Unfamiliar 5

Story Positives:

1. Intro: Cutscene: The opening stills are honestly really well done. The art itself, the way they convey the setup and premise, and the way they’re lined up in animation to convey information
2. Brickwork: I’m going to be honest, it took a while for it to grow on me, but the fact that each world has its own tilesets and visual themes helped. And by the end I think we had enough…
3. Brickwork: …to qualify for a double
4. Spritework: I’ll be honest, these sprites aren’t to my liking. But they are still very well done, especially with Kirby and the animal companions…
5. Spritework: …for an easy double
6. Background Lore: The ‘side quests’ of getting the heart gems is actually kind of legit. They’re dinky micro stories that add a bit of flavor to things
7. Theme: Positivity Elemental in action. The entire game is thematically about Kirby doing what he’s best at; Spreading positivity
8. Atmosphere: Cute Kirbo and cute animals? Sold
9. Visual Storytelling: The dark matter driplets everywhere, and on the map, and in the bosses, and excised if we get all the gratitude / heart crystals
10. Outro: Zero. Everything about this presentation is so memorable for a reason. A gigantic eyeball that bleeds at you and spawns Dark Matter. It’s no wonder this thing has such staying power, as it’s functionally our first look at the source (or closer to the source, anyways) of the negativity elementals

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Co-Op: Honest to goodness co-op mode…
2. Co-Op: …and campaign co-op to boot
3. Kit: Really solid this time around. In fact I think this might be the best kit to date. We have some basic attacks which are honestly pretty meh, but there are a LOT of animal companions and each one of them also has their own versions of the abilities. And between these…
4. Kit: …we have a lot of cool stuff here. Not just ‘fireball but vertical’ but also some neat stuff like waves of fire, or the ability to fly straight up in a damaging line, or maintaining a circle of damage around you. And all of this…
5. Kit: …is on top of the animals themselves, who really change how you play and have their own gimmicks to them
6. Enemy Design: As usual there’s some solid and fun design to the enemies in this one
7. Controls: There’s definitely some jank but honestly each of the Kirby games (except Adventure) have had that issue to date. Otherwise it’s still solidly designed
8. Itemization: Good spread of drops, heals, enemies, and companions
9. Mid Mission Checkpointing: As usual, really solid per-zone checkpointing
10. Music: About on the level of quality as the first game (that is to say, Dream Land 1 on the gameboy)
11. Replayability: Honestly, yeah. Short and sweet, and if you’re not going for the optional heart crystals it’s pretty smooth
12. QoL: Quit out of levels, retaining progress AND able to do it without even having to finish a stage first
13. Guidance: Level title cards give a small but often useful hint for how to get the heart gem for said level
14. Level: World 1 in general. Some basic stuff but it’s still solid for what’s there. The choice to frontload so many options for getting the animal companions (and a much better system of choosing which you want) helps, and most of the initial heart gems aren’t aggravating to engage in
15. Boss: I… actually liked the Whispy Woods here. It’s not much, but having an anti melee attack
16. Level: World 2 is already starting to show some decent design. More actual usage of terrain and enemy placement, more thought put into flow. It’s still got a bit of the Dream Land 2 ‘basic’ problem but…
17. Level: …I will also say that, issues aside, they’ve also started making some of the heart gems a bit more interesting to solve
18. Level: Honestly… I think 3-1 is our first individually good level. The rolling slopes plus power ups designed around it, the smart choice of companions (Rick or Pitch), the enemies getting varied (easy to kill except by projectiles, which they deflect), it’s solid
19. Level: 3-2 continues the trend. Smart backtracking, good hinting and usage of the heart gem, usage of sand as an obstacle with enemies that compliment the terrain, actually rewarding risks rather than being dicks about it, it’s solid stuff
20. Level: World 4 in general has several fun segments. Places where they’ve started playing with concepts (like enemies that break open areas, or enemies which are placed to encourage you to try different paths)
21. Outro: Boss: Holy crap. They took the Dedede fight and actually made it good. Better variety of attacks, more vuln windows, side areas to help reach the enemy, and vastly reduced health
22. Outro: Boss: And then there’s Dark Matter which, again, is actually a solid fight
23. Outro: Boss: And of course Zero. Good lord, Zero. While a lot of the power of this fight is on the narrative side, it’s still a fun fight
24. Level: World 5 in general, by the way. The aggregate here is that while there’s a couple of mis-steps there’s some solid design and general fun throughout the world

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Visual Distinction: The style is neat, and cute, and crayony, and… hard to see
2. Camera: There’s this weird problem where the camera (only SOMEtimes) just kind of lags behind your movement, usually when changing directions, which can lead to a lot of frustration in getting hit by something you literally couldn’t see
3. Minigame: The guessing games are needlessly punishing. Do it all correct or redo the entire stage! And these get mean later. After some thought I’ve decided to bake this all into an aggregate, as there’s one per world and they all suck…
4. Minigame: …for a full…
5. Minigame: …triple
6. Walkthroughitis: Also some of the heart gems basically mandate a walkthrough to know what to do where
7. Level: 4-1’s rainbow gem is straight out of Dream Land 2’s fun times. You have to get the right combo (walkthroughitis), carry an animal companion through a difficult portion of the stage, and if you over-dust or miss on a jump you kill the flower which means restarting the entire stage. The only reason this isn’t as bad as the old Dream Land 2 ones is at least you can get the ability in the screen you need it on, and you don’t lose abilities instantly like in the previous games
8. Level: 5-5 is… surprisingly fair in what it is, but it’s a bit too long and the fact that you CANNOT get the relevant character in it is misleading at best, and there’s plenty of ‘screw you’ traps in the stage to boot
9. Seconds In Minutes: A lot. Everywhere, really. It’s all small but the whole game feels a bit like walking through molasses, and entire stages take longer than they ‘should’ given what’s there
10. Outro: I’m sorry but the final stage (the gauntlet) is kind of a nothing burger, and a boss refight rush to boot

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: This is wild for reasons I’ll mention in a bit but this is the best looking Mario Kart game so far. The background parallaxing is weird but it’s solid, and the ground and extra detail set the scene well…
2. Brickwork: …for a solid double
3. Spritework: The new karts and doodads on the map are surprisingly good too

Story Negatives:

1. Brickwork: So… despite the, uh, ‘good’ stuff, the problem is everything I just said really only applies to the background while you’re sitting still. The moment you start moving (y’know, the majority of the game time) it quickly dissolves into a blorpy blob of pixels…
2. Brickwork: …ruining the effect

Gameplay Positives:

1. Difficulty Option: For the first time in the Mario Kart series the CCs are an actual difficulty option and not just a speed changer. In this case it changes two things; How often the enemies use items, and what items they tend to get
2. Minigame: Fast Run, aka ‘I just want to go race a particular track’, which would become a staple going forwards
3. Kit: This is basically the same kit from Mario Kart 64 so it gets the same basic positives…
4. Kit: …I was torn on this (because it lost the banana chain) but the triple shells are still legit
5. Intro: The entire Mushroom Cup. You may wonder why I give it the entire cup but see, the tracks are as short as the SNES tracks but you do 3 laps like 64 so… you FLY through levels. Anyways. Peach Circuit is your typical tutorial stage. Shy Guy Beach introduces enemies and obstacles. Riverside Park has meaner curves. And Bowser Castle 1 gets across sharp turns and wall bouncing
6. Level: Luigi Circuit is… strangely good. It’s a simple but well designed ‘standard’ track, with good lines and good corners
7. Level: Sunset Wilds is probably our first really solid map so far. No fancy gimmicks, decent corner lines, good spread of power ups, clever usage of jumps and dashes, the ‘dash corridor’
8. Level: Ribbon Road. Again, solid corners and good boost positionings, plus some fun lines
9. Level: I’m going to sound like I’m repeating myself but Yoshi Desert is another solid level. Good placement of coins, items, dash boots, and good lines and corners
10. Level: NOTE; With the SNES tracks copy pasted in I decided to just copy paste the review of said tracks in. Mario Circuit 2, at the end of the Mushroom Cup, is a pretty solid development of Circuit 1. More corners, a jump segment, but nothing too bullcrap and lines built to encourage the players to know when to feather and when to punch it
11. Level: Ghost Valleys, general. There are three in total and there’s some clever stuff here, such as the blocks that form the boundaries that go away as you hit them (which can remove your safety barrier if you’re hitting the same edges), lots of pits to maneuver around, and almost always at least one intended feather skip
12. Level: Mario Circuit 3 and 4. These are the further evolution of the Circuit series, with much tighter and meaner corners but still fairness in recovery zones, and both containing nice long stretches to gun it

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Bug: Speed stat. So some racers are supposed to have substantially better top speed, same as the SNES one, right? They don’t. Near as I can tell this is a straight bug but it also ruins several racers, both good and bad. Also similar to the SNES game if the game flat out told you ‘Bowser is hard mode, Yoshi is easy mode’ I wouldn’t mind this as much
2. Visual Distinction: The turn indicators. These pop up constantly to distract you and pop up too late to be useful
3. Visual Distinction: General. This is the general problem the first game had but somehow worse because there’s more detail (which is nice) and yet it all turns into this glorpy blob
4. Controls: This is the hardest one to describe how it controls because it’s just… weird. It’s very imprecise, slippery, but there’s also this strange delay in almost everything you do
5. Padding: This is the same negative the N64 one got but more so because there are a weirdly large number of tracks that are just vacuous. No real design to them, nothing particularly wrong, just… there…
6. Padding: …for a double
7. Level: Cheep-Cheep Island. It’s mostly fine… until you hit the bridge segments which vibrate the screen and take up a good third of the track
8. Level: Snow Land. Between the ice physics and the blinding white and the awful visual disorientation of the ice on the track, this was a physically unpleasant track to race
9. Graphics: I’m going to go ahead and ding the vibrating ‘thing’ here because this is just eye cancer. Anytime you’re on something vibratey (like grates or bridges) and the ENTIRE SCREEN vibrates rapid fire. It’s just awful…
10. Graphics: …and deserves its own double
11. Itemization: So this is a strange one but hear me out. Item blocks follow the same logic as in the N64 one, where they’re set in static spots and respawn, but enemies also run into them meaning they can deny you an item (and you them). Thing is the placement is very strange and it takes entirely too long for the blocks to respawn, meaning you can go weirdly large stretches of track with no items through no fault of your own
12. Level: Lakeside Park. So there’s multiple parts of the track where you can just trip back to a substantially earlier part of the track. It’s also easy to do, and the tracks (and laps) are short enough that there’s no real recovery from this
13. Level: Broken Pier. Good God. Indistinct visuals, slippery terrain, tons of trap holes, awful curve lines, trap bounce pads…
14. Level: …it’s just miserable
15. Level: Rainbow Road. The bounce pads is actually a neat idea (that would be really cool in a better game) but what drags this down is the bullcrap angles after jump pads and the completely random and unavoidable stars
16. Info In Game: Quite a bit is lacking (unlock requirements for example… the game doesn’t even tell you the SNES tracks exist) but the worst is the outright lying about the kart stats
17. Grind: So in order to unlock the SNES tracks (which is a cool feature, I should mention) you have to get gold in each cup and then, after that, get 100 coins in that cup. That means if you’re playing optimally you have to do each cup twice… except it’s worse than that, because that’s just for that CC. If you want 150 CC you have to do it on 150 CC. Same with 50. This means that to unlock all the SNES tracks you need to do every single cup (well, mind you) a minimum of 6 times. This is asinine, especially how relatively easy it would be to fix this. If you want coins to be the unlock just make 100 coins unlock the 50 CC SNES tracks (or some other number). Boom, easy stuff. But no…
18. Grind: …instead…
19. Grind: …this sucks
20. Raspberry Jam: Low coins means low health beedleeps. It actually gets worse the less coins you have, culminating in awful beeping at 0
21. Level: NOTE; With the SNES tracks copy pasted into the game we decided they ‘count’ for review so I copy pasted my review for each in. So let’s get this out of the way; a lot of the design decisions of individual maps would work in a better game. But with how this game controls and how the karts handle and how the enemy AI just avoids everything and how close they are meaning any mistake is punishing… well, a lot of choices are suddenly worse because they’re in this game. So let’s talk about things like the Bowser’s Castle levels, which are all 90 degree turns. Not a bad idea, legitimately, but as I just mentioned sucks in this game. It’s near impossible to maintain speed while pulling a 90 degree turn because of how physics work (this is true in real life even more so). Your turn arc is going to collide with the interior point or the exterior wall unless you snap those brakes. But braking every single turn isn’t exactly fun to begin with but much worse is how easy it is to screw up. And of course the enemies have no such limitation, they maintain speed just fine
22. Level: Koopa Beach 1. This is one of those innocuous looking maps that only gets bad once you think about it. A HUGE portion of the map is slow-down material (which the enemies ignore) and it’s so tiny and clustered that any mistake means the pack, which is very small, will FLY by you
23. Level: Vanilla Lake 1. It’s ice physics on a blindingly white map with breakable blocks that impede your path, what more do I need to add to this
24. Level: Bowser Castle 3 deserves special mention for just being the absolute worst of the Bowser’s Castle maps. It does three things particularly wrong. First it has four straightaways which you’re intended to gun it through, but every single one of them has something that punishes you for doing so, particularly the first corner which has this 90 degree interior ‘lip’ that will catch you and completely kill your momentum if you hit it on either side. Second it relies on the bouncing physics to get across one segment, and those are wonky at the best of times. And third it goes out of its way to interrupt the final few corners’ arcs repeatedly, ensuring you cannot pull a smooth turn across any of it
25. Level: Donut Plains 3 is a perfect example of what I was talking about. This really should be a great level, because it’s a well designed final exam level. Problem is the enemies totally skip everything and the power ups barely help, plus the usual control and skid issues
26. Level: Vanilla Lake 2. Yes it’s an even worse Vanilla Lake
27. Level: Rainbow Road. I thought about this one for a moment but I think it deserves it for a few reasons. First the visuals are honestly kind of eye cancer, especially at speed. Second said visuals literally block visibility. This is one of three tracks in the entire game where it’s hard to see things like power ups and obstacles. And third is the friggin’ thwomps, which are perfectly designed to screw with you. They’re electrified (or whatever) meaning tapping them spins you out, which almost guarantees they will then immediately smash you

Story Positives:

1. Spritework: These might be the worst looking ships in the Homeworld series. But they’re still Homeworld ships
2. Brickwork: Consider this an aggregate for everything. I wasn’t even going to give it originally but a few spots (noticeably the planetbound space in Mission 1) made me change my mind
3. Voice Acting: Imogen is actually quite well acted, for all her many other flaws
4. Banter: Professionals under stress banter is still here and still solid for what it is
5. Moment: “My fathers await, my sons arise!” is a line that implies a lot about how generational these people’s (fruitless) resistance has been to the Hiigarans for the last few centuries
6. Sound: Fantastic sound design in general. It’s probably doing most of the heavy lifting for making the game have atmosphere

Story Negatives:

1. External Continuity: God where do I begin. This game at least barely ties in to Homeworld 2 (ignore the many ways it doesn’t), but also acts like it’s been a month since Homeworld 1 (it’s been over two centuries). By the way it also randomly cherry picks things from continuity to even acknowledge, but none of it really matters
2. Animation: The animation is just wrong. To put this into perspective my sister walked in on a random cutscene and within seconds could tell they were just… off. The whole thing is very uncanny valley, even when it’s just facial animation. What’s doubly weird is NONE of this is necessary, as each previous Homeworld game (and arguably even this one) has done perfectly well with abstracting people as the ships in question (in fact it’s one of the primary aesthetics of the franchise; Ship = Person). So this is unnecessary, tonally dissonant, AND bad…
3. Animation: …for a strong…
4. Animation: …triple negative
5. Character: Isaac is a wet piece of cardboard who sounds like he’s sleepwalking through everything
6. Character: Karen is just space Jesus again, except somehow more irritating than in 2
7. Voice Direction: I should mention that these people clearly did not have proper voice direction. I can prove it because the actors for Security Blanket and Isaac are both industry vets who have done much better stuff (recently, even)
8. Dialogue: Some usual Netflix writing woes…
9. Dialogue: …combined with being entirely too on the nose
10. Intro: Cutscene: Terrible introduction into Obviously Main Character Imogen and her hair, the super amazing person who designed new artifact cores that put the ancient progenitor super cores to shame
11. Cutscene: So we kick off the plot with a cutscene where we’re informed that the entire galaxy will die off and we’re the only ones who can stop them. This is already pretty bad but then they had to ruin it even further by having the briefing characters inform us that this is a bad thing and that we have to stop it. Repeatedly
12. Plot: I should probably mention that the premise here is incredibly stupid. A lot of games (and stories in general) want the main cast to start off on the back foot and work their way up from there, and there are creative and fun ways to do this. This is neither creative nor fun. The ENTIRE galaxy is being destroyed, BILLIONS dead, and they’re sending us off without a full crew (or even ship) and an unproven navigator AND they, as a deliberate policy, decide to cut off all comms with us! Because… y’know I don’t think they ever mention why. In fact in the same sentence as where they talk about how they’ve lost contact with Karen they insist they’ll cut off communications with us as soon as we leave! This entire thing…
13. Plot: …is one of the dumbest premises…
14. Plot: …I’ve ever seen
15. Cutscene: “Let the burden remain”… is the first of multiple indicators that we’re having this wonderfully Netflix writing. It’s a simple line that says all it needs to but then she has to act all confused, he has to explain it to her like she’s three, and then REPEAT the line, so she then repeats it again. Christ game, we know, we’re paying attention, we’re not three
16. Storytelling Mechanic: Portraits. No I’m serious, adding in the portraits kind of… detracts from how Homeworld has always approached things, and just brings down any character interaction (that is to say, all of them)
17. Plot: The first Act’s big plot is ‘how do these random pirates have access to this super ultra tech?’ Spoilers, this is never going to be really explained or resolved satisfyingly. In fact it serves no real purpose in even being here
18. Cutscene: Imogen making it all about herself and finger wagging about lying to the troops after Isaac’s speech
19. Cutscene: Back to the ocean of the Force or whatever (we go there every time we jump for… some reason) and we’re still connected through the interstellar groove network with Security Blanket (we’ll meet her later), and now Karen. This is when we formally find out that the last time Imogen and Karen met was when Imogen was six. SIX. Do you even remember when you were six?!
20. Moment: Using the Gaalsiens as a vilified group has a lot of problems, and gets worse the more you look into it, but the real problem here is the memberberries involved. It’s like using the friggin’ Somtaaw symbol earlier (without the Beast markings, mind)
21. MSQ: By the way Security Blanket blew up an entire planet to slow us down. First of all this is INSANE and second of all remember that her goal involves us reaching her
22. Cutscene: This isn’t about Hiigara anymore… this is about the entire galaxy! Which… we already knew! And is also a dumb proclamation to begin with!
23. Cutscene: So then Imogen is struggling with finding the key to the gate and she decided to hum the lullaby to herself. And the lullaby was the key to accessing the gate. The lullaby that she taught Imogen when she was SIX was the key and she leaves a DIRECT message for her! And in addition to all this nonsense, Isaac pulls a ‘we can’t deal with this’ even though it’s clearly our main plot and throughline (even in universe), AND there’s stupid structure to the scene too (like Isaac insisting on ignoring it because he literally paused the playback)…
24. Cutscene: …this is the worst cutscene in the game thusfar…
25. Cutscene: …and deserves a solid triple
26. Cutscene: So then Security Blanket reaches out to Imogen. Subjectively this is my least favorite cutscene in the entire game. Security Blanket just rants at her for a while, talks about how she was the only Navigator, and so she threw a tantrum and killed billions so some other Navigator would notice her, and this entire cutscene…
27. Cutscene: …is so…
28. Cutscene: …stupid, but wait there’s two more points I want to specifically call attention to…
29. Moment: First is when Imogen grows super big (for… some reason?) and Security Blanket’s response is ‘clever girl’… as if she had just owned her or something
30. Moment: Second is the INCREDIBLY stupid line. “Where would Karen S’Ject be if Kharak had not burned” is IMMENSELY stupid. It implies that the only thing that made Karen amazing was the horrific tragedy that occurred AFTER she’d already helped pioneer space flight, and if the Taiidan hadn’t decided to be dicks the mothership would have still made its trip to Hiigara
31. Character: This is as good of a time as any to mention that Security Blanket is a TERRIBLE character and villain. A child who’s reaction to fears was to mind control an entire populace and then massacre billions. I remind you the game wants us to sympathize with this
32. MSQ: Okay so our big plan is to bait the ultra evil queen with what she wants so we can get in and do… something to her. This is already an insane plan and Imogen actually asks for straight faith and trust in her that this’ll work out. This is immediately followed…
33. Cutscene: …by a scene where Isaac and Imogen ‘discuss’ the situation. The discussion goes like this. “Hey we should do this” “No that’s insane” “But we should do it” “Alright you’ve convinced me”
34. Character: And this is when we finally talk about Imogen as a character. Y’know, I’ve seen nepo baby characters like her done well in the past (the main villain of Uncharted 4 comes to mind… or even rArcher!) but this is not one of those times. This super ultra genius who is the personal protege of space jesus as well as the grandchild of the space president, who managed to invent new ultra hyperspace cores that supplant the progenitor ones, who is constantly morally superior and right about absolutely everything she does and tries to the point where other characters feel the need to apologize to HER for not listening to her to begin with, and all of this is on top of the ENTIRE story being about her. The mass murdering, the end of galactic civilization, Isaac, Karen, even Security Blanket, none of them matter except in their relation to Imogen. I’ve seen worse characters than this…
35. Character: …but this is still…
36. Character: …damned bad
37. Plot: Sorry I sort of glossed over this, did you catch that Karen sent out a distress signal with a code built into it designed to be unlocked with the lullaby she taught the at-the-time 6 year old kid, ‘having hope’ that someday she would grow up and find her? What in God’s name is this? Did anybody think about this for longer than five seconds?
38. Outro: Cutscene: The fact that Security Blanket even fell for our deception is already ridiculous, the fact that they used it to try and do a terrible callback to ‘may the burden remain’ is even worse
39. Outro: So the final battle mostly involves Security Blanket just yelling at us about how awesome she is over and over
40. Outro: And then the actual ending involves literally (LITERALLY) reaching out a hand to Security Blanket, who I remind you is an insane psychopathic child who murdered billions. Because she just wanted to stop being alone awww… and EVERYTHING about this scene is trash. I’m not even going to try and summarize this nonsense…
41. Outro: …just…
42. Outro: …take it for what it is; Complete trash
43. Outro: Cutscene: Consider this a bonus negative for the awful cutscene
44. Outro: Dialogue: And awful dialogue
45. Atmosphere: The mystical nonsense is back and worse than ever. And worse, it’s in contradiction to the usual tone of the Homeworld series
46. World Building: Everything about the Incarnates, the gateway, the pirates… and everything really

Gameplay Positives:

1. Mod Ease Of Use: Built in mod launcher and installer right in the game
2. Save: Surprisingly decent save system…
3. Save: …with solid autosaves
4. Tutorialization: Decent for what it is
5. Pacing: Honestly gameplay pacing is not super bad for most of the missions. Nice mix of interact, destroy, recover mission design
6. Power Progression Curve: It’s wonky but it’s solid. We get a major boost up when we get Frigates, and another when we get access to Destroyers
7. Difficulty Options: Pretty damned good options actually, with presets as well as custom options…
8. Difficulty Options: …for a solid double
9. Music: I’m not as impressed as I was with Homeworld 2’s banger soundtrack, but it’s still solid
10. Controls: So this is going to go into negatives as well but for the MOST part the game still controls smoothly
11. HUD: The HUD isn’t quite as good as your standard Homeworld fare (entirely too many times I found myself trying to just see enemy ships because their outline had gone away) but it’s still good
12. Info In Game: Solid information on what ships do what, with what weapons, at what range, and what they’re good against
13. Interface: Pretty typically good interface for a Homeworld game
14. Options: Controls presets for modern or older Homeworld game presets
15. Unit Design: Frigates. The Assault Frigate is now the ‘catch all’ unit, capable of dealing with strike craft and corvettes as well as enemy frigates. It has the health of wet tissue paper but what doesn’t in this game. Ion frigates are… fine, nothing much to say about them. And support frigates aren’t bad at their job
16. Unit Design: Destroyers and Battlecruisers. I’m lumping these together because there’s not much honestly distinguishing the two; They’re both your ships of the line, both have solid firepower, and both form a solid fleet core
17. Level: Mission 2 (Facility 315) is a passable tutorial level. Here’s what harvesting is, here’s navigating around terrain, and here’s a basic enemy. Everything is fighter based so it’s just getting used to the mechanisms of playing itself rather than anything involved like unit design or fleet composition
18. Level: Mission 3 (Kesura Minor) is… actually solid for what it is. It’s yet another tutorial mission
19. Level: Consider this an aggregate for several missions I’m not SUPER impressed with but deserve some mention. Holding the line in a defensible position against overwhelming forces in Mission 7, knocking over manufacturing facilities by targeting explosives in Mission 8 are some good standouts
20. Level: Mission 10 (Buran Ice Shelf) is… weird. On the one hand it’s not a space map. In fact it would fit right in with Deserts of Kharak. But on the other there IS some actual design here. Side canyons with targets and resource nodes, reinforcements you can dodge, and a soft enrage timer you can dodge
21. Level: Mission 11 (Chamber of Storms) is probably the best ‘hold the line’ mission in the game thusfar. You get a pretty solid attack vector, multiple paths to set up defenses (because we’re not in space, remember), and tons of juicy salvage if you feel daring. Plus the missiles which are defeatable and don’t do too much damage if you fail
22. Viscerality: For what it’s worth, the audio viscerality in this game is VERY good. Guns sound nice and bassy, with great echo, and good variety to them…
23. Viscerality: …which is great by itself
24. Viscerality: Visuals and Impact are nice too. Though the time to kill is fast regardless

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Graphics: Fog crap. Seriously why does every friggin’ mission need this stupid fog…
2. Graphics: …it literally gets in the way of visibility on several levels
3. Controls: The game seems to control fine but ships just… don’t obey you sometimes, in completely random ways. This is at least partially related to…
4. Party AI: …how stupid your ship AI is. They have trouble with things like firing while moving or attacking off their 2D plane and this just causes constant issues
5. Pathfinding: Related to this, the… I guess we’ll call it ‘pathfinding’ is legitimately awful. As in ‘almost as bad as Starcraft 1’ awful. This reminds me of another more recent RTS we covered (Iron Harvest) where units will just get distended like crazy, get stuck on each other (in SPACE mind you), and all want to take the same path to get anywhere…
6. Pathfinding: …it’s a colossal pain and aggravation which constantly gets in the way. This is made much worse by any level…
7. Terrain: …where there’s substantial terrain. Because good lord the game does NOT know how to deal with that
8. Unit Design: Torpedo Frigate. It might be at least a passable unit if it wasn’t completely bugged. See, Torpedo Frigates cannot fire until they’re at max range. No you read that correctly, MAX range. So try to attack anything closer and they go running. This also means they are completely useless if anything is targeting them
9. Visual Distinction: Almost every frigate is the same general shape and profile. This is also true for enemy ships. Aaand your Destroyers and Battlecruisers ALSO look the same, just bigger. It’s not great for at-a-glance. It’s even worse if you’re trying to quickly navigate your unit card in the lower left and can’t tell which ship is which at a glance
10. Enemy AI: The enemy loves suicidally beelining your collectors at their own expense, which can lead to legitimate softlocking issues
11. Enemy Design: Enemy turrets are absolutely stupid. Hard to hit, too much health, incredible range, and do tons of damage to absolutely everything
12. Level: Mission 12, Noctua 27. So the pathfinding is already bad, leading to people ignoring orders and the ‘traffic jam’ in space problem, I’ve already mentioned that. But Level 12 has a lot of terrain in it… which means lots of room to get stuck. And suddenly the pathfinding has no idea how to deal with anything, which makes what would’ve been a fairly straightforward mission into frustration hell
13. Outro: Level: Mission 13, The Lament has all the problems of Noctua 27 but worse somehow despite being over a flat plane. I think the addition of seven thousand enemy turrets everywhere didn’t help because you’re just getting harassed constantly from all directions by turrets and the AI does not know how to deal with that…
14. Outro: Level: …making for a slog and a frustration-fest of a mission

Story Positives:

1. Spritework: These are mostly the same character sprites from FFIV DS (plus a few new ones) and for what it’s worth I think they did a pretty solid job with these…
2. Spritework: …earning a double positive
3. Spritework: Further the enemies… well I don’t want to over-praise but there’s quite a few of them and they did a decent job of it, plus with the bosses…
4. Spritework: …so enjoy that double
5. Brickwork: Castle. The Brickwork isn’t one of the selling points of FFIV DS (which is basically what this is) but they still do some decent stuff with the castle tileset
6. Brickwork: Town, too. Nice buildings, grass, greenery, flowers, few pots here and there… little stuff
7. Cutscene: Palom teaching Leonora magic, complete with Fire? Spell. They repeat this later with Blizzard? and Thunder? and it’s great. While it’s weird how easy magic is to learn, the way Palom talks her through it is nice and the added gameplay integration of learning with the weird spells is nice
8. World Building: Learning magic, concentration, and visualization. Originally I was thinking of putting this as a negative but when they further elaborated on it and explained it more I actually rather like it. The idea here is that magic is SUPER easy to learn, like basically anyone can learn basic spells… but basic spells are pretty weak to accomodate. The bigger spells? MUCH harder to use, which is why most people don’t ever get to the higher level magic
9. Storytelling Mechanic: All at the same time storytelling. Each of the early episodes is happening basically at the same time and there’s some interesting crossover and hints of the other stories as they coincide
10. MSQ: Palom’s arc in general. Training her, fleeing Troia into the Lodestone Cavern with the crystal, and Palom petrifying himself to ‘win’, and the reveal about whom Leonora is…
11. MSQ: …all great stuff
12. Character: Palom is… probably the only character I’d call an actually good character in the game as of this writing. Most other people are one note characters, up to and including his own sister. He’s ambitious, but hesitant. Humbled, but a braggart. He comes across as rude but it’s just because he doesn’t bother holding anything back. And of course he grows throughout his AND Porom’s episodes
13. Story Sequencing: Edge’s chapter and the 4 micro chapters each touching on one of the OTHER related chapters (Palom, Rydia, Porom, and Yang) and gives some nice variety to each
14. MSQ: Edge’s story in general is solid. Nothing too fancy but I like seeing Edge progress, I like him using the trap to progress, I am… admittedly amused by him doing a blind gamble to survive, and most importantly he’s not a dick in every scene
15. Cutscene: Edward confronting Cecil is one of the better individual scenes in the game. The tension of Edward trying to navigate around Cecil without letting slip that he knows it’s not him, Cecil being JUST polite enough while retaining his edge
16. Plot: This is even made better when Edward pulls one on him with the Whisperweed, which is brilliant and really shows Edward at his best (outmaneuvering someone)
17. Moment: Okay, Edward CONTINUES to be awesome in how he outmaneuvers the Baronian soldiers with the Carnelian Signet and bringing Rosa in
18. Consequence Storytelling: I cannot believe a positive like this exists in this game, I really can’t. The way Kain failed to fell his darker half makes sense. The contrast of his darker self to Cecil’s back in IV makes sense. The way Kain has to embrace his darker half (unlike Cecil who had to atone for it and endure it) makes sense. And it’s all worthwhile because…
19. Moment: Okay, you got me game. Holy Dragoon is awesome, and Kain (finally) accepting himself to embrace it is equally awesome
20. Brickwork: The Lunar Subterrane. It still looks pretty awesome, with the crystalline rocks getting more and more glittery the further down we go, until we see the Crystalline Core at the very bottom with the power core glowing in the distance
21. Moment: The Whisperweed is suddenly audible… and the quiet horror of implication
22. Cutscene: This is actually many little moments between the characters as we descend into the Second Moon. They still have the same dialogue and general structural issues the rest of the game has but I do like them for what they are
23. Outro: For all its issues I actually do like the little tidbits of the ending

Story Negatives:

1. Storyboarding: The entire game’s storyboarding is… weirdly bad. Bleydtorvall went through the PSP version a bit, which prompted me to do the same and yeah… the cutscenes are demonstrably worse in this version. Which is very strange
2. Camera: Related, the camera work is… bad. They don’t take into account the perspective or angles or 2D objects and just use the camera all willy nilly and it looks honestly really bad…
3. Camera: …hey, me from the future, this NEVER gets better…
4. Camera: …and in fact is noticeably worse later on
5. Animation: Generally lackluster animation. I say without hyperbole that FF7 had better animations than this
6. Localization: The localization in this game is bad. Just straight up. This honestly reminds me of late FFVII (the original), and if you know me that is a huge insult. I’m going to keep an eye on it but this is at least a single negative even in the first episode
7. Intro: Cinematic: Boring empty filler
8. Intro: Dialogue: The dialogue in the entire Intro is bad at best. I want you to know that, without hyperbole, the dialogue here is the exact same stuff I was mocking in my “What If FFIV Was A Bad Game” video that came out the same day (you should totally go watch it by the way!) And it was just… weird seeing the stuff I was doing as deliberate parody in an actual official release from Square that came out in 2013 (or 2009 depending on how you’re counting)
9. Intro: Moment: The punch scene by itself is very stupid. I have heard from THREE separate people that this right here would be a Quit Point for them and I don’t blame them. It is sudden, excessive, and out of nowhere. There’s more that makes it bad but I’ll talk about that later
10. Pacing: It’s been TWENTY YEARS and people are still saying the same things and standing in the same places. This is true in every area of Ceodore’s episode
11. Dialogue: I’m going to have to grade the dialogue on a ‘per episode’ basis so consider this a negative for the awful, awful dialogue in Ceodore’s episode
12. Character: The entire main arc of Ceodore’s episode is stupid at best. Let’s go down this shall we? First we have Ceodore himself. He is a whiny loser nobody who has exactly one character trait (wanting to not be a nepo baby) and like… that really is it. It also means he has a problem that the entire rest of the game has…
13. Pacing: …he RACES through his character arc. He goes from nepo baby to whiny child to standing up and being tough in the space of a single dungeon and it’s pathetic. Once again I mocked this EXACT THING in the FFIV Bad Game video I mentioned up above (seriously go watch it it’s like 8 minutes long)
14. Tone: Then Cecil and Rosa, two DEMIGODS, fight off a few low level flunkies and absolutely destroy them and the entire time the game is insisting that Baron is totally over-run and they’re horribly on the back foot
15. Internal Continuity: By the way we go to both the town and castle Baron not too long after and they’re both fine
16. Cutscene: Then Cecil insists Rosa flee (THREE SEPARATE TIMES by the way) and like… what? This was stupid in FFIV proper and it’s arguably worse here. The fact that she goes along with it…
17. Character: …just reinforces the fact that Rosa is not a character (in fairness she never has been really)
18. Character: Speaking of bad characters WHAT is going on with Cecil here? Dude has never been THIS stupid and flailing, or have the years of peace addled his mind?
19. Cutscene Incompetence: Worfing Cecil, Rosa, all of Baron, the Red Wings… which by the way…
20. World Building: The Red Wings are one ship and like five guys. No seriously Ceodore is the ‘last of the Red Wings’ because their one ship got knocked out of the sky WHY DO THEY ONLY HAVE ONE SHIP. Let’s ignore reality and presumption and realize that in this VERY game they’ve mentioned a few times that the Red Wings are a FLEET not a SHIP God DAMN it
21. World Building: Also they could PHYSICALLY SEE SMOKE FROM BARON. Please think about how far away Baron is for a sec
22. MSQ: Everyone but Ceodore dies for no good reason. No seriously they all die. Oh speaking of which!
23. Moment: Biggs dies and his final words are of encouragement for Ceodore, which is already cliched and not great but hold on a second…
24. Character: …I need to mention how bad of a character Biggs is. Remember I mentioned the rushed character arc thing? Biggs goes from insulting Ceodore, to literally punching him, to telling him to DIE or come back successful, to… leaping to his side to save his life, to literally giving his life for him, and finally giving him the ‘you’re actually awesome and always were’ speech to give Ceodore motivation. In other words he was the ‘you’re not good enough for our club’ archetype, to the ‘tough love’ archetype, to the ‘dead motivation mentor’ archetype, all in the space of a single episode
25. Consequence Storytelling: The entire setup makes no sense and fails miserably at everything. What in God’s name is going on here? I had multiple people in chat ask LITERALLY what was going on, because events barely acknowledge scenes that literally just happened
26. Story Sequencing: And events just bounce around with no rhyme or reason to them (in fairness the original FFIV had this problem too)
27. Cutscene: Kain and Cecil’s… ‘confrontation’ is a mess of bad dialogue and pointless filler
28. Dialogue: Rydia’s scenario continues the trend of bad dialogue. Actually it’s probably one of the worst, speaking from the future
29. MSQ: Rydia’s scenario is basically a fever dream of nonsense. We were called to see the king and queen and are immediately told that we’ve been told many times before that we aren’t allowed here anymore (no reason given) and then Mystery Girl shows up, instantly and effortlessly petrifies the ENTIRE POPULATION (Christ, OP much), and then you flee, nearly die because we’re ‘so weak and pathetic’ (give me a break), and stuff be bad yo. All of this is conveyed in awful, awful cutscenes, does a terrible job of doing anything other than worfing the ENTIRE population of summons AND Rydia in order to establish Mystery Girl…
30. External Continuity: …which is stupid…
31. Writing: …bad stakes raising…
32. Cutscene: …and terribly cutscened…
33. Cutscene: Let’s go south to reach Baron, which is immediately north of us! I would let this go but they literally IMMEDIATELY get attacked (from the south!) by the very person they said they were going to avoid. Then the ship crashes. I think this is our second crash in two scenarios?
34. Writing: Too many characters ‘sense a disturbance in the Force’ (metaphorically) and it drives a huge portion of the plot
35. Plot: Fuel. I was honestly fine with most of Yang’s scenario (with one exception I’ll mention later) but then our sailing vessel runs out of fuel and we have to stop to get palm oil from a tree to get fuel. I’m sorry lemme say that again our SAILING VESSEL is out of FUEL
36. Plot: …and we have to go into a FOREST…
37. Plot: …in order to harvest OIL from a TREE to get our ship running again
38. Plot: Hold up, future Lore here who just realized something else! So they just straight up ran out of fuel, right? And the solution was ‘get more fuel’ right? Which means… they left port on a long voyage WITHOUT FUELING UP WHY DID THEY DO THIS AAHH
39. Character: Yang and Ursula is the other issue. She has no character (a recurring problem I’ve noticed… Ceodore, Rydia, and Ursula are all one note characters) other than to be left behind constantly, and Yang… I get what they’re going for here but they fail at it miserably. Yang is the worst aspect of the ‘overprotective father’ archetype except he isn’t, and the ‘you must learn the Force’ mentor and it just sucks
40. Plot: I’ve decided not to be too harsh about the one instance that brought this to my attention but there are entirely too many instances when things happen for absolutely no reason. Why did Yang’s ship delay? No reason. Why did Palom’s ship take THREE WEEKS longer to get there? No reason. Why did we spend time going through the Passage of the Eidolons? No reason. And so on
41. Writing: WHY is the Dark Elf back again? I mean it’s so he can be the boss of the Lodestone Cavern… I know I JUST complained about this but this is the single worst example of ‘bad boss re-use’ since he even calls attention to it and WE don’t even kill him, Mysterious Girl does
42. Plot: Events repeating themselves. This is… something that happens throughout each thing (AND they call attention to it) and it’s frustrating in general. I should also mention this feels especially cheap because the game leans SO heavily on repeat content and everyone keeps calling attention to it
43. MSQ: Porom’s story is a nothingburger at best. The entire arc is more about Palom and Rydia than her, and we spend over half the arc in friggin’ flashbacks doing… nothing really
44. World Building: Sand Pearls. Let’s look at the facts shall we? Desert fever is common enough that basically everyone knows about it and it happens regularly. They know exactly what the cure is. Why do they not keep a supply of these pearls on hand for this? Why do they not have some other cure researched by now? The cure is a bajillion miles thataway, two dungeons away for goodness sakes
45. Character: Rosa. She’s actually WORSE than she was in FFIV, and she’s mainly a friggin’ plot coupon in FFIV
46. Moment: WHY does Rosa stand there and do NOTHING while Kain basically murders Edward and then kidnaps her?!
47. Music Direction: The entire game has this issue where the wrong song is picked for a scene or an area or a dungeon and… it sucks. It doesn’t work and it actively detracts from the scene…
48. Music Direction: …frequently
49. Outro: Pacing: The final dungeon takes way too long. This is actually a gameplay issue but it has an effect on the narrative. This is a very common problem that happens in games in general (and the Final Fantasy series in particular!) where there’s a narrative ticking clock but then gameplay slows it down (Rinoa dangling from the cliff, Meteor falling, the Sector 7 Plate collapsing, etc.) and so the padding of the gameplay hurts the narrative urgency
50. External Continuity: So there’s been a few things here or there but let’s make this clear. This game is FUNDAMENTALLY an insult to FFIV and is made much worse by its connection thereto. This should NOT be an FFIV sequel. It mis-uses every single previously existing character, location, and even setting concepts. There is not a single thing about the connection to FFIV that makes this game better…
51. External Continuity: …and we’ll talk about that more…
52. External Continuity: …in the Outro. Speaking of…
53. Character: Mysterious Girl. This twat is just such a ludicrously powerful Mary Sue who effortlessly walks over absolutely everyone at every opportunity until it’s magically time for her to start losing…
54. Character: …and that’s it, that’s the character. This ALSO is something we’ll talk about more in the Outro. Speaking of…
55. Outro: So hey. The ending. Fun fact I was ready to give this ALL the negatives for how it spat on FF1-6 but apparently that was all axed in this version, go figure! …the ending still sucks though. Let’s track this shall we? First we find out that the dude behind absolutely everything is a goop pile who’s the last survivor of a super advanced alien race that killed themselves
56. Outro: Visual Continuity: Before we continue I need to complain about something weird. In almost every final dungeon in this franchise (including FF4 proper) there’s some visual continuity and storytelling in whatever the last dungeon is. Here we go down a copy paste of the Lunar Subterrane and then… a bunch of OTHER rooms copy pasted from the rest of the game, up to and including places like the Tower of Zot and the Giant of Babil. Even when we get down to the bottom we’re… in space now?? There’s no visual design here
57. Outro: Then we learn that all the crystals seeded everywhere were his creation designed to scan and guide evolution in order to determine the blah blah blah anyways he’s a mass genocider and this is pretty dumb
58. Outro: Storyboarding: Then I have to give special mention to how the IDEA of the end sequence is actually interesting but TERRIBLY presented
59. Outro: Character: Oh and hey, the Maenad’s are back and they’re on our side now. Never explained. You COULD argue the Creator ordered them to help us but this is never even hinted at and in fact official sources claim they do this JUST because we were ‘nice’ to the one Maenad
60. Outro: Spritework: I have to give special mention to the last boss looking ABSOLUTELY ridiculous and impossibly stupid. He’s a giant jibbering goldfish with a face and a statue attached to him
61. Outro: The ending is… fine for what it is but it is ENTIRELY too long
62. Padding: This is probably a good time to mention that the ENTIRE game is entirely too padded. The whole thing, top to bottom. Every scene needs every single person present to say a line of dialogue even when it adds nothing to the scene. Every scene also takes too long for the slooow camera pans and the slooow animations…
63. Padding: …and it drags…
64. Padding: …the entire game down

Gameplay Positives:

1. HUD: Surprisingly good HUD in combat, showcasing enemy names, buffs, weaknesses, et cetera
2. Info In Game: Decent and repeated. MOST stuff has information on what moves or spells or gear or items are and how they work
3. QoL: Optimize, remove all, L and R navigation, smart targeting in combat
4. Auto Battle: Pretty solid actually. Whatever your last action you did gets ‘logged’ as your auto battle action and there’s some smart targeting involved too
5. Enemy Design: This is essentially identical to the positive FFIV will get because there’s still some really solid enemy design…
6. Enemy Design: …so that’s a double
7. Enemy Variety: Solid variety too. Counter enemies, enemies that hit like a truck, enemies that cast, debuffers, you get it
8. Enemy AI: Really solid stuff. This is copy pasted from FFIV DS but worse implemented so a solitary positive here
9. Interface: It’s the same interface as FFIV DS which does have issues but it’s still enough for a single
10. Visual Distinction: Solid for what it is. There’s no real mistaking chests or interactables
11. Sound: This is basically FFIV DS’s sound design so… yeah of course it’s good
12. Save: So the saves themselves are whatever but y’know what’s not? Autosave. It’s a REALLY GOOD Autosave actually, like every encounter and every room and lemme tell you I literally had a crash in the middle of this game and could just go back to retry it. Plus some of the bullcrap encounters and bosses are made so much more tolerable because you can just go right back into the fight…
13. Save: …so enjoy that double
14. Kit: Bands may be hilariously unbalanced but there’s some good stuff here, and most of them are worth doing at least once just for the fun of it
15. Kit: Spells. These are basically the FFIV spells (though you don’t get access to a huge amount of them until literally the last chapter)…
16. Kit: …but it’s still a solid double
17. Kit: Moves. I’ve been chewing on this for a while; Most of the characters have their own special move they can use and they are… varied in their usefulness. There’s some good design here though, even if most of these are weaker versions of their equivalents in FFIV proper…
18. Kit: …so this only gets a double
19. Level: Tower of Troian Trials is… a weirdly good level. There’s decent itemization (mentioned later), the enemies are designed around your party (weak to elements, and specifically you start encountering enemies weak to stuff as you learn specific elements), and periodic save points and recovery spots to refill the magic since they know you’ll be leaning on MP a lot. With only one notable exception this is solid
20. Level: Itemization: Palom’s entire scenario is the first one we’ve played through so far which has actual design to its drops, chests, and shops. You get things that are useful and worthwhile and there’s plenty of things worth buying AND the drops keep you going
21. MSQ: Palom’s scenario (Lodestone Cavern, Troia Waterway). Not much to add here but they do some good stuff overall, especially in making sure the enemies and items are good for whom you’re playing as
22. MSQ: Micro scenarios of Edge. These are all micro dungeons but there’s good itemization and good enemy design to compliment each individual party member
23. MSQ: Also the scenarios benefit from specific moon phases (one for each phase) AND the game flat out tells you which phase is up WHEN you’re selecting
24. MSQ: Edge, the cave, and Babil are solid for what they are. Lots of good items throughout, decent enemy design, the build up to the non boss, it’s solid
25. Boss: The first Mysterious Girl fight with Asura is… weirdly good. She herself casts level three spells, and Asura supports with Shell, Curaga, and physical attacks. You have Fusoya and Golbez, both of whom have tons of options for trying to out-think her strat
26. Boss: Mysterious Girl with Leviathan. Similar to the last fight this is well designed around the insane damage they’ll be doing. She’s mostly the same but Leviathan does a full AOE sweep every turn, on the other hand she’s turbo weaker to elemental attacks and doesn’t have Shell or anything else. Meaning it’s an intense race
27. Boss: Baigen. So here we see a few repeat battles and you’re probably thinking ‘but Lore, there have been plenty of repeat bosses in this game!’ That is true. Thing is, while those were good boss fights, they were NOT designed around the party and relative power level we were at when we fought them, unlike their original counterpoints. It is only here, IN the (second to) last dungeon that we finally see these fights getting to shine as we finally have the gear, levels, and most importantly party composition to enjoy them. So yes, Baigen DS is in fact a good fight, just like he was in the original
28. Boss: Magus Sisters, too, retain their good fight quality. Forgive me for not going into detail because most of these are literal copy pasted from FFIV DS
29. Boss: Dr. Lugae is a bit of an exception. Lugae doesn’t guarantee do the reverse trick now and you start off fighting him in his final form AND Barnabas, who hits like a truck hitting you with another truck, so you have to deal with a one two punch of a VERY high health support/buffer and the actual damage dealer up front
30. Outro: Itemization: Final dungeon in general has pretty solid item drops for most party members, letting you either min max or catch up depending
31. Boss: Elemental Fiends, all of them. These are slightly different than their DS counterparts but still contain some decent design, like Kainazzo’s second phase, Valvalis’s countering, and Milon hitting like a truck
32. Boss: CPU. This is probably one of the better fights overall because of the gimmick. If you kill both adds then he kills you. Leaving both up isn’t very useful either. So you’re limited on AOE spells and attacks, but you’re given a choice of who to damage; the healer or the damager. Killing the damager means it’s just a straight race through his healing, killing the healer means dealing with the incoming damage the entire time
33. Boss: Asura. Same basic idea as before; She heals, she buffs, and she hits like a truck. And there’s plenty of ways around this, up to and including COMPLETELY locking her down (Mirage the party, Reflect her, and she cannot do ANYthing)
34. Outro: Boss: I’ll give it this, the Creator fight IS pretty decent. First phase is entirely reactive, so you choose how the fight goes. The second phase is mostly a setup for the third phase. The THIRD phase is legit, with a lot of unique attacks, regular combos, periodic status effects, et cetera

