Familiar 6

Story Positives:

1. Intro: The first shot of the entire game? A broken Venator and a lone escape pod. A single image says so much.
2. Intro: Music Direction: Let’s get this out of the way. While some people say this game has a pretty lackluster story (they probably mean plot), the Intro is pure gold. We start off with mongolian (Huttese?) throat singing which somehow perfectly fits the tone and setting, which later we see is literally what Cal is listening to as when he pulls out his headphones the music fades. This also immediately puts the player into Cal’s shoes, despite the camera
3. Intro: World Building: The absolutely insanely dangerous work of unjamming hauler clamps (which we literally do later, and Prauf NEARLY dies doing) results in a grand total of double pay for ONE shift. That’s it, that’s all their lives are worth. This is re-emphasized across the entire tutorial level as we see how insanely dangerous and unsecured all these people are, literal inches from death in many cases if they slip
4. Intro: Storyboarding: Several really great shots that establish the tone, the setting, and the timeline. Seeing a Lucrehulk brought in, the shot of the Venator having its wing sliced, the leftover Clone vehicles being patrolled by AT-STs
5. Intro: Banter: Lots of NPCs who all say various relevant things. Some say hi to Cal, some are just talking amongst themselves, some are irritated at our presence
6. Intro: Special mention to the quality of the Intro appealing to two completely difference audiences. For those unfamiliar with Star Wars there’s enough visual and audible coding so you get an idea of what’s going on here and how unpleasant and dirty work this is breaking down old military hardware. And if you ARE familiar with Star Wars we can place this and its direct connection to the Clone Wars and the various pieces involved
7. Intro: Moment: “It’s been here what, four years?” “Five.” This is almost perfect voice direction. He’s just casually making conversation, but Cal responds with deadly seriousness. And we can now tell immediately, even if we know nothing about Star Wars, that whatever happened 5 years ago personally impacted Cal. And since we ARE familiar with Star Wars… we now know he was a padawan
8. Intro: Cutscene: We then see exactly how dangerous this all is. Thanks to blind luck we survive, but Prauf is not so lucky, and there’s this stupid imperial droid right there. If that stupid droid hadn’t been there. And then we have a fairly well executed action sequence (I mean of course we do, these are the Titanfall people)
9. Intro: Much of the intro also makes the player question if Prauf will betray us. Very small, minute details, like him hesitating when we tell him to shush, or him sounding apologetic when he admits what risk we took for him
10. Cutscene: Walking down the train. We start off in a fully busy area, then an empty area, then a completely abandoned area, then we turn around and we’re on a Venator… and if we turn back again the door is now gone. This is GREAT visual detail and very well executed. And of course it leads to the Stormtroopers coming in
11. Intro: Some fantastic establishment here. We see the classic mooks but also the Inquisitor troops, and then a woman with a similar mask on… a low level mook, but substantially higher tier than we are, something I will talk about more later. She, the Second Sister, then has her establishment scene. She gives the party line and sounds almost… bored. Even when she kills Prauf it’s just trying to provoke a reaction… which she succeeds at of course, and now we transition into more gameplay
12. Intro: Cutscene: Then we have the actual establishment for Second Sister. One of the things she mentions is ‘which jedi gave their life that you might live’, and you can just… feel the resentment in that. She is clearly above us in power level but not THAT much higher, which makes her a believable threat. She’s clearly got some baggage, which we’ll unpack as we go. And she is entirely too determined to get us, to the point that she leaps ONTO the ship as we’re fleeing, turns the stick with the Force, and almost manages to board the ship anyways. This makes sense (the penalty for failure for Inquisitors was not pleasant)
13. Intro: Moment: Cal, after the battle as the ship is fleeing, is so clearly freaking out. You can tell he’s just barely holding on, it even takes him several seconds to realize he should turn off his lightsaber
14. Brickwork: Absolutely bonkers visual fidelity and detail in the breaker yards, far too many things for me to list…
15. Brickwork: …so just trust me when I say it’s amazing
16. Doodads: Fantastic doodads too. Tools, wires, rain, chunks of metal, battle droid scrap, clone trooper helmets, all great stuff
17. Music Direction: Also a good time to mention that, similar to another game I’ve covered (KotOR) the music sounds sufficiently Star Wars without just copying the actual soundtracks
18. Character: Prauf is amazing despite only having like 20 minutes of screen time. Tremendous effort is put into his voice, his motions, and his dialogue. He comes across as very everyman. He was given multiple opportunities to turn on Cal and never did. He speaks out against the Galactic Empire. And possibly most importantly his very natural dialogue with Cal bespeaks a rapport the two have had for however long now. This adds to how likeable he is and makes us give a damn when he dies
19. Brickwork: Bogano. The sheer cliffs and nicely contrasting whites and greens, but what’s really strange is how well this area gets across the vibe of this being the middle of absolutely nowhere. There is NOTHING of note visible in any direction, and the playable area is relatively miniscule
20. Cutscene: Cal’s reaction to the news of a holocron that contains potential children Force users says all it needs to, and his moment with BD-1 afterwards is a great personal moment
21. Banter: Stormtroopers have just the best banter. They chat before they aggro (relative to specific spawns) and have varied banter, and then they’ll talk to each other and you as you fight them and react as the fight develops. One of my personal favorites is when the final trooper is left and they psych themselves up. It’s fantastic…
22. Banter: …some easy…
23. Banter: …triple positive territory stuff
24. Animation: There are a few issues here and there but we still have some solid motion capture (special credit to Debra Wilson, as always)
25. Voice Acting: The voice acting in general is fantastic. Consider this an aggregate, and I will update this later. Hey, me from the future here…
26. Voice Acting: …we’re just going…
27. Voice Acting: …to triple this
28. Voice Direction: Absolutely excellent direction. Even when saying some… questionable lines and sequences the people involved are putting in their best performances…
29. Voice Direction: …so that’s a solid double
30. Spritework: Cal and his outfits. I’m sorry, I unironically love the ponchos
31. Spritework: Troopers. I’m sorry but these are some really good outfits. I know they’re classic Stormtroopers but they have the varying helmets, shoulders, colors, and of course the purge troops…
32. Spritework: …fantastic stuff
33. Spritework: Inquisitors. There’s only a few of these but they are quite iconic looking and serve as a good compliment to the purge troopers (and contrast to Cal)
34. Tone: Down to the ground. There’s a negative related to this as well but for the MOST part the game does a good job of emphasizing how low level, low tier, and down to the ground you are. Sure we can mow through stormtroopers but the moment they get any armor they can cause us issues, one dude with a rocket launcher can kill us if we’re not careful, and purge troopers are our serious elite threat. The fact that the final boss of the game is effectively a low level mook themselves just makes this all the more clear…
35. Tone: …and it’s one of my favorite tidbits about the game
36. Character: Cal. The broken kid who’s never fully recovered from the horror of Order 66
37. Character: Greez. The cool uncle who’s just kind of legit no matter what
38. Character: Cere Junda. The broken jedi who’s never recovered from what was done to her… or what she did in return
39. Character: Second Sister, Trilla. This is unironically my favorite character in the game (it helps that every one of her scenes is crazy well done, you can tell polish was put on the voice direction and dialogue). She is such a fascinating example of a dark side user, without the usual cruelty or even mocking that most exhibit (even in this very game), but instead completely broken. You can feel for who she is, sympathize with what she’s been through, hate what she’s doing, and want her to make the turnaround…
40. Character: …great character. Arguably more central to the theme of the story than Cal is
41. Theme: This is a good time to talk about that I think. If my character positives just now didn’t get it across the theme is BROKEN. The entire story revolves around Order 66 and how it affected every single person present to some extent or another. And of course we see how everyone copes with that trauma. Malicos went mad with power, the Inquisitors were turned into punching bags, Cere was suicidal and desperate for any reason to keep bothering, and so on. It’s a powerful theme, reminds me of a worse version of KotOR 2’s theme
42. Character: BD-1 follows the Star Wars tradition of well developed characters who cannot speak english. They are often droids (but not always) and a lot of effort is therefore put into their animation and bloops in order to make them relatable. And, well, they usually succeed at it
43. Brickwork: Dathomir looks like a toxic, hellspawned swamp of a planet. And it is, so that fits
44. Brickwork: Zeffo proper (the caves, the cliffs, the waves, the storm) is all nice stuff
45. Doodads: Zeffo bay and village, on the other hand, some great work here. It’s all little stuff but you can feel that people used to live and work here
46. Background Lore: Zeffo also has a decent amount of background lore for the villagers, the imperial officer who tried to abscond with relics for a fat payday, and other little details
47. Brickwork: Zeffo ruins. This manages to look nice and smooth despite the weathering of time while still retaining just enough of the temple vibe
48. Brickwork: Imperial facilities, general. What’s really amusing is we see these twice because we also see jedi training in the past in places that look astonishingly similar (go figure). Either way some great work is done on the clinically cold and sterile imperial aesthetic as always…
49. Brickwork: …and it looks phenomenal
50. Moment: Cere tries to open up, briefly, about her experiences during Order 66… and then closes right back up just as quickly. She even hesitates when mentioning her padawan’s fate
51. MSQ: Kashyyyk set pieces. We show up and see Saw (woo) fighting imperials and rescuing wookiees, and what we go through is an extended sequence mostly seeing why Saw is as effective as he is and why people gravitate to him so much…
52. MSQ: …as well as why people like Cal would naturally follow his banner (if we weren’t on our save the galaxy mission)
53. Brickwork: Kashyyyk and the horrible deadly jungle, filled with nightmares and worse
54. External Continuity: The game brilliantly uses Star Wars as a setting and connects really well with the Clone Wars in general, the Clone Wars show, the movie Rogue One, the Rebels show, and I probably missed a few things here and there…
55. External Continuity: …great stuff…
56. External Continuity: …easy triple territory
57. Cutscene: Our first major confrontation with Trilla is essentially perfect. She’s there waiting, poised, she’s had time to set this up and time to think about what to say. She tests us and has no problem killing us but she finds us interesting because in many ways we are her. Yet another apprentice taken under Cere’s wing. And so she opens up to Cal (literally taking her helmet off to humanize her) and reveals that she was the padawan Cere lost. And in all her ranting we see no cruelty or malice, we see someone BROKEN. This is the real face of the fallen Jedi Order. A young woman whose life was absolutely destroyed because she was betrayed by her mentor and then tossed to the wolves to be abused, mis-used, and discarded like trash. And all of this is naturally conveyed as she tells these things to Cal, up to and including her final retort. He gets legitimately angry at her and, unable to come up with any witty remarks or retorts he just tells her flat out, ‘I will protect those children’…
58. Cutscene: …and all she can say in return…
59. Cutscene: …is “I thought the same way once”
60. MSQ: Sidequest to the asteroid arena. It’s… not great actually but I still enjoy it for the vibes, the Master of Ceremonies, and the rescue
61. Cutscene: Greez talking to Cal is kind of perfect. Cal’s still broody so he doesn’t respond immediately (nor should he) but Greez really opens up here and just kind of… is awesome here
62. Atmosphere: The Kashyyyk Shadowlands. What’s the VERY first thing we see down here? Obvious traps which are easy to avoid, but then these red plant… things that slowly, quietly approach you. The contrast is wonderful and between this and the music it’s just so damned creepy
63. Music Direction: And seriously, love the music as we climb. It starts off as horrifying but the higher we get the more hopeful it becomes, as the terrifying death world slowly becomes our ally, until we reach the peak and now…
64. Theme: …we’re the ones helping the wildlife against the Empire. The symbolism is obvious but it still works
65. Moment: Ninth Sister’s end. She comes across as casually brutish but when she finally yells out in rage at Cal after losing, tells him how he will be broken and pieced back together, we can tell who she’s really talking about here (notice her mechanical foot?). And her final line, “You CAN’T beat the Empire”… yeah that hits. It is in fact the Empire’s entire modus operandi; the perception of invincibility in its absence
66. Cutscene: Cal and Cere at dinner after Kashyyyk… and Greez overseasoning his food. This is such a great scene. Cere trying to open up but also making excuses, Cal trying to process but also kinda tired of all of this. Greez literally in the middle just… seasoning his food. So much so that BD-1 thinks it’s something new to scan
67. Brickwork: The interior of the Venator is gorgeous. We see it twice, once in the crashed ship and once in the flashback and both look so wonderfully imperial despite, y’know
68. MSQ: God where do I start. The entire Order 66 segment is the best overall sequence in the entire game (there’s one later I personally prefer more but this one takes the cake review wise). Let’s start by saying that this entire sequence is very well placed. We already know a lot about Cal, we’ve had plenty of build up and foreshadowing, we know that he’s been through some stuff. But this… this does something that nothing had done up until this point in time for me. It made me really feel Order 66 on a deeply personal level
69. Moment: The Clone Troopers are really friendly early on in the sequence. Of course they are, they’re Clone Troopers, being affable is built into them. They treat Cal like they’re his older brothers, rooting him on and helping out. This builds up what’s coming so well
70. Moment: Then we see Jaro Tapal who feels Order 66 hit and has to kill the (friendly!) Clone Commander right next to him, instantly and without hesitation
71. MSQ: What follows is a fantastic sequence where we have to flee multiple Clone Troopers by ducking into the guts of the ship while Jaro bulldozes through most of them alongside us
72. Integration: There’s some great stuff here where we can start to fight off or defend ourselves but we aren’t given the opportunity to really do so because, y’know, we’d die. So we have to just flee and do everything we can to AVOID contact
73. Visual Storytelling: Jaro goes out of his way to NOT kill Clone Troopers whenever he can which is… interesting
74. Music Direction: Did I mention that this entire time a slight variance on Anakin’s Dark Deeds is playing and it is perfect? It makes the tragedy of this entire sequence really land
75. Moment: So Jaro finally gets gunned down (twice!) and only because he’s getting swarmed by an entire squad of Clone Troopers WHILE keeping us safe. And so we flee in the escape pod, and we finally see that shot from the opening
76. Cutscene: Poor, poor Cal. Just a kid, his brothers and friends suddenly wanting to murder him for reasons he doesn’t even understand, and now his mentor is dying right in front of him
77. Character: Malicos is yet another broken character (they all are, aren’t they) and just charismatic enough that we can kind of see how he works. His problem is that while everyone calls him a lunatic there’s a disturbing logic to what he does
78. Cutscene: Cere and Cal trying to connect is… weirdly paced but it’s still a strong scene, with Cere finally opening up fully to Cal (about time) and literally handing him her lightsaber
79. Cutscene: So Cal finally, finally reaches the crystal in Ilum and… it shatters. Right in his hand, splits in two. This breaks Cal who just curls up and can barely handle it… it’s ‘just’ a failure, but when we’re already so low on health how can we handle such losses? In all honesty Cal… doesn’t handle it
80. Moment: …but BD-1’s got his back. And so the droid plays Cordova’s final message to him, and we hear a wonderful, horrible line. “No, failure is not the end. It is a necessary part of the path.” And man isn’t that what Cal needs to hear right now
81. MSQ: And everything about this is just kind of the fulcrum point of the entire story. The hope for tomorrow, working together, faith in others, just… such a powerful moment. And all voiced by Tony Amendola who absolutely nails it…
82. MSQ: …such a great sequence…
83. MSQ: …and a great capstone
84. Character: Merrin is so good. The only reason she’s not more positives is we get her RIGHT before the final dungeon (yes I know you can now go do optional 100%ing stuff to get more dialogue but that’s it). She’s lost, lonely, smart, empathetic, caring, capable, and amusing
85. Character: Dynamic. Every one of the principal cast (even Trilla) work very well with and off of each other
86. MSQ: The Force vision sequence on Bogano is fantastic. We walk forward and see Cal, so confident, start training the children… and transition smoothly to the actual Cal watching all this. We climb up the wall transitioning seamlessly into the trenches. We see the children imprisoned and tortured. And we see ourselves submit to the Empire like so many others have…
87. MSQ: …all of that’s powerful, but then…
88. Moment: …we’re in the darkness and cannot see anything, prompting us to ignite our saber. And it’s red. And then the vision ends. Force vision, Dark Side influence, or just our own fears? Who knows, but now Trilla’s here
89. Cutscene: We manage to beat her by disarming her and make the horrible mistake of having an empath touch a lightsaber scarred with horrific pain. And now we see from a first person perspective exactly what Trilla went through. And it’s just three (brief) scenes but each one is incredibly powerful
90. Brickwork: Fortress Inquisitorius. Underwater, in the shadow of Mustafar, bleak and dark and red stained
91. Outro: MSQ: The final battle with Trilla is filled with its own goodness. Multiple great moments and her starting to reach the fulcrum of her character arc as Cal, who by this point really qualifies as a Jedi in his mindset, is mostly just trying to reach out to her. Speaking of which…
92. Outro: Moment: Cal reaches out to Trilla. When beaten he just turns off his lightsaber, takes the holocron, and wants to reach out to her, but then…
93. Outro: Moment: Cere reaches out to Trilla. Literally, she reaches out a hand to her, and apologizes sincerely
94. Outro: Moment: Trilla begins to reciprocate (her line is past tense about the hatred she’s HELD for her) and you can feel Trilla is one step away from beginning the path to redemption…
95. Outro: Moment: And then we hear the breathing, and the slowly increasing hum of the music. This is the single best moment of the game for every reason. The sound design, the music design, the animation, the horrifying reality of what this means. If we somehow, magically, don’t know who Darth Vader is before now… well, now we do. Even Cal (who has never encountered him before) is like uhhh. This is an intense and powerful moment and it is a DAMN shame it is so often spoiled for so many…
96. Outro: Moment: …because…
97. Outro: Moment: …it’s amazing. It is also followed by my favorite line in the entire game
98. Outro: Moment: “Avenge Us”. There is so much in just two words. She doesn’t say “I forgive you”, or “Help me” or “Run” or anything else someone facing the end would. Her demand is that they AVENGE. They must cause pain to those who cause pain. Speaking of which her second word is just as important… US. Avenge US. Avenge every soul, every citizen, every lost child whose lives were destroyed by the Empire. This says so much about her…
99. Outro: Writing: …and about the setting. And then she dies, her arc unfulfilled. Another innocent life casually tossed aside like garbage by the Empire
100. Outro: MSQ: And then we run
101. Outro: MSQ: And then we RUN. I almost don’t want to detail more but the way Vader just starts ripping apart the entire facility trying to reach us is crazy
102. Outro: Vader v Cere. She’s no match for him of course, and he’s already bodied us, but he’s not even really trying. He’s toying with her. She might make another useful inquisitor after all. But she almost dips into her hatred again until Cal pulls her back (second time he’s been there for someone else now)… so she brings down the ocean…
103. Outro: …the friggin’ ocean on Vader, who HOLDS IT BACK. And all of this is exactly as insane as it sounds. A lot of fiction fails at this, where they want the heroes to barely escape the evil doom but can’t make it make sense. Throwing an ocean at Vader is a good method
104. Humor: Merrin, Greez… general
105. Music Direction: General, but special mention for Trilla’s theme. Literally a horror monster tune
106. Outro: I do love the final moments. Cal destroying the Holocron, trusting in the Force, is a very Light Side (and Star Wars) thing to do. And him getting Cere and Trilla’s permission first is a great little moment

