I've been itching for a mystery game like this since I finished Obra Dinn, and The Case of the Golden Idol certainly scratched that itch.
I plowed through this game with a couple of friends, and sharing the aha-moments once all the pieces were starting to fall into place was fantastic. A large part of the mysteries can be solved with enough trial and error, but we tried to challenge ourselves by only placing names that we were 90% sure were going in the right spot.
Looking forward to the sequel!

As much as I wanted to like Drill Dozer, the game has very significant flaws that I cannot overlook. The platforming is extremely bad and the drilling mechanics gets incredibly dull and repetitive a few hours into the game. It got to the point where I felt I wasn’t having a good time and wanted to wrap the title up. The last half of the game has some absurd difficulty spikes, making you wonder how did the devs at Game Freak expect players to react to certain situations when the platforming is so mediocre. That sky area, especially, is the absolute lowest point of this game to the point where I had to question if it’s even worth continuing this game. It was a very frustrating experience and I question if it was even play tested.

While I did love the music (it’s probably a more realized sound coming from the GBA era Pokémon games) and the beautiful sprite work, the last half of the game dragged so much for me that I will probably never be returning to this game ever again.

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 had higher hopes than most. i don't mind the visuals (most of the time), the bosses or the chaos powers. what i do mind is the sheer lack of energy that carries this whole game

superstars is the negative extreme of what a sonic detractor perceives the series as. there's little to no thought or challenge throughout. you're just constantly going with the motions and holding right - sometimes left - occasionally making some precise jumps - but then it's back to going through the motions

almost every zone bleeds together design-wise. the camera really doesn't help - it's too damn close. i have no desire to revisit and explore the majority of these zones because:

a.) i have no fucking idea where i'm going in them half the time

b.) spatial awareness is unimportant anyway because there's no real upside to being on the skilled path vs the baby road

there's stage gimmicks everywhere, but they largely amount to wasted momentum. the game's constantly moving onto new thing after new thing at a pace more rapid than the tiktok algorithm, but for every attempt at variety there's little to no commitment or follow-through. almost every idea feels half-baked. case in point: one of the final stages being a half-assed shmup segment; or THE final act just being the second-to-last but backwards

ironically the bosses were the highlight for me. they're the only points throughout where you're forced to stop and think for a moment. there's a few annoying ones, but generally they reward efficiency and offer more opportunities for damage than they initially let on. i'd say that's a success as far as sonic fights go

what kills me here is i don't think that sonic team's heart is really in the wrong place - trip's a great newcomer and it's nice to see mostly original zones, but i really hope the next outing isn't so painfully safe. this series is always at its best when it's being bold and confident - neither of which i can call superstars in any capacity

also ditch that garbage ass soundfont pronto