I had a lot of fun with this, far more than I was expecting. Did an encore mode playthrough this time and it was a great experience. Great level design that encourages speed and exploration. And the character switching added much needed variety to the levels. Bosses were easy though, just damage boost into them and you win always. Also the special stages in encore mode were kind of cancerous, if they had a restart button I'd do them all, but after trying the second one I gave up because it was too tedious to exit the level and return to the ring to keep retrying over and over again. On a positive note though, it has amazing music and the art style is so clean. I really hope Sega publishes a sequel to this which is fully original with no old stages, but there has been no news on a sequel so far which is worrying.

Masterpiece, Zenith of the medium. Everyone agrees the day time levels are superb, with tight platforming, speed, difficulty and length. Everyone agrees the graphics are far ahead of it's time. Everyone agrees the story is at least great. Everyone agrees the music is incredible and everyone agree this game has massive scope.

I may need a thesaurus, but I know this game has a lot to love. But what about the Werehog? This is where the split begins, do I like it? No. I love it. This may be controversial, but I think this is some of the best combat I've ever played. The amount of combos and strategy involved is insane, you can kill enemies incredibly fast if you know what you are doing. It's some of the most fun I've ever had. However, the Achilles heel is that you need to level up the "combat" skill to unlock the combos. The base werehog is boring, most people wouldn't invest into the combat since most would want to invest into daytime Sonic which is more fun at the start. Without investing into combat, most people resort to spamming Y, which can get you through the game but it's incredibly slow and tedious. I did the same as a child and I hated the Werehog. So if you play this game, invest into the Werehogs skills, especially combat, it makes it a lot better. Is this bad design? Yes, it's one minor slipup which can make or break playthroughs. But this is my subjective review of the game, I'm judging how much fun I had with it, and I had a lot of fun.

There are some criticisms I have though, the performance is pretty abysmal, it is playable but dipping to 15fps is not acceptable, but I look past it most of the time. Some of the Werehogs puzzles like the block pulling puzzles are slow and boring, but these dont take up too much time. Finally, in general, the camera could be better, sometimes mainly during the Werehog the camera can get obscured so it's hard to see anything, it's a minor annoyance.

To go back to positives, the story is fantastic, it's not too lighthearted like the meta era but not super serious, it's the perfect tone, amazing character development, stakes, etc. The voice acting is also peak. The difficulty of this game is also great, it's surprisingly hard which I like, even the daytime levels can be hard to master all these years later unlike Generations. I love the final stage Eggmanland which challenges you in every area with one giant gauntlet. Levels are decently long compared to Generations too, it never ends before it begins to get good, perfect stage lengths.

The final section of this review I want to spend time talking about is the budget and ambition here. The amount of budget in those CGI cutscenes alone must've been insane, it's crazy how much content is in this game and how quality it is. They really gave their all here, didn't cut any corners, and you can tell. It has a lot of heart compared to something like Forces.

To conclude, I didn't go into big depth about the Modern Sonic levels or other obvious positives because most people know about this, I felt like this review's main point was to defend the Werehog and to make others aware how to easily "fix" it. In future, if this gets remastered, the XP should be automatically added instead of manually to make it impossible for the Werehog to be boring to play as. One minor gameplay flaw really did ruin the game for a lot of people, including critics which is unfortunate.

Thanks for reading folks

This game is a let down in a big way. I do admit, the first two worlds are decently fun, but after that, the game goes downhill. It starts to get really bad in the Snow world where there are annoying gimmicks implemented like the snowball level, casino or that idiotic boss fight against the green girl (I forgot her name). For every good level there is an equally annoying level. It's way too inconsistent, higher highs than something like Forces but lower lows. The parkour is never used to it's full potential. This game is also the grindiest Sonic game in existence. I had to play the first level at least 20 times to grind for animals which you need to progress. The music is also painfully forgettable except for a few bangers. The graphics are good on a technical level but art style wise it's not memorable.

