how much of Mario is in the game's DNA. From the mechanics including having a Run button (I will get into this later), to levels having timers, to the overworld structure, and ultimately, some of the literal zones of the game, its in just about every ounce you can think of here. This doesn't even include the second to last boss essentially being a Bowser fight and the entire existence of Hidden World. It's so bizarre that this is the direction they went for after their last few sets of games leading them to feeling like Sonic can stand on his own two feet. One of the few times that the game feels more of an inspiration rather than a clone is in the first act of Windy Hill, but from that moment on, everything becomes a messy, balancing act of an identity crisis playing out in front of you. Which lead into the level designs...

They're just a straight up mess. Again, its trying its best Galaxy impression and it doesn't really work in its favor because it lacks the well-thought-out design and mechanical nature of what makes that game enjoyable, but also its still trying to be a Sonic game with its occasional running sections that feels like the level is actively trying to kill you and its rail sections which are the worst they've ever felt from the exclusion of grind stepping (but for some weird ass reason was in the 3DS version of the game), but also there's 2D sections that don't mesh well with some of the zones and are a slog to get through, but also there's a bad gimmick in almost each one??? Why is there an awful stealth section? Why is there a zone where I'm slowly moving through a poor man's version of Super Monkey Ball as a snowball? Why is there a gliding zone that feels bad and very floaty? There's no rhyme or reason for how a lot of it comes together so you end up with levels that feel incredibly disjointed in themselves (and that's not including the actual out of place level themes that are within each world that feel like they belong in a completely different part of the game). A good portion of Sonic's strength is going fast and getting through a level as quickly as you can, but you spend more time moving slow either due to the levels not being built around being fast, and/or making sure you don't die from the game's absurd design choices, which makes levels that are already too damn long to get through go on even longer. It makes for a slow paced game that's also incredibly frustrating because certain levels will troll you and you'll end up losing a life on a whim from either its artificial difficulty spikes in the later portion of Lost World or just a poorly thought-out execution. There's zones like Sky Road Zone 2, which requires you to be precise with platforming but becomes a pain in the ass because of the game's air movement being really stiff, and then zones like Lava Mountain Zone 2, where not jumping and moving near-perfect through the railings will either land you into a bottomless pit or an instant-kill bomb cart. Some sections of the game are so difficult to get through that the game will just load you up on lives when it can and if you die enough times, the Warp item appears to help skip a section. While it's a nice thought by the devs, their implementations feel almost patronizing as they seem well aware that game has pretty BS sections and this is their best solution for that.

The experience is made even worse when not only are you fighting against the levels, but the controls and mechanics. Instead of the usual "move this direction to start building up speed", there's now a Run button in place for you to start moving quickly....except its not really that fast. The movement of the game feels so slow, which while I do understand why due to how the game is designed, it also fucks you over more often than not. From either how sluggish the controls can be, or the slight lack of air momentum you'll have from jumping after being a tiny bit too slow that leads to you falling into a pit, or to the quick and whiplashy nature of the ice levels where you'll fall off and die because you may have moved a tiny bit too quickly in the other direction, there's rarely a moment where any of the movement and controls feel nature or good. The only kinda good addition to the game is the parkour system, but it comes off way better on paper than in actual execution to everything else going on. I'm also not really a fan of the revamped homing attack system, where now there's an automatic lock on system and a charged homing attack system that works by approaching enemies. None of these really work well, as they either just kill any momentum of speed you're trying to get (which is barely anything most of the time), or trivializes bosses that weren't that interesting to begin with. None of this helps when the game can even be really vague explaining its mechanics, and at times, a few of the objectives. Sadly you'll probably end up having to slow down anyway and rely on your homing attack on enemies because the game decided to bring back the pace-killing medals objective from Sonic Unleashed, in form of freeing animals from either destroying Eggman's robots or contraptions. It's still just as much of a waste of time as before, but slightly less grindy.

Oh yeah Wisps are back now too. Does the game explain why they're here? No. Do they need to be here and fit well with the levels? Not really. Are they at least fun and useful? Mostly no. Did Sonic Team put them here because they're still riding off the highs of Sonic Colors? More than likely.

Now this isn't something I usually bring up from Sonic games, but its something to absolutely point out because it's very telling when even someone like me, who usually isn't too stressed over this element from the franchise, can notice and point out how bad it is. The story and writing in Lost World are presented horribly. The general plot is that Sonic and Tails must stop Eggman, then eventually have to team-up to stop the Deadly Six from destroying the world after Eggman loses control over them. To clarify, I don't think Sonic or anything has to have some top-level, Shakespearean-ass writing or storytelling. Sonic has more simple, straightforward stories and that's cool! But one of the problems here is it's trying to have a more serious, world-threating plot, but it still has the same Saturday Morning Cartoon tonal feel of Sonic Colors, so it ends up clashing with each other and completely falls flat in the process. You have scenes like this with this problem while having forced drama and conflict that comes out of nowhere despite this not being the first time they had to work with Eggman, while those same moments will have someone like Tails act completely out of character. I thought the little dude was nice, why is he suddenly an asshole now? There's also other scenes where they're suppose to be this big serious moment with the characters but end up being laughably bad either from the voice direction, the dialogue, or just the straight up fact that these are colorful cartoon characters trying to play up a high-stakes plot with the presentation of a 4Kids episode. None of the humor lands and when it does, its very unintentional. Also the Deadly Six are extremely one-dimensional boring characters that bring virtually nothing new to the table and are the weakest villains in the series by a lonnnnnnng shot (and all of their boss fight sucks).

I will say there is one undoubtedly good thing about Lost World and that's its music. To keep it brief since I don't really have much to say on it, its just good, not to the levels of the highs of other Sonic games, but it gets the job done.

I hate that this ended up being my longest review, but I had to get everything out because the game encapsulates every problem I've had with nearly every Sonic entry I've played post-06. It has levels that take too long, sluggish to whiplashy controls, some of the worst level designs I've played by far in the franchise, tacked on gimmicks that either add nothing to the game or makes the overall experience worse, locking level progress via collectibles that slow down and hurt the pacing of the game, and the biggest one, its lacking sense of identity of what it is, with probably the worst story that ends up being the cherry on top of this dumbass mountain. While its not necessarily the "worst" Sonic game on a technical level, it feels like the worst complete Sonic experience once everything comes together. Even the worst games in the series like '06 have something that people like about them, whereas here its almost nonexistence asto what can be savaged from it. At this point, I would rather play something like Sonic 4 Episode 1 or even somehow, Secret Rings, because while those games are bad, they're at least consistent in their own garbage and are simply eclipsed by other Sonic entries. It's so strange that by the time Sonic got its confidence back, it goes right back to being pulled in a million different directions that do far more harm than good. I think Lost World is the perfect subtitle for this one, because it really does seem like Sonic is lost in his own world.

It's one of the most human stories I've ever experienced of human will and determination from a game with some of the best performances of the medium that will give you goosebumps with some of the most gorgeous visuals and cinematography that might as well be on pair with a movie with the most beautiful score by the incredible Masayoshi Soken who's contributed to the beautiful sounds of Final Fantasy XIV with the some of the most unhuman ass combat and boss fights that are some of the craziest in scope to where I was almost convinced that Yoshi-P and team created the world's first quadruple-A game

so why the hell did they do Jill like that??