Amy's Story

this uh
sure is a campaign
its not as bad as some will say, but its not good either
its kinda like a sonic-ified resident evil 3 where youre constantly being chased by an unkillable threat, keeping you on the run as you platform your way through the level. problem is, the robot chasing amy (zero) isnt much of a threat. amy is pretty slow in these levels, but it can be fun to control her if you can build enough speed to do a hammer jump... just dont get the long hammer because (in addition to coming in too late to matter) the sound effect is just ruined. it might sound like a nitpick, but the hammer jump with the default hammer just... it just has a satisfying click. it makes me understand dogs more, you know how you reward them with that clicker thing... its like that. anyway you can knock zero down in one hit and that'll stun him for long enough to do a "puzzle" (puzzle being put the green block in the green slot, pressing a button, or rotating a valve) and then just cruise through the level without any real issue until you reach the balloon that ends the level. do that 3 times and then have a boss fight and you're done. the levels arent even long either, they'll probably take you about 4 minutes each. you get a boss fight with zero at the end and hes pretty easy. bop him into the electric fence, bop his head, avoid his ring attack by jumping, repeat 2 more times and thats it, thats the campaign done. even the actual story to the campaign is nothing special, since its just "amy finds a bird then gets distracted by everything as the robot chases her"
its short, its neither good nor bad, its just kind of... there. it exists and then its over in like half an hour, and half of that is either cutscenes or meandering around the overworld.

Knuckles Story:

Knux might be the worst campaign in the game. 5 levels of treasure hunting and all of em are just recycled portions of sonic levels. the treasure indicator is finicky and the collectables can be found in very weird places, and it all ends on a boss thats sonic's and big's leftovers. what a downgrade. even his upgrades suck, i have never once needed to use the fighting gloves in my twenty-something years of playing this game. his story has so little thought put into it either "master emerald destroyed, find pieces, get tricked by eggman, fight sonic, ok i found all the master emerald pieces the end"
literally just feels like an afterthought

Tails Story:
while sonics campaign was a much more straightforward adaption of the traditional 2d gameplay into a 3d environment, the tails levels are more... interesting. its a shorter campaign where the story is largely the same, just from tails perspective, and now the core gameplay is racing sonic in levels that are mostly identical to how they were in sonics campaign. its a neat little novelty but could have been done better. its not even all the sonic levels, and while tails does get his own sandboarding level, one where he doesnt race anyone, it just felt pointless. much like the bosses he fights. theyre almost all just "fight this character from the sonic campaign but without the homing attack" and the bosses were already a lowpoint in the game, or rather the boss fights against other characters you play as, anyway (though a couple of other bosses tails fights arent great either)
tails story does however make up for it all by the end with a great final race against eggman to see who can get to the nuke first, culminating into one of the best bosses in the game, the egg walker, as tails gets his moment in the spotlight as his own hero, independent of sonic (we dont talk about forces)
a charming little campaign

at first, the season seems promising, a step up from the first
then the novelty wears off and you realize that everything notable in the map was stripped out, meaning the new POIs are the only ones with anything in them, the new olympian items just kind of leave you vulnerable so theyre borderline useless once everyones used to them, any new weapons feel pretty much the same as last seasons weapons with a couple exceptions, and returning weapons were the worst ones from last season. even the battle pass is kinda just okay.
chapter 5 hasnt been great so far. next season really better feel good

my previous joke review aside, this is probably one of the best demos ive played that excellently showcases what the final game has to offer, all while giving this short tongue-in-cheek adventure where ryo has to find segas director and basically be a bodyguard to him before 7pm, and you gotta find where he is without much help, by asking if anyone on the street has seen him, admittedly you cant do much of the stuff you can in the final game, mostly just talk, admire the scenery, look at a couple objects and then have a chase that introduces you to the quick time events, which are weirdly brutal in their timing as you can fail them while the indicator is still on the screen. i havent played shenmue (yet) but i can only hope those either improved in the final game or at least the somewhat recentish remasters. the game also has a missed oppritunity to show off the combat, as it ends on a thug showing up to harm the director, but that just gets resolved without you (the player, not ryo) doing anything. its not much, but if you're interested in shenmue at all, or even just the substories in the yakuza games (as this demo just feels like the precursor to those) this is a short and sweet novelty that i recommend checking out. theres an english patch you should be able to find rather easily.

my first impressions of this game were rather good for a simple wonder swan game. i chose bass and he controls very well, the rapid fire, double jump and omnidirectional firing all return from the snes version of the game and now he even has a little dash, and it all feels good to control, and he can tank a lot of hits, giving the impression that this might be an easier title, which pleasantly surprised me considering mega man games can be a bit hard for my liking a lot of the time
then i got to the first boss
it was a devil fight
that takes longer than probably any devil fight in the series
each shot does half a point of damage to the devil and he has a lot of points. his only 2 attacks are to spurt slimes over the stage that do little damage to you but are fucking impossible to dodge (seriously they have a massive hitbox that goes way beyond their body) and they prevent you from shooting. not only that, but the only time you can hurt devil is when the goo is out and it just makes the first boss take like 5 minutes, its insane

i took it as an omen and quit as soon as i beat it. seeing these reviews, i made the right choice

its like a less good mega man 8 also bass is there

edit: OKAY SO BASS PLAYS LIKE OBJECTIVELY BETTER IN EVERY WAY WHAT THE FUCK
i dont think ill go through the entire game as bass, but from doing a couple levels as him just to see what hes like, it genuinely feels like his way is the intended experience and mega man is an afterthought. rapidfire, omni-directional aiming and double jump holy shit it feels so good
im bumping it up a little from my initial rating, and saying this is probably better than mm8

if youre marathoning the mm games, i can see this entry being pretty weak, the burnout would have hit pretty hard by this point
it doesnt do much different or even necessarily better than previous games for the most part, but it does look and control damn fine while doing it. theres still plenty of classic mega man annoyance, and some very frustrating bosses, but i never found it enough to ruin the experience. the animated cutscenes are also quite the treat (with the undub hack)
after giving this game up for years, it finally grew on me