Not gonna give a rating yet because I've only just begun with this one but I really wanna get my thoughts on the game out there. Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers is the most difficult kart racer I've played ever and it's not close at all.

And I'm really enjoying it!! While this game has already kicked my ass in some pretty frustrating ways (which is definitely a thing with kart racers in general, tbf), the successes I've had have been incredibly satisfying. Everything about this game is a lot less straightforward than, say, Mario Kart, but once I started figuring out the nuances of the gameplay it made a lot more sense. Also, I'm definitely a sucker for the Air Ride-esque challenge board, I've always loved filling these out in other games that have them. Overall, Ring Racers is a demanding but still highly enjoyable kart racer that I'm sure will only get better with time. Definitely check it out if you're a fan of the genre--it's free, after all!

...The tutorial absolutely needs to be reworked, though. Everyone's definitely right about that lol

IMPORTANT TIP: Before you go past that final point of no return, you're gonna want to complete the training sequences for Akiyama, Saejima, and Tanimura. Upon completion of each of these, you'll get a piece of armor. MAKE SURE you equip all three of them on Tanimura before you proceed with the finale. You'll thank me later.

Now that that's out of the way, I thought this was a pretty good game! For the first game in the series to have multiple playable characters, I think they pulled it off well. They're all pretty solid, except for Tanimura who, while still good, had some more annoying moments during his parts of the story than the other three (including what I referred to at the beginning; I just know it would've been terrible if i didn't follow my friends' advice). Also, as everyone else who's played has noticed, enemies grab pretty often in this game for whatever reason. It's nothing to worry about in most situations, but it can lead to some nasty combos in certain encounters, so be warned. Anyways, the story is pretty good too, but the twists do start to get kinda ridiculous. That aside, I think giving Kiryu a more minor role for the first time in order to focus on some new characters was a pretty cool choice, and I liked how their individual stories became more and more interconnected over time. I also felt like the OST was a bit weaker this time around too; still very good overall, but there definitely weren't as many standout tracks for me as there were in, say, Yakuza 0 or Yakuza 3. For all of those issues, though, I still think Yakuza 4 is very much worth playing if you've been enjoying the other games!

also they brought back the fishing minigame from the previous game and it still goes hard holy shit

Just decided to play this on a whim yesterday and yeah it's not good. Most levels are just the same sort of fetch quests; the only meaningful difference is what the collectibles look like. This is not helped by the fact that the titular Home for Imaginary Friends serves as the setting of every level which, surprisingly enough, makes for some repetitively boring gameplay. At least the game's rather short.

That said, I think the show's imaginative (heh) art style and character designs are portrayed pretty well here. Mac and Bloo also control pretty nicely--that's more than I could say for other licensed games of the era! All in all, it's far from the bottom of the barrel, and if you're a fan of Foster's (like me), you might even get a kick out of seeing a handful of episodes being adapted into different levels. Not really worth playing other than that though.