Story Negatives:

1. Banter: Cal. Even by the first major mission on Bogano I was already tired of him narrating his events like he was Spiderman. It’s not a trope that’s inherently bad (most tropes are not inherently bad I suppose) but it just does not work here
2. Dialogue: Periodically the dialogue takes a random out of nowhere nose dive into terribleness. No I’m serious, some of the dialogue is fine, and then all of the sudden it’s like HEY here’s some basic bad writing 101 mistakes!
3. MSQ: Speaking of the entire first story arc is a bit… weak. Our Intro is INCREDIBLY strong and now we’re on a mission to… rebuild the Jedi Order basically from scratch in order to fight the empire. Now hold on hear me out, this makes sense if the point is that we’re… y’know, stupid. We’re still stuck in the ‘just go back to the old ways’ mentality (which actually plagues the AU in general I’ve noticed… even the Republic is worse. No you read that right, the Republic, not the NEW Republic, it’s just the same old Republic that was terrible again. Christ. Anyways) So hey! But no they don’t lean into it it’s all quite sincere, our big task is to go save the younglings chop chop
4. Plot: And that premise is the other big weak link here. Sorry I made most of my points in the previous negative (which was mostly just an MSQ negative for the Bogano sequence) but the premise and indeed the main plot does… NOT work. It’s also…
5. Tone: …indicative of a problem the game has. MOST of the game retains its ‘down at the ground floor’ tone which is great. And then sometimes it… does not because they wanted us to feel like the Main Characters (™) and like we were the Hero Of Destiny (they actually use the word destiny several times) and… no game
6. Pacing: Cal confronts Cere the MOMENT he gets back to the ship and the pacing of this is completely off. This is ignoring that it’s a weirdly rushed scene that then stalls so we can come back to it later
7. Pacing: Speaking of broader pacing. This is an issue for both story and gameplay for different reasons but the game cannot stop interrupting itself even when it wants a sense of urgency. Oh my gosh we MUST go do this wait we found out ONE bit of info, let’s leave the planet entirely and go check out another planet! This happens SEVERAL times (probably the most egregious is towards the end, where we interrupt our confrontation with Malicos and Merrin to go sidequest to Ilum)
8. Pacing: In fact I’m going to give a separate positive for that last tidbit because it feels like they were running out of time and cramming everything in at the last minute. By the way the asteroid sidequest has this problem too
9. MSQ: Malicos. This entire arc is pretty weak and frankly should serve more as Merrin’s story than ours but it… doesn’t. He doesn’t even properly mirror Cal because the (probably) intended idea of him being ‘this is what Cal could have been’ is completely unexplored
10. Plot: Ilum and Starkiller base. So yeah it’s Starkiller Base, whatever, what really bugs me here is that we see the planet from ORBIT and there’s no sign of the massive digging out of this thing (almost 50 years before Force Awakens btw) all so we can have some stupid ‘reveal’ moment of omg the Empire’s already here nooo. This is so pointless

Gameplay Positives:

