I was one of those people who used to think this game was just plain average, but after my second replay, I've backtracked on this mindset. It is a good game, however a lot holds it back from being great.

The movement is frankly incredible, this is the best feeling 3D platformer ever made. Traversal is incredibly easy, and the cappy bounce trick isn't super hard, but it is fun. It's not complex or deep traversal, but it does feel great to run around in. The world design lends itself to traversal being super fun, moons and purple coins normally lead you to the next destination, so progression feels natural. Doing the mini moon challenges is fun, collecting tons of moons from bite sized challenges is entertaining and snappy. However this comes at a cost I'll explain later. The capture mechanic is really neat for a powerup idea, the captures are basic and gimmicky, but they do spice things up from time to time. And the originality of this game compared to recent Mario games is frankly refreshing, the kingdom variety and inhabitants are such a treat to see, it oozes creativity and passion unlike something like New Super Mario Bros 2 or Mario Tennis Ultra Smash which are the worst examples I can think of.

The main issue I have is how little concepts are fleshed out, the difficulty curve in this game simply doesn't exist, or is too minor to notice. I never felt like the game was getting any harder from start to finish. One moon in Jurassic Kingdom was as easy to collect as one from Luncheon Kingdom. Due to the nature of moons, most are simple to collect, and offer mini ideas like platforming sections or gimmicks, but the sheer number of them come at the cost of fleshing out ideas, so there are cool ideas, but ultimately, they aren't used to their full potential due to the nature of each challenge being bite sized. It really is an issue of quantity over quality, I always find myself slightly disappointed when there is a fun platforming room for a moon but it's beatable in 20 seconds, it presents a fun idea, but it's swiftly abandoned. This is why I prefer Super Mario 3D Worlds gameplay, because levels fully flesh out platforming ideas and gimmicks even if that game is soulless when it comes to originality. I really think Bowsers Fury fixed where this game faltered for me.

Despite my gripes with this game, I still found it to be incredibly fun 7 hour journey. I'm glad I gave the game a second chance.

For a "spinoff", this is way better than I expected. I expected a game with fun combat and fun interactions with a story that isn't that interesting. I am happy to report I am wrong, this is a true sequel to Persona 5. Sophie and Zenkichi are amazing characters, some of the best phantom thief writing within the context of P5, especially Sophie because she reminds me of Aigis but more developed. The villains are surprisingly well written too, they are more sympathetic compared to Persona 5, however they are held back by lack of screentime somewhat. Gameplay is hype as shit, best musuo combat I've ever played due to the mix of tactical Persona combat mixed in, it's basically an action RPG. Amazing combat. Jails are pretty fun to explore, they are very linear but feel very big in scale. Some jails feel very small and rushed like Kyoto or the World Tree but in general I like the jails. Music is amazing, it's Persona 5 music, of course it's peak. Content wise it's decently big, almost 60 hours to almost get all the achievements. Side quests are simplistic but fun in nature. Graphics wise it looks great, especially on PC, it runs well too. My only criticisms are sometimes the camera sucks and the ending felt slightly rushed but other than that this game is fantastic. More than a worthy sequel to one of my favourite games ever.

The gameplay is close to perfect in my opinion. 3D world has incredible level design all split into bite sized levels which keeps the game incredibly fast paced and mechanically interesting constantly. Movement and control is perfect, the move set is a bit more limiting than Odyssey but it's still incredibly fun to use, I like the addition of the dive here too.

Bowsers Fury is fantastic aswell since it takes the levels of 3D world but puts them in an open world instead. This is genius because it adds non linearity to the formula but doesn't make collecting Shine Sprites boring, each Shine Sprite feels like it's worth something because there aren't many of them and are generally harder to get than Moons. Also the atmosphere of Bowser's Fury is so raw.

The only minor flaws this game has is I don't like how they nerfed the Cat Suit slightly and the touch control sections are annoying and jank but frankly these complaints are so minor I don't care too much.

If you count this as one whole game, it's the best Mario game ever made imho, if they are separate games to you the package itself is still fantastic.

Despite being an inconsistent experience from start to finish it is an experience worth playing and has gameplay systems that are both innovative and genre defining. I just wish the the Sky Islands, Depths and Caves were actually good along with the temples. And I wished they fixed the healing system. This was definetly not worth the wait at all, as it didnt change enough along with having compromises that shouldnt exist for a wait this long, but I still had a load of fun and I dont regret playing this at all. The abilities and shrines are peak, the physics system is fun to mess around with and exploit. It was a blast overall! Especially the final boss. Thats how you do a final boss Nintendo.

I love the story and characters. The pacing and world building is near perfect. Voice delivery and timing can be off at times but overall the voice performances were charming and memorable. It's aged incredibly well. I was scared the gameplay was too basic at the beginning but it really opens up, the sphere upgrade system is genius. The end game encounters and bosses aggravated me a little but thanks to some cheesy tactics because of Rikku I got to the end with zero grinding required. The ending is something that will stick with me for a quite a while, it concluded beautifully. Recommended for any JRPG fan.

