This game is so fucking good I don't know how anyone ever thought this was bad. 99% of the complaints even by people who defend LoD are half baked at best. Only issue one could have is the n64 controller itself shafting this game a bit. Play it on a real controller and that issue is gone.
Here are my bindings for a PlayStation controller.
A=Circle=Jump
B=X=Attack 1
C Left=Square=Attack 2
C Right=Left Bumper=Collect Items
C Up=Dpad Up=Change camera
C Down=Triangle=Item Attack
L=Right Bumper=Werewolf Attack
R=Right thumbstick press=Lock on
Z=Left Trigger=Crouch
Map Dpad to right stick

i've had a rocky relationship with this one to say the least

it may go without saying, but i'm the kind of person who thoroughly adores absolutely everything about this game's initial concept and presentation. i didn't grow out of my 'edgy phase' - it wasn't one. this shit's cool as fuck. it was cool as fuck 20 years ago, it still is today and it will be forever

shadow the hedgehog is a game carried by ideas, but they're executed to mixed results. this permeates the plot, script and gameplay. nothing's completely unscathed

narratively, it's incredibly ambitious - especially for such an obviously rushed game. the route structure is somewhat insane, even if the endings do split into 3-4 similar templates - almost all of which have really awkward line deliveries (shout out to 'journey to nihility' though - that one goes hard)

scriptwise... man, it's a mess. black doom is the biggest issue. he's effectively a caricature of a shounen antagonist who never shuts the fuck up. conversations tend to be pretty stilted across the board, but this dude just amps it to fucking 13. i contemplated dropping a half star here just because of how annoying his presence was during the final episode. in fact, i better stop fucking talking about black doom or else this game might be a 2/10 by the time i'm done

...on the contrary, shadow himself is thankfully as strong of a character as ever and the ability to constantly jump between routes really suits his whole mysterious/badass/what-the-fuck-is-he-thinking demeanor. that said, his stages could easily give you a positive or negative impression depending on which of those paths you end up on

personally, i started with the pure dark route... then after a neutral-only palate cleanser, pure hero - this was a fucking mistake! depending on your whims as a player your first run could consist of varied but mostly straightforward objectives, or menial tasks such as combing through multi-pathed environments for torchs to light and killing exactly specified quantities of enemies (it'll be a cold day in hell when i replay lost impact)

at his best, shadow disappoints as the star of a sonic game but actually excels as a shooter more akin to gamma's role in sa1, boasting faster movement and a solid variety of weapons that all feel fun to shoot - which is especially important because this game wants bullets to rain constantly, as it actively rewards killing enemies of both alignments, encouraging the ambivalent carnage no matter which route you're aiming for

in fact - i feel like this game would've likely gone over better with some fans if its A-ranks were stricter in places. you can basically hold forward and pass any normal mission with flying colors, but beyond that there's tons of room to optimize runs via effective usage of shadow's chaos blast and especially control powers. definitely a missed opportunity here!

with a few more months in the oven, some slower bits axed and some added speed to shadow's spindashing, homing and walljumping, this'd be a classic for sure

as it stands, it's pretty confused. i've come to enjoy the chaos quite a bit, but i'd only recommend it to someone who wished gamma had more of a presence in sa1. if you go in expecting sa3, then everything's all over before it can even start

the soundtrack, however, i can - and will - recommend to literally anyone with or without a pulse

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

I DONT CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAREEEEEEEEE
i love this game, coop is extremely fun, and the extra modes are even more fun
mercenaries is amazing
and i love the story of each campaign, especially chris's
its still good when playing solo, very fun

You're trying too hard, bro! More or less, the main reason as to why I'm generally disinterested in modern horror games, which tend to serve as vehicles for cryptic lore dumps for YouTube analysts to pore over rather than fright-enhanced decision making. I don't want mindfuckery, I want regular fuckery, something that I was hopeful would be present in this kind of return to form. This game was sold to me as the best of Resident Evil meets the best of Silent Hill, but, in reality, it's the worst of both: Resident Evil's cramped item management without any of the brilliant circular level design that makes Spencer Mansion thrilling to route through even after dozens of playthroughs, and Silent Hill's scary-because-it's-scary imagery without any of the dread that defines each and every one of Harry Mason's fog-enveloped footsteps. Instead, we've got jumpcuts to character closeups and spooky stanzas of poetry, pulsating masses of flesh on the ground, and handwritten notes conveniently censored at the most ominous places- surface-level stuff that makes horror games effective for people who don't understand what makes horror games effective. I'm not engaged enough to decipher your jumbled-up story, I'm not interested in your generic sci-fi setting, and I'm not even scared! But, maybe if I actually felt like the character I was playing as, I would be! Fast movement speed and wide hallways make enemies pitifully easy to juke, and thus not at all intimidating. Exploration isn't exciting or intriguing because of how straightforward it is on a grand scale. Plentiful items and infinite saves mean there's not any pressure on you even if you do wind up making a mistake somehow. I initially chalked this all up to misguided attempts at balance, but they get harder and harder to defend once you realize that all you're really doing is (often literally) opening up a locked door just to find a key for another locked door somewhere else on the map, which makes the experience feel more like a parody of classic survival horror games rather than an earnest attempt at recapturing the magic. I hardly took out any enemies, I didn't burn a single body, and, on several occasions, I killed myself on purpose because doing that was quicker than having to run back to the save room to retrieve the specific contextual item I needed, which is about as damning as you can get for this kind of game. The only strategy to pick up on is keeping nothing at all on your person in between storage box visits so that you can handle when the game inevitably dumps five key items on you in successive rooms. Mikami's rolling in his grave!

The lone bright spots are the traditional puzzles, which, although are few and far between, frequently nail the physical satisfaction of fiddling around with a piece of old, analog equipment that you're half familiar with and half in the dark on. If this game had understood its strengths better, it would've been a fully-fledged point-and-click or even a Myst-style free-roaming puzzler. The actual survivor horror feels tacked on, as though it's obligated to be this kind of game because it's attempting to tell a story in the same emotional vein as the Silent Hill series and the player needs to have something to do before being shown the next deep, thought-provoking cutscene. I can't even say that it understands the classics from a visual standpoint, forgoing the fixed-camera perspective that gives each of Resident Evil's individual rooms a distinct cinematographic personality and instead opting for a generic top-down approach that makes every location feel the same. Though, that's not to say the art direction itself is bad. In fact, it's phenomenal, and easily the standout of the game's features, but it doesn't make up for how bland everything else is. At some point, this one demoted itself in my eyes from 'mostly boring but worth playing just for the aesthetic' to 'downright painful.' Maybe it was after the game pretentiously transitioned into a first-person walking simulator one too many times. Or, more likely, it was when some of the small details- red-light save screens, items conveniently located right on top of their respective instruction manuals, and even the sound effect of equipping your pistol- started feeling less like homages and more like creative crutches, indicators of an entirely rudderless experience. I really feel terrible for ragging on something that's evidently a passion project and extremely competent from a technical standpoint, and I sincerely hope the devs keep at it. But, man. I wish I got anything at all out of this. The one game I've played that's managed get this done, I mean, spiritually succeeding an era/genre rather than a specific series by remixing several blatant inspirations so proficiently that it ends up feeling like something entirely new, is still Shovel Knight, but I'm not sure the world's ready for that conversation quite yet...