1. Difficulty Options: So good difficulty options in general with aggression and timing windows…
2. Difficulty Options: …but also literally changing AI patterns and attacks depending on difficulty
3. Difficulty Options: Toggleable on the fly, which is always great
4. Controls: Controls like a dream, as it needs to for a game like this. I’ve played quite a few Soulslikes at this point in my life and this probably controls the best of all of them…
5. Controls: …putting that at a solid double
6. Enemy AI: Pretty decent for what it is. It’s… flawed, but once you’re actually in a fight it’s legit
7. Enemy Design: Excellent. We have plenty of enemies with plenty of design to their attacks. How they react to your attacks, the strength of their guards, their weak points, how they counterattack…
8. Enemy Design: …great stuff
9. Enemy Variety: Good variety too. You have melees, ranged, heavy ranged, heavy melee, and then a smattering of monsters
10. Guidance: Generally good. There’s only a few times where I’m like ‘uh’ and most of those are later on in the game
11. Visual Distinction: Generally good, again. It varies based on tileset but some are really well designed with regard to features and colors
12. Cosmetic: Not great, but something. Ponchos, BD-1’s outfit, and some lightsaber changes (the crystal color is the big one really)
13. Tutorialization: Videos showcasing abilities as you pick them up, so you can get an idea for them in action
14. Kit: Not… great honestly. It’s very simple, and limited in WHO you can use it on (more on this in the negatives), but there’s still some great stuff here by the end game. Basic attacks, delayed attacks for defense piercing, the split attack you get later on, the heavy attacks that cost Force, and of course (once upgraded) being able to yoink and one shot or shove people off a pit is nice
15. Itemization: Exploration is, as usual, encouraged in a Metroidvania and this is no exception. While MOST of what you get is cosmetics (which is fine of course) there’s a decent spread to Force and Health upgrades, as well as new stimpack locations
16. Map: This is, no joke, one of the best 3D maps in gaming. I would put it just below Doom 4’s, which is still absolutely fantastic. Tons of effort is put into making it readable and navigable at multiple angles, with great color usage of interactables and indicators of where you can go, where you CAN’T go (to not waste your time, but also to mark it for later), and all around…
17. Map: …great…
18. Map: …design
19. Penalty For Failure: The usual approach for Soulslike games; You die, you go back to the last checkpoint/bonfire/etc. and you can re-grab your dropped resources if you recover your corpse, but if you die again they’re gone
20. Music: Great stuff, a bit inconsistent but I do enjoy almost all the new tracks. They sound very Star Warsy…
21. Music: …in a similar way to KotOR
22. Core Combat: Of course the combat is excellent, but HOW excellent is the question I chewed on for most of the game. I do think the Kit has a few issues I’ll mention elsewhere (er, sorry apparently I put those notes above this point) but the combat ITSELF? I’ve decided it’s up there with Sekiro or Bloodborne and I tend to hold those up as the pinnacles. It’s responsive, dynamic, fluid, and enormously in the hands of the player. A no-damage playthrough is absolutely possible and indeed even encouraged. So yeah…
23. Core Combat: …we’ll call this…
24. Core Combat: …a solid triple
25. Animation: Enemy animations for attacks are pretty standard in a Soulsborne but they’re really good here. There’s a few jukes and a few copy paste animations but this is still some great telegraphing…
26. Animation: …and so earns the double
27. Intro: Tutorialization: The entire opening quickly and smoothly tutorializes all the basics of movement, platforming, and climbing… oh and sliding, plenty of sliding. Also very early in the game they tutorialize the two fundaments of combat; You attack and you parry
28. Level: Bogano, our first real level. Some basic enemies, some basic platforming, some basic shortcutting, but it’s all pretty solid. We also have good looping design as you go through an area once, gain access to the wall run, and go back through in a different way…
29. Level: …this is arguably a much better tutorial than the train segment back in the Intro
30. Boss: Oggdo Bogdo is a fascinating first boss. It’s COMPLETELY optional (which is good) but where it really succeeds is it’s a ‘here’s what to expect from bosses’ fight. It actually has a pretty small retinue of attacks, but every single one is one of the types of attacks that exist in the game. One ranged hit, one delayed hit, one combo hit (with a 2 and a 3 variant), one close range smack, and primarily leaning on red attacks forcing the player to learn about iframes and dodge rolling
31. Level: Zeffo 1, which is the trip towards the temple and then the (mostly optional) trip OUT after finishing the temple. This is a bit more combat heavy than Bogano with a lot more troopers (and we are quickly introduced to different varieties of troopers, of which there are quite a few and they escalate nicely and non-linearly… a rocket trooper is just as weak as a gunner trooper, but of course that rocket hurts…). Meanwhile…
32. Level: …we have some solid platforming, introducing us into what the game is going to expect of us with combining different platforming types into concrete segments
33. Encounter: Escalation. I already mentioned the troops which is good, but there’s another thing…
34. Encounter: …there are several bigger enemies we encounter (the big troll things, the guardian bots) that the first time we encounter them they’re either weakened or optional in some way, and we face them with this ‘help’ several times before finally having to fight them without any assists at all, easing us into these fights
35. Level: The Zeffo temple is almost pure platforming, very little combat. It’s also some great physics puzzles and platforming in general, with some really smart design. The rolling ball that loops without you so you have time to figure it out, looping back to areas you can now Push in order to access more once you get it, great swinging wall running sections. If I might sidebar for a sec, one of my favorite things about a good Soulsborne game is the level design, aka the Metroidvania thing, and as I was doing this extended platforming section I started thinking about what a game like this would be if combat was either entirely absent or far more infrequent. It’s not like you couldn’t lean into it right? Anyways, random thought…
36. Level: …great section though…
37. Level: …easy triple
38. Hyperbeam Moment: Kashyyyk and the AT-AT. We’re given a friggin’ mobile artillery and told to go ham. And it’s awesome
39. Level: Kashyyyk 1 loop. Some fairly basic platforming here, but still good stuff. I’m particularly fond of the timing puzzles in being able to turn machines on and off now
40. Encounter: Kashyyyk 1 loop is also when the encounter design starts to get good. We encounter the security droids of course, and we escalate with more of the purge troopers, but the thought about who we fight where is much tighter here. Two of the spider creatures? They’re fighting about six troopers at once to distract them. Staff-wielding purge trooper? We fight one by himself then one with escorted troops. There’s a bunch of design put into this
41. Boss: Second Sister 1 and teaching you duels. We’ve seen snippets of this before with purge troopers but this fight really teaches you how to watch for tells and to realize that simply parrying or dodging isn’t enough and now you have to worry about combos
42. Level: Kashyyyk 2. I love this segment. It’s weirdly horizontal for how much climbing you do, but the extra branches (pun intended), the wonderful climbing, the great looping design, it’s just a level you can tell some real work went into it. I mentioned this up in the Story axis but the way we start in the creepy, horrifying, enemy infested Shadowlands and ascend up to the treetops is great pacing too…
43. Level: …great stuff
44. Boss: Ninth Sister is probably the second best boss in the game. She attacks hard and fast, but most of her attacks are parryable. She has fantastic reach AND range, and is way faster than she looks. She also leaves herself massively open if you successfully outmaneuver or outparry her. In all she’s a fight that encourages you to pay attention and rewards you if you do…
45. Boss: …fantastic stuff…
46. Boss: …triple territory for sure
47. Level: The crashed Venator is a simple but very well designed level, one of the better levels in the game despite its size (and being COMPLETELY optional). Fun puzzles, tight platforming (that MOSTLY works), great working with the interiors of the ship…
48. Level: …solid stuff overall
49. Boss: Rabid Jotaz is a basic troll fight but far more rabid in both its attack speed and animations, making the whole fight far more frenetic than normal
50. Boss: Gorgara is another solid fight. Big sweeping attacks that hurt like hell but also create big vuln windows, and if you successfully damage both of its wings sufficient then it will get a big vuln period where you can beat the hell out of it
51. Level: The Venator over Bracca. While this is obviously a great mission STORY wise it’s still some solid and fun platforming as we flee the Clone Troopers
52. Integration: There’s some great stuff here where we can start to fight off or defend ourselves but we aren’t given the opportunity to really do so because, y’know, we’d die. So we have to just flee and do everything we can to AVOID contact
53. Viscerality: Excellent Viscerality, honestly almost too much considering how low tier we really are. But visuals are fantastic, with blasters and sabers and slices and everything…
54. Viscerality: …big double
55. Viscerality: It’s proper Star Wars sound design of course the audio viscerality is absolutely amazing…
56. Viscerality: …and deserves a full double
57. Boss: Malicos is probably the weakest boss in the game. But he’s still a decent fight. He employs our last real main mechanic; being very good at blocking but his stagger meter doesn’t regenerate quickly
58. Outro: Encounter: Fortress Inquisitorius has some fantastic encounter design. It’s all designed to push you, to use every tool you’ve discovered to this point. Heals, reprogramming, shoves, pulls, combos, Force strikes, the whole shebang
59. Outro: Boss: Trilla. This is the best fight in the entire game. She’s precise but not too precise, properly difficult, has vuln windows, delayed stagger regeneration, plenty of times when she just takes damage (regular and chipped), plays by the rules (if she’s in mid lunge or has flung her saber she can’t parry or block), and it’s just a final exam fight of every mechanic built up across every other boss in the game. It reminds me of the final boss of Metal Gear Revengeance for the exact same reason. It’s literally all the previous bosses in one…
60. Outro: Boss: …so take…
61. Outro: Boss: …that triple
62. Outro: Difficulty: One more point. It’s the best fight in the game and the most properly hard fight in the game, and that’s a nice smooth difficulty curve
63. Replayability: Generally replayable, as it’s still a damned fun game

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Tutorialization: For all the game does to naturally and smoothly tutorialize, the combat tutorial on the train commits a simple sin; You HAVE to do the mandatory interactions in order to progress
2. Unskippable Cutscenes: So hey, cutscenes are unskippable. And they can be quite long…
3. Unskippable Cutscenes: …so that sucks
4. Enemy Design: Damage. Enemies just hit too damned hard. I appreciate that the game lets you not get hit at all (mentioned in the positives) but good lord it can be deflating to make a minor mistake and lose half your health because a stormtrooper got a lucky hit in
5. Enemy Design: Psych-out attacks. This isn’t as bad as I’ve seen in some games but they REALLY like to do the wiiiind uuuup delaaaay ANDTHENATTACK type of thing
6. Leveling: Barrier’d. You can only ‘level’ so far based on plot progression, meaning no real farming or bypassing
7. Bug: General jank. The physics definitely physics it up a bit…
8. Bug: …and it constantly interferes with basic platforming
9. Bug: Animation locking and body blocking
10. Visual Distinction: So enemies doing an unblockable attack glow red. If they’ve killed you they glow gold. And the gold over-rides the red, making dodging those attacks irritating. If not for the audio cue that also plays I’d probably give this more negatives
11. Kit: I’m going to call this one an aggregate. There’s plenty of cool stuff you can do but a lot of it is locked behind the end game talent unlocks, or just straight up does not work on elites and bosses. And the Dualsaber, the ‘crowd control’ weapon, is just not that useful in a game that mostly throws heavy or elite mooks at you by the time you ‘normally’ get it (yes I know you can go get it early, but it’s not designed for that)
12. Level: Dathomir 2. The entire segment is hard to put into words why it sucks but I think at least part of it is the basic platforming is just less well designed here. Way more janky physics interaction, entirely too much verticality without an engine that really supports it, relying on more semi scripted jumps instead of natural platforming challenges…
13. Level: …and several segments where if you make a mistake, don’t do a particular thing in the right order, or otherwise screw up you’re in for a bundle of backtracking to fix it
14. Viscerality: This probably sounds weird to give a negative to this considering how many positives it’s also gotten but while the Visuals and the Audio are great the Impact… is not. By late game you have a lot you can do but… well, the enemies take even more to push through them. When you’re fighting some scout trooper with vibro sticks and each hit you do barely feels like it dents his stagger and when you finally do you get ONE hit in that does like a fifth of his health… and this is a low level nobody. The elites are much worse. Someone actually asked in chat about if the game got a negative for how a lightsaber felt too weak and the answer is absolutely yes but it’s not the lightsaber itself it’s just the fact that we always feel like we’re tickling the enemy to death (unless you do just the right combos which means you three shot even bosses… yes I know you can do this yes I’ve done it ON CAMERA no it doesn’t change this negative)…
15. Viscerality: …because this is a pretty consistent problem
16. Pacing: So I mentioned this up in story negatives but there’s this weird problem where the game insists you keep doubling back to hit other planets before you unlock more. And it’s just jarring to be in mid exploration and be told ‘hey come back to the ship to go do this other thing’. Now I think this’d be a problem regardless but…
17. Backtracking: …it’s worse because it mandates backtracking. And some areas in this game are a PAIN to navigate if you don’t have an idea of the routes to take
18. Minigame: Not a huge fan of the half pipe of Sonic 2. It’s a bit gradient on the difficulty but the real issue is that if you screw up you screw up HARD, and it flat out mandates memorization

Story Positives:

1. Sound: I mean all three of these games so far have basically the same sound design, of course they all get the same positive. Picking up rings and doing a good still sound good
2. Brickwork: Emerald Hill Zone. Essentially a polished up Green Hill Zone, with less detail but in a way that makes it look better. Trees, grass, rolling hills
3. Brickwork: Chemical Plant Zone looks amazing. Nice greys and yellows with blue highlights, and of course the plant in the distance
4. Brickwork: Aquatic Ruin Zone looks lovely (one of the only things it does right, hey-o) and does a lot with its overgrown foliage and underwater aesthetic surrounding intermittently discolored bricks and broken down pillars
5. Brickwork: Casino Night Zone zigs where Collision Chaos zagged back in CD (y’know, the game that came out AFTER this… whatever). There’s enough negative space and smart usage of black in particular to make the occasional highlights and flashing cityscape pop much better
6. Brickwork: Hill Top Zone. I was torn on this for a moment but honestly yeah this is another solid one. Alpine cliffs and thick trees with the clouds showcasing how high up we are and mountaintops in the distance
7. Brickwork: Mystic Cave Zone. I was torn on this one as well but I’m still with it. It’s almost an overgrowth cave, contributing to that mystical vibe (it feels vaguely like that cave in Dagobah), and of course the usage of purple for the backdrop against the green was a great choice
8. Brickwork: Oil Ocean Zone is another great usage of contrasting colors. A dark violet ocean with a dull orange sunset, and machinery and pipes and refineries as far as the eye can see. Also as per Sonic usual the further into the game the more technological and less natural we are
9. Brickwork: Metropolis Zone, speaking of which. For all the… other issues this stage has it still gets across the vibe immediately. Green platforms with dull copper machinery and parts against a cold blue factory floor in the background
10. Spritework: While the Sonic series has always been ‘fine’ on sprites, 2 really upped the ante. Way more animations for Sonic, all the new animations for Tails, way better variety in enemies across stages, and more unique boss models…
11. Spritework: …so we’ll call this an aggregate across all of that…
12. Spritework: …and award a triple
13. Outro: For our very first time we have an actually nice ending. It’s not much but it is what I’d call a good NES ending; There’s some good splash shots, good implication of what’s going on, and it’s generally sweet