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Music: Don’t worry, FFIV DS will get this same negative. I have talked (at length) about the issue here so forgive me for being brief. When translating music to another soundfont (instruments, in short) you need to adjust both the song AND the soundfont so the new font fits the new music. They did neither. They crudely stamped a bad MIDI sample on top of metaphorical sheet music and called it a day. So the quality of the songs varies pretty wildly because sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t…
2. Music: …and when it doesn’t work, it’s BAD
3. Info In Game: This is a good time to mention there is this WEIRD lack of info all over the place on how certain things work. Consider this an aggregate because it’s all over the place and it’s… very inconsistent because sometimes it’s great and sometimes good friggin’ luck…
4. Info In Game: …so take an aggregate double
5. Encounter Rate: This is a fun one. Sometimes the encounter rate is fine, sometimes it’s… too low. Yes you heard me, too LOW. It causes issues with how grindy this game is
6. Controls: So I’ve sat on this for a bit (we’re in the last last dungeon as I type this) but there’s this… issue with the interface and controls in combat. No not the 15 fps thing, that’s later, no there’s this weird thing where the menu does this weird adjustment of positioning… thing periodically. It’s hard to explain but if you’ve played the game you know what I mean. So you go to do something and accidentally cancel out or select the wrong thing and the menu ‘moved’ but there’s very little indicator that it did. It’s overall a lack of feedback problem
7. Unskippable Cutscene: There’s a lot of this, and the cutscenes can drag a bit, and most are right in front of bosses…
8. Unskippable Cutscenes: …so that’s always fun
9. Power Progression Curve: Almost none to speak of. You gain something like 15 levels in Ceodore’s episode and none of it makes you feel ANY stronger on any level
10. Intro: Padding: Why does this take so long to do the first dungeon? Why is it multiple floors? Why are some of the passageways hidden from the camera? Oh speaking of which
11. Camera: The camera feels WEIRDLY zoomed in the entire game, to the point where it interferes with navigation and general playing
12. Graphics: So this and FFIV DS both have this absolutely abysmal 15 fps framerate in combat. It’s not great in either case…
13. Controls: …but here it LITERALLY interferes with gameplay as it creates input lag and dropped inputs in combat
14. Tutorialization: I’ve seen worse but they do the ‘you can only do one thing’ form of tutorialization where it forces you to do an action non natively which, at this point in my life I’ve studied tutorialization so much I think I can definitively say this is one of the worst ways to do this. Players are just not going to retain this
15. Tutorialization: By the way the game also doesn’t tutorialize SEVERAL concepts, we’ll come back to this later
16. Viscerality: Bad, at best. Most of these graphics are borrowed from FFIV DS and while I love that game its viscerality is NOT good…
17. Viscerality: …in audio or visual
18. Itemization: Stores. Someone somewhere did not think about what shops should sell. The second and third shops we encounter in the game barely sell upgrades, and only for a couple of characters
19. Difficulty Curve: Waterway under Baron is the first dungeon I feel safe stamping a negative on. Ignoring that it’s literally the same dungeon from FFIV it’s also not balanced for our current party or level. In fact I guarantee this is why they gave us White Mage and Black Mage (great names by the way), because the LAST time we hit this dungeon (in FFIV) we had Palom and Porom along with. This place is pretty clearly just copy pasted and they crudely adjusted the party to try and compensate
20. Difficulty Curve: Cave of Mist is another dungeon which just kind of sucks, but amusingly it’s NOT because it’s a copy paste dungeon. This is just terribly balanced. No joke, literally the first enemy I encountered here one-shot Ceodore (who was in the back row, mind you)
21. Power Progression Curve: Rydia in general has the worst curve in the game. She only gets ONE new spell of note, Luca never gets anything, both stats of both people are not great increases, and you’re saddled with Calca and Brina who are HP barriers at best. And on top of this you never really get any expanded kit, just a bit more stats
22. Level: Sylph cave is almost as bad as it was in the original. I only say almost because the damaging tiles are gone. Still a giant maze, still frustrating to navigate, still barely worthwhile, still awful enemies. However…
23. Difficulty Curve: …you probably want to go hit the Sylph Cave before you do the actual first dungeon (the Sealed Cave) because the Sealed Cave is going to punch your teeth in otherwise, because…
24. Grind: …Rydia’s scenario wants you to grind. Badly. Keep in mind there are, IF we include the Sylph Cave, a grand total of three (relatively small) dungeons in this scenario and it took us close to 4 HOURS to get through two of them because of grinding. Not just exp of course, but searching for hidden Bokkol Ores to turn into gear and by the way…
25. Walkthroughitis: …I sure hope you knew that the ore existed, where to turn it in, and where to get the items to make the gear, AND what the new gear does and how it works (NOTHING indicates how the Dancing Dagger or Tomahawk work for example)
26. Level: Then there’s the Sealed Cave itself. As mentioned earlier the enemies here are brutal and frustrating stat walls
27. Level: Did I mention there are honest to God Troll Rooms in the Sealed Cave? Because there are. They’re behind Dimension Doors too, making it even worse
28. Level: Encounter: Speaking of, Dimension Doors. These are such a dick move. They have a giant pile of HP and only one attack, which KILLS you instantly, no real evading it unless you kill them fast enough. If you don’t kill them fast enough they turn into another enemy which gives far less exp and gil, meaning you lose someone and lose out on rewards because screw you
29. Level: Backtracking: Also you have to WALK your ass out of the Sealed Cave (this is also true in the original)
30. Padding: Rydia’s entire scenario is just so sloggy for how little it is
31. Level: Then you hit up the Agart Mine which is… fine? Except the enemies in here are frustrating, rely on black magic weaknesses (or NONE), and doesn’t have great treasure. Also the enemies are of the ‘can randomly nuke your face off’ variety and the boss is… not TERRIBLE but he’s a one note boss, with one gimmick and only one solution
32. Padding: Yang’s story isn’t bad, really. Each dungeon is… I mean it’s the same dungeons for the most part. Even the ones that are seemingly new are actual previously existing dungeons repurposed, right down to the encounters and in some cases bosses. And I would let that go as is…
33. Backtracking: …except when literally two of the three dungeons mandate slowly walking back through them after you finish them
34. Encounter: I have to ding the triple frost guardian fight in the Trial Tower for Palom’s scenario. They do enough damage to three shot you, there are three of them, and you cannot kill them all with a single AOE attack. So you have to AOE twice or kill all three individually. Thing is you are basically praying for good RNG, that they do sufficiently low damage that they don’t kill you before you get your spells off. And yes I know you CAN just go grind but I think you know my response to that
35. Info In Game: Each of the four Eblan chapters benefits from doing them during a specific phase of the moon. They even tell you which phase is currently up IN the selection screen, which is nice. Buuut you also have NO idea which person benefits from which phase so that sucks
36. MSQ: Porom’s story is not great on the gameplay axis either. You’re stuck with almost an entirely mage party and that can get frustrating through no real fault of the player’s, and…
37. Padding: …the entire thing takes WAY too long. I think as of now her episode is the second longest (only beaten by the dreck that is Rydia’s episode) as we go through FOUR separate dungeons, each one excessively long, two of which we have to walk back out of after we’re done
38. Padding: Redoing the meteor dungeon
39. Padding: Redoing the Waterway (second time in THIS game by the way)
40. Backtracking: Redoing the Waterway for the THIRD time immediately after…
41. MSQ: …but this time without frickin’ anyone in the party except for Edward!
42. Backtracking: By the way we have to backtrack BACK again through the Antlion den AND through (part of) the Waterday… again again
43. Backtracking: And then in Kain’s tale guess where we go… again! Again again again again! I’m not joking we do the Waterway for the FOURTH TIME just in this game!
44. Level: I also have to mention that most of these retrips are at least tolerable but THIS one sucks as Ceodore is just such a load. And speaking of which…
45. Kit: Ceodore sucks. He has bad stats, bad stat growth (he’s spread way too thinly), terrible spell selection, and falls behind ALMOST every other character
46. QoL: In Kain’s chapter in particular this is even worse because Ceodore is awful in the front row (he will literally get three shot up there) and the game constantly shoves him into the central slot in the front row, everytime there’s a cutscene he defaults to this. I nearly died to this at least once because I didn’t notice at first
47. Level: Lunar Subterrane. This is effectively the same negative it will receive in the original FFIV. There’s some good things about this dungeon and, amusingly, NONE of them are in After Years. Instead it’s just the bizarre layout and confusing looping nature and a camera that’s too zoomed into really help with anything
48. Padding: By the way the first time you leave the Subterrane? You do so manually. 11 floors of just walking out of the dungeon, with like 5 scripted fights on the way out. This is just… wow
49. Backtracking: Then you have to go BACK down through the entire dungeon, but this time it has full enemies, and by the way you only have Golbez and Fusoya to manage that…
50. Backtracking: …so have fun!
51. Difficulty Curve: So once you finally reach the final chapter you’re dumped almost immediately into a new overworld which is dangerous as hell. The game very clearly expected you to grind, a lot, in the individual chapters (more on that in a minute) because this stuff will beat your teeth in. This is out of nowhere too, the whole game has been reasonably balanced (except Rydia’s chapter) but then we hit this wall. What’s worse, your party is actively AWFUL for this initial section. You have Luca (mediocre melee with weak abilities and no healing or casting), Rydia (no summons and terrible durability so she’s just useful for her black magic), Edge (glass cannon damager and also our only reliable source of healing), and Golbez (solid melee and dps caster). If you’re paying attention that’s VERY little endure (just Golbez, really) and almost no recovery, on top of having no buffs and very few debuffs. This…
52. Difficulty Curve: …really sucks…
53. Difficulty Curve: …but wait, it gets worse
54. Grind: See, all the game needs is for you to grind! And grinding does help, thankfully, but there’s two major issues. First, most of the enemies at your relative power level give WAY too little exp to be worthwhile. Meanwhile the enemies that give good exp will be absolutely destroying you because they’re above your pay grade. You need to either mindlessly grind the weaker stuff or do one of two other things. The first of those things is the second problem; The game actively encourages you to go BACK to the previous Tales and just grind there, then save and restart this chapter and reload the newly updated grinded save… it’s worth noting that’s ALSO mindless, but it’s a lot safer than anything available here, and you might actually have things like heals and, y’know, functional INNS (did I mention the Inns are basically gone from the overworld? Thankfully some of the shops are still active so you can live on cottages, and you can rest in the airship, but still)…
55. Grind: …so all of this…
56. Grind: …is awful. As in several hours of grinding awful
57. Walkthroughitis: But wait, I mentioned a third option! You see the moment you hit the overworld we’re (finally) at the Freedom Point and can go zoom around and gather a bunch of loot to help gear up our team. In fact the loot that’s out there is very specifically set up for THIS party, so that’s helpful too! The problem here is that nothing even indicates you CAN do this, at all, nevermind where each individual piece of gear is. Did I mention that about 85% of the items available now are just consumable fodder, with the other 15% being crucial upgrades?
58. Guidance: I mentioned that ‘nothing indicates’ problem, but it’s even worse. See there are specific spots in the world you can now explore such as trees, craters, etc. There are MANY of these on the overworld now which… is sort of the problem as only a VERY small number of them are interactable, and absolutely nothing differentiates the ones that are decorative from the ones that contain critical upgrades
59. Encounter: One last middle finger to the player. Almost every single one of those critical upgrades? Locked behind what is effectively a boss. So you either pull some exploity bullcrap to take them down, get lucky, or go back to the ‘grind the easy stuff’ option to get the stats to kill the bosses to get the gear to kill the other bosses
60. Boss: Consider this an aggregate for all the Eidolon fights. They try, but ultimately they’re all very basic and drag
61. Walkthroughitis: Good luck even figuring out where the Eidolons even are to get them. Or to even know that you need to fight them at all. OR to know it’s required to enter Baron. Honestly I want to give this more negatives but if I’m being fair all you have to do is hit every town and area in the game in order to find where they are and that’s… fine. But also some of these have some WEIRD requirements which still earns the ding (like needing to defeat Ramuh to recruit Porom to get into the real fight with Titan)
62. Grind: So hey, remember that gigantic grind wall I already mentioned? Well THAT was for the beginning of the chapter. Now we’re at the END of the chapter and have TONS of new characters to grind up! To be clear this is no where near as bad as the last time since the moon actually gives good exp, you have a shop with fantastic gear right nearby and a full heal spot, but this still sucks especially since you probably DON’T want your final party to be Luca, Rydia, Golbez, and Edge
63. Early Game: So we have a Problem. Because of how the game is structured you have to go through every initial episode before you gain access to the final three (and you have to do the final three in order). Every episode except for the final TWO are designed around low level. And if you have a functional brain you already see the Problem, because this means you spend a huge swath of the game, well over 30 hours, being stuck in Early Game. This…
64. Early Game: …already…
65. Early Game: …sucks for the obvious reasons but let’s cover a few other ways this causes issues…
66. Kit: …starting with limited Kit. They try to vary it up with some of the characters having one or two abilities from the original game and it does help, but at the end of the day this is VERY limited because, again, low level. You also run into the issue…
67. Enemy Design: …of (almost) every enemy being designed around low levels too. This means the much better later enemy designs don’t really get a chance to shine because you’re stuck fighting…
68. Encounter: …the same formation of Dark Goblins and friggin’ jellyfish over and over. This is made even worse…
69. Padding: …because it’s not just repeats from FFIV proper…
70. Padding: …but repeats in this very game. You end up fighting these same enemies with this same low level kit CONSTANTLY…
71. Level: …in the same damn levels over and over. I’m sorry, FFIV dungeons are fine (really, only two of them kind of suck) but having to do them over and over and over again? Please keep in mind we’ve done the Waterday dungeon literally four plus times JUST in this game, nevermind how many times we did Mt. Ordeals or the Crater or even things like the Lodestone Caverns…
72. Level: …and even good dungeons get old when you just…
73. Padding: …keep doing them over and over…
74. MSQ: …and finally, in case I wasn’t clear, this is all mandatory. You can do the early episodes in any order but you HAVE to do them all to proceed. Sucks to be you
75. Music: Usage. Not only do some of the same songs play endlessly but the choices of which songs are used where is VERY strange, in fact…
76. Outro: Song: I have to give a separate negative for how they used the friggin’ Moon Overworld song for the final dungeon. This needs explanation. So the Moon Overworld song is a short loop and kind of vacuous as a song because the actual time the player spends ON the Moon Overworld is very brief. It’s perfectly designed for what it is; A ‘space’ like song that plays for a few seconds while you transition between areas (which have different songs). Now think about it in the final dungeon which is HOURS long. And it just becomes… awful
77. Bug: There’s a text glitch that happens entirely too often when it lists the name of the character speaking at the beginning of the sentence, like the spreadsheet lost a column
78. Kit: Final dungeon and Bands. So hey, y’know how some games insist on putting the cool stuff in the final dungeon? No I don’t mean like the best gear I mean the COOL stuff. FFVII is probably the worst offender here but honestly a lot of games do this. Well here we are, tons of cool Bands locked behind (permanently missable!) events in the final dungeon
79. Outro: Level: The last dungeon kinda sucks for the same basic reasons we’ve already dinged and are already present in FFIV…
80. Outro: Padding: …but what’s worse is, remember, this is our THIRD TIME in this stupid dungeon. THIRD
81. Outro: Pacing: Also the last dungeon is onerously long. You first go through the 11 or so floors of the dungeon and yer like okay soon I’ll be done weuuu… and then WHAM, next floor is EVEN MORE rooms. And then more and more and more and four HOURS later you end up actually reaching the actual last dungeon (yes there’s another one)…
82. Outro: Pacing: …so that sucks
83. Outro: Pacing: As with everything else in this game the pacing sucks. We beat the final boss (which is… fine. It has enough interesting attacks to qualify as a positive) but then we… very slowly run away, across entirely too many zones, and have to KEEP fighting it as its self destructing. It’s a neat idea terribly executed and as with everything else it takes ENTIRELY too long

Story Positives:

1. Sound: As was common in this era the little blings and sound effects as you grab and do things are nice and satisfying
2. Brickwork: Green Hill Zone. Yeah I stand by it, they did some really solid stuff here. Waterfalls, the checkerboard style which would become iconic, the palm trees, the flowers, the distant trees
3. Brickwork: Star Light Zone. The cityscape, the construction work, the scaffolding
4. Visual Continuity: We go through the green hills to the marble to the city… making our way from nature further in. And Scrap Brain is then clearly inside the city proper and then given what happens at the end of Scrap 2 we now know all of this is ABOVE the previous zones, which tracks with the path we’ve followed. Honestly if I knew absolutely nothing I’d think Robotnik was actually in charge of the city and we’re kind of a nature fighting back against technology sort of thing

Story Negatives:

1. Outro: Bad even for the era. I mentioned this on camera; when NES games have better endings than you, something has gone wrong somewhere

Gameplay Positives:

1. Optional Mode: Anniversary mode which allows for different screen resolution, infinite lives, added story cutscenes, and added the spin dash. Also this is an optional mode and you can still play classic. Very nice option but I should mention that this version also has a weird ‘save’ system where you can reload a checkpoint when you game over even on Classic (again, as an option)
2. Music: Honestly there’s some pretty solid stuff here, considering its limitations
3. 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
4. Guidance: Rings are used as a form of guidance several times, as is pretty normal for most good platformers
5. 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
6. Kit: So this is where it becomes more relevant that we’re reviewing the Origins version because, hey, we can play as Tails or Knuckles and they play… pretty differently actually. Tails has lengthy (but limited) outright flight and Knuckles can glide and climb. And arguably these suit the first game better than Sonic himself
7. Mid Mission Checkpoint: Pretty standard, though a few stages actually have multiple which is nice
8. Intro: Tutorialization: The first few screens worth of level in Green Hills 1 are honestly a masterclass in tutorialization and design. This was a lot of people’s first platformer and in some cases their first video game period and you can tell this whole sequence was designed with this in mind. Early slanting, a platform to encourage jumping, a singular enemy after jumping has been tutorialized, an aerial enemy that’s easy to reach from the top, a slanted lip upwards to get across the momentum mechanic, and finally a tube and a fling to get across the feel and vibe of the game. Great stuff
9. Intro: Level: Green Hills 1 is a good stage in general, with solid top down stuff (mentioned above) and some real thought put into enemy placement, spikes, and platforms
10. Level: Green Hill Zone 2 and Green Hill Zone 3. Tutorialization, slowdown encouragement, racing encouragement, more options to switch paths, and our first (very basic) boss. It’s all really solid stuff. Enjoy this, it won’t last
11. Level: Spring Yard, general. There’s a few issues here but there’s also a bit of a return to form with some actual puzzles and platforming. Also COPE
12. Level: Star Light. I don’t wish to over-praise but I did enjoy these levels for what they were. Plenty of actual speed sections, enemies that weren’t an obstacle to enjoying the platforming, some fun encounters and moving platform placements. They even introduced the seesaw mechanic (later used on the boss)

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Bug: Collision is already an issue, and there’s a few other (admittedly minor) bugs that near as I can tell were introduced with the Origins version
2. Controls: So some of this is due to the platforms and the slopes but the controls are… off. The easiest way I can explain this is the controls are janky and awkward when you’re not moving at speed, but once you are they’re smooth
3. Level: Marble Zone 1 is the beginning of what we’re REALLY in for in this game. Slow, awkward platforming and lots of waiting around for platforms to (slowly) move out of your way
4. Level: Marble Zone 2 starts to escalate a bit. Now we have temporary platforms, lava pits, moving platforms that are more or less mandatory for progression (so if you lose ‘em sucks to be you), turrets, MORE waiting, and of course plenty of lava and platforms specifically designed to interrupt your jump angles…
5. Level: …so enjoy that fun
6. Level: Marble Zone 3 is somehow even worse. The whole level has all the problems I’ve already mentioned…
7. Level: Gotcha: …but now we have gotcha! interrupting us in our outings! Enemies and spikes you cannot possibly see without knowing they’re there or going VERY slowly through sections. (It’s okay, later on in the game they start actually hiding these in the terrain to make it worse)
8. Level: Encounter: Also everything about the final stretch of having to moving platform across a lava pit and then moving up stairs that alternate spikes and then moving between spikes and moving platforms which are dangling OVER the room you just went through meaning any mistake and it’s back down to the lava pit and by the way one more gotcha! of spikes here
9. Penalty For Failure: Lives and continues. You don’t get many lives, and you don’t AUTOMATICALLY get continues (you can earn them from special stages… good luck with that by the way). This should be MANY more negatives but thanks to the save feature of the Origins collection this is merely one
10. Itemization: Stingy lives, by the way. There are WAY too few lives for a game with 3 lives. Y’know why I gave Mario 1 a pass on this feature? Because 100 coins would get you a life, and lives and coins were all over the place to reward exploration. Slight correction; Rings actually do give lives, if you get 100. Which I’m VERY tempted to give ANOTHER negative to because that’s absolutely insane. It would be interesting to see which stages have how many rings in the stage, total, and you have to get those WHILE not getting hit (cuz that mandates losing rings even if you get some back) AND fighting the timer
11. Level: Spring Yard 2 brings more timed delay platforms and sections that encourage you to go as fast as possible while penalizing you for it, and of course the pinball bumpers which aren’t bad by themselves but the array of how they’re laid out is just irritating
12. Level: Spring Yard 3 is even worse about it. Bottomless pits are finally added (wooo) in addition to slow platforms, rush penalizing sections, all the same things I just said honestly…
13. Level: …just worse
14. Boss: Robotnik 3 and the bullcrap. So yes I know you can hit him as he comes down but first of all good luck, second of all the area around him has no rings for prepping for the fight (especially after a death), third he takes SO many hits that if you’re not sufficiently optimal he will literally remove the entire floor (hitting him once per floor section leaves TWO for reference). And of course you fight him over a bottomless pit so instant death says hello
15. Level: Labyrinth 1 is not that bad… and that’s the scary part. It is MERELY a slog of everything. Y’know all the issues I had in Spring Yard and Marble? It’s all of that, but now it’s underwater which adds the ‘moving in molasses’ mechanic that’s everyone loves so much and, naturally, air to the equation
16. Gotcha: The nature of how air bubbles spawn. So they respawn on a global timer (already a bit of an issue since it’s probable you will show up at the wrong time through no fault of your own) and they spawn up ABOVE the vent, which means you HAVE to jump up to reach them. They can also spawn inside other things preventing procurement
17. Core Mechanic: Underwater and air. So I mentioned this briefly but you have to understand, moving underwater SUCKS. It’s all the control issues in the game but somehow even worse. And the very existence of the air mechanic of just adding a timer resulting in instant death if you fail with entirely too tight a timeline to recover (especially on later levels) all makes for a colossal pain. By the end the drowning music stopped being terrifying and just became frustrating to hear it for the umpteenth time
18. Level: Labyrinth 2 and the bullcrap enemy placement. Mostly the same issues here but they REALLY like to put enemies in places where you essentially can’t see them coming
19. Level: Labyrinth 3 is blessedly short but still sucks, and it has this lovely feature…
20. Level: Encounter: …the once-and-yer-done water rising and also an enemy knocks you off the platform encounter. There’s just so much fun to be had having to redo a segment because of this bullcrap
21. Boss: Robotnik 4 (the climb). This ‘fight’ is absolutely stupid. It’s just chasing Robotnik up a column but here’s the thing. First there’s some VERY meanly placed spikes that directly interfere with most major jump arcs. Second, there is no air recovery in the entire segment. And that’s important because Thirdly, the water is rising with you. You can probably recover if you stumble once, but if you get too far below the water line you are dead because you simply cannot climb fast enough with the water slog, WHILE avoiding the spikes, WHILE avoiding the fireballs, in order to reach the surface before drowning…
22. Boss: …screw this fight
23. Level: Scrap Brain 2 is such a troll level. Hidden enemies or obstacles you can barely see that are designed to knock you down, or my personal favorite; quickly moving floor that ‘traps’ you in it while a voltage outlet constantly electrifies the ground. There’s just so much irritation in this level
24. Outro: Level: Scrap Brain 3 (ha ha). Let’s get this out of the way, the entire first part of the stage sucks for all the usual reasons, but then it gets so much worse
25. Outro: Level: The first underwater segment has slow moving platforms, carefully positioned enemies to interrupt arcs, switches to slow you down, all while dealing with the slowness and badly placed air bubbles
26. Outro: Gotcha!: Then the second segment is deceiving because it has several air bubbles in a row, then none for a LONG time… all while you have to do one of the ‘pump’ segments, but it’s okay there’s an air bubble there! Two things. First, the floor there immediately starts rising to smash you against the spikes resulting in instant death and if you don’t know it’s there you can’t move out of the way in time. Second, the air bubble here produces bubbles in the brick, impeding you actually GETTING the air bubble
27. Outro: Gotcha!: The SECOND trap of bullcrap is another example of this. A fairly lengthy vertical segment where the angle of the drops are perfectly designed such that if you get hit the knockback guarantees you lose a TON of progress. And there are NO air bubbles in range, you have to do the entire pump section, go past the gotcha! trap, and then make this climb all on one ‘breath’. And finally at the top are enemies who do a leaping attack towards you upon aggroing, meaning they are ALSO likely to knock you back down the water
28. Outro: Level: The final stretch of assholishness is awful. There’s enemies, swirling spikes, and other fun things but the real problem is you have to make this entire segment on a single breath (sound familiar?). This is while dealing with the placement of platforms being JUST high enough that you waste time jumping up each one individually (too tall to hop, too short to leap over), and also there’s a switch over to the side in an overhand which is almost guaranteed to ALSO waste time. And then you face an air bubble and amusingly enough it’s a TRAP because just going further up to air is the right call, but nothing indicates that
29. Outro: Boss: Boring and one-shotty. Seriously he gives no rings and that means death if you get hit, and he takes like 8 hits too
30. Minigame: So the minigame to get the emeralds in 1… sucks. It’s not terrible purely mechanically but it is a HUGE amount of noise and disorientation that just confuses the player
31. Difficulty Curve: All over the place. Some stages are a bit too easy, some are way too hard, and it rollercoasters around the entire game