The female MC route is better than the base game imo

Unique, expressive protagonist with more depth than the average Persona protagonist. New social links over the base game which are way better and help you to know the party members more and other characters like Ryoji. Amazing, new music for her route, although I do prefer Mass Destruction.

However there are some downsides to this route. Despite thinking Ken's social link is good and above average for Persona 3, the fact you can date him is fucked up and should be called out. And you can save characters lives who are supposed to die which goes against the themes of the game.

The gameplay is boring, 1/10, nowhere near as good as future games, bad battling and too many floors. The visuals are lame as shit too, miss animated cutscenes.

Overall, thanks to the female MC route, I really love this game now, I'm so happy this exists, for me it's a clear upgrade over the original experience, I sure hope the eventual P3 remake includes it but I doubt it. Despite being held back by it's gameplay and visuals, I appreciate this awesome game.

I have to say I am pleasantly surprised with how good this game ended up being for me. I honestly thought it would be inferior to the first two games, but it far surpassed them in most ways.

In my opinion, this has the best turn based combat ever crafted. It's even better than any Atlus game I've ever played, which is a monumental achievement. Every single boss fight is incredibly challenging and fun, you have to change strategies constantly. You cannot rely on the same strategy to win, forcing you to change up jobs constantly keeps the battle system incredibly fresh. The final boss from a gameplay perspective a culmination of this, it provided one of the best final boss challenges ever for me.

The music is frankly incredible, the battle themes, character themes, town themes are so good. And the final boss theme is the peakest of all time!

The art style is... Mixed at best. The hand drawn town areas look stunning, and a lot of dungeons like the volcano dungeon look great, or the snow area looks great. But the grasslands overworld looks terrible. Character models are very charming, but they are limited in the movements and expressions they can make during cutscenes so they hinder the story telling.

The most contested thing about this game is the story though. A lot seem to think the story is bad compared to the first two games. I massively disagree with this. I agree the main cast isn't as good, but I still think they still offer a unique dynamic, and are still well written enough. The world building is really good in this game, seeing the political struggles in Savalon or the crazy ass cult in Rimedhal provided interesting mysteries to unravel for me. The main villain of Holograd was a lacking a little compared to the Templar of the first game, but most of the other villains were fire. The first 5 or so hours are a little slow, but this criticism applies to all the games in my opinion.

Finally, I want to hit on the criticism on here of "where is the meta content". And I have to say, I have no idea why people are asking this since it clearly is in the game. It's not in your face like the first two games, but it is heavily hinted at. The implications of what the final boss is blew my mind when I figured it out. This game I think serves as a set up to Bravely Third where I think this meta storytelling will be explicitly revealed. I understand how you could miss the clues though.

Overall, I never expected this game to be this good. It in fact elevated the first two games for me as a good sequel should do. It may have a mixed art style, a slow start and have a mediocre English dub (I switched to Japanese lol), but it makes up for it's shortcomings in strong ways.

Well done Square, you win this time.

One of the best open world games I've ever experienced. There is a lot to love about this game. The combat is so good, it's basic light and medium attack are the base but this is built upon by weapon switching stances, staggering, parrying, dodging and special moves like the heaven strike and blade dance, with all these options combat feels interesting and intense. Parrying feels especially fun. Stealth is lame though, wind chimes feel mediocre to use, enemy ai isn't very adaptive or smart, the layouts don't feel well designed for stealth. But this is fine, I rarely did stealth and it rarely forced you to do stealth so this was ignored. Sometimes with combat the camera can interfere, and sometimes Jin can get stuck occasionally, feels slightly rough around the edges, but it's still amazing. Open world activities are very run of the mill sort of. Enemy camps, and stuff to collect. A lot of the activities like the hot springs or the honour monuments dont offer much besides just going to them and collecting your reward. However other activities like the bamboo strike or shrines offer more, especially the shrines as they offer platforming challenges. The side quests are pretty fantastic, most if not all of them have proper stories, all fully voice acted with unique characters and stakes. Some side quests are ongoing throughout the game like Masakos story. These side quests feel very well designed and high effort, they are very good. The graphics are insane like most Sony exclusives, except it has very beutiful Japanese scenery to look at and it's open world, unlike something like TLOU2 where that game is linear so it's not as technically impressive as this game. However the downside is the framerate is way more inconsistent, this only happens during overworld traversal, during combat it's a non issue, the framerate is serviceable. The story is pretty damn excellent, a game about sacrificing honour to save the land, using poison and dishonourable strategies to win, and how Jin deals with this and accepts it over the course of the game and how other characters react like his uncle and Yuna. Overall, this is one of the best Sony exclusives ever made and definitely 2020's best game not including rereleases. Raw game.

