While the latter games in this series are undeniably more polished experiences, Blood Money still manages to be a memorable time. Maybe it's the jank that makes me love this so much. There's something exhilarating about pushing people, and the melee combat--hilariously broken as it is--only adds to the amusement factor.

That might not seem like high praise, considering one man's trash is another man's treasure and vice versa. But even if you aren't a fan of just how 2006 the whole thing is, the variety on play here will keep you interested long before the credits start rolling. The Hitman series has almost always nailed level variety, and Blood Money is no exception.

But what I really love about this game is that the cheats that are secretly built into it are really, really stupid. If you want a good example of why, here's me beating the game in less than twenty minutes using nothing but cheats, and here's me doing the same thing but with slightly more attitude attached. This is more or less an excuse for me to shamelessly plug some of my "work," but even if you aren't trying to break the game in record times, it almost creates this sandbox within the already established sandbox. A couple of the cheats are broken: if you're playing past the 1.0 release, don't use Give All. Using it more than once causes your game to crash. And if you decide to use a weapon that's not in the level you're playing, you're probably going to crash, anyway. The timemultiplier cheat is funny because it breaks all of the animations, but it requires a key spammer if you're going to use it past a certain speed. Other than that, it's a bizarrely enjoyable experience for those of us who still think that cheating in games is the funniest thing.

A great experience hiding true depth under it's crass surface. The engaging story and cutscenes about finding meaning and what it means to have all you could want. Travis is a likable character despite his aggressive demeanour and all the bosses serve as interesting parallels to an aspect of either Travis or the life of an assassin. Fun hack and slash gameplay with some amazing boss fights that all serve a fun purpose without feeling too gimmicky. Only flaw is the dull open world with a motorbike that feels like it's made of paper, but everything besides that is top tier

an insane psychotic trip through retrofuturistic hackerman renditions of cyberhell mixed with absolutely bonkers SFX and music… and a goddess-empress trans (?) AI antagonist. the gameplay is surprisingly solid by contemporary standards for something which appears superficially to be as outdated as a game can get. but it’s just an FPS metroidvania, in essence. combat can be obnoxious and movement can be weird but it's fine the overwhelming majority of the time.

if i hear one more person say "it's like an OS" or "it's like controlling a tank" im going to stab myself with a Laser Rapier™.

The highly influential, but commercially unsuccessful inspiration for some of the best video game franchises of all time. Now with mouse look, making it almost as easy to pick up and play as the sequel. It takes less than a minute to beat a mutant to death with a lead pipe, what's not to like?
In all seriousness, this game is pretty good. It probably has the highest enemy and weapon variety out of every game that ends in -shock. The levels are also a thing of beauty, clearly designed more like a realistic living space than a video game level. I'm also a fan of the music, which is simply excellent and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that industrial is the definitive music genre for cyberpunk settings.
The difficulty is also highly customizable, as an example, you can set story to 0 and never have to listen to an audiolog or find a password ever again. I wouldn't recommend it, but it's convenient.
My closing thought is that I suggest people try it, it's really not as hard to play as it looks.

Great art style, great music, some of the worst gameplay and level design choices I've ever had the displeasure of playing. Disappointed. Maybe the annoying enemies and stage gimmicks would be okay if the controls weren't so awful. Bear in mind that Pro Skater 2 came out the same year as this, and Pro Skater 1 came out 2 whole years before it as well.

Game is tied to 30fps by the engine no matter where you play it. This usually doesn't bode well for platformer-type games.

If you want to engage with this game, just appreciate the art from a YouTube playthrough and listen to the music or something. It's just not worth playing. Maybe Future is better.

I love the new mechanics and the characters are all great, but the game is extremely slow and all the cases drag on far more than they should. It also has one of the most boring final cases and it's never good when you finish a game and your first thought is "thank god it's over".

The flashback case was probably my favorite in this game, the interactions between Edgeworth and Franziska were great. Kay is also one of my favorite characters in the series and she's such a great assistant character to have working with Edgeworth.

I wish the storyline was more interesting because otherwise this would be a fun game, but they fix all the issues in AAI2. If you want to play this before AAI2, the final case can be skipped over or done with a strategy guide.