Story Positives:

1. Sound: Same basic positive as the first game. The blings and bloops of getting stuff are delightful
2. Intro: Shockingly good animated intro for what it is. It also establishes a few things; Sonic is fast, our location (the moon or whatever attached to the ground), and the fact that we want to fix that
3. Brickwork: We’re going to call this an aggregate for about half of the game doing some solid stuff
4. Visual Storytelling: Again some neat stuff here. The heavily mechanized core of Robotnik’s lair, the palmy beach at the beginning, the fact that you can see the ground up top if you go really high in stages. Also a great touch is in Stardust Speedway 2. In the Present there’s a giant statue of Robotnik. In the Past it’s a castle. In the Bad Future it’s a Robotnik shaped fortress. In the Good Future it’s… I actually don’t know what but something else
5. Visual Storytelling: Good time to give a positive for the visuals changing based on the time in general. Most of these are minor things but the aforementioned Stardust Speedway does some great stuff with it

Story Negatives:

1. Brickwork: Some of these backgrounds are… not great visually and just look like a glitched or thrown together map pack. Which is funny if you think about it
2. Outro: Another bland, empty ending (worse if you got the bad ending, but also kind of pointless if you got the good one)

Gameplay Positives:

1. Optional Mode: Anniversary mode which allows for different screen resolution, infinite lives, added story cutscenes, and added the spin dash. Also this is an optional mode and you can still play classic. Very nice option but I should mention that this version also has a weird ‘save’ system where you can reload a checkpoint when you game over even on Classic (again, as an option)
2. Optional Mode: Sonic CD also comes with Time Attacks which are neat in their own right but, more importantly, serve as a built in stage select
3. Kit: You can swap to Tails who has a limited flight mechanic. No Knuckles this time though, shame on you
4. Music: So this is going to be a weird music rating since there’s literally two soundtracks (not the first time we’ve encountered this actually). But there’s also a LOT of songs (each stage effectively has several remixes based on timeline). And so we’re going to double up…
5. Music: …on the japanese soundtrack, but I also listened to the US one and I’m going to say something very controversial
6. Music: While I do actually prefer the japanese OST overall I think they’re pretty equal in terms of quality…
7. Music: …and so award both a double
8. 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
9. Guidance: Rings are used as a form of guidance several times, as is pretty normal for most good platformers
10. 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. Note; there’s a later stage that really plays with this
11. Mid Mission Checkpoint: Pretty standard, though a few stages actually have multiple which is nice…
12. Mid Mission Checkpoint: …much better placement than in 1 too
13. Intro: Level: Palmtree Panic 1 is honestly a really good stage. It’s an… unusual first stage but it’s a very solid stage in its own right so it kind of works. The level has a lot of density, continues the general theme of top bottom, but also encourages the player to backtrack and explore more… either for the time gateways or for finding more rings. I’m explaining this badly but this stage does something very right…
14. Intro: Tutorialization: …it tutorializes that you’re supposed to take your time with the stages. You see the sheer depth of terrain usage and any platformer player sort of automatically starts exploring. And this leads to the other two stages (more on that in a bit) and of course finding the hologram (doesn’t do anything) and the giant… machine thing (which fixes the future for the stage), and also increases the chance of getting rings for the special stages
15. Intro: Level: Now if only two positives sounds small for the first stage I have bad news. Thanks to the very nature of the game there’s actually closer to 42 stages in the game and reviewing that on camera was… not feasible on any measure (thanks in part to the lack of proper level select and the frustration with the time mechanic). So I did a lot of playtime OFF camera to try and cover each as thoroughly as I felt I could. So now we have to talk about Palmtree Panic 1 PAST and let me tell you, this stage does a lot right in (once again) encouraging you to take your time and peruse. There’s plenty of routes back (often aided by bounce pads) and a huge smattering of coins and monitors all over to keep the player wondering what’s behind the next angle or under that ledge
16. Intro: Level: And yeah that means we have to talk about Palmtree Panic 1 Future as well (these labels are going to get fun, I can tell). I have a little less to say about this one as it’s not as varied as some of the later Future levels get but there’s still some very solid design around long, difficult jumps (if you stay topside) or trying to out maneuver pits and small ledges (if you stay down)
17. Core Mechanic: So this is a good a time as any to discuss the time mechanic. It sucks to USE (see the negatives below) but the concept itself is fascinating. You go one ‘step’ forwards or backwards (so in the Past if you hit a Future marker you end up in the Present) and as mentioned each stage is different. The Past contains a device which lets you fix the Future. And if you do the music and visuals of the Future change (though the gameplay itself is almost entirely identical… the only real variance is in enemy placement or lack thereof). This is a neat gimmick in its own right and kind of naturally inclines the player towards wanting to get the good Futures..
18. Pacing: …but it also changes how the game is paced since so much of it is now about exploration. Trying to hit every nook and cranny to find coins, the machine, or gateways to other times
19. Level: Palmtree Panic 2 Present is already at the level design of Star Light back in the first game. Several smart loops (near time gates, even) and some nice platforming sections up top. Sadly I don’t think the Past version varies itself enough to qualify for a separate positive but still gets bundled in here
20. Level: By contrast, Palmtree Panic 2 Future does several new things. The top looks mostly the same but the bottom is almost completely different, with far more emphasis on ramps and tunnels, along with plenty of bounce pads to help you get back on track if you have issues
21. Level: Collision Chaos 1 Present is honestly a bit of a better tutorial than the existing tutorial stages in Palmtree Panic. First there’s a MUCH more natural flow to its movement; If you stay up top you get bounce pads which can fling you into pipes which then let you hit more bounce pads and the loop kind of continues. If you stay below you get long runways and even more pipes. And both are great segments for using the time gates (one of the last stages which really encourages the time travel in the level design, I’d say). This is really solid stuff…
22. Level: …and worth a double
23. Level: Collision Chaos 1 Past is fascinating because it doesn’t remove the bounce pads but it kind of does. Way more reliant on the tubes and the half pipes to keep the player scootching forward, and plenty of distribution to reward them
24. Level: Then Collision Chaos 1 Future is the ‘mean’ version of Present and Past combined. A lot of blocks are in the same places but now the bounce pads aren’t as frequent, the pipes are more interrupted, and there’s spikes now. Far more hazards in general means navigation is a bit more punishing but, once again, tons of items around to help you recover
25. Level: Collision Chaos 2 is such a weird stage. You’ll notice I’m not mentioning Past or Future and that’s because there’s probably the least variance here I’ve seen so far (even the platforms on the rollers are in the same spot). It’s mostly really refined touches that don’t change the terrain much. So consider this a review of all three stages. Good news? The stage is still damned good. We open up with multiple routes forward, all of which start with pipes and then lead to either plenty of bouncing into objects or bouncing ABOVE objects depending, and then you can kind of mix and match your route depending. There’s a persistent motif across about half the stage of there being three layers instead of the usual two which works because of how interconnected they are, and bounce padding into paddles into platforms into more bounce pads is just satisfying…
26. Level: …so consider that a solid double
27. Level: Tidal Tempest 1 is, sadly, another ‘barely different’ stage. The funny thing is the biggest distinction is the Present seems to be the meanest of the three here, with additional spikes and platforms interrupting jumping arcs. So let’s talk the level itself. We have underwater mechanics (noooo) but it’s okay because they’re not bullcrap like in 1! Well okay they’re a little bullcrap. We actually run into some weird issues because while the underwater gimmick ITSELF isn’t nearly as bad, the spacing of bubbles is still a problem and there’s no panic air music meaning your only real warning is the number and a fairly easy to miss sound effect. That’s the only major issue though because the stage itself is far more designed around the underwater physics in general. Also about half the stage is above water and there’s a weirdly large amount of verticality to it. We also encounter everyone’s favorite water pump sections from 1, but this time with less bullcrap
28. Level: Tidal Tempest 2 Present and we’re back to some variance. The terrain is near identical but the block placement varies substantially which changes how you navigate it. We also see they’re playing more with the movable terrain and the water pump sequences, and a few nice platforming sequences towards the beginning and end
29. Level: Tidal Tempest 2 Past ditches almost all the pumps in favor of platforming, arguably for the better. More spikes and other hazards but also smarter enemy placement
30. Level: Quartz Quadrant 1 Present and Future are pretty similar but introduce a new gimmick, the conveyor belts. These are fun in their own right but also include switches to change their direction which is critical for navigation and backtracking. This stage ALSO practices the ‘three lanes’ philosophy instead of two, and getting between them almost always involves using said conveyors to navigate. I’m really impressed with this stage…
31. Level: …call this…
32. Level: …our first triple
33. Level: Quartz Quadrant 1 Past loses the switches but keeps the conveyors, and a lot less terrain for navigation and more reliance on bounce pads and using enemies as boosters
34. Level: Quartz Quadrant 2 (all three variants) is another triple lane conveyor belt boosty, this time the switches are all over the place (some in the Past, some in the Present, etc.) and smart placement of jump pads and long pathways to get up to speed for time travel. Plus some generally smart terrain usage…
35. Level: …call this a double. Very impressed with Quartz overall
36. Level: Wacky Workbench 1 is another ‘hardly different’. It’s also shorter than most stages because it is SO much taller (I think it’s our tallest stage so far). So this stage is frustrating, I’ll be honest, but it’s also REALLY smart and probably the best stage for taking your time. The entire lower level is layered in these bounce FLOORS and they ignite every now and again in time with the lightning (which is our dominant theme of the stage). When they do they absolutely launch you upwards. There’s also tons of bounce platforms and other thing inclining you UP. This means it’s easy to go up and hard to stay down, and up is brutal. Lots of enemies, lots of damaging terrain, lots of impediment. Down? Down is lucrative. Tons of monitors and rings and smooth sailing… if you can stay down there. I had to go back through this stage a second time off camera to really get a stronger vibe for it because it was so frustrating the first time and I’ll admit that really raised my opinion of it…
37. Level: …so we’ll call this another…
38. Level: …very solid triple
39. Level: Wacky Workbench 2 Present is interesting. Our first segment is just enemies and bounces, it’s almost freeform to just have fun, but it quickly devolves into VERY dense platforming with TONS of monitors to profit then, and then throws you directly into hell with the next gimmick (spinning pillars you have to time your leap off of) levitating over almost an entire field of coils to zap you
40. Level: Wacky Workbench 2 Past flips this up a bit by giving you even LESS of the spinning pillars to navigate with, but also throwing you into the endless circular spinners (God I hope my terminology is understandable… so many things in this game are variants on ‘go in a circle’). This is further offset by how easy it is to time travel here and that’s arguably a ‘bad’ thing, once again emphasizing how this stage is the inverse of others (it’s easy to leave the Past, it’s hard to get back)
41. Level: Wacky Workbench 2 Future goes all in on the vertical spinners. That early section? There’s THREE of ’em here. That section with the coils? SIX over there. And three in the ending. This also keeps the incredible terrain density of the other two but really ups the enemy placement (assuming Bad Future of course)
42. Level: Stardust Speedway 1 Present. There’s… a LOT going on here. This stage is insanely dense, to the point where I had to replay it several times to really gauge it. Once again we see we have a three lane system, though in some cases it’s more like five lanes good lord, and our new gimmick is being able to hit these (barely visible, see in the negatives) switches that push you to the foreground and background depending. They do some really cool stuff with this, alongside having some very neat lengthy stretches of running, tubes, launchers, pads, and of course interrupting terrain. Hardly any enemies though which is interesting…
43. Level: …call this a double
44. Level: Stardust Speedway 1 Past (getting that green motif going on) is far less dense and far more loop focused, with several loops which are either semi infinite or can actually be looped forever, all alongside far more of the vine mesh mechanics
45. Level: Stardust Speedway 1 Future goes even harder into the mesh if you can believe it. Far less basic platforming, far more getting to the next mesh segment or launcher sequence
46. Level: Stardust Speedway 2 Present is wild. Same general themes as the previous stages, but now it’s reasonably easy to navigate around, between smart bounce pad and launcher placements. There’s also the same insane density going on…
47. Level: …so we’ll call that a double
48. Level: Stardust Speedway 2 Past is far more restrictive, as part of the challenge. A lot more threats and spikes, much fewer pathways to navigate up or down, and generally harder to reach your destination (for example the mechanism to save the future is VERY early on, but have fun reaching it)…
49. Level: …another solid double
50. Level: Stardust Speedway 2 Future is very similar to Present except when it goes all in on the pipes and tiny maneuvering areas concept. It also really wants you to use those launchers by golly
51. Outro: Level: Metallic Madness 1 is… mean. Spinning platforms, enemies that blend with the background, spikes all over, moving platforms that slow you down and are likely to crush you… but it’s still mostly proper difficulty, alongside being more dense than padded. There’s a lot going on in only a few screens. Its biggest flaw is the three timelines are functionally identical (like, Present has two spinning platforms whereas Present has one, and that’s it)….
52. Outro: Level: …but this is still a very solid final stage
53. Outro: Level: Metallic Madness 2 Present is noticeably different from its predecessors. It’s also ENORMOUS, easily the largest stage in the game. So in the Present we have spinning wheels you run on which can fling you (hard but rewarding to control), alongside more of the conveyor belts (different type this time), more crushing platforms, careful enemy and spike placement, and on top of all that there’s this mechanic where you can use a pipe to access a different part of the stage (there’s three such pipes in the beginning, middle, and end of the stage) where you can use these to navigate, find a switch, head to the next area, and so on
54. Outro: Level: Metallic Madness 2 Past mixes it up a bit by being somehow even meaner, which makes sense. There’s even a time gate right by the mechanism to try and trick you into leaving at the last minute. There’s also somehow less and more of the pipe mechanic (for example if you enter the pipes at a certain point early on it’ll take you almost through the entire stage) which, once again, makes it more punishing on the player if they go the wrong way… which, again, makes sense. It should be harder to stay in the Past and hit the machine in the final stage
55. Outro: Level: Metallic Madness 2 Future is interesting in how it goes absolutely all in on the terrain and platforming while keeping the expanded pipes from the Past. So you can zip around huge swaths of the level, have some very extended and rewarding platforming sections (more of the circle launchers too), and far tighter jumps towards the end (watch the spikes!)
56. Boss: Call this an aggregate but there’s some legitimately creative boss design here. My personal favorite is the Egg Conveyer but I also liked the Bubble and the Tilter
57. Minigame: For the only time so far I actually rather like the Sonic CD special stages. They’re logical, self explanatory (get the UFOs, avoid the water), gradient in their difficulty (you can get time back AND lose time but no instant fail conditions), and reasonably fun
58. Replayability: Generally replayable, especially to go sweeping

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Core Mechanic: Time travel is awful. It should be just a button push, even if you limit it to each individual gate. Also each gate can only be used once. Also VERY little conveys how this mechanic even works (even as of typing this I’m not 100% sure how it works except for ‘go fast for a while’. I’m not sure if running on the ground cancels it or momentum cancels it or what because sometimes I lose the spark but then several screens later I can start charging it again). Either way this is a completely unnecessary aggravating to an otherwise excellent mechanic and game…
2. Core Mechanic: …and serves as the biggest impediment…
3. Core Mechanic: …to its enjoyment
4. Penalty For Failure: Also each time gate can only be used once. This sucks for a lot of reasons. First, if you screw up that gate is burnt, and there’s already awful and means your finite means of changing stages is reduced…
5. Penalty For Failure: …but this leans into a stage design thing where in later stages there are ‘traps’ that try to fling you out of the Past into the Present (and it’s hard to get TO the Past to begin with). Which means if you hit one of these traps you might be completely screwed for the entire playthrough
6. Info In Game: By the way almost nothing in the game conveys how the time travel works or even that you’re after anything in the different time periods
7. Walkthroughitis: And of course nothing even mentions there’s a machine you’re after OR that taking it down causes any real changes (especially given that it takes TWO hops to get back to the future and see all of this)
8. Terrain: One last problem with this Problem. The stage design in some stages naturally leans itself towards time travel… and then there’s the stages that are actively HOSTILE to it. It is SO frustrating on some stages to time travel and, remember…
9. Core Mechanic: …you only get one shot. So you’d better have your route mapped out in advance and dodge AROUND those time gates until you’re good and ready
10. Visual Distinction: The game is SO noisy and SO busy that on several stages it’s legitimately difficult to tell what’s going on. This is particularly bad…
11. Visual Distinction: …in Wacky Workbench (the coils) and Stardust Speedway (the flipping behind the mesh)
12. Level: Tidal Tempest 1 is a decent enough stage (really) but I have to mention that it does suffer from two issues. First, this is THE hardest stage for me to time travel thusfar by a wide margin, it was actually frustrating just finding a stretch of stage where I could get and maintain the speed necessary. Second, the spinning chain spikes in the walls are literally invisible for about a fourth of their arc and the rest they’re so close to the wall they’re hard to see. This is the first, but not last, stage that suffers a bit from visual indistinction
13. Level: Tidal Tempest 2 loves those water pump segments… and also how easy it is to get blocked by invisible jets screwing with you. While you’re underwater and just trying to get some air back
14. Boss: Metal Sonic’s race can go to hell. You have to go so fast there’s no real reaction, only memorization or luck
15. Gotcha: Still plenty, but more spread out than Sonic 1 at least

Story Positives:

1. Spritework: The quality of the sprites have always been decent, but there’s some noticeable bumps in quality for the principal cast. New frames of animation, more detail, little stuff…
2. Spritework: …so that’s your easy up…
3. Spritework: …to a triple
4. Spritework: Then you get in bosses, enemies, and of course Mecha Sonic (mk. 2) and we golden
5. Cutscene: Spectacle. There’s this weird emphasis on spectacle (sometimes to the detriment of the stage design) which is almost always enjoyable for its own sake
6. Visual Storytelling: Burning the first zone, falling into Hydrocity, construction work at Launch Base Zone
7. Brickwork: Hydrocity. The layered ruins in the distance, the multi colored and clearly caked with decay bricks in the foreground, the pillars and emblems
8. Brickwork: Launch Base Zone. Decent enough foreground but the real winner is the background, showing us the Death Egg in the middle of the jungle and the massive amount of scaffolding around it
9. Brickwork: Mushroom Hill Zone is a much better ‘foresty woodlands area’ than the Angel Island Zone was. The lush greenery, the bits of spores wafting here and there, the layers of different mushrooms, the canopy
10. Brickwork: Flying Battery Zone. This is what Sky Fortress should’ve been, I’m just going to say it. Way better mechanical look, we see lots of machinery and the inner workings of the ship (or fleet?), and the bits and bobs that keep it running
11. Brickwork: Sandopolis Zone has several issues but visuals are not one. Even more so than Hydrocity this place is absolutely falling apart, with cracked pillars, bricks worn away by time and sand, and rolling dunes in the distance
12. Visual Storytelling: Lava Reef but, really, the entire story of the Death Egg (which is kind of the main plot if you think about it). We see the Death Egg poking its head in in the distance, having crashed here after the halfway marker, and as we get closer and closer we see how badly wedged in there it is… until we get close enough and the frozen cave ignites again just from the engines (or lasers or whatever)
13. Visual Continuity: Cutscene transitions (falling from Angel Island into Hydrocity, launching from Carnival Night into IceCap and the bits of snow left near Launch Base, etc.). There’s a lot of these and they’re really well done…
14. Visual Continuity: …some really solid double territory
15. External Continuity: Everything naturally follows the events of 2. The Death Egg crashed here, leading to the interaction with Knuckles, the need for the Death Egg to be repaired (at Launch Base Zone), and the thing being stuck in the volcano for the later Lava Reef Zone
16. Atmosphere: I was chewing on this for a bit. The whole game has this semi mystical vibe to it. The phrase ‘castle in the sky’ was said in chat and fits the vibe to a t
17. Brickwork: Death Egg Zone. The heavy machinery up front, and the massive sprawling interior in the distance… which isn’t even moving, conveying size

Story Negatives:

1. Intro: Cutscene Incompetence: I’m sorry, Knuckles just bodying Super Sonic at the beginning is ridiculous
2. Character: Knuckles is a DICK the ENTIRE game and then, snap of the finger, he realizes Robotnik is evil and is immediately an ally. Come on game at least don’t make him an asshole the whole game. He literally laughs at us as he trolls us across several stages