The story... My God this is terrifyingly, monstrously bad. It's offensively bad, horrifyingly bad, it makes me angry how bad it is. They butchered Tails especially. He becomes a dick in this game for no reason...? Like he acts like an egotistical child, nothing like his Adventure 2 character which was his best incarnation. The game also plays with cool ideas like Sonic mentally breaking by losing everyone close to him but they don't take it anywhere at all. Same with the idea of Sonic working with Eggman which is cool but it isn't used to it's full potential. Good concepts, poor execution. The script and voice acting cannot get me invested at all, when "serious" moments happen I laugh my ass off. Like Sonic makes a terrible meta era joke about him being "cool" like the ice area around him or something and Eggman swears to eat the Zeti's black hearts and murder them 10 seconds later. The tonal whiplash is too laughable to take seriously. The Zeti are some of the most forgettable villains of all times, just boring Koopaling ripoffs with worse designs. No motivations, one note personalities. Villains like Mephiles are evil for the sake of being evil, but he was at least memorable in a lot of ways unlike Zavok who is lame as shit. The story here truly is one of the worst I've ever witnessed. Does story matter to Sonic? Yes. Story has played a major role since the third game, it's apart of Sonic's identity, and this game butchers it worse than Colors. And that is it's biggest sin to me.

Overall though, I said before for every good level there is a bad level, so there is a decent amount of good levels, they are basic but I had some decent fun sometimes. It an inconsistent mess, but I had some fun with it. I'd recommend this for less than $5 for which I got it for but nothing more than that, skip cutscenes too.

While not being as good as the HD version, this one is certainly worth playing in my opinion. Day time levels are a unique spin on the boost formula where boost is way more limited and situational, levels are also generally a lot more spacious too which take advantage of the drift a lot. The werehog's combat is nowhere near as good as the HD version but it's an above average brawler with some fun platforming for sure. The story is still in tact which is great but presentation wise it is a downgrade going for a visual novel style and removing the hub worlds. I think this is a nice bonus to the original game, highly recommended. The final boss is way better too.

This is simply the best 2D Sonic game ever made and also one of the best Sonic games ever made. It's pretty fantastic, it expands on Sonic 2 even further but turns the scope up to 100, adds new characters, settings and even cool lore and a great short and sweet story solely done through visual story telling. It's pretty much perfect besides some minor pace breakers in the first half of the game which are very minor but thats the only flaw I can give it. Oh yeah and the final boss is complete bullshit, a bit too punishing if you die but not as bad as Sonic 2. Highly recommended.

I think I'm the only soul on Earth who thinks this is way weaker than Episode 1 or HL2. My issue is that it felt way too gimmicky for my tastes. For example, the first 1/4 of the game is spent in small cave areas fighting annoying bug enemies, in general this area was visually repetitive aswell as fighting enemies was very boring. The middle section of the game is decent but the last 1/4 of the game takes an open ended approach to level design which I'm not a fan of. There is no incentive to explore for me so finding the right path ends up being tedious. The final boss while I appreciate the scope just ends up being annoying, limited ammo, an annoying gimmick where you have to fire sticky bombs onto the striders and those stalker enemies which accompany it are bullet sponges. It felt more annoying than fun, and thats what I'd say about this game overall. The story is cool, it's great just like all of HL2 and the visuals are superb. But the gameplay being annoying combined with the abrupt ending just left a sour taste in my mouth. I like the rest of HL2 but Episode 2 just ends up not catering to my taste. No disrespect to anyone who likes this, just didn't jive with me.

I wasn't the biggest Half Life stan. I thought the franchise was good but it wasn't anything special to me. Then I played this game and my mind has been blown out the water. This is my second favorite shooter ever made, despite being in VR, mechanics aren't stripped back, in fact, it's the most involved Half Life game I've played. Combat is intense and exciting, ducking for cover in real life is just so cool, aiming feels satisfying, reloading with gestures just feels so great. Puzzle solving requires a lot of physical precision, thought and speed. The exploration for weapon upgrade crystals encouraged me to explore every nook and cranny from opening shelves to smashing boxes open. The entire game is immersive but also mechanically satisfying and well designed. It's almost perfect. The story is the best Valve has ever told, it made me care about the Half Life world, I did care a little bit from previous games but this game's characters, world building and plot twists near the end got me fully immersed in it's world Valve is trying to show. The ending which I won't spoil had me so freaked out due to how insane the plot twist was, it leads so perfectly into Half Life 2 since it is a prequel. Overall, this is easily Valves best game ever made, I hope it becomes more accessible in the future through platforms like Oculus Quest platform and PS VR. Awesome experience.