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Optional Mode: As usual the pick between Anniversary Mode and Classic Mode remains a good one for the extra QoL features and new resolution
2. Kit: So we can play as Tails again, but also Knuckles…
3. Kit: …but also a combination of the two if we want, thanks to that juicy two player!
4. Music: Absolute bangers. I can honestly only think of maybe two songs that DON’T pop in this one (Wing Fortress and Death Egg, before you ask) so yeah this is fantastic bop…
5. Music: …and an easy…
6. Music: …triple
7. Co-Op: Hey, co-op! It’s actually quite limited but it EXISTS and I can attest that it can be pretty fun couch co-op
8. Controls: For the first time in the series I’m willing to give the game a plus for controls. The extra refinements under the hood to Sonic 1’s engine and better usage of the gravity and momentum make for a much smoother experience. It was VERY rare I’d make a mistake and be mad about it because it was MY fault
9. Enemy Variety: I’m not super into the DESIGN of the enemies but there’s a good variety to them. Fliers, climbers, crawlers, stabbers, etc
10. Itemization: Very solid throughout. Good placement of rings, boxes, and SMART placement too so you’re likely to get what you need when you need it
11. Replayability: Of course it’s replayable. Generally replayable, the first positive
12. Visual Distinction: With a couple of noteworthy exceptions (see in the negatives) the game is quite distinct and they use color or lack of color very well
13. Penalty For Failure: Rings. Rings are kind of a genius idea if you think about it. As long as you have at least 1 Ring you have health, but taking a hit with 0 Rings is instant death, but ALSO when hit you drop your rings. Some of which can be picked back up. This is a wonderful and gradient penalty for failure
14. Guidance: Rings are used as a form of guidance several times, as is pretty normal for most good platformers
15. Core Mechanic: Top and bottom routes. Top is ‘better’ but also quicker and easier to fall off of, and it’s usually difficult (or impossible) to get back to the top route
16. Mid Mission Checkpoint: Pretty standard, though a few stages actually have multiple which is nice
17. Intro: Level: Tutorialization: Emerald Hill Zone 1. It’s near identical to what was done in Sonic 1, but it works for the exact same reason. Within the first few screens we’re tutorialized about slopes, enemies, jumping, and hidden areas. But the first stage does something else (that a lot of other stages do too)…
18. Intro: Level: Flow: …flow. Do yourself a favor and glance at a map of Emerald Hill Zone 1 sometime. You can literally see how much both the lower and upper routes flow AND how both have multiple opportunities to naturally zip up or down to the other. This is a hallmark of Sonic 2 design and I’ll be pointing it out when it’s particularly good
19. Intro: Level: The stage itself deserves praise in general I should mention. Good platforming, good terrain, well designed jumps
20. Level: Emerald Hill Zone 2. This stage is just so good. It’s in the running for one of the best individual stages in the game, no wonder people love this game. Look at this nonsense. Lower loops that end in a ramp that can go forward into a hill or up into more jump pads. Circular loops to help build momentum. Pads to let you access shortcuts. And the two routes through interchange so much that you can swap lanes pretty much at will, all while zipping around and having fun feeling awesome because a lot of this is still skill. This, if I may, zigs where some later Sonic games zag (where you just let the game play itself) because you CAN still screw up here, and the skill ceiling is still decently high (watch someone bounce through the stage sometime without touching the ground after the initial jump… I ALMOST did that on camera)…
21. Level: …so the player still feels like they’re PLAYING the game…
22. Level: Flow: …while still feeling that incredible flow
23. Level: Chemical Plant Zone 1. I’ve heard from several people that they put the game down here because the gap in quality between Emerald Hill Zone and this is so big (and it is) but… no this is still good stuff. There’s some WEIRD checkpoint placement (you have to literally backtrack for one, and they’re mostly at the beginning of the stage) but the way they use the flowing pipes as indicators of going high or going low is amazing. Right off the bat you’re given an easy choice, high road or low road, and once you do your initial snake weave you’re off to totally different parts of the map. This is all while…
24. Level: Flow: …continuing the same great flow. I’m running out of ways to describe the flow here so bare with me but I do want to mention that the inclusion of the loops which then lead massively DOWN thus giving you a huge speed boost before hitting whatever section was next was inspired
25. Level: Chemical Plant Zone 2 is interesting in that it seemingly has more verticality than the last but it kind of doesn’t, it’s mostly just bigger ramps separating the lanes. Having said that it is interesting how there’s actually three lanes several times and you still have some solid platforming here and there (and our very first speed traps, enjoy those by the way)
26. Level: Aquatic Ruin Zone… is not nearly as good as the previous two stages. There’s still good stuff here though. The underwater segments are no where near as bad as in the first game, and transitioning from underwater to air is a lot easier. And the second stage has some solid triple laning where they, once again, weave in and out of each other smoothly
27. Level: Casino Night Zone is fascinating to review as a stage because it breaks most conventions of what a 2D Platformer stage even is. There’s almost no enemies in the entire stage and VERY few dangers. You can get crushed by physics but that’s about it. No this is literally a playground. Go have fun, explore, toss around the pinball machines, gamble a bit, zoom around the loops, use the launchers to soar across bouncers…
28. Level: Terrain: …and of course the placement of everything is very precise. You can tell some of that QA polish the game had (up until Metropolis Zone) really paid off
29. Level: Casino Night Zone 2 is more of the same. Still great stuff, don’t mistake me, but I’m mostly repeating myself. Having said that I do want to give special praise to one segment. There’s a half pipe you can fall into in the lower route that launches you JUST to the right of some bouncers which then leads into angled bounces on the floor and ceiling. This is an interesting terrain puzzle because there’s a few ways around it, but if you just go naturally it will launch you right back where you came from. In short it’s still gameplay and the player still has to… y’know, decide on a path and DO something to progress
30. Boss: Casino Night Zone, Catch Eggman, is easily my favorite boss in the game and the only one getting his own positive. The pinball motif, the bouncers to help reach him, the upper area to just screw around a bit, the fact that Robotnik is almost universally weak to the top so the entire arena is designed to get you up, it’s neat
31. Level: Hill Top Zone 1. I’m going to give this away now, this zone surprised me by being one of the best zones in the game, alongside Oil Ocean (of all things) and Emerald Hill. The reasons why are all minute design decisions that really make the stage pop. There’s multiple points where the challenge is ‘go through this area quickly’, either because platforms are temporary or enemies are attacking or the lava is rising. And while going through these sections they paid VERY careful attention to where players would go (praise to that QA team again) and put SOMEthing there to benefit that decision. What this means in practice is a good, skilled, and/or memorized player can zip through super fast and feel awesome for doing so, but anyone who is playing blind, not as skilled, or just not as good at platformers can still recover at multiple points to prevent irritation and still manage the win…
32. Level: …and that’s damned skilled level design
33. Level: Hill Top Zone 2 is even better if you can believe it. Imagine everything I just said, but now there’s three lanes for most of the stage and they ALL perform the same trick. Now you can zoop over things, lunge through them, or really barrel roll your way downhill into launch pads and if you screw up there’s almost always something you can do about it. The word I want to zoom in on here is ‘fair’. Hill Top Zone feels fair, and that’s what makes it pop so much…
34. Level: …so there’s that…
35. Level: …triple
36. Level: Flow: Of course the flow is excellent, mostly in the second stage. There’s some wonderful sections where you zoom up a hill with a launcher, have a quick hop across several platforms designed to be gone through at full speed, leading to a downhill segment which in turn leads to a launcher, and so on
37. Level: Mystic Cave Zone 1. I actually remembered these caves pretty badly from back in the day but that’s because me and my friend used to Super Sonic through all of this and this level isn’t very conductive to that. Instead it manages a wild hat trick. You know how Sonic 1 felt slow and awkward repeatedly? You remember how Sonic CD kind of solved that issue by smart terrain design and guidance? This stage feels like a Sonic CD level. Just a glance at the second challenge screens conveys this. The upper level has moving blocks that impede you but also serve to help you keep going as they get you ABOVE the next few obstacles, hooks that lead into downward slopes to keep you moving, falling platforms that launch you NEXT to spikes but not into them…
38. Level: Terrain: …very smart terrain usage overall
39. Level: Mystic Cave 2 does most of the same stuff (more triple lane fun) which I won’t bore you with, but what I DO want to talk about…
40. Level: Terrain: …is the terrain. The raw Terrain design here might be the best in the entire game. A hook lowering a bridge leading to a checkpoint that’s posed over a downward jump angle which inclines the player to landing on a single platform hovering over spikes with rings immediately over the platform to draw the player’s eye to it. Moving crates that shuffle you across (to rings and invincibility) or down) to a sloped ramp which in turn shoves you along to a racing section terminating in two consecutive jump pads that help you reach a dangling vine. A downward slope that terminates in those angled jump boosters which keep you going through them into a giant pile of rings and a bridge that opens such that you’re likely to land on the far left or right (leading to temporary safety or rings, respectively). All of it feels very carefully laid out…
41. Level: Terrain: …so it deserves that double
42. Level: Oil Ocean Zone 1. I hinted at this earlier but the biggest shock to me is that Hill Top Zone and Oil Ocean Zone are as good as they are. There is an incredible density to this stage, with a lot going on and the usual triple lane goodness, but also some of that Sonic CD multiple solutions fun. Do you simply walk across? Do you use the jets to float across seamlessly? Do you use the angles to make a propelled jump up to higher air jets and therefore launch into the elevator to switch lanes? All of this is just on a single screen of interaction, and the stage is full of these. I didn’t even mention the stage’s three new gimmicks, two of which encourage the player to keep moving and reward skill. The slopes slicked in oil means no backtracking but also incredible speed if you use them well. The fact that the oil ocean itself is functionally quicksand and can be escaped serves as a gradient penalty. And the final thing is the barrel launchers (I know this predates DKC but come on). Either way…
43. Level: …enjoy…
44. Level: …a triple
45. Level: Oil Ocean 2 somehow manages to retain the same level of quality as the first one. Incredible density, multiple solutions, two or three lanes, lots of slipping slide sections, usage of damaging platforms as a way to boost to new areas, large dodgable spike traps…
46. Level: …it’s all fantastic stuff…
47. Level: …and deserves our final level positive of the game
48. Boss: General. Seriously (almost) all the bosses are decent for what they are

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Level: Chemical Plant Zone 2 has a few irritations and hiccups. I mentioned earlier speed traps? Yeah the game REALLY wants you to go zooming through but then penalizes you for not having very good reflexes OR memorizing what’s coming up. And the penalty here is straight up death thanks to the bottomless water
2. Boss: Egg Poison. This is a seemingly decent fight… until you realize any slip up with the platforms means instant death, and the fact that he can bounce you into said pits relatively easily
3. Level: Aquatic Ruin Zone 2. There’s several irritations here deserving of mention (water bubbles still suck in how they spawn, and there’s large stretches of underwater in some segments) but the real frustration is the pillars that will fall onto you and instantly kill you. When you can’t even see them coming
4. Boss: Egg Hammer is boring at best and frustrating at worst. So you get up on the pillar and jump on him and then… wait. Or you dodge the hard to see arrows which you need to use as platforms. OR Tails steals your attack and sends you plummeting to your death. Yay
5. Visual Distinction: Good time to mention this. It’s infrequent but several stages have some pretty bad visual distinction, something I’ll be mentioning in more detail later
6. Gotcha: Another tidbit. The whole game wants you to go fast (that wonderful flow) but then they like to have gotcha! traps if you either don’t have amazing reflexes or have the stage memorized
7. Level: Mystic Cave Zone is overall solid but it does suffer from periodic traps. And these traps just completely break the flow of everything, and there’s almost never any way to tell what’s a trap or what’s a way forward
8. Level: Metropolis Zone 1. Hoo boy, here we go. Let me start by stating something I plan to mention in the blurb later; I firmly believe this is where the QA team stopped, and I believe this, Sky Chase Zone, Wing Fortress Zone, and Death Egg Zone all didn’t get the QA polish the rest of the game did. This stage is abjectly miserable, with mechanics designed to slow you down (the screw elevators are the most overt example) and WAY too many moving pieces for how simple it is
9. Level: Encounter: But wait, there’s more! There’s only three enemies here and they ALL suck. I’ll talk more about those enemies in a minute but the way they’re placed is pure troll. The starfish jackasses are almost always in walls (where they’re hard to see, cute) and their projectiles keep going even if you’ve scrolled past them and are angled to be able to still hit you when you’re in the next screen. The crab dudes basically remove the ability to simply run through and require going around. THESE are almost always placed right before segments where you can go fast (because of course). But the worst are the damned Slicers. These are assholes to fight in general and almost every single one is placed in a way that they will completely block your movement both when you approach AND (if you don’t kill them) as you’re leaving. Speaking of…
10. Level: Terrain: The terrain design is just awful. Pistons and a pit that interrupt a smooth downward slop, serving as a gotcha trap. A lengthy rolling section designed to get you up to full speed leading to wall bouncers which will then fling you (again, at full speed)… right into some spikes. But my personal favorite? There’s a section where you’re designed to go at speed right into a screw lift, which you’ll then be running right on. This is good tutorialization for how the screw lifts work. The problem? Going right goes UP. There’s spikes right above you. I hit this with so much momentum I was incapable of slowing down in time even though I realized pretty quickly what was happening
11. Level: Metropolis Zone 2 is just the same as the previous and just as dickish. Irritating placement of traps, interruptions in flow, awkward puzzles, those damned go-slowly screw lifts…
12. Level: ..but the worst part?
13. Level: Encounter: Now they like to place those starfish or the damned Slicers in JUST such a position that you’re extremely likely to run into them and get knocked back at the perfect angle to have to redo whatever slow segment you just finished
14. Enemy Design: A threefer, for all three enemies I’ve been talking about. All three of them are antithetical to the very design concepts of Sonic 2, irritating to deal with, and even when you know what you’re doing they upgrade from being hair pulling to merely an irritant
15. Level: Metropolis Zone 3! Can you believe this, THIS stage got three?! This is actually the worst of the three too, that’s the worst part. MULTIPLE screw lifts in a row now, speed segments designed to toss you into pits or lava, sloooow inclines, rotating platforms that push you into spikes, weird bumps in the terrain that completely interrupt flow…
16. Level: …it’s just miserable…
17. Level: …oh and one more thing
18. Level: Encounter: Enemy placement is just as dickish as before. Sometimes Slicers are on the CEILING now just to completely screw with you. Remember, those blades home in on you regardless
19. Level: Sky Chase Zone is something I’m not going to complain about TOO much but it is slow, boring, and weirdly easy. It’d be a nice breather level if not for the fact that…
20. Mid Mission Checkpoint: …it has no checkpoints at all. Screw up on the last turtle? Go redo the entire stage. Did I mention the stage is slow as balls?
21. Level: Wing Fortress Zone. I… don’t know what they were thinking here. There’s a ton of enemies, almost all of which have projectile attacks, the path forward isn’t very clear (more on that in a minute), some of the intended routes involve very slowly hopping between hanging wires which are inconsistent in how you can land on them (and any mistake means death of course), huge empty swaths of nothing (not even cool ramps or setpieces), did I mention that some of the checkpoints in this stage are BACK instead of forwards? And then enemies start interlocking attack vectors and you have to do more hook jumps…
22. Level: …and screw all of this. But wait, one more thing
23. Visual Distinction: The whole game has this problem here and there but no where is it worse than in this stage. It is legitimately hard to tell what’s decoration and what’s interactable in this game, the background and foreground put simply. You see those gigantic flame jets that are directly in the way of your jump arc? They’re not there, they’re background. How about those slots in the side of the wall? Foreground, those are platforms. Okay what about the clearly background looking conveyor doodad? Also foreground, it’s how you progress…
24. Visual Distinction: …screw all of this
25. Outro: Boss: Silver Sonic. I know it seems harsh to give three negatives to what is effectively a speed bump (as I showed off on camera you can kill him in SECONDS if you know what you’re doing) but hear me out. First, he has too much health for what he is. Second, you HAVE to fight him with zero rings, no alternative (outside of debug mode). Third, his hitbox and hurtbox are both… wrong. Like I’ve seen pictures people have done to showcase where they actually are, it’s stupid, and it’s distressingly easy to get hit for having done nothing wrong. And finally he follows a very set pattern which makes him aggravating until you’ve memorized it then it makes him BORING…
26. Outro: Boss: …so just by himself…
27. Outro: Boss: …he’s a terrible boss
28. Outro: Mid Mission Checkpoint: But then there’s no checkpoint. Which means every single stupid mistake you make on the Death Egg Robot necessitates refighting Silver. I should mention that the fact that we’re playing the Origins version of the game salvaged this from getting a whole slew of additional negatives because I want you to imagine getting here, managing Silver, getting to Death Egg, dying because of bullcrap, and having to replay the ENTIRE game to get back here to try again. Because I don’t HAVE to imagine that
29. Outro: Boss: Death Egg Robot. I wish I could give more than three negatives to this (in fact I can, but more on that in a second). SCREW this fight. Screw this fight so hard. Okay so when you first face this thing you have no idea where his vuln areas are (hint, it’s up where his arms are, his upper chest area). So you probably get killed looking for it, go refight Silver, and then try again. You probably die several times trying to figure out how to hit it. You MIGHT figure out that there’s a few frames where you can hit him while both arms are as far ‘back’ as they’re getting. But either way you will eventually wait long enough for him to do his launch attack. If you’re behind him you’re probably dead, but can dodge his mines to hit him in a VERY small window of vulnerability in between his rocket and his legs. If you’re in front his chest wobbles forward, letting you get in several hits (about 3 if you’re good, and way more if you’re a speedrunner) before he takes off and lands again… and then the fight repeats. So that’s a long, slow, BORING fight with very limited and very tiny vuln windows which you have to fight at one health with no checkpoints between Silver and here. And of course if this was the original game go back to Emerald Hill Zone if you’re trying to learn the fight. But wait, there’s more!
30. Outro: Boss: You see, the exact nature of both the mines and the arm flings are bullcrap. The arms grab your position a few frames before they launch, which is natural, but because that’s ALSO his vuln window you’re probably already jumping for him. And his ‘knockback’ when you hit him has an angle almost guaranteed to send you into the arm. Also the arms track far better the closer you are and you are, once again, probably pretty close because you’re bouncing into him. Did I mention he has TWELVE health? Hit him 12 times while doing all this nonsense…
31. Outro: Boss: …this whole fight can suck a dick
32. Outro: Penalty For Failure: By the way the one health thing isn’t REALLY the problem but it absolutely acts as a multiplier for everything else. Even on this version of the game ANY mistake of ANY kind means redoing the entire fight (plus Silver)