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: This is more or less ‘the usual’ here, though Sonic has a bit more than before…
3. Kit: …and of course Tails and Knuckles come with their own options and movement
4. Music: For obvious reasons we listened to the, uh, modded version of the music but for review purposes we’re only considering the unmodded music. The two are a bit of a departure from each other but ultimately I still liked what was here
5. Controls: Still a few hangups here and there (especially in those special stages, yikes) but still some solid controls
6. Enemy Variety: Same quality of enemy variety from back in 2 applies here as well. Plenty of different enemies attacking from plenty of vectors
7. Itemization: Great spread of rings and shields, and one tiny thing I’m fond of is just how many special rings there are so you can get the emeralds very early on if you bother
8. Replayability: Absolutely gets the first replayability tag. It should, it has a whole other pseudo-different run as Knuckles!
9. Visual Distinction: With a few exceptions the game continues to be visually distinct
10. 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
11. Guidance: Rings are used as a form of guidance several times, as is pretty normal for most good platformers
12. 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
13. Mid Mission Checkpoint: Pretty standard, though intermittent because most of the time it’s good and sometimes it’s bad, so I’ll note individual exceptions as they come
14. Intro: Tutorialization: Angel Island Zone has some issues (point in fact I think it’s actually a bad zone) but it still does tutorialization well. We learn how shields work, how we lose them, how bouncepads operate, how to access special stages (it actually takes effort to avoid the first special stage), as well as all the other basics
15. Level: Hydrocity Zone 1 was such a breath of fresh air. I was legitimately scared after Angel Island Zone that I wasn’t going to like the super popular, ‘everyone loves it’ Sonic, but phew, good stages. What a relief. So! The upper layer here is mostly simple but very solid zoom segments, plenty of items and multiple recovery points thanks to jets and loops, and is definitely the faster route…
16. Level: …but I actually find I prefer the lower route. There’s a lot of great spacing of air bubbles, spikes, enemies, and the conveyor belts you hang from which neatly loop into each other helping you to stay mobile, alongside enemies that smartly push you towards where you need to be to progress…
17. Level: …and all of it is just damned fun
18. Flow: Also great flow for the entire stage
19. Level: Hydrocity Zone 2 does not disappoint either, but in a slightly different direction (deja vu). The upper segment has these slides which if jumped properly will send you absolutely zooming through the stage, but (like a Sonic 2 stage) still reliant on player reflexes and/or memorization to properly keep the chain going. But meanwhile…
20. Level: …you can zip up and down the layers pretty smoothly and repeatedly thanks to the long vertical segments, most of which have a wind up right before them to make sure you can get up to speed properly…
21. Level: …and all of that is before considering the good moving platform design, the proper propeller usage, nice enemy placement, and good checkpointing
22. Flow: And, as before, great flow. This is such a Sonic 2 level in such a good way
23. Boss: Egg Vortex. So you can’t QUITE reach him most of the time but you can use the jets he creates to reach him, or time his placement so his own bombs smash into him, OR just ride the water jets to get up and smash him
24. Boss: Egg Drillster mk. II is a simple but fun fight, with good vuln windows and a nice flight section as a phase two
25. Level: Ice Cap Zone 2. There’s issues with the first one but the second Ice Cap Zone is pretty smooth. Good Flow, plenty of places to explore, good guidance on where to go, nice usage of the bungee platforms and lots of fun slide segments…
26. Level: …for a solid double
27. Level: Launch Base Zone 1. What a treat of a stage. Lots of gimmicks but they actually advance you this time (for example the jet tubes launch you into new areas, the rotating elevator shafts encourage you to retain momentum, the switches change what’s accessible and make backtracking interesting). Great slopes, fun vertical movement, multiple lanes which dovetail into each other regularly meaning plenty of cross track possibilities, all on top of some very smart enemy placement to inform and threaten without screwing the player over, and some solid item placement…
28. Level: …and you’ve got…
29. Level: …a triple stage
30. Level: Terrain: Great terrain usage too. Really love how smart they get with the interior looping
31. Level: Launch Base Zone 2 is just as good but, once again, for a different reason. Underwater segments compliment shunts that help you zoom around rapidly, and the upper segment involves a lot of tight and rewarding jumps while navigating flamethrowers and keeping your timing across rotators…
32. Level: …while the bottom is more underwater fun with plenty of air possibilities, good terrain usage, good item distribution, and plenty of pipes to zoom along on…
33. Level: …great stage
34. Level: Flow: Great flow too. Another of those ‘feels like a Sonic 2 level’ stages
35. Boss: Egg Rocket & Big Arms are both quite fun for what they are. One encourages timing (and rewards risky jumps) while having nice big vuln periods, the other is a maneuverability check
36. Level: Mushroom Hill Zone 1 should have been the first zone, I’m just going to say it. This is so much better than Angel Island Zone. Great double layer lanes, the top lane being all about managing lengthy and tricky jumps alongside unfolding terrain and bouncy mushrooms…
37. Level: …the bottom is about more meticulous movement around obstacles, using levers and lefts (and mushrooms) to progress
38. Level: Terrain: All along solid terrain usage (and GREAT thought put into the bouncy mushrooms)
39. Level: Flow: And a shockingly good flow
40. Level: Mushroom Hill Zone 2 is another smart stage. Here we introduce these new smooth capped mushrooms you can easily walk on, which can be used as a launcher in some cases, but also an umbrella to let you glide downwards… and the game does a perfect job of tutorializing this by very careful ring placement. The whole stage does cool stuff like that. Flying through the sky? There’s some rings to indicate where to land. Unsure if you should or even CAN go up? Couple of rings right next to it…
41. Level: …stuff like that
42. Level: Flow: And, similar to the first stage, very smooth flow
43. Level: Terrain: And great terrain usage and placement
44. Boss: Egg Scrambler would, once again, be a great tutorial boss. It’s a chase boss, the pseudo 3D lines of spikes are neat to dodge, and his attacks encourage you to think about your positioning
45. Level: Flying Battery Zone 1 is, as of this typing, the best stage in the game. We launch IMMEDIATELY into a vertical spinner which then lunges us at a mobile platform, and down at the bottom we learn about grappling across the jungle bars that line the ceiling. We also have enemies that shoot alongside flamethrowers which can be used as bounce pads. This escalates almost immediately before we head out into the open air (after a brief stop to get some rings and a fresh shield, which we will probably need) to do some spinning platforms and more jungle bars to traverse the underbelly. After this, another spinner segment requiring timing to progress, then a nice big room designed to tutorialize the launchers which can be used to get into the slow moving platforms segment, and all of that leads us up to the topside of the ship. Up here we have very tight timing on spinning across the helicopter blades, and finally one last tutorialization of the magnetic segment (it’ll pull spiked platforms up, pulling them out of the way, but when they come down they’ll do damage… it also pulls enemies out of the way too). And ALL of this is before we finally split to our upper and lower layers…
46. Level: …the upper layer is pretty short all things considered, has several hidden segments (and a special ring), and loops down into the main path. Meanwhile the lower path involves a LOT of freeform flow and movement through spirals, launchers, magnetic segments, or underbelly sections which have great escalations on the spinners and the floating platforms, and all of this culminates in a great final exam sequence…
47. Level: …so consider that a triple base
48. Flow: Great flow, GREAT flow, especially if you go down
49. Terrain: Great terrain usage too. The placement of ramps, blocks, launchers, and magnetic platforms is near perfect
50. Mid Mission Checkpoint: Also some VERY good checkpoint placement, worthy of its own positive There’s a lot of thought put into where these should be, and it’s not always to make it easier, but more to help tutorialize and encourage the player to experiment
51. Level: Flying Battery Zone 2. Forgive me for not being as verbose with 2 as I was with 1 but please trust me that it’s basically just as friggin’ good. MUCH tighter corridors, far tighter jumping timing, more narrow avoidance windows, and having to dodge spiral columns in addition to spikes, ramps, and magnetics, but it’s still all fantastic stuff…
52. Level: …and is still a triple…
53. Level: …stage
54. Flow: Once again amazing flow. My personal favorite example is when the ceiling AND floor both form half pipes and if you get into the zone you can zip between both in turn
55. Terrain: Again, great terrain placement. Jump pads, magnetic racks, flamethrowers, etc.
56. Mid Mission Checkpoint: AND great checkpoint placement
57. Level: Lava Reef Zone 1 is how a big stage can really work. This was such a smooth stage to push through. The stage splits almost immediately, and really encourages the player to get and KEEP that fire shield (you don’t NEED it though). Combine this with smart placement of hovering platforms, checkpoints, and enemies…
58. Level: …and we have ourselves…
59. Level: …a winner
60. Level: Lava Reef Zone 2. So now it’s all frozen over and the design philosophy completely changes. It’s all about ramps and launches now, encouraging the player to spin and precisely leap all over the place, all alongside moving platforms (to help catch you if you fall), flamethrowers (it’s still a volcano after all), and some fantastic set pieces whether you go high (long swaths of timing based lunges and vertical ramps) or low (plenty of big open jumping puzzles to push you forward while dodging spikes that disappear behind terrain), and all while dealing with vertical fling puzzles that once again reward the player for good timing…
61. Level: …call this…
62. Level: …a damned good triple
63. Level: Sky Sanctuary Zone 1 is just a damned solid level. Grapple beams to drag you upwards, long slopes to ramp off of, temporary platforms to leap around on, limited but careful enemy placement, platforms that hurt if you hit them the wrong way, and tons of verticality
64. Level: Flow: Great flow to it too
65. Outro: Level: Death Egg Zone 1 is the definition of ‘difficult but fair’. I actually died quite a lot here (as stream can attest to) but very rarely did I feel I was being cheated or screwed over. The split between upper and lower is VERY early and completely opt in, it’s pure choice. Upper deals with electric panels, moving staircases, and tons of tight jumps. Down involves navigating tight corridors with temporary beam floors and spike enemies. Both conclude with a rotating gravity mini boss and, of course, those weird light launchers…
66. Outro: Level: …very solid stuff…
67. Outro: Level: …easy triple
68. Outro: Terrain: Excellent terrain usage, as is quickly becoming the norm for this game
69. Outro: Level: Death Egg Zone 2 is… not as good. But it’s still good! Early on you get an uninformed choice of where to go (for reference left is lower, right is upper) followed by plenty of final exam style challenges. In fact I’m going to save my fingers some typing and just say that. Death Egg Zone 2 is all about challenging the player in all the ways they have been before. There was ONE segment I felt wasn’t well conveyed, and it’s the tilting platforms pretty far in, and honestly even those were only a problem because the last checkpoint BEFORE that involved a difficult conveyor section with no rings
70. Level: Carnival Night Zone 2 Knuckles version. So far most of the Knuckles stages are only small remixes of existing stages, such as changing the positioning of moving platforms or adding height boosters or leaning into the wall climb. But Carnival Night Zone 2 is almost an entirely different stage and very well constructed for it, clearly designed around Knuckles and his kit and serving as a nice ‘remixed hard mode’ thing (I’m reminded of Luigi mode in New Mario U, where the stages are shorter but retain the same themes and are harder)
71. Outro: Boss: For what it’s worth I like both of the new Mecha Sonic mk. II fights. The first one has decent enough hitboxes that it’s not bullcrap and decent vuln windows. And his second phase evolves even more, first with him being risky and either lunging or shooting large shots, then him hovering and doing multi shots, all while having nice obvious vuln windows
72. Minigame: Despite issues with this version (see negatives below) the minigame itself is neat. Map out your route, some recovery space and time, and rewarding you for getting all of a ‘square’ of blues to get rings

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Bug: General, again, but we definitely ran into several input and collision glitches
2. Intro: Angel Island Zone 1. I know, I know, but I stand by it. The first two stages are just… not very good. These have multiple gotcha points and active trolling, alongside some unintuitive routing and awkward pathing to shift lanes mid level
3. Intro: Level: Angel Island Zone 2 continues this trend, further exacerbated by the visuals which cause issues with readability
4. Level: Marble Garden Zone 1. Two bad stages, two great stages, two bad stages, what a weird quality path. Huge issues with visual distinction, plenty of troll moments, plenty of gotchas, very strange routing between lanes, weird issues with the walking platform things…
5. Level: …the whole thing feels like it’s over gimmicked AND that the gimmicks aren’t good, which has a knock on effect of each other
6. Level: Marble Garden Zone 2 is no better, but in slightly different ways. First it is WAY too busy. This isn’t a dense level, there’s just too much happening simultaneously in ways that don’t mesh with each other. Second it is VERY trap heavy, which can work if the traps are good or they serve the level’s overall flow (either to keep you moving or to have pacing breaks) but it does neither. And finally we ran into quite a few bugs on this segment…
7. Level: …so that sucks
8. Level: Carnival Night Zone 1 is just a mess. It’s not as bad as two (more on that in a sec) but there’s just SO much going on and this level is absolutely enormous. Most standard pathways are interrupted, there’s few smooth jump arcs, it’s so busy it’s difficult to tell what you’re looking at at times…
9. Level: …just generally not a great stage
10. Level: Carnival Night Zone 2… whoof. So let me start by saying it suffers all the same problems as the previous stage, but somehow worse
11. Level: Padding: For one, it is WAY longer. This is such an ARDUOUSLY long stage, I do believe we spent longer here than any other stage in the game even counting deaths
12. Level: Encounter: And then I have to bring up the troll drum. I’m going to explain this one for those unfamiliar. So throughout the stage there’s these moving drum pillars and you can hop on them to move them up and down, or just ride them to your destination. Simple, right? Then there’s this one STATIONARY drum just sitting, completely blocking your path. I thought I had it at first simply by moving it up and down with jumps but it clearly was not reacting linearly to that input and until chat told me I had no idea. You see…
13. Level: Walkthroughitis: …it responds to just holding up or down. While just standing on it. NOTHING in the game conveys this adequately
14. Level: Visual Distinction: Also there’s quite a bit of this stage that is VERY difficult to tell what’s terrain and what isn’t
15. Level: Ice Cap Zone 1 is what you get when you crudely smash a Sonic CD and a Sonic 2 level together. It has gotcha irritation, an honest to goodness maze, bad visual distinction (blue on blue), and at multiple points you literally have to go slower to progress
16. Level: Mid Mission Checkpoint: Also there’s genuinely bad checkpoint placement. It’s an oddity because it’s usually quite good but good luck on this one sucker
17. Level: Visual Navigation: One last thing before I move on. There’s VERY little indicating where you CAN go and where you SHOULD go in this stage, which I suppose is part of the maze problem but it was one of the first stages where I felt the need to check a map (the actual first stage for that was Carnival Night Zone 2)
18. Level: Padding: Sandopolis Zone 1 is… empty. This is actually quite common in ‘normal’ platformers, aka the kinds you barely hear about. There’s no real interesting jumps or placement or terrain usage. There’s quite a few gimmicks but ALL of them involve just sitting and waiting. It’s…
19. Level: Padding: …devoid
20. Level: Sandopolis Zone 2, by contrast, is bad. What a miserable map. Let’s start by mentioning the lack of anything interesting before we also mention the recurring gimmick of the ghosts and the light source which just provides a constant irritation for the whole stage, but also dovetails into something else later
21. Level: Padding: Also it’s a LONG friggin’ stage, smaller in size than Carnival Night Zone but longer due to…
22. Level: Padding: …how many of the mechanics and switches are ‘slowly push then rush, then slowly wait’ variety
23. Level: Gotcha: Lots of it. Plenty of spikes and pits and enemies perfectly placed so you can’t see them coming
24. Level: Encounter: The second sand pile section can go directly to hell. So there’s this thing where you knock out sand blockers which means the area fills with sand, providing you a slowly rising platform to navigate. The second of these involves doing so with very tight timing and multiple trap segments, as well as at least one of the aforementioned gotchas, but then this dovetails into…
25. Level: Visual Distinction: …the section where you cannot friggin’ see where you’re going. I pushed the block, tried going right, failed, tried going left next attempt because I saw the door open up there, another failure. Turns out I just needed to go right a bit quicker but damn. ALSO by the way there’s a later segment where the way forward is to jump into what looks like foreground terrain because it’s passable. Cute
26. Sound: I don’t like to bang on Genesis games sound since they tend to bother my ears in general but the constant grating of the switch puzzles on this stage is a notable exception as just being a constant audio spam from hell
27. Outro: Boss: Giant Eggman Robo. So this is three bosses in one and in the interest of honesty they’re not THAT bad… but the problem is they’re somewhat unintuitive and basically designed to kill you. The first phase is simple and even a bit fun, but the second phase with the nose that you have to hit (that shoots fireballs without warning) and the beam which has a very tight dodge window isn’t great. Then the THIRD phase involves constantly losing momentum while trying to out race collapsing platforms, which can lead to some physics weirdness…
28. Outro: Boss: …if this wasn’t the final boss this wouldn’t be nearly as bad
29. Outro: Mid Mission Checkpoint: Also total lack of checkpoints between these phases
30. Bug: Input issues on the special stages (among other places)
31. Level: Launch Base Zone 2, Knuckles version, has an extended water sequence which is uniquely designed to be utter bullcrap. The nearest checkpoint is miles away (before and after), they give you an obvious water shield well before the segment but it’s very easy to lose it, the climb itself involves multiple enemies you want to avoid entirely, and thanks to how the mechanics of springs work you’re almost guaranteed to have to do part of it twice. Have fun redoing a quarter of the stage because you drowned. Twice
32. Boss: Egg Scrambler, Knuckles Edition, is just… wrong in addition to being irritating. The timing is off, the hurtboxes are bad (Origins bug), and… that’s it actually, but it makes it way more frustrating than it really should be
33. Outro: Mid Mission Checkpoint: Or lack thereof. The bosses aren’t bad, really, but having to redo the first phase each time is as arduous as it always is
34. Bug: So, Special Stages. These aren’t… terrible, but we’re reviewing the Origins version specifically and that’s relevant because the controls for it are literally bugged. There’s a combination of input buffering and lag which makes it horrible to play and just straight frustrating. Which is a shame because I can see what they were going for. So consider this…
35. Bug: …a double negative

Story Positives:

1. Spritework: Sonic is crazy well designed here. He has an insane number of frames, incredible detail in his animations, and this is just… the best he’s ever looked. In fact the WHOLE GAME looks insane, I think the only Sonic game (ever) that MIGHT challenge this for sheer visual quality is Frontiers. So…
2. Spritework: …let’s give…
3. Spritework: …Sonic that triple
4. Spritework: Enemies are exceptionally well designed too (really showing off what the Saturn could do)…
5. Spritework: …another solid double
6. Spritework: Bosses are fantastic. Great visuals, great variety, great animations…
7. Spritework: …all around great
8. Spritework: Tails, Knuckles, Ray, and Mighty. They don’t have QUITE the range Sonic does but they’re all damned good…
9. Spritework: …and earn…
10. Spritework: …another triple
11. Brickwork: Green Hill Zone. It’s the same but somehow even better thanks to more frames of animation and extra layers
12. Brickwork: Chemical Plant Zone is the same deal. The same, but better. Good lord this stuff looks good
13. Brickwork: Studiopolis Zone has SO much going on you can just watch the background the entire stage. I don’t recommend doing this but you can
14. Doodads: Our very first Doodad positive for Studiopolis. While it has issues on the gameplay axis, this is really legit on the story axis, with tons and tons of speakers and cameras and monitors and all kinds of stuff
15. Brickwork: Flying Battery Zone. This is what Sky Fortress should’ve been, I’m just going to say it. Way better mechanical look, we see lots of machinery and the inner workings of the ship (or fleet?), and the bits and bobs that keep it running. And Mania adds even more cool stuff to the background
16. Brickwork: Press Garden Zone 1. The rolling papers, the factory clunked down in the middle of a forest, the endless machinery
17. Brickwork: Press Garden Zone 2. The snow-covered forest, slowly being chopped up into more pulp and resources
18. Brickwork: Hydrocity Zone. Honestly it’s just Hydrocity but better, just like several other stages
19. Brickwork: Mirage Saloon Zone is yet another really, really good looking original zone. The train, the desert, the saloons, the detailing
20. Doodads: Mirage Saloon Zone 2 also has really, really good detailing. Like the friggin’ bar complete with stools and ice cream
21. Visual Storytelling: Lava Reef Zone and the little planet being recaptured (for… some reason)
22. Brickwork: Metallic Madness Zone. Yep, it still looks amazing

Story Negatives:

1. Outro: The ending is… weird. And kind of flat. A fairly typical Sonic ending honestly

Gameplay Positives:

1. Optional Mode: Time Attack and act selection serving as a form of level select (and being fun regardless)
2. Kit: Sonic finally has enough kit by himself to qualify for his own positive. Especially that drop dash, amazing stuff
3. Kit: Knuckles & Tails both add their own fun things. Knuckles remains the same (glide, climb) and Tails still flies
4. Kit: Ray & Mighty add some interesting mechanics. Ray lets you glide (temporarily) and Mighty can ground pound and is resistant to spikes
5. Music: Okay so let’s get this out of the way, the game has a DAMNED good soundtrack. It’s not quite at the point of each song being a song positive but it feels like it’s right before that. So we’re going to give…
6. Music: …a full triple…
7. Music: …for most of the standard songs
8. Music: And then another triple for each of the Act 2 variants…
9. Music: …cuz…
10. Music: …yeah this is great stuff
11. Controls: Easily the best controlling Sonic game so far. I should mention at least part of that is because we’re finally off the Origins version, and while the Origins port had a lot of QoL features such that I’d still recommend it to most people, the fact is that the controls just had too many minute issues. This game has none of that…
12. Controls: …so it gets the solid double
13. Enemy Variety: Usual high quality of the variety
14. Itemization: Really solid itemization. Great spread of rings and great spread of boxes…
15. Itemization: …another solid double
16. Replayability: Of COURSE it’s replayable. If not for those lives I’d be replaying it soon even
17. Visual Distinction: With a few notable exceptions (looking at you Studiopolis) this is a pretty distinct game
18. Minigame: So hey, Special Mode. I’ll mention its negatives in the, uh, negatives but it IS still probably my favorite overall special stage across the series thusfar
19. Tutorialization: Lots. There are so, so many small rooms that immediately and visually convey ‘hey, this is how this new mechanic works’…
20. Tutorialization: …it’s so good
21. Optional Mode: Encore Mode in its entirety is a great mode for a second playthrough. You start off with new characters and can gain even more as you go. The alternate characters serve as your ‘lives’ and you can swap between them and it’s just some cool alternate play…
22. Optional Mode: …for a solid double
23. 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
24. Guidance: Rings are used as a form of guidance several times, as is pretty normal for most good platformers
25. 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
26. Mid Mission Checkpoint: Generally good. There’s some variance on this but it’s rarely very good or very bad throughout
27. Intro: Level: So hey, Green Hill Zone 1 is back! It’s still good for the same reasons it was back in Sonic 1 so forgive me for just copy pasting a bit here. Ahem. The first few screens worth of level in Green Hills 1 are honestly a masterclass in tutorialization and design. This was a lot of people’s first platformer and in some cases their first video game period and you can tell this whole sequence was designed with this in mind. Early slanting, a platform to encourage jumping, a singular enemy after jumping has been tutorialized, an aerial enemy that’s easy to reach from the top, a slanted lip upwards to get across the momentum mechanic, and finally a tube and a fling to get across the feel and vibe of the game. Great stuff
28. Intro: Level: But then we have the second half of the new Green Hill Zone 1 (should I call this Green Hill Zone M 1? Hm) and it’s basically Emerald Hill Zone with insane flow and fun and, y’know, general joy
29. Intro: Boss: I’m also surprisingly impressed with DD Wrecker. It’s just the two balls but they rotate off each other and swap which is spiked and which isn’t, and interestingly enough being spiked does NOT prevent damage
30. Level: Then we hit Green Hill Zone M 2, and we start to really see that remixing. More jump pads, more slide bars, tons of loops, double or TRIPLE lanes, and plenty of opportunities for cross laning. As an aside I hope you’re not tired of hearing me try to explain why stage equal good at this point because I’m slowly running out of new ways to say the same things. There’s only so much I can do to stretch the vocabulary! I swear I’m trying. I managed for Megaman, I’m going to manage for Sonic by God
31. Level: Flow: Anyways the level flows well. …….no really it does! They do this great trick repeatedly where it’s not a linear plane but if you input at the right time it becomes one thanks to hops, good placement of half pipes, enemies, or pads
32. Level: Terrain: Great terrain usage too. I fell in love with this level basically instantly
33. Boss: It’s Death Egg Robot, but good! No seriously this is SUCH a better fight it’s insane. This goes from I believe quadruple negatives to single positive and that’s a hell of a boost. It has far less bullcrap hitboxes, more attacks, looks cooler, and you get actual rings this time
34. Level: Chemical Plant Zone M 1 is… y’know, the same. So to repeat myself. Ahem. 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…
35. 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
36. Level: Tutorialization: Chemical Plant Zone M 2 does something SO smart at the beginning I felt the need to notate it. We see a big obvious yellow plunger, and when we hit it the camera naturally pans downwards to show it turning the acid blue into a lighter blue. We can then jump in it and see it’s turned bouncey… and doing so then shows us ANOTHER plunger which we can hit, which turns it green. And the green is required to progress (it’s super bouncey). This is such amazing in gameplay tutorialization without a single line of dialogue or text
37. Level: Chemical Plant Zone M 2 is just so good, what is this nonsense. It continues the ‘remix’ concept but adds the aforementioned different acid color theme, making bouncing itself a major theme of the level. It’s also a very nonstandard stage, rather than left to right in lanes it’s more like down to up and there are MANY routes. Let me just try to save you listening to me type the same stuff over and over…
38. Level: …and give…
39. Level: …a full triple
40. Boss: The Mean Bean Machine can get a bit old I’m sure but it’s still a fun and creative fight
41. Level: Studiopolis Zone 1 has a few issues (more on that in the negatives) but still some solid level design
42. Boss: Weather Mobile and the Cluckoid telling us what move will be used next, all while trying to use Robotnik as a defense
43. Level: So, hey, Flying Battery Zone 1 is… back, copy pasted. So to copy paste my notes. Ahem. We launch IMMEDIATELY into a vertical spinner which then lunges us at a mobile platform, and down at the bottom we learn about grappling across the jungle bars that line the ceiling. We also have enemies that shoot alongside flamethrowers which can be used as bounce pads. This escalates almost immediately before we head out into the open air (after a brief stop to get some rings and a fresh shield, which we will probably need) to do some spinning platforms and more jungle bars to traverse the underbelly. After this, another spinner segment requiring timing to progress, then a nice big room designed to tutorialize the launchers which can be used to get into the slow moving platforms segment, and all of that leads us up to the topside of the ship. Up here we have very tight timing on spinning across the helicopter blades, and finally one last tutorialization of the magnetic segment (it’ll pull spiked platforms up, pulling them out of the way, but when they come down they’ll do damage… it also pulls enemies out of the way too). And ALL of this is before we finally split to our upper and lower layers…
44. Level: …the upper layer is pretty short all things considered, has several hidden segments (and a special ring), and loops down into the main path. Meanwhile the lower path involves a LOT of freeform flow and movement through spirals, launchers, magnetic segments, or underbelly sections which have great escalations on the spinners and the floating platforms, and all of this culminates in a great final exam sequence…
45. Level: …so consider that a triple base
46. Level: Flow: Great flow, GREAT flow, especially if you go down
47. Level: Terrain: Great terrain usage too. The placement of ramps, blocks, launchers, and magnetic platforms is near perfect
48. Boss: Big Squeeze is a nice remix fight (as opposed to Barrier Eggman). The trash piles being condensed together, making it easier to hit the boss but lowering your time, is a nice little mechanic
49. Level: Flying Battery Zone M 2. My goodness what a stage. This might be my favorite stage in the franchise as of this typing. I’m going to struggle to properly describe how good this stage is. Multiple routes like normal. Great movement like a Sonic 2 stage. Multiple solutions like a Sonic CD stage. Amazing gimmicks and plenty of them. All keeping the theme and WHILE dealing with going inside and outside throughout the stage, with the additional gimmick of the trash piles. I am unironically in aw of this stage…
50. Level: …so that’s…
51. Level: …an easy triple, but then we have to acknowledge
52. Level: Flow: …some of the best flow so far…
53. Level: Flow: …for its own double
54. Level: Terrain: And the fantastic, great usage of gimmicky terrain (the lightning shots, the wind pulling bars, the propellors, it’s all so good)
55. Level: Press Garden Zone 1. Okay so I kind of mentioned this earlier too but in the interests of saving my poor fingers and not just endlessly repeating myself I’m going to try and vibe this out a bit. I apologize. So, Press Garden Zone 1 introduces us to a lot of fluidly mobile terrain, such as the rolls of newspapers which are elastic conveyor belts, the umbrellas which rotate us around, the giant letterpress blocks, the rotating crushers which adjust the terrain slowly…
56. Level: …it’s all great stuff
57. Level: Flow: Fantastic flow too, especially with how much of the stage is flinging you forwards
58. Level: Press Garden Zone 2 introduces trees as temporary platforms that get mulched, and all kinds of trees you can navigate, but no what really makes this stage pop is the ice blocks. Which I’ll talk about more in a sec, for now let’s appreciate something this stage does really well in that it allows recovery backtracking. At several points in the stage if you fail a jump and get shunted down you can (usually) backtrack a bit and, with some skill, pull yourself back up to a higher lane. Considering this stage is insanely vertical and has a ton of half pipes this all occurs naturally; At no point does the player think ‘man I’m stuck’, instead it’s like ‘oh shoot lemme go try again’…
59. Level: …and that’s awesome
60. Level: Terrain: So hey, ice. The main gimmick of the stage is freezing and they do SO much with it. We start off with smart tutorialization (something the whole game does so no surprise there) and quickly see that while you’re frozen your interactions change, so if you launch yourself while frozen you’ll bash through otherwise inaccessible areas. Further, items and objects can be frozen too, which now means precision platforming and decision making on where you want to land. Do you want those rings? Doing so will leave the lower block open for breaking now, and that one has spikes in it. What’s that, you want to avoid this entire segment because it’s all dangers in ice? Good, but if you fall you’ll end up breaking one (and now it’s a hazard). This is exactly the type of thing I mean when I type up ‘Terrain design’ for these types of games…
61. Level: Terrain: …and I was really impressed with this one
62. Level: Flow: There’s also a very natural flow to it all. Lining up a kick and then freezing yourself before launching across three screens of obstacles you just cleared just feels legit
63. Level: Stardust Speedway Zone M 1. I always struggle to properly describe these stages because Stardust stages are SO dense. There’s not one lane, there’s like four (or FIVE in some areas). But this stage manages a lot with two seemingly minor gimmicks. The first is growth. You hit obstacles which are big, obvious, and visually distinct and bam, a vine grows. This opens up new passageways and usually new obstacles as well, meaning you have to think about progression. Second is the directional gimmick, which might be some of the most Sonic 2 stuff in this game. So you have lots of (very well designed) pathways and pipes, almost all of which end in a red pad (aka a ‘strong booster’). If you hit NOTHING you will loop here forever so you HAVE to hold left or right to adjust your angle and change which pipe you enter. They tutorialize this early on, but very quickly escalate it into some really tight timing, rewarding the player if they manage to enter one of the pipes with a smaller window…
64. Level: …so that’s awesome
65. Level: Flow: I have to talk about the One Two Go concept here. Much of the Sonic games have done this (2 and 3K as well as Mania are the big ones). The idea is you move forward (full speed or just starting, it doesn’t actually matter) and you hit something. There’s a pause as you enter (1), a pause as you adjust (2), and then boom you’re launched. This is everywhere in this game in particular, but this stage has a textbook example of it with the grey launchers. You enter one, they adjust their angle, you hit jump, and off you go. This is part of what makes Flow a gameplay positive (and, frankly, what several of the Boost Era Sonics fail at). You, the player, need to DO something for the One Two Go theme to work, otherwise you’re just watching the spectacle. Anyways…
66. Level: Flow: …double positive
67. Level: Stardust Speedway Zone M 2. I want you to do me a favor, if you care. Go look up a map of this stage. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Okay yeah that gargantuan ABSOLUTE INSANITY is this stage. It’s hard to even properly describe but someone in chat (I think it was Frieza 2000) said it perfectly; it’s all about routing. This is not a stage with an ‘upper and lower’ like many Sonic stages, this is a stage where you pick a direction. Any direction, they’re all valid. There’s also a lot of micro routes as you go, small changes on the path that constantly force the player to be making decisions about which path they want to try for (and of course, which ones they succeed at). This is on top of how much ‘peeking’ they do, where you can see where other routes lead and theorize about how to reach them…
68. Level: …what a great stage…
69. Level: …easy triple
70. Level: Flow: That One Two Go philosophy is all over the place here as well, with lots of slopes leading to red bumpers, the grey launchers, and half pipes galore…
71. Level: Flow: …another double
72. Level: Terrain: So, terrain design. I kind of already made this point but the decision to make most of the terrain single width pipes means you can see a fairly large portion of the nearby stage at any given point in time, and you’re often only a few feet from reaching the other side of that wall. And that’s on top of being able to smartly predict or react to terrain as you go…
73. Level: Terrain: …so consider that another double
74. Boss: Metal Sonic. Really the first fight is the star here. Smash his fake silver sonics (ha ha by the way) at such an angle that they hit Metal while dodging. And of course the second phase is a nice big Resident Evil boss
75. Level: Hydrocity Zone M 1. So hey, one of my favorite stages from previous Sonics is back. The water bubbles are back and redesigned to not be awful, the jets fling you all over the place, the switches to change the water levels are neat, the gondolas and how you control their speed are fun…
76. Level: …just a really fun stage…
77. Level: …easy triple
78. Level: Terrain: Also special praise to placement. The rotating conveyors you can hang from informing movement, extensive usage of half pipes and slopes, it’s all good stuff…
79. Level: Terrain: …easy double
80. Boss: Dive Eggman is great, as we play AS him and have to drag him up into us like he used to try and drag us. But he drops bombs, and the bombs come quicker than him (lose some weight Robotnik, God) so there’s some nice pull to it
81. Level: Hydrocity Zone M 2 is interesting in that it’s nothing special it’s just really solid. Lots and LOTS of pipes, ramps, and half pipes with a pretty clearly defined upper and lower route, the only major mechanical difference being whether you’re in water or not…
82. Level: …still great stuff though
83. Boss: Laundro Mobile (who names this stuff?) is an interesting fight. Took me an attempt to figure it out (hey it’s almost like failure as a teaching tool is a good thing, sure a good thing there’s no lives in this game… cough…) Anyways! It chases you, you hit oxygen tanks which hit him, each hit releases an air bubble, and thus becomes our loop. Hit the boss or die. Rather rare to push such a berserker mentality in a Sonic game but I’m down
84. Level: Mirage Saloon Zone 2 is such a ginormous zone. Insane verticality, at several points you’re more going up or down than you are left or right, with temporary barrels you can fall through, balloons everywhere that form a one-time jump boost, guns (yes, just a straight up pistol, thanks Shadow) that launch you, and a few other casino-themed aspects make for a frenetic but fun level…
85. Level: …with the usual multiple routes…
86. Level: …and quality
87. Level: Terrain: Special praise to the usage of the balloons and how they’re placed to really inform your jumps and help you lane transition
88. Level: Oil Ocean Zone M 1 is mostly the same so, to repeat myself! 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…
89. Level: …there’s…
90. Level: …a triple
91. Level: Oil Ocean Zone M 2 is a fascinating stage. So there’s this smog mechanic (borrowed almost copy paste from Sandopolis of all things) which will slowly reduce your visibility and, at max smog, start ‘drowning’ you. Thing is you don’t die from it, it will only ever drain you down to 0 rings and then sit there. Switches of course reduce said smog. There’s also plenty of fire shields, lots of oil to burn (which can change the terrain), and submarine sections as escapes and bonus areas…
92. Level: …so that’s…
93. Level: …a solid triple
94. Level: Lava Reef Zone M 1. Nice recovery segments in case you screw up, and a very trap focused stage with lots of switches. Thing is these switches are really well placed so that they’re not easy to get but they’re not obtuse either, usually just involving a single precise jump (or luck) to progress forward…
95. Level: …solid stage
96. Level: Terrain: Special mention to the careful placement of breakable terrain, staircases, and enemies in lava to encourage you to keep moving at a rhythm as you go through the stage…
97. Level: Terrain: …plus the aforementioned recovery spots
98. Level: Lava Reef Zone M 2 really leans into the lava stompers (these were in the first stage but they’re used more here). These are an interesting gradient; Once you get them moving they stomp forward only a single step, forcing the player to hit the back foot to do another step, but since they’re stepping in lava they slowly sink. So there’s a natural timer on how long you can take before you really should hit that back foot and take another step. This is also escalated nicely with additional enemies and terrain hazards as you get further in. And that’s before I get into the flingers, conveyors with switches, rotating spikes, and some smart shortcut design…
99. Level: …for an overall solid stage
100. Level: Metallic Madness Zone M 1 is a generally solid stage. Multiple lanes, good item placement, good usage of rings, nice enemies that encourage you to dive under or jump over. But what really sells it is the weird red launchers which fling you to the background, and now you can zoom around in little micro stages in the brickwork…
101. Level: …great stuff. Most of these loop too in case you miss anything
102. Level: Metallic Madness Zone M 2 has some good conveyor design, lots of circles you can run on to launch yourself, good cross laning, and the ability to go into the foreground or background (not like the previous stage). But the real star of the show is there’s lots of lasers that either shrink you or return you to normal size and entire swaths of stage designed around which size you are at any given time and tutorializing what you can do as each before giving you some options in how to progress…
103. Level: …another very solid stage
104. Boss: Crimson Eye. I almost gave this a negative (the physics being different screws with a bit) but ultimately it’s still an inventive fight and the phase two and playing with the adjusted gravity is neat

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Options: No key rebindings in a PC game from 2018. I’m weirded out by this more than anything else
2. Bug: So I already suspected this during the playthrough but shortly AFTER we wrapped up I discovered I was right all along. So the previously given negatives for crush deaths are now adjusted to be bug negatives. See the collision box for being pinched to death are literally bugged (go figure!) which explains SO many of the pinch deaths I had in this game…
3. Bug: …and considering how constant of an issue that is, let’s call that a double. By the way there IS a mod specifically to fix this if you’re curious
4. Minigame: The difficulty of the Special Stages ramps up VERY quickly to the point of silliness
5. Level: Visual Distinction: Studiopolis Zone 1. There is just… SO much going on visually that I had trouble seeing myself, the terrain, the obstacles, and anything I missed
6. Level: Studiopolis Zone 2 is… not a great stage. It is incredibly busy to its detriment and it feels absolutely crammed but not with anything interesting but rather stuff that gets in the way. I suppose you could consider this a negative for flow, hah. But for real, there’s awkward platform placement, frustration in transferring lanes, weird angles which interrupt smooth jump lines, plenty of terrain with varying interactability…
7. Level: …it’s no wonder this stage led to me putting the game down back in the day
8. Level: Visual Distinction: Studiopolis Zone 2 is also, like the first stage, REALLY hard to tell what the hell you’re looking at. Like I wish I could show you a screenshot, it’s insane
9. Level: Padding: Studiopolis Zone 2 is also absolutely enormous and so feels like a slog to traverse
10. Boss: Spider Mobile is a neat idea badly implemented. The reliance on physics alone makes this irritating, but add in the fact that a second player can completely screw over your attempts, he can juke you (sending you flying into spikes), and the physicsyness means you can send him flying into spikes but his actual vuln spot doesn’t hit it, wasting the attempt… and it’s just an irritating boss
11. Padding: Level re-use. It varies but some levels are literally copy pasted, some are mostly copy pasted
12. Penalty For Failure: Lives. I’m ultimately only going to give this two negatives but I want you to realize that I personally think this is the worst aspect of the game, and I never really realized how bad it was until I suddenly had to deal with lives again (as a reminder we played without lives in the previous games thanks to the Origins version). Lives mean you get more cautious, less experimental, and it punishes you for trying things to learn the stage (and bosses). Learn By Failure is a valid phrase for Sonic games and having to restart an entire act or Zone because you ran out of lives is just needlessly harsh considering. Either way…
13. Penalty For Failure: …there’s that double
14. Outro: Level: Titanic Monarch 1 is the worst stage in the game. I can even describe why very easily. First, it’s too long. Second, there is gotcha! everywhere. Third, that gotcha is inconsistent. What I mean by that is sometimes you’re barreling towards spikes and something you couldn’t have seen will pop up to save you. And sometimes it will not. This doesn’t teach the player anything other than to memorize…
15. Outro: Level: …so that’s awful
16. Outro: Level: Flow: Then there’s the damned orbs. These are the worst part of the stage, legitimately. They completely interrupt any sense of Flow by forcing you to stall, adjust your aim, THEN launch (and hope you launched at the right time). And if you fail almost all of these are above giant pits meaning tons of lost progress. This is THE worst part of the entire game, bar none…
17. Outro: Level: Flow: …and deserves…
18. Outro: Level: Flow: …a triple for how much it aggravates and interrupts everything
19. Outro: Level: Titanic Monarch 2. More gotcha! all over the place, the stage is WAY too long, and those damned orbs return and continue to screw with the flow…
20. Outro: Level: …so that sucks
21. Outro: Level: Flow: And screw those stupid orbs
22. Gotcha: General. It’s actually pretty downplayed compared to some Sonic games but there’s still some out of nowhere ‘hope you memorized the map’ traps

Story Positives:

1. Intro: Cutscene: Decent opening cinematic for what it is, though it doesn’t convey much
2. Spritework: Main cast. These aren’t bad visuals but they’re not great either
3. Spritework: Bosses. Lots of variety and style to them
4. Spritework: Trip by herself has a weirdly large amount of animations and work for her. Did you know that in super form she’ll slide down slides with a gleeful expression? Just to name one example
5. Brickwork: Bridge Island Zone. So, brickwork positives are normal, not just for Sonic games but for platformers in general since platformers tend to lean on their visual storytelling to convey the plot, world building, and atmosphere. This game has… very little of that. In fact in some of these are actively bad. Bridge Island Zone is decent for what it is but this is an exception
6. Brickwork: Speed Jungle Zone manages some decent density and nice meshing of nature and technology
7. Brickwork: Pinball Carnival Zone looks properly detailed but also showcases how the place is falling apart
8. Visual Storytelling: Amy and the animals (and Trip) are honestly some of the closest we get to an actual plot in the entire game, and it’s appropriately adorable

Story Negatives:

1. Brickwork: Lagoon City Zone has… bad brickwork. It’s not terrible but it’s distressingly bland and barely conveys anything, even basic location
2. Brickwork: Golden Capital Zone is yet another bad visuals zone… in fact it’s probably the worst so far. Seriously it looks WRONG, it looks like you’re standing in front of a mini stage play or a diorama
3. Cutscene Incompetence: Fang stealing the emeralds. I’m sorry, HOW did he just take all the crystals so instantly and effortlessly?
4. Story Sequencing: None of the sequencing here makes ANY sense. There’s always been at least a little bit of a throughline to where we’re going and what we’re doing, even as far back as Sonic 1 (the nature stages giving way to more and more industrial ones as we approach the city and Dr. Robotnik’s factory). There’s not only NOTHING in this game, in many cases it actively makes no sense why we go to one stage after the other Why does the cyber stage exist? How does it lead into the frost stage? Why is the desert right next to the ocean?
5. Story Sequencing: We may never know
6. MSQ: So hey, surprise, there’s a big dragon but it’s okay because surprise Trip’s actually good but surprise she’s actually a dragon or whatever and surprise Fang’s super dead and now we’re in cyberspace stop asking questions
7. Brickwork: Frozen Base Zone is another of the ‘why does this look like a DS game’ stages
8. Outro: The worst combination of nothingburger and nonsense

Gameplay Positives:

1. Optional Mode: Time attack and battle mode
2. Kit: Sonic has a decent array of kit, alongside the usual suspects…
3. Kit: …of Tails and Knuckles. I will also mention Trip here since she’s very similar to Knuckles in several ways
4. Kit: Amy is just amazing though. The charge attack, the double jump, the aerial attack with great sweep
5. Kit: Moves, from the emeralds. They’re of very limited use because the stages are designed around you NOT having them so they mostly serve as bonuses or shortcuts, but they’re still need. Bullet and Avatar were personal favorites
6. Music: Enough decent tracks that I think it warrants a positive
7. Controls: Pretty decent actually. I had a few complaints but controls were not one of them
8. Co-Op: Exists. It’s a bit rough, but it’s there. Local only of course
9. Itemization: Decent enough spread of rings and boxes
10. Visual Distinction: Solid for what they’re going for, even on the blander stages
11. Minigame: The Special Stages here are mostly inoffensive and, more importantly, easy to retry
12. 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
13. Guidance: Rings are used as a form of guidance several times, as is pretty normal for most good platformers
14. 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
15. Mid Mission Checkpoint: Decent as per usual
16. Intro: Level: Bridge Island 1 is actually really solid for an intro level. Two lanes, tons of rings, multiple special rings which are reasonably accessible to encourage you to get the Emeralds (which also unlock new abilities in addition to the second quest)…
17. Intro: Level: …probably one of the better stages in the game
18. Level: Bridge Island 2. Generally good flow, smooth looping to backtrack (and once again encourage you to find those special rings), and plenty of cross laning
19. Level: Speed Jungle Zone 1 is like a Sonic CD lite level. Plenty of cross laning, plenty of opportunities to explore, and plenty of rewards for doing so…
20. Level: Terrain: …and solid usage of the springs and leaf platforms
21. Level: Sky Temple Zone. I’ll spoil you, this is the best stage in the game. Extensive usage of wind mechanics, platforms that extend on touch requiring precise micro jumps, arkanoid sections where you have to break out of an area, solid routing, and fun spectacle…
22. Level: …so consider this…
23. Level: …a triple
24. Level: Pinball Carnival Zone 1. Lots of bouncers, good launchers, temporary flings, the ability to stay in the top of bottom layers… this whole thing might legitimately be one of the best casino / bouncer levels in the franchise, and I mean that sincerely. In a game with so much mediocre stuff and awful bosses someone somewhere spent a weirdly large amount of time on these stages…
25. Level: …so that’s a solid double
26. Level: Terrain: Plus one for the very smart placement of terrain
27. Level: Pinball Carnival Zone 2 is one of the only stages in the game that does solid tutorialization. It also introduces then escalates (again, Pinball Carnival is just kind of legit, it’s so weird). The roller coasters, bouncers around coins, and extensive vertical sections are good examples of this, plus you can choose a route pretty easily…
28. Level: …so that’s a base double
29. Level: Terrain: Plus for the smart terrain usage
30. Level: Flow: Plus for the great flow
31. Level: Lagoon City Zone general. Usage of water, flow of the above ground areas, and smartly placed bubbles
32. Level: Sand Sanctuary Zone has quicksand recovery pits over some of the harder jumps, slides which reward quick reflexes, yankers which let you flow through whole segments, and some cool little One Two Go loops
33. Level: Press Factory Zone 1. The presses send you flying which change up where you can access when, lots of great itemization, and good routing. I feel like this is a good time to mention why I’m not being as verbose as usual with the stages. Have you noticed several of these stages only get one positive? As in one positive for an entire Act, or in some cases one per Zone? Consider how enormous Sonic stages are and how they tend to get multiple positives by sheer virtue of the quantity and quality. And Superstar’s stages are… fine. They’re just fine enough to be generally decent. And so I tend to not have a lot ot say about them because it’s just a generally decent stage. If you’ve read this far, first know that I appreciate you for actually reading these, but second you know how I recommended you use a mod to remove all the bosses from this game? Did you know that if you do that the score of this game leaps up to around zero? For those not familiar with the system, zero is dead middle. Not bad (negative) not good (positive) just… right in the middle. And that really is this game in a nutshell. Anyways back to the review
34. Level: Press Factory Zone 2 uses trash piles to progress, rockets, and a nice big self destruct timer which kind of turns the entire stage into a variant of an underwater stage…
35. Level: …and they escalate this pretty smoothly throughout the stage
36. Level: Golden Capital Zone. So many rings which are, admittedly, fun to collect… and some good loops and bouncers
37. Level: Cyber Station Zone. The unique forms (squid and mouse) as well as the cyber lines to zip through
38. Level: Frozen Base Zone. Another generically good stage. I’ve completely run out of things to say here, sorry
39. Princess Peach Segment: Shoot ‘em up segment when we go up to space after the Egg Fortress

