It has finally happened. I've beaten Sonic '06... and I can muster no hatred for it whatsoever. It is, quite obviously, an unfinished mess of a video game. It is full of bad decisions. Each level has at least one poorly conceived piece of nonsense which greedily consumes either a player's time or their stock of lives. The automation of its spectacle setpieces cannot be trusted. Sonic '06 is a game that must be played safe. Flirting with shortcuts will only invite destruction. Its story crumbles to dust under the weight of a single glance of scrutiny. Its voice direction is simply wrong in so many places. On an actual Xbox 360 hard drive rather than my PC's SSD, the loading times are so horrific that I would never, EVER recommend that anyone play it in that way, which until about a decade after its release was the only possible way to play Sonic '06.

And yet... this was fun. I had fun with Sonic '06. More than I have had with Sonic Heroes. I don't know if this makes me a defender or a hater.

Man... is this... the best one??? I dug this one way more than I thought I would. Great stages, great bosses... in a lot of ways this feels to me like a "fixed" version of Mega Man 2. You've got the slide and charged shot here now, you don't have anything like Metal Blades being the overpowered answer to every situation, you don't have bosses turning to dust the second you enter their room with the right weapon, there's no freakish difficulty outlier like boobeam or yellow devil... You've got a secret side-collectible thing but it's just a useful and fun bonus, not something secretly mandatory like the Magnet Beam...

Yeah I'm gonna say it, this one totally rules. If you're looking for something harder, you'll like 3 more, but if you're a big fan of 2...? I think this is the one to check out. It's hard to quantify why I feel this one is so much less bland than 4, but there it is.

Edit: I've figured out why I like this one so much more than everyone else seems to... I don't use the boss weapons outside of hitting boss weaknesses and I never have. Turns out the main complaint people have with this one is the weapons. Well, if you're usually a buster-only hero like me, you'll be right at home.

I'm sorry dog, I just can't. I don't like having to change equipment for every boss. I don't like hitting enemies for 1 or 2 damage until my combo ramps up and I can start maybe hitting it for actual numbers. I don't like having everything come to a screeching halt every two seconds because somebody's casting a spell. I do not appreciate arbitrarily placed invisible traps that only exist to make me cast a slow-ass spell every time I walk into a room. None of the systems in this game give me any satisfaction or joy. Fiddling with inventory crap is almost universally my least favorite part of any game, and Vagrant Story perfectly represents to me the issues with difficulty in so many RPGs. Show up with the right gun and fire the silver bullet, or prepare for abject misery. The only choices are the right and the wrong, and even being right still feels like shit. In my experience, I have found defenders of Vagrant Story's gameplay to all be operating under the same misunderstanding. Something having depth or it being difficult to discover, does not actually make it fun. The complexity of Vagrant Story does not, in any way make it a more enjoyable experience for me to play. It just makes it even easier for me to have a miserable, god-awful time by entertaining any of the fifty thousand ways to play it "wrong." Even if you're doing Vagrant Story "right", it is so stop-and-start, so infuriatingly slow in each of the wrong ways, so loaded to bear with stupid block puzzles that even the game's fans don't seem to actually like, that I am adamantly convinced no teacher in the world can help me learn how to enjoy playing Vagrant Story.

The writing however, is something else entirely. As is typical of all these Ivalice games, it is stellar. The dialog here is immaculate and carries the same type of maturity present in Xenogears and Final Fantasy Tactics which is so uncharacteristic of the rest of the medium even today, but especially for in its time. The most impressive thing about this whole game though is the honest to god cinematography of its cutscenes. The introductory section is absolutely phenomenal and feels like a genuine feature film, in a way that not even Metal Gear Solid does. It's such a pity that I find it hard to enjoy playing through this even with a supercharged, action-replay powered character. Even when making the combat as painless as possible for me in this way, on a second playthrough, just trying to navigate and traverse Lea Monde is so fucking irritating to me that no amount of optimism can show me a good time. If I felt like being even more inflammatory, I could call Vagrant Story the worst metroidvania I've ever played, but even if every second of gameplay makes me wish I were dead, its writing and cutscenes absolutely demand my respect.

If you've ever wanted to know how beneficial snappy movement, innovative storytelling, cohesive direction, and a wonderful soundtrack can possibly be to a game, play Nier Replicant.

This is a game loaded with drudgery. Almost every side quest is a menial chore and the main game's content is recycled ad nauseum. If not for the very solid combat and the fantastic strengths above, this game would be insufferable to play.

Typically though, it's not. The soundtrack breeds a desire to simply relax and inhabit the game's world, and both movement and combat are pleasing enough to ease the tedious tasks given to the player.

I'm honestly a bit surprised to see such universally high ratings for this on here, because this game almost feels destined for controversy. Love it or hate it, it is certainly memorable and distinct.