Story Positives:

1. Intro: For what it’s worth the Intro actually does a lot to establish itself and the tone and theme of the game pretty quickly. With only a brief text scrawl about an evil empire and some hellspawn we’re thrown into an unwinnable battle we barely survive and are quickly recruited into the rebellion
2. Brickwork: With a few exceptions there’s still JUST enough here for a positive, similar to FF1’s
3. Internal Continuity: After the Death Sta–er, the Warship launches the number of roaming NPCs in town goes DRASTICALLY down as they’re all dead or hiding. The survivors even say as much as you go around talking to them
4. NPC Set Dressing: Good time to mention this but most NPCs update their chatter at almost every major story tidbit, which is neat (if out of the way to experience)
5. MSQ: The Cyclone moment. While it sucks gameplay wise, leaving the Mysidian Tower and finding Altair completely destroyed is a heck of a vibe. Heading north we see that Gatrea is gone too (you’d have to explore to find this out and the new awful encounters discourage this, but if you did you’d find Paloom and Poft are also gone). This really sells the premise of the intro better than the entire rest of the game has. The world is NUKED, over-run by hellspawn, and you find yourself in the middle of an apocalypse…
6. Atmosphere: …it’s great, horrible atmosphere
7. Integration: For what it’s worth, the fact that you suffer gameplay detriment (enemy changes, loss of towns) helps with this whole vibe

Story Negatives:

1. Brickwork: Some areas are just… awful. The tropical cave comes to mind immediately
2. MSQ: Spinning wheels for a while in the middle parts of the story. In many ways it feels like your objective is to just wait for the Emperor to finish summoning the Cyclone
3. Plot: Replacement Hilda. Why is this plot point here? We go rescue her from the Death S–er, the Warship and then go do an unrelated quest, come back and hey she’s been replaced and now we have to go rescue her… again. Which we do, even. Why is this here?
4. Outro: Sudden, unfulfilling, and feels like a fake ending

Gameplay Positives:

1. Music: Good for what it is. Uematsu hasn’t hit his stride yet but he’s still doing some decent stuff here
2. Save: Surprisingly decent save system for what it is. Four slots and can save anywhere on the overworld quickly and easily. No saves in dungeons though so… have fun with that
3. Kit: Spells are actually really legit in this one… if you can level them. I think this will be more positives in future versions of the game where you can actually take advantage of the kit
4. Guidance: NPCs, as per the usual for an RPG of this nature
5. Enemy Variety: Quite a bit of enemy variety actually, with a huge array of resistances, weaknesses, status effects, etc.
6. Visual Distinction: Decent for what it is
7. Itemization: For what it’s worth there’s some really solid gear in this game, all kinds of cool and interesting weapons and armor which have a fairly complex amount of abilities on them. Shame you don’t know what any of it IS or DOES without a walkthrough but the gear itself IS nice
8. Integration: For what it’s worth, the fact that you suffer gameplay detriment (enemy changes, loss of towns) helps with this whole vibe
9. Outro: Itemization: Jade Passage. JUST the Jade Passage, Pandaemonium wouldn’t know good loot if it walked up and smacked it in the face. But the Jade Passage has some REALLY good gear (best bow, best dagger, best axe, best shield, some of the best armor, some of the best accessories) and that’s good because it is absolutely needed for what is to come

