Okay i need you to level with me rn: this game has the most excellent graphics and music of any game i've ever played. like i need to make it clear, i love this game, okay? it's absolutely delectable. but dear lord the gameplay is disgusting. trying to get these damn kids to just do what i want is so frustrating. i'm not a huge extreme sports game buff but like jesus this game is hard to control. it's like im actually roller skating its crazy. props to sega for making an accurate roller skating game but its not fun to control it is frustrating. i want to like playing this game so bad but its so hard to just do what i want to do. so yeah this game gets its rating bc i love its aesthetics and music its one of the best looking games ever made but the gameplay is not fun.

wow! i have a lot to say about this, mainly though that i didn't expect to put in 22 hours into this game. in fact, i'm surprised i even finished the game in the first place - the first time i tried to play this was on my xbox in 2018 and i just could not get into it then, cause it was too hard. flash forward to now, 22 hours later, and i have come to the conclusion that it is still hard for a variety of reasons, but there was something that clicked for me where i suddenly kinda understood how to use the thumbstick, and after that i only failed about 10% of the times i tried to do things rather than uhhh 70%? but when that click happened, man it changed everything for me.

my biggest complaint with this game has and always will be the gameplay - i dunno if it's just because it's dated, whether it's because the Dreamcast is a fucking weird console, or if it's just because the team of Blit and Sega just had hopes, dreams and prayers and it somehow got the game running. it feels like the camera is working against you constantly, the thumbstick just kinda does what it wants, and some of these hitboxes are soooooo obnoxious, especially when you're trying to do sick combos!

but in spite of everything about that, like i said, i kinda got used to it? and things started not just making sense, but the flow just made total sense to me. there's always a technique loop in every level, there's tons of ways to get around quickly, and there's so much more to the maps than what it originally seems. i stumbled across many secret areas and routes completely by accident because i just started loving the loop. the mobility that is provided by JSRF is definitely much better, but the janky charm here really kinda just sells it all for me. so that's how i got over the gameplay, which is still the weakest part of the game!

everything else is just pure, unadulterated style with substance, banging music, banging art, great fun all around. fighting against the police by spray-painting them will never not be cool, and i'm so glad that's the default in both JSRF games every time. but just like the art, the music, that fucking amazing style, it's something that i personally think has had such far reaching effects on video games that i really do believe that it's influenced games even like Hi-Fi Rush. It's one of those games that i am so glad exists because it just created the best fucking style check of all time, and it's gotten us so many good fan-games, art, music, and even inspired games (looking at you Team Reptile! I love you!)
i'm also a really big fan of how many different types of enemies there are, even if they're only an enemy per stage pretty much. the lack of enemy variety is really felt in JSRF, and i wish that it was introduced and implemented in that game better!

overall, while i don't think the game has aged the best, it's very charming still and once you get over the hump of the gameplay, things just get so much better. amazing game whose style has withstood the test of time over and over again. if you wanna play it, try it out! if you don't want the gameplay, emulate JSRF instead!

I have not felt this level of hate towards a game since my days attempting to play Smash Bros competitively. Some people say some games age like a fine wine, some people say some games show levels of jank over time, I say Jet Set Radio was never intended to be played by someone who wants to interact with the game. This is like baby sensory videos for the 29th of June 2000, things are happening and you can kinda tell what but most of it is to distract from one simple failure, this game isn't playable.

By playable, I mean none of this is controllable. Your inputs do things, however it always feels like it's never what you intended. The game never lets you be in control of your character, in a movement game, in a platforming game, in a time-trial game. It's like everything Jet Set Radio teaches you about your controls is ever so slightly wrong, to where you believe it's your fault you messed up but there's no inherit logical answer as to why. Sure the age shows, and it only worsens existing problems in the game. Very little air control but massive jump directional changes but also basically no friction but also momentum is built in seconds. No HUD either, in a game about exploring the map when the controls are this actively hostile (with limited time, no less). The level design is also just painful enough to where you need good movement in order to tag some spots, but your character controls with what feels like 5 whole seconds of lag. There's always another 'but' to be added whenever you try to find something positive to say about the game. Wallrunning, but less than 1 second and destroys momentum. Momentum chaining, but freezing in place for larger graffiti. Chase sequences, but you can't truly control your character. I can go on.

What especially irks me is that Jet Set Radio gets you into a particularly vulnerable state and consistently punishes you for random things. It's takes a particular type of poor design to effect someone like that. I used to be a very angwy gamer when I was younger, whenever something didn't go my way I would yell and cry and have the urge to break something. I consider myself to be past that point of rage, only feeling at worst frustrated at an experience, however this game brought all of that flooding back. It feels like you're the one messing up your jump, and to be honest I probably am, but it also gives no explanation as to why. As an example, the game does not teach you the trick jumps but expects you to be able to do them (and not do them) consistently. But whenever you jump an unknown factor seems to influence whether you perform a trick jump when you're trying not to, and send you flying way past the location you were actually trying to jump to. While a lack of control like that is aggravating, infuriating even, Solar Ash implements something similar without it ever being frustrating. Sure, in Solar Ash sometimes you don't turn on the ground as fast as you'd like, however the game is actually designed around that and never takes agency of control away from the player. In Solar Ash it's just an added rule on your mechanics that syngerises with how the game is designed, in Jet Set Radio it's the mechanics themselves that seem to clash with the game's overall design.

This game is lucky I played Little Kitty Big City before it, because if I had not played a therapeutic jank game before this I wouldn't have given it the time of day. Hell I even gave it a second shot after I had made a decision on the game to double check it wasn't just my inexperience with the game, it wasn't. I wanna avoid just listing bad qualities about the game and not going into detail about why they don't work or why it's like that, but there's so much bad, so many confusing decisions, and so little explanation. I'm sure at the time it was groundbreaking and revolutionary, however on it's own right now it's actively hostile and an extremely poor proof of concept. Soundtrack's a banger and the heavy pre hi-fi rush visuals look good no matter what, everyone knows this, unfortunate it's tied to what I'd call an undesigned game.

Really makes you feel like you gotta Jet Set Get-out-of-here before it's too late