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Camera: Bad. It’s weirdly zoomed in for how seemingly zoomed out it is. And it actively gets in the way of being able to see what you’re doing or, more importantly, where you’re going. On multiple occasions I could not see more than one piece in a multi-piece jumping puzzle at a time, so I was jumping blind. And I ran into lots of obstacles periodically because I could not see them coming…
2. Camera: …so that’s all great
3. Music:
4. Level: Speed Jungle Zone 2 is… vacuous. There’s no real level design here, just jumps. This is going to be a trend by the way
5. Boss: So let’s talk about the so called minibosses. They all suck, every single one of them. Every single one of them has enormous invuln phases in between hits but the awful thing is NOTHING indicates this other than the fact that you’re just not doing damage. So every single fight involves hitting them (once), and then waiting for 10 to THIRTY seconds before another vuln window opens up…
6. Boss: …this is…
7. Boss: …absolutely terrible
8. Guidance: I need to mention that bad feedback issue. You hit a boss, it flashes for a second or two, and then it stops. You can hit it again right? Wrong. Its actually got several more seconds of invulnerability because screw you
9. Level: Lagoon City Zone Amy is another nothingburger stage which also doesn’t really use Amy’s moveset
10. Boss: Fun fact. The name of this boss is, I kid you not, Sky Temple Zone Boss. Yeah it’s not the only boss like that either. This fight sucks. Rings fly upwards, meaning very little recovery. Gigantic invuln phases (what else is new). And way too much health considering how long every hit takes
11. Boss: Also the refight with Trip is even worse. The extra shots are irritating in how they spread because it’s completely nonsensical where the gaps in the shots will be, meaning a lot of on the fly guesswork. And that’s on top of everything else
12. Level: Flow: Press Factory Zone 2 has the return of the orbs. You know, those damned orbs from Mania? They still slow the flow down to a crawl and completely get in the way of just playing the stage
13. Level: Golden Capital Knuckles. Way too many bounces on a stage with someone who doesn’t gel with that, lack of vertical climbs, enemy spam, and all of this on a stage you’re mandated to play as Knuckles who doesn’t work with ANY of that…
14. Level: …this stage sucks
15. MSQ: Forcibly having your emeralds removed in Golden Capital Zone and losing the kit for the stage. Not fun, game
16. Boss: Fang’s first fight. Yes, FIRST fight, enjoy this, for it’s all downhill from here. I’m going to be real with you, we talk a lot about Sunshine Syndrome and more importantly the Sunshine Point, aka the point in a game where it’s best to put the game down. And this is it. Put the game down here, you will be better for it. Anyways this MERELY terrible fight is incredibly long, incredibly boring, has no checkpoints…
17. Boss: …and is just generally a slog
18. Level: Cyber Station Zone has some cool gimmicks but it really needs to be shorter. And the camera is aggressively bad on this stage in particular because a lot of damaging terrain is JUST off screen here
19. Boss: Metal Fighter. Good lord. So huge invuln phases (which is just normal for this friggin’ game), very tiny vuln windows, entirely too much health for how infrequently you can hit him, two phases where he just gets more irritating, and the ‘wind’ mechanic (so the acceleration is wrong in these chase fights where it feels like a ‘wind’ is pushing you left, screwing with your ability to maneuver…
20. Boss: …so…
21. Boss: …awful fight
22. Padding: And way, way too long… if only I’d known
23. Boss: Ptera. Honestly it’s a chase fight (so bad physics and ‘wind’ effect), and if you screw up you die almost immediately thanks to the terrain collapsing behind you. And I know that all sounds pretty banal but trust me…
24. Boss: …this fight…
25. Boss: …REALLY sucks
26. Boss: Big Egg phase 1. God this… is so awful. Christ I struggle to even explain this properly. Okay so he shoots rockets, a few of which are blue. You have to circle around him, hit the blue one, and that hits him. This, like everything else, takes time. Then he’ll do an easily dodgable energy wave thing. Then he’ll slam the ground in a weirdly deceptive way that LOOKS like it’ll hit you but won’t, which damages the terrain, then sends a bunch of orbs after you. When low on health he’ll slam both hands down and if you’re not ALREADY moving WHEN he does that there’s a good chance you’re dead. That’s it that’s the whole fight. It really is just like every OTHER boss in the game just… more and worse…
27. Boss: …so we’ll call that…
28. Boss: …a triple
29. Boss: Sadly he has a phase 2. So Big Egg phase 2 involves him slowly chasing you. You can technically hit him at any time but good luck (also his iframes are like 15 friggin’ seconds long). So you wait for him to smash the ground in front of you to hit his head (the window on hitting him here is entirely too small), float around slowly and boringly dodging the very easy to dodge attacks, or jump over his laser attacks. If this all sounds boring then congratulations, it is!
30. Boss: It’s a really…
31. Boss: …really boring fight
32. Padding: That takes way, WAY too long…
33. Padding: …thanks to the arduous…
34. Padding: …invuln phases
35. Mid Mission Checkpoint: And did you know that if you die at ANY point in the fight you have to redo the ENTIRE thing over again? Don’t worry, there’s a boss later which is EVEN WORSE at this…
36. Mid Mission Checkpoint: …so that’s…
37. Mid Mission Checkpoint: …great
38. Level: So consider this a negative for all of Trip’s levels. They’re barely different (first problem), you have to redo all the stages to access the real final bosses (second problem), and everytime they DO change a stage all they do is make you go slower because a platform is gone (three strikes)
39. Padding: This feels like a good time to mention that EVERY boss has about double the health as Trip. This would not bother me except they didn’t get rid of the gargantuan invuln phases thanks to the co-op issue and, I remind you, Trip mode HAS no co-op
40. Boss: Ptera, Trip refight. So this is somehow even worse than before, and I’m going to try to explain why very simply. You with me? Okay. The boss has double the health of before, and any mistake at all instantly kills you. …….no that’s it, that’s why this fight sucks. Imagine just sitting here face grinding for however long because any time you make any mistake you have to start all over. This game has taught me so much about how challenge runners stream and let me tell you, I’m never doing that. You did it game. You killed my desire to beat FFI with just White Mages…
41. Boss: …anyways…
42. Boss: …triple negative
43. Boss: Metal Fighter, Trip refight. Honestly, same issues as with Ptera. More health, any mistake is death, have fun. Y’know you can walk into some of these fights with super form and that helps a LOT but uh… if you die, for any reason? Those rings are gone. So… you get one shot of that…
44. Boss: …so…
45. Boss: …have fun
46. Boss: Death Fang Robot. I… I don’t have words. I think I spent about an hour and a half on this one fight, no joke. I was actually fighting it last night AND this morning while we were watching the Nintendo Direct. This is misery incarnate and, I’m going to spoil something for you, the second worst boss I have EVER covered to date. I checked! So gosh, where do I begin. Let’s start by saying that phase 1, which we’re talking about right now, takes FOUR MINUTES to do if you do it PERFECTLY. This is the ultimate expression of the ‘long invuln phases’ thing I’ve typed up entirely too often today. It also has way, way too much health for these huge ass gaps. Also the boss is boring…
47. Boss: …like, REALLY boring. He launches missiles (a joke to dodge), lunges at you (easy to dodge, hard to hit), and then he does one last thing…
48. Boss: …he sends out these pink beams which INSTANTLY KILL YOU. Even if you’re Super. And if you are, good luck getting that Super back, cuz those rings are gone now
49. Gotcha: The very nature of how that attack works is pure bullcrap too by the way. There’s NO indicator
50. Mid Mission Checkpoint: Also no checkpoints at all. Why do I bring that up? Imagine redoing a four minute fight because you tripped at the last second…
51. Mid Mission Checkpoint: …and then realize there’s a phase 2
52. Padding: So yeah a triple padding for this nonsense…
53. Padding: …God…
54. Padding: …I hate this fight
55. Boss: Phase 2. Yeah, phase 2. This God damned fight, and man… I want you to realize now that if you screw up you have to redo everything. The whole thing. All EIGHT MINUTES. Actually it’s eight minutes and forty five seconds if you make NO mistakes and play perfectly. Jesus Christ. So okay, the fight. He’ll put pseudo homing targets up which create a web. If you get caught in a web you cannot move. He will then use a launch attack which instantly kills you so… if you’re in a web, that’s instant death too. Then we have the bouncers which you hit into him, the rollers which you hit into him, and then when he’s low on health he’ll slam the ground on either side of you AND where you are, leaving you a small window. That’s it, that’s the entire fight…
56. Boss: …it’s dull…
57. Boss: …boring…
58. Padding: …takes WAY too long even if you do everything right…
59. Padding: …again, almost nine minutes long if executed perfectly…
60. Padding: …but then…
61. Gotcha: …that last attack I mentioned has NO real tells so good luck figuring out what he’s going to do
62. Outro: Boss: RNG hell and boring. No seriously that’s it, that’s the entire fight. There’s barely any execution on this fight even. Just get lucky with rings, wait out his enormous invuln phases, then hit him…
63. Outro: Boss: …that’s it…
64. Outro: Boss: …oh and screw you on the last attack which good luck figuring out what it even is
65. Difficulty Curve: So the game has a very smooth curve in the LEVELS but the BOSSES go from boring to bullcrap to boring again…
66. Difficulty Curve: …several times throughout the game

Story Positives:

1. Intro: The Intro is something I would honestly consider relatively badly written but what it is… is very much conveying the tone of this work. You will know by the end of the Intro if this is the game for you, or if you bounce off it
2. Spritework: Generally good, as was honestly pretty normal for the era of point and clicks…
3. Spritework: …consider this a solid double
4. Brickwork: Visuals of each area conveying character. Gorrister’s is a dilapidated airship, rusted and worn out, alongside an old saloon filled with a run down bathroom
5. Brickwork: Ellen’s is an electronics pyramid. A monument (greatness) built out of trash, and all electronic to signify her electrical engineering degree and the heights she aspired to
6. Brickwork: The horribly grotesque jungle of Benny’s chapter. Clearly emulating a lush forest but instead made of twisted monstrocities, even the rocks seeming more like blorps of flesh than stone
7. Brickwork: The Nazi research camp, complete with horrible suffering room, cremation chamber, and barbed wire
8. Brickwork: And finally a castle which, as Ted himself says, is pretty draperies clad upon dull stone
9. Theme: More than just the brickwork characterizing each person though, each chapter itself does something (of varying quality) to convey a thematic core to each character. Ultimately some of these hit sufficiently harder than the others that I don’t think each one deserves a positive but I wanted to mention each one here for future readers (all two of you who read these… hi by the way, I appreciate you). So we start off with Gorrister’s. His chapter is primarily in an old, worn out transport, and the only ‘friendly’ person in his chapter is someone trying to use him, everyone else hates him or actively tried to kill him. He is isolated, worn down, and always on the road. Ellen is in a tomb, a burial ground for the dead but also a prison, trapped and unable to escape the trauma of her past
10. Theme: Benny’s I think deserves individual mention. Benny’s is a bunch of tribal people who are in a survivalist situation where they have to regularly sacrifice one of their own for the greater good, the kind of cold calculus Benny’s military background would understand… and with his deep-seated issues and internal hatreds, of course when they can’t do it randomly they pick those people ‘unworthy to live’
11. Theme: And isn’t that a great segway into Nimdock’s. There are actual audience members observing the surgeries of people who are still aware when they begin, and guards who will carry out their directives without hesitation… all detached, distant, and otherwise disconnected people like the good doctor himself. And finally Ted’s, yes even Ted has this, as almost every single person in that castle is trying to screw everyone else over, often by directly lying, just like Ted himself did once upon a time
12. Music Direction: There are musical cues for doing things and, more importantly, change based on your mood and the events of the game
13. Voice Acting: Shockingly good voice acting considering, though I strongly suspect…
14. Voice Direction: …this is due to some excellent direction
15. MSQ: Gorrister’s chapter is excellent top to bottom, easily the highlight of the game. The not-quite surreal dream-like nature of the zeppelin and the bar, the antagonistic nature of almost everyone he meets, Gorrister himself and how run-down and tired he sounds, and a fairly well done central theme…
16. MSQ: …earn a solid double
17. Character: Gorrister himself is probably the single most interesting character in the work. You can feel the person here who is just buried in their guilt but still has enough depth to them to have conflicting emotions alongside that
18. Theme: Burning the past to move on is pretty literal in Gorrister’s scenario but actually it’s a common theme in all of them. Ellen has to overcome her trauma (badly, see the negatives below), Benny has to prove to be a better person, Nimdock must face the truth of who and what he was, and… that’s it. Ted gets nothing
19. Character: Benny is such an awful person in such a well written way. The actor conveys all his biases and crimes with such casual sincerity it really helps sell it
20. MSQ: Nimdock’s chapter. While there’s a few hiccups here and there (and honestly the actor is a bit too devoid of… acting), there’s still good stuff here. The plight of the victims, the injured who refuse to forgive or forget, the endless reminder of the regime, the outright admittance of his crimes, the secret of what he was working on, and how he faces it all in the end
21. Brickwork: AM’s interior. The cerebellum with shards of bloodied glass shoved into it

Story Negatives:

1. Writing: AM. This one is harder to parse in few words (ironically) but AM himself is just not very well written. He’s what I envision a teenager would imagine is an edgy, cool character and this comes across constantly…
2. Writing: …from the opening narration to the literal ending
3. MSQ: Washing your hands of the blood of the animals you just killed is so obvious it’s a bit much (in Gorrister’s story). Also it happens inside of seconds and then is almost immediately forgotten
4. Story Sequencing: Ellen goes through an absolute cavalcade of awful and is then reminded of a critical point of trauma for her and then she… just immediately moves on as if it never happened. This is SO jarring. I’m not a big fan of this type of thing in general but at least DO something with it, don’t just instantly move on as if it didn’t happen
5. MSQ: Ellen’s scenario in general is much weaker, and feels the most incomplete (it just ‘ends’ twice, once after the elevator confrontation and once when you’re done)
6. Consequence Storytelling: Or lack thereof. This is an intermittent issue in several of the chapters, where something will happen that feels significant and then bam, it’s over. Like Benny having to seek forgiveness for the squad he murdered which he… then does, and immediately moves on. It’s weird
7. MSQ: Ted’s story is just a complete nothingburger. There’s only the vaguest of symbolism and the actual events of the scenario are just spinning your wheels and doing nothing character or event wise

Gameplay Positives:

1. QoL: So, this is kind of a weird positive that only really applies to this type of game but you know how in most point and click games you have to pixel hunt to find what’s interactable? And often click it and then sit and listen to the character go ‘nope’ for a second? There’s an actual pop up at the bottom of the screen to indicate if something’s interactable. This is a Godsend in a game like this

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Save: Generally slow and irritating to utilize, with no real sorting or other indications
2. Music: I know the music’s only bad in this version (the GOG version) but it’s… really bad. Like, people requesting me mute the music bad. Either find the actual playlist on Youtube or grab the Steam version which SUPPOSEDLY has the correct soundtrack…
3. Music: …cuz this is awful
4. Bug: Many. Bit of a rushed game and a problematic port
5. Penalty For Failure: Thanks to pure RNG you can get to redo a chapter if you fail. Or not. Sucks to be you
6. Sound: Terrible audio balancing
7. Walkthroughitis: Gorrister’s scenario. Oh gosh, I’m going to try to not be TOO verbose in these negatives but you have to understand how insane some of these puzzles are. So make sure to slash the gas bags but not TOO many or you die. Make sure to grab two sheets from two rooms, tie them together, use them to get your heart, but then (this is important) use the knife on the sheets to get the rope back because otherwise you’ve lost. Make sure to constantly fill the dude’s drink so he’ll actually talk to you. Give the jackal the heart but swap it later even though he talks about maybe eating it but maybe not. It’s…
8. Walkthroughitis: …pretty bad
9. Guidance: Lack of feedback on fail states. There are several points in the game where you will lose WELL before you know it, and quite some time later (in some cases LITERALLY in the final stage) you suddenly find out ‘whoops, you screwed up hours ago, you lost’
10. Controls: Inconsistent door interactions (sometimes it’s Walk, sometimes it’s Use, sometimes you can just click). This was a nonstop irritation
11. Visual Distinction: Good luck seeing what’s what on screen! If not for the QoL positive I gave up there this’d be even worse honestly
12. Guidance: The book and hint system which screws you over if you use it
13. Walkthroughitis: Ellen. Hoo boy. Good luck figuring out you need the blindfold to do certain interactions. Good luck figuring out how to access the sarcophagus OR anubis. Good luck figuring out how to use the cup properly. And have fun with the friggin’ parts repairs that nothing indicates what they’re used for (as of this moment I’m still not sure what some of it did)…
14. Walkthroughitis: …blegh
15. Walkthroughitis: Benny is kind of worse but for a different reason in addition to the norm. So first off good luck figuring out the order of triggers to be able to do things like talk to your squad mates (and if you tell them the wrong things, something that normally gives you information, it causes you damage). Then there’s how to eat the initial fruit (which is required to progress), where to find the pieces for the toy, and by the way if you sleep too much you auto fail the entire chapter…
16. Walkthroughitis: …guh
17. Bug: So I mentioned another issue. Benny’s scenario has at least three major progression blocker bugs that I know of that can completely screw with you. There are ways around SOME of them but others, you’ll just have to restart the chapter. Sure hope you kept saving in between chapters like I did!
18. Walkthroughitis: Nimdock’s scenario is seemingly smooth until you start to realize that if you go the wrong way you die, if you talk to the wrong person you die, if you didn’t pick up the right thing you die, if you don’t hide the friggin’ eyeballs you die, if you don’t use the poster you don’t get the critical password thereby screwing over the entire playthrough…
19. Walkthroughitis: …blurgh
20. Walkthroughitis: Ted’s is the worst, by far. You start off with only one clue, find the mirror. Go to the kitchen to talk to the maid. While you’re there push the door to discover it’s locked, otherwise you can’t progress later. Deny having sex with the maid SIX TIMES IN A ROW to then have her screw you over, and then talk to her YET AGAIN to progress. By the way go use the secret passageway to gain access to the idol which you use on the door which you can then move a statue in front of, otherwise you die later. There’s two bookcases which have critical books, but here’s the wild thing; One has one obvious book to progress, the other has NOTHING to progress. BUT later on in the chapter after you’ve used the demon to open the door to get the portrait to talk to the devil you can then go back to the bookcase which you have ABSOLUTELY no reason to go back to, find out there’s suddenly two new books (which is player hostile because this isn’t a puzzle to solve it’s ‘use everything in the level in the vain hopes of finding something’), one of which has the mirror, which you then use ON the devil and it like traps him, so then you use it on… her? Killing her?? And then use it on the demon and THEN break the circle and you’re done. What in God’s name were they smoking…
21. Walkthroughitis: …when they designed…
22. Walkthroughitis: …this chapter
23. Outro: Gotcha: The entire final stage sucks. Do exactly what you need to do otherwise every, and I mean EVERY other interaction has you taking damage. If you take too much damage your current character dies and you have to start with another character over again. This is not just regular stuff, but even interacting with something that’s not critical path or asking any questions that aren’t mandatory leads to this…
24. Outro: Gotcha: …what a mess
25. Outro: Walkthroughitis: Also good luck KNOWING what that critical path is

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: Generally good. I know, low bar, but the brickwork DOES do what it’s supposed to; Sell you on this gloomy haunted castle
2. Voice Acting: There’s several, but only a few who really have a lot of lines. But everyone involved does a solid job
3. Storytelling Mechanic: Notes, audio logs, and audio cutscenes. Notes can be read at your leisure (and re-read), audio logs are the same but voice acted, and the ‘cutscenes’ only slightly interrupt gameplay and let you keep moving while you listen
4. Character: Alexander?
5. Intro: The intro hits a lot of notes very well. Creepy castle, mystical vibes, eldritch touches here and there, horrifying music, and honestly no real threats or dangers. Which is good… because what’s REALLY happening is it’s building up for the ACTUAL tension
6. Sound: The sound design and what it adds to atmosphere is hard to properly quantify in this game, but I’m going to try anyways dammit and we’re going to segment it based on sequences. So for the initial part of the story there’s this wonderful effect where when you’re moving (and ONLY when you’re moving) you hear footsteps that are not yours. This naturally prompts the player to stop and listen, but since you’re not moving now… you hear nothing. Great touch. The creaking, the chains, the water dripping, the entire first section is weirdly loud for how quiet it is
7. MSQ: Kaernk, the water monster. I’m going to be honest, while there’s some good sound design and general atmosphere leading up to this (mentioned above) this was the first moment that caught me. What really works here is that it’s so video gamey, but in a way that’s in service to the narrative. You almost immediately divine that the water is ‘danger’ and everything else is ‘safe’ and are given options to avoid the water. This is all just a minor bump in the road… until you get to the second encounter, which escalates. And now you’re desperately trying to avoid the water while flinging chunks of meat at someTHING that’s chewing on them noisily in the background. And then you see the third encounter and there’s NO safe zones, ANYwhere. Just a big empty corridor of water…
8. MSQ: …so…
9. MSQ: …you RUN
10. Pacing: The pacing of the quiet dread, followed by the nerve-wracking water monster, followed by the intense fleeing is already excellently paced but immediately after it is a genuine safe zone as the second act hub. Great tempo
11. Music Direction: Good time to mention that the music is used as part of the feedback which really adds to that narrative pacing. When you do a good you get a relief from the more oppressive sound and occasionally music. When you’re in a truly peaceful area this beatific music plays. And when you’re not… it doesn’t
12. MSQ: What I’ve seen a few times referred to as Act II is another good pacing segment. When you first enter the Back Hall it’s quiet, peaceful, blue light, music, it’s all very ‘safe space’. From here you enter a fairly lengthy section of the adjacent levels all in an attempt to get the elevator working (our next critical path). Each segment we go through has its own styles and themes of horror. We have the castle manor with creaking halls and warped faces (and don’t look at the trees!)
13. MSQ: Then we have the rumbling machinery and endless cogs of the elevator segment
14. MSQ: And finally the ‘best’ part, my personal least favorite part, the Storage. This area is INCREDIBLY dark, more so than usual even, but has tons of lights you can light. It ALSO contains two monster spawns who, yes, will absolutely beeline you in the light. This whole segment is easily the most tense I’ve been to-date, though we’re about to surpass that
15. Sound: I of course have to give more praise to the sound design for this entire segment. The roar of the Shadow in the distance, the Grunt making itself known, the dripping water as we get the sewers working, it’s all properly horrifying
16. Doodads: Good time to mention the doodading. Each area has its own placements which clearly had a lot of thought and care put into them. The medical supplies, the larder and kitchen, the bits of machinery
17. Atmosphere: So I mean, duh, right? Everything in the game drips atmosphere. Honestly I’ve been talking about the whys and wherefores this entire time so let’s just slather…
18. Atmosphere: …a solid…
19. Atmosphere: …triple over this and move on
20. Integration: Good time to talk about the gameplay and story integration in this game. Looking at the monster lowers your sanity and makes you easier to find but… also that works in reverse too. Finding a dark hole to hide in and not looking at the monster is a legitimate strategy that works in cases it arguably shouldn’t. Further everything about how light is used as a mechanic informs both axis at almost every opportunity
21. MSQ: The Prison. Good God, the Prison. This place is exactly as awful as it should be. We hear about people being held here for no just cause, we see the awful, awful conditions of the prison, we can barely navigate for the darkness
22. MSQ: And while I have issues with this place gameplay wise I have to say this is probably the most tense I’ve been as of now. Having to deal with the monster while in narrow corridors, very low sanity, and in crowded and dark hallways where I can barely navigate is a hell of a vibe
23. MSQ: Couple of other notes before I move on. First, apparently the water monster only shows if you’re low on sanity, but I was immediately and automatically avoiding water in the sewers. Enough said
24. Moment: Second, seeing the dead monster (I believe they’re called Grunts) literally ripped in two, followed immediately by our first introduction to a Brute (an ARMED monster) was a hell of an experience
25. Pacing: Third, the pacing continues its excellence. After a horrifying segment of running my ass off to avoid the Brute we enter an almost entirely safe segment as we get the vaccine and clear the sewers. Until a monster slams open the door to a room you’re in to stalk you of course
26. MSQ: The Choir. The torture devices, the clinical way they describe how to maximize the pain from torture, the thick red fog adding to the atmosphere and obscuring the (SIX) enemies in the area, great atmosphere
27. MSQ: The entire Imprisonment sequence is a nice bit of setup and fully puts is in the mind of Daniel and Alexander. Hey speaking of which…
28. Plot: So the plot is interesting when you line it up. We’re a horrible human who pissed off an eldritch abomination and sought help from an alien who wanted to use the power of the artifact to go home. That’s kind of it, but it’s compelling in how down to earth and how believable it all is. It also makes the stakes very real as we see how many hundreds of people have been tormented by this
29. Character: Daniel. An interesting man in how oblivious he is and… let’s be honest with ourself… he’s an awful person. WE are an awful person. We try so hard to isolate ourselves from our actions and it leads to so much awfulness and it’s so compelling in said awfulness
30. Outro: Of the three endings two are… whatever. But the, shall we say ‘main’ ending is interesting. Daniel continues to refuse all blame for his own actions, the Shadow lets us go as the castle crumbles, and Alexander is lost to who knows what. The end
31. Foreshadowing: Plenty. If you’re paying attention early on there’s a lot of little details
32. Internal Continuity: Again, plenty. They clearly mapped out a lot of the events of the story (considering almost all of it happens before the game begins) and we see it unfolding as we go
33. World Building: Again, a decent amount
34. Integration: Lying to the player. Every game lies to the player to some extent or another but this game refines it to an art form. I mention Subnautica later and it’s related to this concept. You are in far less danger than the game conveys at almost every point in time because the point of the game is still to enjoy said game, to progress through it. But they want you to FEEL like you’re on the very verge of total death at all times, just dangling over the edge. And between the visuals and sanity and music and sound design and the monster AI and the usage of darkness and everything…
35. Integration: …the game does…
36. Integration: …a great job of it