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Bug: Stat reduction bug. So hey, in the early versions of this game when you gain a primary stat (Stamina, Intelligence, Spirit, etc.) you have a chance to LOSE another stat. That’s its own problem but there’s also a bug related to it where instead of the intended relatively low chance of this happening it’s 1 in 2. As in 50%. It happens CONSTANTLY
2. Bug: Targeting bug. So thanks to, y’know, bugs the two people in the middle (which are Maria and Guy) will be targeted WAY more than anyone else, and if one of them is in the front row and the other is not that person will be targeted even more. Again if this was deliberate (like how FFI did the targeting priority) this would be a neat feature but nothing informs you of this and, again, it’s a bug
3. Bug: Dual wield bug. So hey you can dual wield in this game, and it’s supposed to substantially increase your damage output. Problem is it doesn’t calculate the second weapon. At all. So you’re actually LOSING damage because it runs the first calculation (which has reduced damage thanks to dual wielding) and then that’s it
4. Interface: So I was going to be a bit kind about this at first because, well, it’s not as bad as FF1’s. Thing is I went back and checked my notes and FF1 got way more than three negatives for interface so let’s just slather these on. For real though, every single goddamned time I have to spend two minutes in the menu manually and slowly healing my party up, switching between stats and equipment to verify who gets what from what, and all while dealing with that weird lag that’s happening… which is even worse on the ‘loot’ screen (which pops up when you get loot from an enemy) just makes…
5. Interface: …playing the game…
6. Interface: …miserable
7. Controls: By the way there’s this weird input lag problem along with a weird thing where it will buffer your input if you held down the button too long. This isn’t terrible…
8. Controls: …but I’ve had some issues throughout
9. Leveling: So hey. Leveling. Gosh where do I begin. I think I talked about just leveling for a good 10 minutes at the start of the Run. So the BASIC idea is it’s a ‘use it level it’ system (one of the first, I do believe). This is… not something I enjoy, and in fact I’ve only seen done well like three times in my entire life (no, seriously). The problems with the system are that it requires a lot of OTHER conjoining systems to not get immediately lopsided. Some later games will have some kind of ‘protection’ mechanic to prevent this but there’s NOTHING here. Let’s start with the most obvious problem; You end up naturally specialized in whatever you’re using, even if it’s not what you want to use. That’s a Problem by itself (and we’ve just gotten started)…
10. Leveling: …but also thanks to something I’ll talk about in more detail in a minute you’re actually punished for trying to raise, say, your magic stats on your mage and your health on anyone at the same time…
11. Leveling: …because our next issue is how not all things are equal, but each takes equal time and effort to raise. This is compounded by…
12. Info In Game: …the fact that the game doesn’t TELL you what’s useful or not (for example, both unarmed and swords are useful the entire game, but not everything can claim this)…
13. Itemization: …which also speaks to how the itemization doesn’t properly inform each thing. Not every ability is properly supported by the loot in the game, either at certain points or throughout, and as such some things will simply lag behind and there’s not much you can do about it…
14. Leveling: …oh hey remember me mentioning losing stats as you raise stats? Yeah that’s great and contributes to another problem…
15. Build: …building yourself into a corner. This is going to be a threefer because there are two major ways to do this that I’m aware of and it’s STUPID easy to do so on a normal playthrough. First, if you set yourself up right (easy to do) your evasion will go through the roof. If your evasion is through the roof you don’t get hit very often, which reduces your Stamina and HP gain, which makes it so you get into a bit of a ‘rocket tag’ situation where you can’t be hit unless you get creamed…
16. Build: …second is similar. It’s VERY easy to get your damage output really high simply by consistently using the same types of weapons and spells the whole game (Sword, Unarmed, Flare, stuff like that). That means you kill enemies before they have a chance to really damage you which, again, lowers your defensive stat gains. There’s a reason almost EVERY version of the game after this included a safety feature where you would gain health automatically every few levels just in case…
17. Build: …either way it’s, again, very easy to manage this without meaning to on a normal playthrough…
18. Leveling: …hang on, just a few last complaints I swear. First, the specifics of how stats actually level is… wrong in this version of the game. Health checks for end total health loss (which penalizes healing), attacks check for targets but not successes, agility levels literally at random, it’s all wonky…
19. Info In Game: …and, once again, NONE of this is explained in game. A normal player playing through can probably figure out that ‘use thing raise thing’ works, but will then run into issues on every other stat (once again, most notably health). For example, it’s trivially easy to just sit there and attack yourself to lower your health, then finish the battle and gain health exp, right? In fact in future versions of the game this is a valid strategy. HERE though it’s all just wasted time because it doesn’t care unless your end health is lower than your starting health, oh and by the way if you heal up after attacking yourself you get nothing…
20. Info In Game: …this is just player hostile
21. Kit: By the way spells level SO slowly that you’ll never get to really use the high end spells without hours of grind, and even the spells you start off the game with will barely be tolerable by the time you get to the end
22. Core Combat: Targeting with no roll over. It’s the same problem FFI has. I’ve always hated this and it is still one of the worst features of the game. For those unaware of how this works if you target something (with anything) and that something dies, the rest of your team will continue to attack that empty spot. Because you didn’t actually target the enemy or even the enemies but the space, which is now empty. So that’s neat. FFIII (NES) fixed this but here it continues to be a hassle just like in FFI, wasting actions and possibly MP…
23. Core Combat: …on nothing
24. Inventory: You have 32 inventory slots and items do not stack. Believe it or not I think this inventory is actually WORSE than FF1 NES’s, and 1’s was not exactly great. Everything is cumbersome to use for the usual reasons (more on that in a minute) but honestly do I need to add more? You have 32 inventory slots (which includes quest items by the way) and nothing stacks. What in the world…
25. Inventory: …what’s weird is this is such a noticeable change from previous AND later games…
26. Inventory: …I got nothin’
27. Info In Game: Good luck figuring out what any of the spells are or how they work or any of the items or how THEY work. I should mention this game has some silly good spells (noted in the positives) but unless you have a walkthrough or someone telling you… well
28. Encounter Rate: As per usual for… honestly every FF up to and including 6, the encounter rate is just too damned high. It’s too high…
29. Encounter Rate: …in the overworld…
30. Encounter Rate: …and it’s too high in the dungeons
31. Seconds In Minutes: The BlueWind Negative (the ONE negative in the entire game!!) When you cast an AOE spell it has to show the effect on one person, then the text, then show the effect on the NEXT person, then the text, and so on. This gets old in a hurry
32. Intro: Gotcha: You know about it, I know about it, everyone knows about it. If you head left from Altair you’ll end up near Mysidia and be absolutely destroyed. This is stupid easy to stumble into as a new player (hence the category of Gotcha!) but also I just have to share an anecdote. This particular playthrough I was sort of focusing on chat and just following the terrain and without meaning to stumbled right into the Mysidian area (and, of course, died). And I KNEW it was there
33. Intro: Weak intro in general anyways. The first town is actually pretty decent for what it is but then you are given very little direction except to head to Fynn. It’s pretty natural to either follow the bridge north (only real landmark) which is the right way, or follow the coast (which leads to death). Fun fact the VERY first time I played this game I kept going north past Fynn and, y’know, died horribly. Anyways you get to Fynn and find soldiers who will kill you instantly. You have to navigate around the town (literally), enter the pub, find the dying prince, get his ring, then head back to Altair. That’s kind of it, that’s the whole Intro. It’s… not great. FF1 did a better job with more limitations and restrictions in order to show the player what the game was and get them into the zone of things
34. Walkthroughitis: Good luck figuring out what to do after you finish going to Fynn! Seriously. We get the canoe and know from NPCs to head east, but then your directions boil down to ‘roam around until you stumble into Josef’, at which point Josef will tell you to go to the mine (and not where it is) so you have to find that and good friggin’ luck. One person mentions it’s near a waterfall but nothing about where that is or how to reach it
35. Guidance: Speaking of. The game in general has some guidance on what to do next and even where to go but not HOW to get there. A good RPG will inform traversal and exploration in its level design (even non RPGs which have overworld-style design like Symphony of the Night or Ocarina of Time). Instead what you get is a big swath of nothing. And that is because…
36. Overworld: …FFII has one of the worst overworld designs I’ve ever seen. Giant swaths of empty terrain with no design to it gameplay wise or story wise. Massively open ended exploration which confounds said exploration. Hell, to really make this point, when you START the game you actually have access to reach almost every major area in the game, on FOOT, if you wanted to. You’d have to survive that of course, but you could do it. And that’s a huge friggin’ problem. It means the player is likely to just stumble into death (more on that in a bit), it means there’s no natural gradience to the tiering of enemy encounters, and it means the player can get lost easily having no real idea of what is where thanks to bad landmarking…
37. Overworld: …consider this…
38. Overworld: …a triple negative
39. Level: So hey, after all that you finally reach the Semitt Cave where we can get the mithril. Woo! This dungeon is a great example of what we’re in for in this game. The enemies are noticeably worse than everything outside (one bad encounter of Soldiers and Sprinters will absolutely wreck you if you’re not prepared), many of the chests are not super useful, but otherwise it’s a fairly basic dungeon…
40. Level: …until you get to the Troll Rooms. For those unaware, FF2 has this WONDERFUL bit of game design it uses in almost every single dungeon in the ENTIRE game where you’re given multiple doors to choose from. One of them goes forward, the others go to Troll Rooms. Each Troll Room door teleports you to the center of the room, and you then have to walk out. Ignoring how irritating this is, Troll Rooms also have much higher encounter rates in them (it’s actually semi rare to NOT get an encounter in one). And because you were teleported to the middle you HAVE to walk out so… it’s just a massive troll. I hate Troll Rooms, these are anti design and feel spiteful (hence the term). I will be dinging every dungeon that has Troll Rooms for doing so, unless they do something good with it, or unless they’re even WORSE about it
41. Boss: Adamantoise and Sergeant and near immunity to physical. Great stuff to have this early in the game given how awful magic is to raise and procure this early on (see the next segment)
42. Early Game Hell: So yeah this is a good time to mention this. The early part of this game TURBO sucks. I would be surprised if more than 5% of the people who’ve ever sat down to play this version of the game (the NES one, not any future ones) put down the game before they finish Semitt Falls, aka the first dungeon. Much of this is due to other things we’re about to mention or things we already have so I won’t belabor the point here I just had to mention that this game does, legitimately, get better… once you can actually access the kit and resources, and if you have a walkthrough or know what you’re doing. Getting lost in the initial adventures, constantly traipsing back and forth across the overworld, barely making any money and very slowly leveling, and all while constantly feeling like you’re just barely managing
43. Inventory: So hey, remember that 32 inventory limit? There are 12 key items in this game. You CANNOT get rid of key items in this game. At all. They’re just… there. They’re part of your life now, taking up space and serving as an inventory tax. That’s 37.5% of your inventory eaten up for no good reason
44. Info In Game: First of all, there’s a lot of weapons and armor with unique stats or abilities or uses which the game conveys not at all
45. Info In Game: But second of all there’s a ‘trap’ in the game which is a twofer. Heavy armor MASSIVELY reduces your evasion, to the point where it’s comical. This is to replace it with absorb, which makes perfect sense, but once again the game doesn’t tell you which armor is Heavy and which is Light, and that’s a pretty important strategic decision the player needs to be informed even exists
46. Kit: The ‘two’ part of the twofer is that this is pretty terribly balanced. Light armor is UNIVERSALLY superior to Heavy armor in this game because the Heavy armor will never absorb enough relative to what you can get with evasion instead. It also kind of works against logic (Heavy armor reduces evasion, so you shield up which increases evasion, for example)
47. Economy: So the economy in this game is absolutely terrible. Everything costs way, way too much for its value (and its worth noting a lot of these items are either worthless or only useful in very specific scenarios). This is on top of the Inn problem. So in this game each Inn doesn’t have its own pricing, they all charge the same… that is to say, an amount depending on how injured you are. And this gets expensive FAST. By the point I’m typing this (heading to the Ice Cave) it’s already hundreds of gil per trip, and I only have a couple thousand lying around…
48. Economy: …so that’s…
49. Economy: …borked
50. Itemization: But wait, it gets worse, because you know the reason this all sucks? The gil is paltry. I’m at the point of selling potions and antidotes to afford things (and to free up inventory, see above) because the game does NOT give you enough gil at all. I should mention for historical purposes that this problem is COMPLETELY fixed in future versions of the game, so all these negatives go away in the Pixel Remaster version…
51. Itemization: …but here…
52. Itemization: …you get things like receiving 6 gil from a tough battle. Or 0 (yes it actually informs you you got ZERO gil). Or how about opening a chest with ONE gil in it, as an insult? None of these examples are hyperbole
53. QoL: The Exit spell HURTS YOU when you use it. WHAT?! To be very clear about this, if you use Exit to leave a dungeon it leaves the caster in critical health. Worse, there’s no backing out of this. It warns you it’s about to do it (every single time) and then just does it, so hope you didn’t misclick
54. Backtracking: The entire segment from Bafsk to Altair
55. QoL: People leaving take their gear with them. Sure hope you’ve saved frequently! This happens every time by the way
56. Backtracking: And then Altair to Poft to Altair again. To be clear every single one of these trips
57. Music: Restarting music is back. And just like FFI NES it’s absolutely terrible, because you change in and out of combat so rapidly and switch in and out of dungeons…
58. Music: …that it’s going to be an issue
59. MSQ: Traversing the ice field and ‘redo dungeon’ design for the ice cave
60. Level: Snow Cavern (can’t Exit, in the middle of absolutely nowhere)
61. Level: Troll Rooms. Again. I told you I’m going to ding it every single level that does it
62. Audio Spam: Being poisoned is ear cancer
63. Level: Kashuan Castle. A very lengthy, boring corridor with juke rooms (aka rooms where it’s very lucrative to loot) which is frustrating when…
64. Level: …Troll Rooms exist. Oh and while I’m at it a LOT of magic vulnerable, physical resistant enemies here… which is funny considering the boss is almost straight immune to all forms of magic
65. Backtracking: Have fun walking from Kashuan to Altair. Yes I know the chobobo forest is there, do YOU? Also uh…
66. Song: …the Chocobo song is a 6 second loop of awful. It’s horrifying. Amusingly the only reason this isn’t worse is how infrequently you’ll be using the chocobo. Hey, speaking of which
67. Traversal: What the hell is up with this? No seriously think about this a sec. The one and ONLY chocobo forest in the ENTIRE game is south of Kashuan, which is no where near anything. The nearest town is Bafsk and even that’s a trek. This means if you want to use the chocobo you have to fly with Cid (not available after a certain point) to Bafsk or friggin’ WALK all the way out into the middle of nowhere to get the chocobo to get the improved move speed and no encounters. And you know the worst part? There’s parts of the game where that’s a worthwhile bargain (like when hitting the Dreadnaught, or Palamecia proper). The time spent traipsing across the entire world map fighting relatively low level enemies is still not as bad as slogging through the HIGH level enemies surrounding both locations. Speaking of which…
68. MSQ: There’s some indication of where the Dreadnaught is (cool) but it’s still in the middle of ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE. This is THE furthest away location in the game to reach, mathematically. Other ‘further away’ locations you usually have something (like the airship) to mitigate the trip distance but there’s no speeding this up. You have to walk all the way to Kashuan then chocobo the rest of the way (this is effectively circumnavigating the ENTIRE world by the way), or walking straight there from Altair (this is what the game actually tells you to do) and enjoy a very, very, VERY long and arduous trip through high level enemies with no safe haven in sight. Also this runs into that ‘traversal’ problem I mentioned back in the Snow Cavern. In fact this is the exact same problem as the Snow Cavern but worse. The game clearly wants you to go a bit in then backtrack heal recoup and come back but NOW it’s an even LONGER trip and also even if you chocobo in you’re dealing with tons of enemies on your way out… y’know, when you’re low on health and resources. I actually died a few times trying to just get back to town…
69. MSQ: …screw this nonsense. By the way! The Dreadnaught has another feature I NEVER knew about until this playthrough. Did you know that after you rescue Hilda you can no longer leave the Dreadnaught until you leave? This is especially terrible if you decided to play the game the way the game has been DEMANDING up until now so you get all the earlier treasures, rescue Hilda, and turn around to leave and NOPE. You’re stuck now having blown all your resources thinking you were about to get a refill. I swear the further into this game I get the more spiteful and petty it feels
70. Grind: So we reach the second major grind point. For all the reasons both above and below this was a pretty big grind spot for me and whoof
71. Level: And then there’s the Dreadnaught. Let’s get the usual out of the way, some lovely Troll Rooms (I’m particularly fond of how the initial choice of rooms are ALL Troll Rooms, thanks game) and the game has started slowly falling in love with more and more status effect enemies. Keep in mind recovering from status effects is a whole thing in this game thanks to how frustrating and slow it is to level up Esuna or Basuna (Heal and Peep in this game). This is alongside enemies with plenty of health and tons of physical resistance. Should I even mention the dead end corridor fest?
72. Level: Oh and here’s the negative for the Troll Rooms
73. Leveling: By the way Darkness and Poison both prevent leveling. Entirely. Screw you!
74. Walkthroughitis: Good luck figuring out where Deist is…
75. Guidance: …or even reaching there! You get the ship in what might be literally THE opposite end of the world from Deist and you have to not only go ALL the way around to reach it, it’s not very clear (especially if you’re not familiar with the overworld map) that you have ONE path to get over there
76. Difficulty Curve: The ocean. The moment you gain access to the sea you gain access to sea enemies. All enemies on the sea are the same encounter table (near as I can tell) and it’s a BIG jump up in difficulty. If you’re not ready for it…
77. Grind: …have fun grinding. Like a lot actually because right after this is the friggin’ Deist cave and that place is one of the biggest weird hurdles in the game for reasons we’ll cover in a minute…
78. Grind: …but between sea and Deist Cave, grind city
79. Level: Deist Cave. Screw this goddamned cave. There’s a drop halfway through that shoves you to a distant, samey area which is SUPER far into a dead end portion of the dungeon. There are TWO such dead ends by the way. Also the loot in here is pure troll. But ultimately all of this is merely bad…
80. Level: Encounter: …until you see the Gigas encounters. I should mention that by the time we got here the prep work done (as in the grinding) made it so most of the enemies here were manageable. All except the damned Gigas which is, no joke, a late game enemy that’s just… here for some reason. AND can spawn in multiples, AND you can fight multiple groups of him in a row. This dude has a bajillion health and hits like an absolute truck and resists everything you have at this point in the game. I say without hyperbole that this dude is harder than the boss of this dungeon
81. Level: Troll Rooms, again. They’re still ‘merely’ bad, we won’t see the awful, awful troll rooms until later, don’t worry I’ll say something
82. Boss: The Lamia Queen is pure RNG. First of all this is actually an ENDgame fight (unlike the earlier Gigas who is merely LATE game) and it shows. She has a nice chunk of health and good resistances but what really matters is she can proc Sleep on her attacks, and can just straight up cast Confuse on you. When I finally beat her it was just from RNG farming
83. Grind: This is the worst grind in the game so far. We had to grind so damned hard to be able to deal with all of the upcoming crap, finally resorting to use exploiting and optimal leveling techniques to crank up weapon skills and health. And that’s it, no more screwing around, no more trying to raise magics or to have a balanced party which has been horribly slowing me down, three people who can just kill things by looking at them…
84. Grind: …this…
85. Grind: …ate up my entire lunch break
86. Encounter: Outside Palamicia’s enemies are so stupid (noticeably harder than INSIDE Palamicia by the way)
87. Level: Castle Fynn Basement, filled with petrifying enemies and… honestly it’s actually fine. Lots of treasure, mostly no bullcrap. Why’s it get a negative then? There’s SIX doors on a single screen. FIVE of them are Troll Rooms. No this isn’t the dungeon I referenced earlier
88. Walkthroughitis: Have fun finding the tropical cave. The directions the game gives you are, and I quote, “It’s on an island in the middle of the sea.” Good luck!
89. Walkthroughitis: Have fun finding the Mysidian Cave
90. Walkthroughitis: Or even knowing you have to go there at all. Fun fact, due to the near total lack of guidance at this point of the game you can use the White Mask first but have no idea where to go for the Black Mask, or get to the Black Mask dungeon and have no idea you need the White Mask or how to use it
91. MSQ: Backtracking and bullcrap about the masks, as mentioned above. This entire section involves a lot of traipsing through areas that are filled with enemies that poison and petrify you
92. Level: Mysidian Cave. Christ the god damned Mysidian Cave. I haven’t exactly been enjoying this playthrough but this place made me want to rip my teeth out. Every floor is massive and filled with narrow corridors that force you into one of several pathways, all but one of which lead to Troll Rooms. There’s crap loot here, brutal enemies, and LOTS of status effects. This is officially the point of the game in which status effects are just your life now, I sure hope you’ve been diligently leveling the Heal spell for the ENTIRE game because if it’s not at least level 6 you are screwed sir. By the way my Heal spell is about level 2 and YES I’ve been leveling it consistently up until the grind spot immediately prior to this one. Anyways long narrow corridors with bad loot and frustrating enemies…
93. Level: …means…
94. Level: …a triple. LONG dungeon too, get used to that
95. Level: Troll Rooooms woooo
96. Mid Mission Checkpoint: Lack of saves starts to be an issue from about the Mysidian Cave and onwards thanks to the aforementioned issues. Die at any point in the dungeon, redo the whole thing. And these are LONG and MEAN
97. Level: Mysidian Tower is… actually not SUPER bad compared to some other dungeons but I really need to stress that this zounderkite rantallion muckspout of a dungeon has nineteen Troll Rooms. Lemme say that one more time. NINETEEN in this dungeon alone…
98. Level: …that is an impressive amount of trolling
99. Level: Encounter: Mysidian Tower enemies can also florp my shorp. Large groups of near-immune-to-physicals, poisoners to prevent you from leveling, confusers to screw you over or randomly kill you, LOTS and lots of assholes who Fear or Sleep or Petrify you, Basilisks who SPECIALIZE in Petrifying you, flowers who proc Confusion just by hitting you, Imps that Confuse AND can Blink their party, it’s a cavalcade of nonstop nonsense poured directly down the throat of the helpless and flailing player. And by the way the third boss in here just RANDOMLY has a bajillion health and defenses (we literally needed to use the Blood Sword here because nothing else was working). I hate these enemies…
100. Level: Encounter: …and everything about them
101. Itemization: By the way the loot here is bizarre. There’s some legitimately good things here. Then there’s troll drops which, I should mention, have been common for several levels now. Chests with like one regular potion, or 30 Gil, or some other nonsense
102. Mid Mission Checkpoint: Did I mention the Mysidian Tower is TEN floors long? Don’t die on floor 8 (we almost did)
103. Gotcha: So there’s a very high chance you save once you leave the Mysidian Tower, which is good. I sure HOPE you do. Cuz fun fact, as soon as you finish the dungeon the overworld state changes and now the enemies on the overworld are all much, MUCH worse than what you’ve been dealing with so far AND almost every town in the world is destroyed. Including Altair, the nearest town, and the one you were probably just beelining for to recover after the frickin’ tower. There are now only four encounter tables for the entire world and the funny thing is the ones near Fynn (where you probably are) are the weakest by almost half than the rest of the world. When you start roaming towards the actual final dungeon areas you’ll be facing giant piles of hell garbage. The ONLY good news here is we’re very close to not needing to really navigate the world soon since most of it is destroyed
104. Grind: Another grind point. A much worse one because these enemies are NOT conducive to leveling. Sorcerers are a very common enemy and they can cast plenty of level 8 spells in an AOE, Stun, Confuse, Curse, and frickin’ Death
105. Level: Cyclone and the branching paths. What’s that, given an option of two doors? Well one leads all the way through the dungeon to the final floor and then four Troll Rooms…
106. Level: …the other is the actual route. By the way I hope you enjoy enemies who do tons of status effects constantly
107. Level: Itemization: Castle Palamecia has such terrible, terrible loot it HAS to be an error. You can find an actual Knife (starter dagger) and Buckler (starter shield) in here. This is the SECOND TO LAST DUNGEON
108. Level: Seven Troll Rooms, by the way
109. Walkthroughitis: Good luck finding the Jade Passageway! It’s ONE tile in the entire world! In Fynn they actually tell you to go to Mysidia to find it but the Mysidians don’t tell you jack, go figure
110. Outro: Encounter: Jade Passageway. So yeah the enemies in here are the worst in the entire game, no joke. These are literally worse than the enemies in Pandaemonium. High chance of ambushing you and almost every enemy in here is even more status effect’y than the rest of the game. To really encapsulate this I once was playing the PSP version of this for the Lorerun I got a random encounter which killed me. It was a Lorerun, meaning I was cheating. A lot. And I still got instantly murdered before I could move an inch
111. Outro: Troll Rooms are, of course, here… quite a few
112. Outro: Enemy Design: All the enemies at the end of the game suck. They have high resistances, high armor, high health, hit like trucks, and do status effects
113. Outro: Boss: Mateus, sorry the Emperor, is such a terribly designed fight. I should mention that I was doing pretty solidly for the rest of the build up to this, having grinded both on camera and off to make sure my weapon stats were good, my health was good, my evasion was good. I had the second best gear possible (in many slots I had THE best gear). And Mateus was flat out impossible without cheesing it. So he has several spells… those aren’t significant (in fact they’re a reprieve if he uses them) but he does have physical attacks that hit for four digits against my team. And he heals for the melee damage he does. Meaning you have to out-pace the damage he’s doing to out-pace his healing. Thing is with my super death team, equipped with the Yoichi Bow and the friggin’ Excalibur, I was doing a couple hundred damage per round. I physically could not defeat him. Now I had a few options; I could have used the Reflect bug to Toad him to death (would require grinding), I could have held onto the Ancient Sword this entire time and reduce his stats, or I could use the Blood Swords which body him in just a few rounds. And that’s the final reason this fight seriously sucks. There’s no state in between super easy or actually impossible…
114. Outro: Boss: …so that all…
115. Outro: Boss: …sucks
116. Outro: Difficulty Curve: But also it’s a hell of a cliff AT the very end of the game
117. Outro: Info In Game: Also nothing tells you he’s healing. No feedback, no healing effect, no text, nothing. Imagine (if you will) getting to this point and just slowly damaging him trying to widdle his health down bit by bit, going the endurance route. Now realize that under the hood you’re NOT damaging him because every time he hits you he’s healing to full. This is awful
118. Grind: Consider this a general grind negative for… everything else. The NES version in particular is excessively grindy. Everything takes WAY too long to level, some specific (and USEFUL) spells take twice as long because they require specific circumstances to get ‘full’ exp, and you can’t grind for everything simultaneously (y’know, like… leveling) but have to focus on grinding one thing at a time. Which essentially means the already excessive grind is multiplied by every individual thing you want to raise at a time…
119. Grind: …so…
120. Grind: …that sucks
121. Power Progression Curve: Also you REALLY do not gain power on a smooth curve in this game, and unless you know what you’re building for you don’t ever…
122. Power Progression Curve: …just imagine…
123. Power Progression Curve: …a normal playthrough without a walkthrough
124. Graphics: Flashing lights. Way too many flashing lights
125. Bug: So after some hemming and some hawing I’ve decided to put this under bug since… it is a bug. Every version of FF2 after this one makes Ultima actually useful. Grindy, but useful. This one does not. The damage is flat capped at about 500 which even for the NES version is pathetic. Nothing indicates this (again, bug) and nothing helps. So… that’s an entire massive side quest across two dungeons which killed Minwu for… nothing. Cool

