this game sucks
ok that was a bit too harsh. Let's backtrack a bit.
Sonic Heroes is by all accounts, a decent enough Sonic game. The stages are pretty alright and the team mechanic makes for some pretty unique level design we never really see in any other Sonic game, but it's fun and playable.

When you play your first team.
People love to shit on Shadow the Hedgehog for the constant backtracking and mandatory level redos and while i can understand the frustration of playing Westopolis 10 times, I honestly think Sonic Heroes has it far worse, but I digress. Personally, I think having to play the exact same game four times is really draining, especially when the playable characters really don't differ enough from each other to make each experience unique. not to MENTION THE MANDATORY SPECIAL STAGES WHICH I DESPISE WITH ALL OF MY HEART WHY DO I HAVE TO DO THIS FOR THE FINAL BOSS SEGA WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME
so yeah I'm not a huge fan of Sonic Heroes

Persona 4 Golden is the best 6.5/10 game I've ever played. The main storyline was honestly amazing, and I loved seeing the main mystery slowly unfolding, with the main conclusion being super cool on all fronts. I do think that sometimes (especially in the early game) it dragged on a bit, it felt like the story didn't want to progress so it was just the least amount of new info possible. If it were only for the main story and some of the Shadow confrontations, I'd be confident in calling this an amazing game.

Sadly, there's more to it. And that's when the game slowly starts to fall off (but not that much, mind you). While the main cast is pretty strong, a lot of the running gags and jokes throughout most of their interactions just... aren't funny. Yukiko laughs a lot! Rise's entire personality is simping over Yu! Yosuke is homophobic! Laugh! I'm willing to just say the humor isn't for me, but it really made going through some of the slower parts of the game that much harder.

The Social Links for the most part are actually pretty solid! Some of them were a bit boring but hey, you can't expect them all to be bangers.

Ok, but well, this is still a video game, right? How was the gameplay?

eh

The combat is fine for the most part, pretty standard as far as turn-based jrpgs go, but the dungeons are sooooo boring, and whenever a floor decides to have a quirky gimmick to spice things up, it just makes it bad in the process (the less said about Hollow Forest the better). Not to mention how hard it is to gain EXP at times, so I had to change the settings to make the amount of EXP I got higher just so I could be around the same ballpark as the bosses for the most part.

I really wish I could give this game a higher grade but it's too flawed for me to do so, which is really unfortunate. Oh well, at least Marie was peak.

I am Shadow the Hedgehog's strongest soldier. Genuinely one of THE most OVERHATED games I've ever played. People love to shit on the guns when we had Gamma three games ago. People love to shit on the mandatory level repeats when the last game was Sonic Heroes, where you have to go through the exact same 14 stages four times in a row to beat the game. That said there are some complaints that I do agree with, not every stage is a banger (Lost Impact haunts my nightmares) and the story does try a bit too hard to be edgy and dark at times, but I personally don't find either of those to be bad enough complaints to drag the entire game down. There's plenty of fun stages, and for the most part you can completely avoid some of the big stinkers while still getting all of the endings the game has to offer (Lost Impact, for example, is completely optional).

Also the songs are BANGERS I still listen to I Am All of Me to this day

Can you feeeeeeel lifeeeee movin through your miiiiiind
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
looks like it came back for moreeeeeeeeeee
yeaaaaaaah
Can you feeeeeeel timeeeee slippin down your spine
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
you try and try to ignoreeeee

Sonic Adventure 2 is one of my favorite games ever made and the gem that made me a die hard Sonic fan for the rest of my life. Is it buggy? absolutely. Can the Treasure Hunt stages be really bad? mad space. Are the Mech stages good? not that much but they're really overhated. But the sheer radical energy this game holds makes it an eternal classic in my eyes, and I always enjoy replaying it.