Played this game in the early 2010's and had to force myself through the first few hours cause I didn't really vibe with how the game presented itself. Felt a bit too dated even for 2003. Then I persisted and almost everything feels like a blur now. Something clicked and played the entiery of it over the course of a week. By the end of it when the credits rolled, I was having an odd feeling of nostalgia for my first hour of the game. Reminiscing and reflecting on my journey, how far we've all come.... Incredible experience that still makes me want to come back for more from time to time. Sometimes the games calls out to me like the green goblin calls out to norman osborn.

FInal Fantasy games dominated my childhood and I always vibed with the incredible OST of those games. Back in the early 2000's I would constantly listen to bruned CDs with a random assortment of them, or boot up a random FF on the PS1 just to afk in a zone and leave the music playing in the background while doing other stuff in my room. I've grown to like rhythm games a lot after discovering DDR and Stepmania, so Theatrhythm is basically THE most appealing game that could have ever released for me.

The first one was a nice distraction but seriously lacked content. Curtain Call fixed this slightly but still felt meh to play on a touchscreen because it would randomly refuse to register some inputs correctly. Final Bar Line is the ultimate revision that fixes every complain I had about the game, brought even more tracks from more obscure Square RPGs, and added tons of cool features such as online battles, coop play and extra difficulty settings.

By far my favorite rhythm game I've ever played.

Previously gave this game a 2 stars rating upon my first go around, but now that I have given Trip's campaign a try I finally understand what happened here.

Not to be one of those "it's a great game but not a great [insert franchise name] game", but in this case I feel like it's more than appropriate. The team behind Superstars build all the levels from the ground up to work almost exclusively for Trip's move set and gimmicks. When I play with Trip, every level flows naturally, everything is laid out so you have to pick between the double jump or stick to walls to go higher, enemies placement makes sense and actually posses a threat, and like most Sonic games, it's rewarding to be put on these short automated fast sections as a breather between the platforming challenges. If i was given this from the get-go, I would have a much higher opinion of this game because it is genuinely fun.

However, that's not what happened. It feels like SEGA looked at whatever the team was cooking with this gameplay and level design and went "oh that's nice, let's slap the Sonic branding on this, let's make it focused on multiplayer, and I guess that original character you made could be a New Game+ addition", and that's what ruined it for me. Because absolutely none of the level works cohesively with Sonic&Friends. The level design stayed almost exactly the same, but 90% of the fun obstacles and challenges have been completely stripped. As a result you get a game where you mostly hold right without thinking much. Very little is in your way to stop you, which makes every level kinda bland and obnoxiously repetitive. I absolutely did not have fun with my Sonic playthrough, nothing was memorable or caught my attention. I was just going through the pace like it was nothing and after the halfway point I was begging for it to be over. It was such a nothing-game that it just felt like a way to waste a few hours of my life without getting any enjoyment out of it. The "Sonic" portion of the game is mind-blowingly boring.

Let's not even touch on the multiplayer. After the halfway point in my solo playthrough, I figured that bringing a friend along might make it a bit more fun at least. WRONG, dead wrong. It's even worse. Because now instead of have free will to explore and find a modicum of fun in these devoided levels, you are basically forced to keep going forward no matter what. The way the game picks who's the "main player" is by basically focusing the camera on the one that's further ahead on the level. Meaning that ANYTIME you want to go back to grab a collectible that you just missed, you have to coordinate with your other 3 friends to stop and attempt to come back. Most of the time it's not possible because of an obstacle in the way, a drop too big, a door that closed, one-way platform, etc... You are restricted from exploring or course-correcting most of the time, and basically every 5 second someone is going to go off-screen and instantly be "killed-off" to be respawning in the chaos. Most of the time they barely have time to react and follow the main player and will instantly be brought off screen again. You'd think for a multiplayer focused Sonic game they would fix how the multuiplayer works.... but it's kinda how Sonic 2/3/Mania was already functioning? Camera strictly focused on one player with the other one basically having "baby brother" mode where they constantly go off-screen and respawn without much consequences. Except this time the baby-brother is chosen semi-randomly depending on how the level design feels about it.

I wont touch on how much of a broken mess the game is in the technical aspect. Players would die and permanently disappear until we enter a special stage, exit to menu or finish an act. Random teleportation across the level, respawning into walls and being stuck, game randomly killing off the entire team after opening a capsule... every 2 minutes the game would randomly break down in a major way that made the multiplayer one of the worst gaming experience I had in my life. All of that for SIXTY (60) BUCKS. This game is not even half of what Mania was, yet somehow costs double. Truly a massive rip-off if you ask me.

Game would be better off if it was just "Trip the Dragon starring Sonic the Hedgehog" or something, with multiplayer being a complete afterthought and Sonic not being the main focus of the gameplay/story. The real game being locked behind NG+ is a real tragedy, especially when you have all the powers unlocked once you get to Trip and every boss fight becomes trivial with by using the super transformation.

If you have the game on PC and there's a mod that unlocks Trip from the get-go, and the game is on sale for $20 bucks? Yeah go for it. Otherwise avoid it like the plague.