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: General, but solid. The backgrounds of the sectors, the individual space backdrops. It’s the type of thing that would normally be a skybox, but it’s good stuff
2. Spritework: Ships. Lots of varieties with good designs and flavor to them, making each style look and feel just a bit differently and adding to the unique architecture of each race…
3. Spritework: …for a solid double
4. Background Lore: Flavor text, of which there is much. At a certain point you fall into a natural habit of just kind of mashing through events but I encourage you to keep reading, at least to make sure it’s something you haven’t read before, for there is a LOT of flavor and story in these event texts…
5. Background Lore: …even little stuff that pops up for ‘empty’ zones…
6. Background Lore: …and on shops
7. Prime Opt: Events. There are a fair few of these and they can vary from simple to horrifying to tragic. A personal favorite? A rebel ship is assisting civilians. If you destroy the ship you can then rob the civilians, at which point they say this is why they support the rebellion. But if you DON’T rob them… then they die out anyways on their own. Fun stuff…
8. Prime Opt: …and another double
9. Music Direction: The music is already great on its own but it really adds to the all important…
10. Atmosphere: …vibe of the work. It’s just energetic enough while still conveying that this is a pretty bad time in the history of the galaxy, and this rebel fleet is causing all kinds of issues on an interstellar level…
11. Atmosphere: …which is accented even more by the…
12. Sound: …excellent sound design which, in addition to serving gameplay function, once again helps carry that all important tone

