Starting off a Sonic review with talking about his transition to 3D has become a cliche but for this game I believe it's necessary. In terms of control and level design Sonic transitioned into 3D swimmingly. Sonic Adventure has my favorite soundtrack of any Sonic game and the game still looks great. But this game did introduce the two things that will haunt 3D Sonic for the next 25 years, jank and content padding.

It felt like the camera was always fighting against me, getting blocked by geometry and whatnot. Collision issues were another problem I ran into. I wasn’t falling into the floor or anything but there were a lot of little issues that made traversal more cumbersome. Things like brushing against invisible walls in the jungle area that I felt like didn’t belong, snowboarding feeling super awkward due to every tiny bump sending you airborne and not being able to in certain spots as Knuckles. Even compared to other games of its time Sonic Adventure lacks polish.

Technical issues aside, Sonic's campaign is quite fun, all of the high speed platforming you’d want from Sonic. The rest of the campaigns suffer from being too short while also reusing content from Sonic. While the rest of the cast does control well, these issues make their campaigns satisfying to play through. The exception is Big’s campaign, whose short length is its only saving grace. Despite all of my bellyaching I didn’t hate my time with Sonic Adventure. But I wonder how good it could have been if they’d cut out all the fluff to make Sonic’s campaign as good as possible.

Sonic Dream Team is one of the best 3D Sonic games ever. The controls are silky smooth (with a controller) and the level design is really engaging. I'd recommend this to anyone who likes platformers. I do have two major gripes with this game though. Most of the music is pretty forgettable and the performance on non mobile platforms. I played this on a MacBook Air and the game could get really choppy even on the lowest graphics settings. The game ran perfectly on my iPhone 13 so I believe it is an optimization issue. The problem I have with this is that there is no way to play this game comfortably with a controller without dealing with performance issues. Even with all of that said I still really liked this game. Just buy one of those controller clip-on accessories for your phone before playing.

I'm pretty inexperienced at both rhythm games and character action games, but Hi-Fi Rush has been a real treat. I love how this game looks and the animation is some of the best I've ever seen. The writing, especially in the flavor text, is super funny. The music rules and the way it syncs into everything makes it feel even cooler.

I do have some issues with this game. The controls while platforming feel kinda clunky and combo strings overlapping eachother made the combat feel more limited than I'd like. But that's a huge deal in the grand scheme of things.

But what's really amazing about Hi-Fi Rush is how you can feel how much love was put into it. You don't put an extended Xenogears refrence in a game you don't care about. It's not a great time for game developers right now, especially those in the AAA space. I hope in the future we can see an industry that allows developers the chance to put as much love and care into their games as Hi-Fi Rush.

EDIT: Wow, the last paragraph has certainly aged. I truly wish the folks at Tango Gameworks the best and hope they can find new work where they won't be treated like dirt.

This is the JRPG of all time. Everything in this game feels so heightened. If something is exciting you're jumping for joy, if something is sad you're bawling your eyes out. And every single asspect of the game is like this, the combat, expolartion, minigames, music and story all come togethor in this beautiful package. I'm aware that this reveiw really dosen't get into the nitty grity details but I think what's more important is communicating the emotions I felt while playing. Because I have never felt this much while playing a game, and I think that's what matters most.

I really love the 2D Metroid games but I had never had the chance to play Prime until the remaster came out. And for the most part I had a great time. The pacing was extremely snappy, the game looks incredible, the music is great and the combat and exploration was satisfying. That was until I got to the Phazon Mines then all of that momentum comes to a screeching halt. Save points become incredibly scarce, the enemies are brutal, the map is even more confusing to interpret and navigate. The Omega Pirate is one of the most frustrating bosses I have fought in recent memory. And on top of it all in order to beat the game you must collect 12 random collectables across the world killing all of that good pacing I had just praised. Metroid Prime is a great game that deserves all of the praise it gets, but it just didn't make the landing for me.

Sonic Adventure 2 fixes my two biggest issues with the first game. The game is more polished across the board and every character has levels tailor made for them. While it does make some new problems along the way it is still a stark improvement over its predecessor. Instead of 6 game play styles Sonic Adventure 2 cuts it down to 3.

Sonic and Shadow’s stages provide all of the speed based platforming you’d want from a Sonic game. Compared to Adventure 1, stages are more linear with an emphasis on speedrunning. The only real complaint I have is that so many actions are mapped to the same button. So I would often try to light speed dash and end up somersaulting or spin dashing. This happens much more than one would think and can be pretty frustrating.

Knuckles and Rouge’s treasure hunting stages benefit greatly by the changes made to character movesets and level design. The tracker can only track one object at a time and the target will not change until you collect the first object. This makes finding everything more annoying than they have to be. They also suffer from the button mapping issue. There were so many times where I would try to attack an object but I end up talking to a hint monitor instead, cheating me out of an A rank.

Tails and Eggman’s stages are all about locking on to as many things as possible and blowing them all up for massive point bonuses. It provides a very arcade-like satisfaction. The biggest issue comes from the controls. The mechs are very big and slow, so I’d run into situations where you are unable to avoid damage causing me to lock off all the enemies. Aside from that I liked these stages more than I thought I would.

The side content didn’t do much for me personally. I’m not a Chao person and I don’t have anybody to play multiplayer with but they are still really cool. I would still prefer if this game only had Sonic and Shadow stages but I cannot deny the increased quality of what is here.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake was my favorite game of 2020 and my first introduction to Final Fantasy. I mostly want to reveiw the new content added to Intergrade. The game looks and plays amazingly on PS5, I can't imagine going back to the PS4 version now. The Intermison campaign was also really fun. Yuffie might be my favorite character to play in this entire game and just makes me even more excited for Rebirth. They just added even more great stuff to a really great game and I can't ask for any more tham that.

I want to make clear that this is a reveiw of A Realm Reborn only, and that of someone using the free trail. So I never really got a chance to interact with other players.

Lets start with the positives. The music is amazing and the graphics really hold up. I think a lot of the mechanics are really cool so with all of that considered I totally get why so many people love this game.

But that being said the MSQ for A Realm Reborn might be the most miserable and mind numbing time I have spent playing a video game. Most of the MSQ are made up of mindless kill and fetch quests. Even when you do get something inportant to the story it dosen't matter because the story sucks too. Maybe I didn't give it a big enough chance due all of the filler but I felt nothing the during 95 percent of the story.

Part of me feels bad for this reveiw becuase I know that a ton of people love this game and it probably does get better in the expansions. But I can only write what I felt and I did not have a good time playing this game.