Story Negatives:

1. Brickwork: Yeah I’m sorry by the end of the game my eyes were literally tired of looking at it. This is Grade A Brown Era of Gaming territory. Which makes sense

Gameplay Positives:

1. Core Mechanic: The game has a fundamental building block of the entire game which I call the sanity loop. So you have sanity (or do you?) and it can be frayed very easily. Looking at unpleasant things (almost all manually placed), looking at monsters, this all lowers your sanity. Lowered sanity starts to screw with your ability to play. First you start to hear fake sounds, see fake enemies, and at very low sanity your controls start to get sluggish
2. Core Mechanic: This is already an interesting mechanic in a game like this, where you functionally have no real combat or survival abilities. But what makes it work really well is the loop I referenced earlier. See, as you complete objectives you gain sanity back, even if it isn’t like a peaceful or pleasant thing. So you’re rewarded for constantly pushing forward, and punished for standing still. It’s a neat bit of friction
3. Core Mechanic: One more interesting tidbit. Light is a huge mechanic in the game. Being in the dark, even for SECONDS, causes you to start having issues. Being in the light similarly smooths that all out. Be in the dark TOO long and it’ll start hitting your sanity. Thing is, Light ALSO makes YOU more visible. This turns the whole thing into an interesting risk/reward because light offers safety AND danger depending, whereas dark offers danger and safety…
4. Core Mechanic: …and they play with this really well in some of the later stages where monsters are far more common
5. Sound: The usage of sound is critical for atmosphere of course, but it also informs game design. You can ALWAYS hear the monsters before you can see them. And there’s several tiers of…
6. Yoshi Drums: …layered music that play depending. If the drums are present, the monster is still active and nearby. If there’s a siren starting to play, it’s homing in on your location. If it’s actively spotted you and is hunting, the siren will be blaring
7. Difficulty Option: The hard mode that was patched in is legit. It does quite a bit of minor differences which are very different, but probably the biggest changes are; Saving is now manual only and costs FOUR tinderboxes, dying revers to previous saves, sanity becomes another health bar, and resources are far rarer. Have fun!
8. Intro: Tutorialization: The Intro establishes a lot very naturally and with in game design. You figure out how to use the lamp, how to refill it, what darkness does both good and bad, how to use tinderboxes, and how to navigate basic puzzles
9. Intro: The entire first segment of the game is fascinating from a gameplay perspective. Obviously it’s all atmospheric and that’s nice and all but it’s very mechanically dense despite being almost completely safe. It reminds me in some ways of Subnautica (hear me out) where the aptly named Safe Shallows can be properly terrifying thanks to presentation but mechanically are almost completely safe. You have to WORK at it to die here. Same vibe. The goal of the Intro is to convey ‘this is how to play the game’, we won’t escalate until we hit the next major segment. Speaking of which
10. Tutorialization: The Kaernk. So first they (once again) tutorialize very effectively, but I also have to mention how well this works BECAUSE of how video gamey it is. The water is danger, but it’s gradient danger (you have a second or two of leeway being in the water before you start taking damage). There’s shorter platforms you can jump up to from water, and taller ones you can’t. And there’s platforms strategically placed to allow progress BUT there’s also a few segments where you cannot (reasonably) make those jumps without hitting the water, so you HAVE to learn how the water works. Finally at several points, including the lever, they have bookshelves right next to them with grabbable books you can fling as distractions
11. Encounter: So then we get to the Kaernk (the water monster) encounter itself. Aside from all the excellent introduction I just mentioned the first few rooms are very well designed. There’s a timed lever puzzle, several forced water segments, it’s all well designed and sets it all up great, but it really starts getting going…
12. Encounter: …with the second segment. First off, when you pass the door there’s a few seconds of safety / leeway to give the player a moment to adjust and process. You quickly see you’re STILL in water and there’s boxes nearby so, y’know, scramble back up. Second, this area escalates nicely (WAY more water, way less safe areas). But it also gives you new tools (make your own platforms, and also there’s human limbs you can toss which not only distract the monster like the earlier books but stun it for a sec as it noisily eats them). And all of this clever avoidance and puzzle solving to completely bypass the monster leads neatly into…
13. Encounter: …the third segment. You enter the last door, and you see a nice big empty hallway FILLED with water. No platforms, no levers, no nothing. Just RUN. And it’s brilliant. They even give you a few additional obstacles as you go (I love how you have to pull the door TOWARDS you, interrupting movement) but also you can slam said doors shut to help, and you can leap over some of the obstacles to gain speed
14. Pacing: And all of this is brilliantly paced gameplay wise as well. We started off with an exploration tutorial segment, then some simple ‘find the stuff’ puzzles, then careful and slow platforming, then literally running
15. Integration: Good time to talk about the gameplay and story integration in this game. Looking at the monster lowers your sanity and makes you easier to find but… also that works in reverse too. Finding a dark hole to hide in and not looking at the monster is a legitimate strategy that works in cases it arguably shouldn’t. Further everything about how light is used as a mechanic informs both axis at almost every opportunity
16. Integration: Lying to the player. Every game lies to the player to some extent or another but this game refines it to an art form. I mention Subnautica later and it’s related to this concept. You are in far less danger than the game conveys at almost every point in time because the point of the game is still to enjoy said game, to progress through it. But they want you to FEEL like you’re on the very verge of total death at all times, just dangling over the edge. And between the visuals and sanity and music and sound design and the monster AI and the usage of darkness and everything…
17. Integration: …the game does…
18. Integration: …a great job of it
19. Enemy AI: Related to the above. The enemy AI is very patterned in a way that you can use it while it still has a few random moments
20. Autosave: Very smart manually placed autosaves

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Visual Distinction: I know the POINT is the darkness and being careful with light usage, but that doesn’t change the fact that several of the plot critical items are a wee bit hard to see at times
2. MSQ: I’ve been chewing on this for a minute. There are several swaths of puzzles that boil down to ‘find the thing’ and I’m not a big fan of those. Between the lighting issues and monster problems it just sort of gets irritating to actually find the thing I’m looking for. I know it’s here, I know I need it, I can’t friggin’ find it. This is a pretty constant problem but there’s a few individual puzzles I’d like to call out
3. Encounter: First, the bomb puzzle in the storage area. Nice atmosphere, very tense, but also very irritating to find the right things to use the right things on the right things
4. Encounter: Second, the entire elevator sequence. I mean I know all of the second act is basically repairing the elevator but there’s a few points where the solution made perfect sense (coal for the furnace, gears for the machine, put the right rods into the right things) and some that just took forever to do (where the hell is the third friggin’ rod aahhh)
5. Encounter: And finally, and my least favorite as of this moment, the damned prison. I feel grateful that I have a decent mental map because there’s almost no guidance on where to go or what you can do here, and in some places if you follow right wall you’ll end up looping improperly and miss things. And nevermind that you’re in narrow corridors with lit torches while monsters spawn directly in front of you
6. Encounter: One last complaint before I move on; Fixing the sewers (the cistern area). Most of it was pretty smooth, and then we spent like thirty minutes trying to find all the pipes. Turns out there WERE no other pipes they just had to go in some random configuration. As of this typing I don’t know what the hint or clue was to do so correctly, I just put them in randomly until it worked
7. Padding: Related to the above. Some puzzles just involve too much busy work of ‘find the thing for the other thing’, very point and click style
8. Visual Navigation: I have a pretty good mental map. If you don’t you are probably going to get SO lost in this game

Story Positives:

1. Sound: Generally good sound design for the overall aesthetic, oomph, and vibe
2. Voice Acting: Shockingly good voice acting across the board. Which is good, there’s a lot of dialogue…
3. Voice Acting: …and it’s really solid
4. Spritework: Generally excellent spritework on the main cast. Distinct, flavorful, well done
5. Spritework: Also some good stuff on the enemies throughout
6. Spritework: And very solid boss designs too
7. Music Direction: So this is a bit of a gimme considering it’s the premise of the entire game but I think I can safely say the usage of music in this game is absolute fire for the purposes of adding to the story axis. The tone, beat, vibe, and presentation are built into the very bones of the game…
8. Music Direction: …so…
9. Music Direction: …consider that a triple
10. Storytelling Mechanic: Clear indicators of when there’s new dialogue to interact with in hub areas
11. Character: Rekka. She’s boisterous, entertaining, and flavorful while still being enough of a terrible boss that I’m not particularly sad when she explodes
12. Cutscene: Style, in general. Several cutscenes are fully animated, but plenty are done in a pseudo 2D style which really works well for the aesthetic of the work
13. Foreshadowing: Plenty, and while a bit overt it’s still well done and fits in character
14. Intro: Cutscene: The entire opening sets up everything pretty much perfectly. The ridiculousness, the corporate hellscape, and how amazingly stupid and rude we are
15. Intro: The rest of the Intro sequence continues to set up the rest of the bricks we need to know going forwards. Peppermint, much of her relationship to the company, the fact that things went to hell relatively recently, the beat, our main character, stuff like that
16. Brickwork: Production has some great visuals. Lots of moving lifts and lines and breaks and elevators and escalators and conveyors and crates and blocks and bricks…
17. Brickwork: …excellent stuff
18. Doodads: Production, general. You see a lot of repeats (Rekka really loves those motivational posters) but still solid and does good characterization for her and the department as a whole
19. Banter: Good time to mention a positive for the random NPCs in the stages. They’re almost all blue collar workers and just grumbling about today’s particular aggravation
20. Tone: Wild zany 90s cartoon. Seriously just look at the game
21. Atmosphere: Corporate dystopian hellscape. It reminds me a bit of Outer Worlds honestly. You know the really sad part? A few years ago I’d have called this exaggerated
22. Cutscene: Rekka’s everything. Her introduction, her boss battle, her spectacle. For being such an awful person she’s a treat to behold
23. Brickwork: R&D isn’t as well designed as Production but there’s still good style and design to the underground volcano base
24. Doodads: Some more good doodading down here too. The Zanzo plushies and cardboard standups, the uh… after party… no gift basket though…
25. Doodads: …still worth a double
26. Cutscene: Zanzo losing his budget across his extended boss fight / level is great stuff
27. Brickwork: Security. Very digital, flowing lines of data, lots of lasers, very high tech
28. Cutscene: The teamwork scene on the L.I.F.T. is an extended but well structured cutscene, good storyboarding, and showing the team working together well (arguably for the first time)
29. Moment: The L.I.F.T. cleaning bot is such a little spot of amusement and joy (several times, even)
30. Brickwork: The museum and concert. Not much to say here, generally solid (love the clock motif)
31. Doodads: Great doodading here. Mostly in the concert and park area but still
32. Cutscene: For what it’s worth I do think the scene where they reveal the big obvious secret with Peppermint works. First, they IMMEDIATELY move past the potential fake drama. Second, Chai is actually not a dick. And third, some great storyboarding (as they’re talking about her and her mother, Kale’s cardboard cutout is always in the shot… and when they leave Peppermint literally closes the door on it)…
33. Cutscene: …solid double
34. Cutscene: The initial infiltration to the tower in Track 10 is absolutely hilarious. The timing, the shocked expressions, the coincidental pose, the double take
35. Doodads: Finance. Mostly just another corporate interior but lots of detailing and details to flesh it out. The gold statues, the giant wolf poster, the damned statue…
36. Doodads: …all great stuff
37. Character: I debated for a while but I think Peppermint, CNMN, and Macaron deserve a positive. The team they have going on and the dynamic between them all works quite well
38. Character: Special mention to several of the bots throughout the game (especially LU-C1LLE) who provide an interestingly human element to the enemy faction
39. Cutscene: Consider this a boss positive for spectacle for the Mimosa fight. The lighting, the band, the stage, the audience, her wing dress, great stuff
40. Cutscene: A similar positive for Roquefort. The gigantic werewolf with a monocle and tie fighting us in a giant money bin. I’m down
41. Character: Chai and Kale. I’m not super impressed with either character in a vacuum but they play off each other very well. Both are demotivated people who want to coast through life without trying, who were handed amazing power and/or wealth to get what they wanted. The difference is Chai had a support network and worked to be a better person. Kale did not
42. Outro: Moment: Chai vibing with his friends to find the resonance to break the energy barrier is a bit ridiculous… but the music really helps sell it
43. Outro: The entire vibe of finally geling as a team and going after Kale
44. Outro: Cutscene: CNMN finally decides to… lend a hand. (this scene is awesome)
45. Outro: Cutscene: …easy double
46. Outro: Cutscene: Spectacle. The entire final boss is great spectacle
47. Outro: Great ending. Mostly just a ‘now what’ with each of the characters, and generally very heartwarming
48. Animation: Generally solid animation throughout the cutscenes…
49. Storyboarding: …which have some really solid action sequencing

Story Negatives:

1. Character: Chai. We’ll see if he becomes a better character later but in 4 hours of playing him I just want to slug him. He’s a completely typical ‘lazy idiot’ archetype and is a rude dick to almost everyone around him

Gameplay Positives:

1. Difficulty Options: Difficulty also affects timing and recovery mechanic
2. Difficulty Options: And is toggleable on the fly
3. Music: Been chewing on this for a bit. The soundtrack is pretty fly, and easily earns…
4. Music: …a solid double. But the way the music is USED is even better
5. Core Combat: The core conceit of the game is very well executed (of course it is). It’s hard to properly emphasize how well designed this all is though. So obviously it’s rhythm based but let’s explore what that means. If you just mash attack you’ll still attack at the same beats, you’re essentially locked into the tempo. Thing is you do bonus damage (and score) the closer your button hit is to the beat itself, aka when the attack lands. This is brilliantly subtle in how great it is. It means if you screw up you can recover quickly and smoothly. It rewards but does NOT mandate more skillful play. And it feels awesome when you pull off proper combos. This by itself is a fantastic system…
6. Core Combat: …easily worthy…
7. Core Combat: …of a triple
8. Guidance: But then there’s this… interesting thing the game does. EVERYthing indicates the beat. Hell there’s an optional button to make a literal beat button show up at the bottom! You can literally play this game without sound, and that’s impressive even before you consider the song ITSELF is also helping with said beat…
9. Guidance: …so that’s all very well designed and awesome
10. Yoshi Drums: The music also ramps up a bit as you do better which always feels awesome
11. Penalty For Failure: The lower in health you are, the more health the enemies drop… but it takes the place of gears. As with so much of the gameplay loop it’s all about keeping you moving forward at a cost
12. Controls: Very tight controls. I’ve had only very infrequent issues and it’s mostly related to traversal and camera. Once you’re in combat everything pops…
13. Controls: …so take that solid double
14. Kit: Sub tanks are in this game if you can believe it. They’re not QUITE as good as over in the Megaman X series but they’re still a gradient, earnable recovery system
15. Enemy Variety: Really solid throughout. I’ve seen better, even in this type of game, but this is still some solid variety…
16. Enemy Variety: …for a double
17. Enemy Design: Generally good designs too. Almost every enemy has one major attack they use and this leads to…
18. Encounter: …good encounter design as they mix and match which units to determine which attacks you have to deal with
19. Kit: Call this a general. I’m not as impressed with the kit overall as I’d like. It’s still decent and there’s good variety to it but it’s nothing game changing or playstyle altering
20. Viscerality: In a game all about it of course the viscerality is excellent. The sounds and splashes and hits all sound very meaty and satisfying…
21. Viscerality: …so a double Audio
22. Viscerality: The Visuals, though, are the star of the show. Lots of big flashy attacks with big flashy moves while doing big flashy things…
23. Viscerality: …so that’s a solid…
24. Viscerality: …triple
25. Respec: So you can sell stuff right back after you buy it (except for permanent upgrades and circuit upgrades). This serves as a functional respec, and helps encourage playing around with moves and specials
26. Mid-Mission Checkpoint: Exceptionally good checkpointing. Even death only puts you back one ‘step’ which is usually within the last minute or two…
27. Mid Mission Checkpoint: …and I’ll need to do testing later but at the very least it’s a solid double
28. Guidance: It varies, but there’s still some good peeking and general guidance in the side, optional stuff
29. Intro: Boss: QA-1ML. Pretty basic (nice big obvious telegraphs and not TOO punishing when you fail) but still rewards the player for being on it and does a good job of having bypass phases
30. Boss: Rekka. I actually really liked this fight. Each healthbar she either added a new mechanic or escalated a previous one. She has lunges (which you can lead her into a wall for a stun), big AOEs you can barely get out of, good mobility when she employs it, the dash to avoid flinging segments, the lightning ‘avoid everything’ segments, and again escalations of each of the above…
31. Boss: …very solid boss fight
32. Encounter: Track 4 and the escalation of enemy combinations as you piss off Zanzo more and more and he flushes through his budget
33. Encounter: Track 5 and the L.I.F.T. sequence. This is effectively an Elevator Encounter but they do good stuff with it, throwing plenty of ranged and blue shielded enemies against us while requiring us to knock over the brakes with Macaron, and it’s gradient enough to not be frustrating and still let us juggle between our party members while handling everything else
34. Level: Track 7, The Climb, is I think the very first decent level in the game. This is funny considering something I’ll mention in the negatives, but there’s some actual platforming (the usage of 2.5D helps) and good side areas with upgrades and bonuses
35. Level: Encounter: This is also when the encounter design is really starting to come into its own. Throwing us up against a Z-Shielded and blue shielded enemies simultaneously, or one of the charging dog enemies alongside several aerial bots. It’s very Doom-like
36. Boss: Korsica. This is such an interesting boss fight but so well designed for what it is. It’s the ‘parry boss’ but she also does attacks you can’t parry, and she tells you the timing before it happens. Thing is the timing is a bit mean, BUT there’s also animations to help you AS she’s doing the attacks if you lose any of it. Further, she never violates the rule of 6 (no more than 6 attacks to memorize in one given slot). Lastly it’s paced well enough to give you breathers in between meaner segments, and she usually follows a pacing in how her attacks come; Starts off easy, then mean, then backs off, then multiple mean attacks in a row, etc…
37. Boss: …exceptionally well designed fight…
38. Boss: …easy triple
39. Encounter: Track 8. We start to introduce new enemy types (still! Mostly fire based this time) and some fun setpieces like the timed platforming segments and the electrified floor arena
40. Boss: Mimosa. A bit too long with a few issues but still a very fun, very creative fight. Being weak to stun damage helps with tactics and the adds being removable or avoidable does too…
41. Boss: …great spectacle while I’m at it
42. Encounter: Track 10 continues the trend of encounter design, with a few new enemies and some smart mixing and matching alongside not overstaying their welcomes
43. Boss: Roquefort. Big, sweeping attacks which are relatively easy to dodge, much faster lunging attacks which encourage parrying, area denials in the form of tornados, high mobility, and a defined counter to Korsica. His intermission phase is… varying. Just chasing him is whatever, chasing him while he sets up lasers is more fun, and dealing with his coin diving attacks is great…
44. Boss: …solid double
45. Optional Content: Training room. Great place to practice…
46. Optional Content: …plus options. LOTS of options
47. Postgame: Rhythm Tower is exactly what it sounds like, your typical Bloody Palace scenario
48. Postgame: Extra challenge modes like ‘collect the power ups as you go’ or ‘BPM fast mode’ stuff
49. Mid Mission Checkpoint: By the way there’s mid BOSS checkpoints as well, which is even better
50. Outro: Level: A nice in between of a victory lap but also a mix of fighting every combination of enemy throughout the game
51. Outro: Boss: Kale is an excellent final exam boss. Parry to break, area avoidance, lots of mobility, great tempo of attacks and counter attacks, amazing pacing in styles of attacks, visual and audio indicators, and very high pressure…
52. Outro: Boss: …absolutely…
53. Outro: Boss: …amazing fight
54. Animation: Decent. I’ll be honest, a lot of this is more on other things to indicate timing, but there are still visible wind ups (especially on bosses)
55. Enemy AI: Always on the beat, but that actually works really well for a game like this
56. Pacing: Solid pacing overall
57. Replayability: Generally replayable

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Difficulty Options: Some basic lazy difficulty
2. Tutorialization: As of typing this I’ve run into 12 separate tutorials. Some optional, some not, but the thing that REALLY solidifies this is the fact that in many cases the tutorials LITERALLY repeat themselves. As in you’ll have a mandatory tutorial on, say, combo attacks… and then an optional tutorial on combo attacks RIGHT after it…
3. Tutorialization: …Jesus Christ game
4. Core Mechanic: Platforming is not good. This is the nicest possible way I could put it. The horizontal movement is lacking and the camera lends itself towards not letting you see where you’re going. I’ll mention any specific problems later but it’s not good in general across the whole game
5. Intro: Level: I won’t be super harsh on most of the stages I think since this is clearly a Beat ‘Em Up first and foremost but the Intro stage is entirely too wonky about everything that isn’t an empty fighting arena
6. Terrain: Speaking of. Almost every fighting arena is just a big empty room with nothing in it. Even Double Dragon had like crates and pipes you could use. And that came out in the 80s
7. Level: Okay I lied. Track 3 is not great platforming wise and there’s a fair amount of it. Even doing a double jump and dash doesn’t always line up and the camera wants you to do straight-line platforming which runs into some depth perception issues as well as makes it hard to adjust since the best sign of where you are would be looking DOWN which the camera pushes against as you’re moving
8. Bug: R2 interactions have this weird bug that only crops up occasionally but every time it does it’s irritating. Speaking of…
9. Encounter: …during the Track 4 escape sequence you have to call in Macaron to very quickly remove a boulder or die and redo the sequence. I’m not 100% sure why it even worked the final time we did it, though credit to Granspectre who suggested I just hold down R2 the ENTIRE time leading up to the platform which… worked? Somehow??
10. Visual Distinction: I’ve been debating this one for a bit. There are extended sequences, usually in combat, where it becomes legitimately difficult to tell what’s going on. It’s infrequent enough that it’s only a single, and I can still usually perform based on audio, but whoof
11. Level: Padding: So I was debating if this is a full Problem or not since I reached this weird point from levels 4 to 7 or so where I was just… bored. And it felt weird since the game kept doing things ‘right’ it just… was dragging. As of writing this we’ve sort of decided that it’s just these levels, which are not only too damned long but…
12. Level: Padding: …RIGHT next to each other, which does not help anything
13. Economy: After some thought and cross comparisons I’m thinking a single negative for the economy and related grind. Even if you scour everything and everywhere there just are not enough gears to really flex with the Kit. Honestly if not for the respec option this’d be much worse