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Music: The soundtrack in this game is straight fire, no notes…
2. Music: …easy…
3. Music: …triple territory
4. Yoshi Drums: Also each sector has peaceful and combat variants playing at the same time which it dovetails back and forth through
5. Song: The entire final sector, final boss song is fantastic
6. Tutorialization: Not the best, but good for what it is, and more or less mandatory for a game as unique as this one
7. Visual Distinction: Icons, color distinction, good outlining, solid and simple colors and angles. It all looks like a well designed board game or, as I like to say, very video gamey. And that…
8. Visual Distinction: …is a good thing
9. HUD: Again with color, but also everything is clear and distinct
10. Controls: Lots of solid hotkeys for ease of use and everything is neatly and easily controllable
11. Interface: General, but again good. There’s no mistaking your inventory, squad slots, ship slots, ship layouts, etc.
12. Starting Options: Ships and setup. Obviously these open up as you go but there are plenty of starting setups and they all encourage experimenting with playstyles
13. Enemy AI: Quite good for what it is. It’s not perfect (and is controllable) but that’s arguably a good thing
14. Difficulty: Director style. If you’re doing well, bad things can happen. If you’re doing poorly, good outcomes are more slanted to happen
15. Build: Crew, equipment, upgrades, ship. These are the building blocks of your setup and while, as I mention down in the negatives, not every Build is created equal there is still a lot of potential to play around with here…
16. Build: …so it still gets…
17. Build: …a triple
18. Kit: Crew. There are 8 possible races and they are NOT created equally (Humans kind of suck, with one bonus and one blue option attached to them) but the rest have their own benefits and detriments which can vary up a playstyle
19. Kit: Equipment. There are dozens of guns and drones in the game and they run the gamut from useful to pointless, but there’s solid design to most of them and there’s almost always going to be at least SOME use for all of them (even if it’s just to sell). Me, I’m personal to multi-hitting weapons (Flak says hello) but there’s still…
20. Kit: …a ton…
21. Kit: …of great stuff here
22. Kit: Upgrades in general and augments. Upgrades provide new functionality (more weapons, more shields, sure, but also faster oxygen or better regen, more sturdy doors, vision on enemy ship, etc.) and augments have a TON of variety and usefulness which can really make or break a build (and usually stack additively too)…
23. Kit: …so that’s another solid…
24. Kit: …triple
25. Kit: The Kestral is honestly probably the best designed ship in the game. It’s not the best ship, or even the funnest, but you can tell a LOT of thought was put into this one. So all three variants get their own positive here. The Kestral A is your good ol’ standard. Starts off with missiles and a multi-hitter as well as a pip of shields, three crew, and nicely interlocking rooms which makes movement and upgrades smooth
26. Kit: The Kestral B is a personal favorite of mine (probably my second favorite ship overall). We swap some human crew for some more useful (A Zoltan for energy and a Mantid for fighting), the layout is a bit trickier for navigation but better for shunting, but best of all it comes with four basic lasers. This may seem small but it means your weapons officer gains shooting experience very quickly, and it gives you gradient control over burst fire (you decide when all four shots go, and if something bad happens you have backup guns instead of it all being on one repeater) and can carry you across multiple sectors by itself
27. Kit: The Kestral C is getting a bit more experimental. Two humans and a Lanius (oxygen drainer), starting off with a clone bay instead of a medbay and cheap and easy dual lasers and a stunner for dragging enemy shields down easily
28. Kit: The three Stealth ships are… there. I mean they’re all about the Cloak and using it well. The A has VERY weak weapons and an awful crew, the B has a Glaive beam (yikes) and a Zoltan to help power it as well as a rank two cloak, the C is… weird, with a drone setup and some very weak weapons (and NO CLOAK for some reason). All in all I honestly think this is one of the worst overall designed ship setups of the groups, but it’s still not bad
29. Kit: Engi. Big, blocky ships, and their layouts support that… get used to going the long way around to get around your ship. The Engi A is probably one of the better ‘okay you’re used to the Kestral here try another playstyle’ ships in my experience, also a pretty early unlock (just have to reach Sector 5 with the Kestral). The Engi B is… a challenge mode ship (ONE crewmember, awful drones, and disabling weapons). But…
30. Kit: …the Engi C is pretty fun. Comes with two engis and a lanius, dual lasers, a beam drone, a clone bay, and a hacking device baked in. Once again, nice to do something other than just timing your shots
31. Kit: Rock ships are similar to Engis in that they make for some simple but solid setups. Rock A is all about missiles, with a very blocky interconnected hull and three rockmen (slow, high health, immune to fire). The Rock B is a bit harder to navigate, but comes with a Fire Bomb (which does exactly what it sounds like) and Piercing Lasers to get past early shields. And finally Rock C which is fun, using a VERY spread out layout making for some interesting corridors, a swarm missile launcher and a heavy crystal weapon (which also shield pierces). Rock overall…
32. Kit: …is a solid double
33. Kit: Federation. I’m sorry, I love the Federation ships, I don’t even care. They all come with a unique weapon which charges, aims, and fires automatically as long as it’s powered. The Fed A comes with an artillery line which ignores shields and does a beam line on the enemy. And the ship itself is very multi-racial (helpful for event coverage and a nice story tidbit) as well as a very solid Burst Laser 2 (relatively cheap and fast charge time for a triple shotter)
34. Kit: The Fed B changes it up a bit by having a more narrow layout for the ship, less crew, but starts with more power behind their artillery line and comes with a dual laser (instead of the tri) and a standard missile launcher
35. Kit: The Fed C is… weird. We’re back to four crew but NO weapons (at all). It also has a different artillery gun, this one being a flak cannon that shoots SEVEN flak shots per round. It also comes with a built in transporter and a two star cloning bay
36. Kit: Slug ships are so weird. Slug A is all about killing enemy crew (comes with dual lasers for shields, a bio beam that specifically kills enemy combatants, and a breach launcher that makes holes in the enemy ship). By the way Slugs (the crew, not the ship) innately sense enemies so you can see where they are to kill them. The Slug B comes with a transporter (for Slugs??), a heal launcher and a standard missile launcher. The Slug C comes with a friggin’ Chain Laser, a mind control device, and a hacker, in case you really wanted to play a mage ship today…
37. Kit: …overall a solid double ship class
38. Kit: Zoltan ships all come with Zoltan Shields, which makes for a whole extra layer the enemy has to penetrate (there are specific mechanics and ways around this, for you AND the enemy). The A comes with a pretty standard setup, a beam and a missile. The B comes with a lotta weapons (and a VERY weird interior layout), including two ion blasts for disabling shields and a pike beam for obliterating once they’re down. And the C comes with a charge ion (more of that disabling fun), a beam drone (and a LOT of drone upgrade for some reason), as well as a built in backup battery…
39. Kit: …nice stuff
40. Kit: Mantis ships are ones I really wanted to like but could never get to work the way I wanted to. So the Mantis A has a pretty spread out layout but also the augment to make your crew zoom around really fast (all Mantis ships have this actually) to make defensive actions easier. And you start with three Mantids and an Engi. Thing is you only start off with a small bomb and a basic laser, so you’re heavily reliant on your beamer… and it’s only a two slot teleporter. Now the Mantis B comes with a luxury four slot teleporter which is great, but NO weapons at all and only two Mantids for some reason… but also comes with an incredible boarding drone and a defensive drone AND starts with two shields. And then there’s the C which starts with an engi, mantis, and lanius (what a weird trio) two very weird teleporting explosives (stunner and crystal wall blocker), and once again the quad teleporter slot, but a huge energy spread…
41. Kit: …still solidly designed overall
42. Kit: Lanius. Sadly the Lanius only has two variants and they’re… fine. The A has a chain laser and ion stunner, a hacker built in, but a mixed crew for some reason (I wish this was just three lanius instead of having one useless human). The B comes with an advanced flak which is CRAZY good, a teleporter (two slotter), and a mind control device, all of which is fantastic… but once again two Lanius and an Engi, and a VERY weird interior layout
43. Kit: Crystal ships are not great for what they take to unlock. Both Crystal ships have a thing where they have a 10% chance to do damage to your enemy when taking hull damage which… okay? Crystal people themselves have a nice lockdown ability but the A barely takes advantage of this, starting off with a very weird and elongated layout and focusing mostly on the two shield piercing crystal weapons it gets. It honestly feels like a slightly worse Kestral A. The only reason this ship even gets a positive, in my opinion, is the Crystal B. Once again a very long, elongated interior, but a quad teleporter, three crystal crew, NO weapons, and a built in cloak
44. Core Mechanic: Real time with pause. The whole core combat itself is fascinating. Power shunting, targeting, timing your attacks, rearranging crew, all of it is just solid core fun…
45. Core Mechanic: …and worthy of a double
46. Pacing: Ticking clock with pause. So after combat (outside of ‘danger’ areas) the clock effectively stops moving. This makes for a nice breather and recoup section but more importantly adds all important variety to the gameplay loop of fight, shop, event, recoup
47. Sound: Absolutely amazing sound design, some of the best in the business. I can tell most of what’s happening just by listening. Distinct sounds for events, enemies attacking, types of weapons, a fire being present, oxygen leaking through a hull breach, et cetera…
48. Sound: …really great stuff
49. Enemy Design: Mostly based on your own ship concepts but there’s still a ton of good design to the various enemy ships you encounter…
50. Enemy Design: …for a solid double
51. Enemy Variety: Good variety in enemy styles of attack too. Boarders, disablers, nukers, drone ships, tanks, dodgers, etc.
52. Info In Game: A necessarily good amount. Sadly there’s actually a decent amount of info that is NOT in game but it still gets one point for the attempt
53. Levels: Call this a general positive for the layout of the various sectors and how they interconnect and space out distress calls, quests, stores, and nebulas
54. MSQ: Events. There are many, they vary based on sector, and they can go multiple ways. Most are risky, but certain equipment and/or crew can sway things your way. They also tend to be pretty lucrative when they go well…
55. MSQ: …consider these…
56. MSQ: …a simple triple
57. Outro: Boss: For all my griping about the final boss, I DO like how it varies up across the three phases. So you have the behemoth, the drone spammer, and the boarder (plus that stupid super weapon)
58. Replayability: Any good Rogue game (reset OR progression) should have a triple replayability and this one is no exception. One for general replayability
59. Replayability: One for being able to substantially vary up playstyle each run
60. Replayability: And one for being a game all about replaying it over and over

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Secondary: Crystal unlocking is pure RNG bullcrap. It’s absolute nonsense and requires just reloading over and over and over and OVER and over
2. Difficulty Curve: So the most well known issue in FTL is also our first major negative. Your run is decided long, long before it finishes thanks to cascading dominos of luck and setup. This means pure RNG and/or mistakes on the player’s part can cause you to lose long before you actually do, something we’ve talked about in a few other games which share this issue…
3. Power Progression Curve: …and this is tied in to the RNG and how random it can be getting the pieces you need to progress. Not just the ‘correct’ build but ANYthing actually useful. Doubly so since it’s easy to get stuff you have no use for far enough into the run that you can’t change gears
4. Economy: Also contributing to this is how damned expensive EVERYthing is. Even on Easy, which flings scrap at you, you just do not have enough money to keep up
5. QoL: Several small, weird issues. Lost a drone after launching? Sucks to be you, fire another one. There’s other examples, all small, but they add up
6. Outro: Boss: The final boss is interesting in that it’s just… too much. It’s over-tuned and only has a few designed ways around it without relying on exploits. And you have to fight it three times, don’t forget
7. Outro: Build: While there’s a lot of builds in this game, some are just not going to cut it on this thing
8. Padding: The whole game. No, hear me out. You can sink an hour or two into a given run before finding out its bust. It was argued that this isn’t a valid negative because you can tell by the end of Sector 1 if this is a valid run, but the catch there is that relies on experience and knowledge of the game to be able to divine that. Most normal, first time, or early on players will not have that necessary information. So they’ll keep going… and then waste hours on runs that had no chance of making it

Story Positives:

1. Background Lore: Newspapers. They’re a bit procedural but they add a fun bit of fluff and flavor
2. Spritework: Okay so, here we are, the pièce de résistance of Sim City 2000. I’m not even joking. The thing that really makes Sim City 2000 stand out amidst the many other city builders, even in the time, is the incredible spritework. There’s so many different types of buildings, with amazing detailing and little animations and variety and it’s just gobsmackingly good. This game looks good TODAY, it was bonkers in 1993. So let’s just smear some positives all over…
3. Spritework: …the buildings…
4. Spritework: …and the services…
5. Spritework: …and the utilities
6. NPC Set Dressing: Also I love how little interactions slowly populate your city. The train, cars (traffic, really), boats, planes, it’s all nice set dressing

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Difficulty Options: Honestly, yeah. Starting money is a pretty big deal, being able to choose to start off in debt is a nice touch, and the optional disasters (which can be completely disabled) add a nice layer
2. HUD: Icons and colors. Similar to the spritework mentioned above, the HUD design is really solid. You can tell what everything is and where basically at a glance and without much need for digging
3. Cosmetic: Signs. No, I’m serious. The ability to add a custom sign to label your areas for fun or silliness or for future development or to remind you of stuff is a great feature
4. Save: Shockingly good for the time. A quick combo for save and a quick combo for load
5. Info In Game: There’s issues here (more on that in the negatives) but there’s also some good info here on the ups and downs of various buildings and their impact on the game
6. Visual Distinction: Related to that excellent spritework I won’t shut up about but it’s really easy to at-a-glance basically everything, both in game and in the menus. You have to be at the point of arcologies everywhere to finally stop being able to tell what you’re looking at…
7. Visual Distinction: …so that’s a solid double
8. Core Mechanic: Build to earn, earn to build loop. This is the meat and potatoes of what a city builder is and it’d be weird if Sim City 2000 didn’t have it. There’s related issues (we’ll talk about those in the negatives) but the core loop is there and solid. It really is satisfying to zone, map, plan, and watch it grow…
9. Core Mechanic: …so that’s a double
10. Kit: Variety of options in buildings. There’s actually not THAT much really; Services, luxuries, the RCI, and that’s kind of it. But there’s enough to quality
11. Kit: Disasters. Yes this goes under Kit, don’t look at me that way. Being able to pop these at will to either challenge yourself or just for fun is a huge element of these games for a reason
12. Early Game: Shockingly good for what it is. You start off with a chunk of change, an empty map, and very few buildable options… get to it. This is all about placing some very basic town concepts, interconnecting them, and figuring out the basics
13. Mid Game: By the time you’ve developed past the early town segments you’re starting to mess with needs and wants, and running into your first issues you need to deal with, and by this point the game is still reasonably fun
14. Level: Scenarios! These are actually pretty simple for what they are, but there’s some design here and they boil down to two different types of scenarios. The first is levels where there’s some disaster triggered at the very beginning of the map and it’s your job to fix it
15. Level: The second is where you’re given a fully developed city which has one major problem and it’s your job to solve it. These tend to be more involved and require more knowledge of how the game works
16. Replayability: We discussed this quite a bit on camera. Ultimately while there’s just not enough depth for this to earn the second Replayability, it just has to qualify for the third. This is a game with replay built into its bones

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Difficulty: RNG and unhappiness. So hey, several of these early Sim City games actually cheat in order to ensure there’s no ‘solved state’. There’s no possibility of winning. In fact in some cases you can’t avoid LOSING because of how the curve of unhappiness and abandonment work. If this was an option, or the game was overt about this, it’d probably be fine honestly… but NOTHING indicates this is in the game. In fact I only know about this from years of experience and reverse engineering. What this leads to is a weird feedback loop where you are doing everything you can and, for all intents and purposes, are doing everything right… and your city is still dying. Which can lead to frustration, quitting, or worse, learning the WRONG lesson and doing things worse which escalates the spiral
2. Economy: Honestly really bad. This is the singular reason I’ve only played through this game legit once, back in the day, and resort to cheating in money in every other playthrough. The price of essentials is way too high for what you get back in taxes. Tax income is pathetically low. And raising taxes is a guarantee of killing your city in SECONDS (seriously, crank the taxes up sometime and count how long it takes for buildings to start being abandoned)…
3. Economy: …kind of a problem considering it’s a core conceit of the game
4. Terrain: So the game isn’t QUITE 3D terrain and it shows. That’s fine. What’s NOT fine is how badly it interacts with building on it. Obviously buildings and zones can’t be placed on slopes, but other stuff can… kind of. Sometimes. And it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. It’s also a huge hassle to build around in general. Honestly there’s a reason ‘flatten the terrain’ is one of the first steps in a lot of playthroughs
5. Info In Game: So while some things are well explained, more aren’t. How do rails work? Why do these buildings not develop? Why does it say this has water but it also says it doesn’t? There’s all kinds of issues like this all over the place, and that contributes to the OTHER major problem of the game…
6. Walkthroughitis: …hope you brought a walkthrough. Or a manual, though even the manual didn’t explain everything. There is a LOT going on under the hood and by now we have a pretty good idea of how this game works, but for example, good luck figuring out the road requirements, or how buses work, or what parks do, or how to track happiness, or basically anything required to actually play the friggin’ game…
7. Walkthroughitis: …it’s frustrating