This game is an enigma, if one game has the most lost potential, it's this game. In it's current state, my personal score is 3 stars, why? Am I insane? Yeah possibly, but I'm here to justify my stupid score anyway.

Gameplay

The game is split into three campaigns, Sonic, Shadow and Silver. Everyone's controls are serviceable, it's not perfect, but I think the controls get the job done, decently responsive and all.

Sonics levels are fun to speedrun, have a lot of shortcuts and generally fun level design. The mach speed sections are annoying but not impossible, except Crisis City, fuck that.

Silver is interesting, I thought I'd hate his gameplay but I like it because you can manipulate the environment around you to take cool shortcuts, it forced me to think creatively so I would say I enjoyed it. My only complaint is that he's way too slow on the ground.

Shadow's gameplay was mid because it has terrible vehicle sections and focuses on button mashy combat, but it's still ok most of the time because there are still cool shortcuts and platforming to contend with.

Amy, Rouge and Knuckles are TRASH. Bad physics, slow movement and poor combat options.

Tails is just decent, he's slow af on the ground but his air mobility is ok if not a bit gimped.

Omega and Blaze are top tier, great controls, move fast and Omega breaks the game with the infinite floating oversight which is fun to abuse.

"But what about glitches". Well you see, this was a replay, on my first playthrough, I ran into them constantly, but this time, I barely experienced any, and the glitches I did experience were very minor. These glitches shouldn't exist, but for me they aren't a big deal anymore.

Performance is mixed. Sometimes it's locked FPS but when physics and boxes get involved, you'll see major slowdown. Unleashed and Age of Calamity have worse performance and I still enjoy those games a lot. Loading times were a bit annoying, but installing the game off the disc onto the hardrive improves loading times for me.

Overall, I thought the gameplay was "ok", I had above average fun, and thats all that matters tbh.

Story

Sonics story sucks, just straight up sucks. I like his characterisation, but the shtick of rescuing Elise 50 times wears thin quickly.

Silvers story was decent, I like his character. He's like Future Trunks but more naïve, he's not super deep but I find his plight pretty investing and has a great ending.

Shadows story is straight up great. The previous game butchered his character, but this develops his character in meaningful ways. He truly feels like a three dimensional character in this game, the way he subtly shows off his feelings is really well done. And in general I just like the idea of Mephiles trying to tempt him towards revenge again but he rejects it. I liked his story, was the best part of the game. Modern Sega needs to copy this game on how to write Shadow, he's not an edgelord, he's so much more and this game proves it.

The plotholes are numerous... Time travel does that unfortunately. Do plot holes ruin a plot for me? No. I enjoyed Endgame's plot a lot even if the plot holes were just as numerous.

However, there are some frankly stupid story decisions here, like the kidnapping stuff. But also the "don't cry" rule or the damn kiss. Like there are some moments that just take me out of the story. Plotholes don't do this but Elise kissing an animal absolutely does. Ridiculous stuff.

Despite these story issues, the story elements I do enjoy ultimately justify the story for me. I mildly liked it.

Other stuff

The graphics I think are still pretty good, besides the dull hub worlds, the game looks pretty sometimes, the colours of Tropical Jungle or Crisis City are striking. The music is frankly incredible, some of the best music ever composed. The voice acting ranges from serviceable to excellent.

Conclusion - To conclude, I understand the hate towards this game, it frankly DOES deserve it, but I also understand why there are an increasing amount of people who admit they like this game. Instead of following the crowd and feeling guilty for liking this game, I'm just going to be honest.

Thanks for reading

Rarely do games enthral me so much. I was in a state of constant (positive) bewilderment and fascination playing this game. It was frankly is one of the most magical experiences I've had in a while. It really has one of the most challenging but rewarding battle systems ever. The gameplay was insanely rewarding and addicting from top to bottom. It had some of my favorite boss fights ever. And the final boss? I was floored with how much they pushed the battle system to it's limit, it was truly an unforgettable moment for me. The gameplay was special. The stories? They were fantastic, they felt really diverse and each protagonist offered something unique. And they all tied together really well, especially in the end. My personal favorites were Ochette, Osvolds and Temenos'. Finally, I want to talk about the music. Frankly, this might be the best OST I've ever heard? No other game can reach the heights of this soundtrack. When I saw how they remixed the Journeys End theme with each character theme I just knew this was special.

This game truly achieves greatness for me in more ways than one. Games like this remind me why games will always be my favourite medium. A damn masterpiece thats for sure.

For the first game in the series, it's decently good. The story is somewhat interesting, mainly the setting and the plot twists towards the end. Maki is probably the best character in this game. The rest of the cast is decently good but not super deep. Battling is mid but it's easy so it was painless, encounter rate is too high though. Graphics are pretty good for a PS1 game. Finally, the lesson of finding what you live for and accepting yourself resonated with me somewhat so I appreciate that the most about this game. Also soundtrack is full of bangers.