I am surprised to see most of the scores so low for this game. I did come in to the game with low expectations but all I really wanted the game to be was a game that felt like a sequel to BFBB and while this game doesn't have the same structure I felt like they delivered that really well. So level design wise if BFBB played like Mario Sunshine than this game is more design like Mario Galaxy 2, the levels are much more linear especially on your first visit but they make the level design just open enough to hide a lot of collectibles in them. The level design is really fun too they took Rehydrated's Spongebob and gave him a glide and a few other moves and he's really fun to play with. Keep in mind the glide is lot more limited than Sandy's glide, you can't really make much distance with it but it feels right for correcting jumps and finding clever ways to skip segments. This level design is also made where there are a lot of intentional ways to skip some level design if you know how to use your abilities well which is really cool and I feel will have some great speedrun potential. The level themes I was really worried about at first as they borrowed five of them from BFBB but the theming and level design made them feel not even remotely like their BFBB counterparts. Levels especially like how they redid Downtown Bikini Bottom and Goo Lagoon I would have just given them different names because they have such good theming that I feel like they didn't need to call them after those original levels. There are two original levels in this game too and I won't spoil them but they're incredible and work really well. This game's levels are pretty simple there never was anything super challenging like you would see in BFBB's dream world or Flying Dutchman but the levels have this really good momentum in them with the platforming being fast and all the moves really flowing into each other. The boss design is probably on par with BFBB's but there's more of them so it works out well and they aren't just fights a few of them are kinda creative. The final boss is really unremarkable though, really short and easy and because of that I thought there would be a true final boss once I went back and 100% every level but nah. The game forces you to play every level twice in order to 100% because they put new collectibles in them and a couple levels have new objectives but I really liked this it made revisting the levels really fun especially since the new challenges they add with your complete move pool felt satisfying. The costume mechanic is fun even if they aren't tied to gameplay and there's a lot of references in there. This game references a lot of Spongebob material even some stuff from later seasons which is really cool. The humor isn't that great but I do think it's better than BFBB's. I know I am very biased with why I'm giving this game such a high rating but I just was really pleasantly surprised with and even when I was going for some annoying achievements I was having fun the whole way through. I do hope someday they make a game with level design a bit more open ended but this game feels like a genuine sequel to BFBB it really does feel like what the next game would have been like if Heavy Iron kept making these games.

Reviewed on Feb 08, 2023


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