This game is cool, but I don't think it fully deserves the reputation it holds. It is absolutely packed with charm and character, and is pretty stellar when it comes to the visuals and music. All that stuff is great. My issues come in with the gameplay, and I have quite a few small issues that build up into major ones. Let's start with the combat. Timing attacks is fun, but pretty slow. Doing the same repetitive timed inputs over and over can get tedious when it comes to the special moves. I like the dodging system, offering some risk and reward for skilled players. Overall, combat is alright. It's generally easy, but feels much slower than something like mario and luigi. Exploration also has some issues. While I like some of the unique area gimmicks, exploration can also be quite sluggish. Some areas are just slow to get through, like one chapter that makes you backtrack through the same island area several times over. Changing characters and using their abilities also just feels slow. Some chapters, like the Glitz Pit, really really drag since it's mostly just a few hours of easy combat encounters with a little bit of exploration spliced in between. Much like the combat, it's got good fundamentals that just feel slower than necessary. And that's really my biggest issue with this game. It's creative at every turn, but getting to some of those turns and get boring. Granted, I played Bowser's Inside Story way before this, and maybe asking for pacing and speed as excellent as that isn't totally fair. This was mostly complaining, but I do like the game. I would enjoy it a lot more if there were a lot of changes made to speed up animations and attack timings, as well as condensing several areas down.

It's pretty fun and incredibly varied. I did worry that it might run a bit stale, especially after realizing the game is much longer than I thought it would be. Shockingly, the game remains fresh the entire runtime thanks to many different golf-ish challenges and some fun bonuses. I was pretty regularly surprised by what the game pulled out, which is really impressive. I do think iterating on some of the concepts further may have made the game a bit stronger. Say, if each section had a final challenge that used all the level types of that section in a harder way, it could be a bit more mechanically satisfying. Either way, pretty fun.

This game was really fun, and makes some improvements on the solid base of the original. The game's incredibly varied moveset flows very well and works excellently for this game's focus on speed. Completing it was very fun, doing each level several times to meet the requirements. Finding the small collectibles gives a good sense of direction, the Vinyl records that unlock a remixed version of a level are more hidden and fun to find, and time trials are a good test of your abilities. I will say, my biggest issue with the game is how easy the time trials are. A handful gave me some issues, but for such a fun moveset I didn't feel like there were too many times that I was really forced to use it to it's maximum potential. This could be fixed the way crash bandicoot does it, where getting a gold rank is all you need to unlock achievements and the bonus level, but there's a bonus platinum rank that's much harder and is for bragging rights. Anyways, the game's pretty fun. I like the visual style, it's pretty distinct. The music is alright, didn't love or hate it. Overall, a pretty fun and short experience to master. (Also it seems like there's a good amount of people who really don't like this series for some reason. Don't listen to them. The game's fun.)

I played until probably halfway through chapter 4. It took me nearly 6 hours, and I think I've realized the big issue this game has. At least, the big issue of quite a lot of it, since I've heard it opens up like 30 hours in. The game gives the player no agency. For quite a while, there's pretty much just one strategy to take in battle since your options are so limited. And it's not like you get to make any decisions outside of combat since the area design is so linear. You can't even jump, the game just does it for you. Linearity in an RPG is certainly not a bad thing. In fact, FFX is very linear and I love that game. But it still lets you figure things out. The combat has depth, that 13 just doesn't. Even as new mechanics get introduced, it's just finding a new easy pattern to follow for every battle. It's not helped by it's boring/obnoxious characters and messy story (except sazh, he was kinda cool and has a bird on his head). It's frustrating, because I see hints of something fun here. I'm sure I'll revisit it or try the sequels at some point. But for now, the game is just a boring slog that I can barely pay attention to.

While it's certainly weaker than superstar saga and bowser's inside story, it's still pretty fun and well worth checking out. The gameplay, combat, exploration, everything is well done. But there's many small flaws that steadily mar the experience. Most areas go on a bit longer than they probably should, most bosses and enemies have a bit too much health (like the terrible final boss that has an INSANE health pool). There's a lot of padding and unintuitive design. It's still fun at it's core, however.

This might be my favorite portable sonic game (although I haven't played Rush). It's an odd mishmash of sonic 2 and 3 primarily, with level themes from 2 with new designs, gimmicks from 3, and music from all over the place. It's pretty fun, and the screencrunch doesn't really hurt the game suprisingly, spare one or two times a bottomless pit comes out of nowhere. Even then, the level design is fairly forgiving, where falling often leads to a path that takes the player back up to where they fell rather than instant death. Boss fights are rather fun too. It's a great time and an easy recommendation for sonic fans.

Franken is an interesting game. It's easily beatable in less than an hour, and is definitely worth the brief time investment. The gameplay is deliberately as simple as possible, which I don't strictly think is a benefit. The humor is pretty much the only thing the game has, and the writing is pretty funny. It's so blunt and absurd, and combining that with the scenarios, rpg tropes, and some funny music choices means I was consistently entertained. But I can't help but feel as though there were opportunities to spice up the humor through gameplay. Maybe some sort of twist on RPG gameplay to make even more jokes, instead of just making it one button. Cool game, I'd like to see more from this developer.