It's a perfect game to me. Every route is unique and has their own gameplay loops and smart use of the RPG system to keep the experience fresh althroughout. The best routes especially were the ones that went beyond the simple JRPG format and did something unique; Edo Japan, Wild West, Present Day, and Distant Future being the most unique. The others follow more closely with standard JRPG design, but are still unique and fun to play nonetheless, with Near Future having my favourite story, Prehistory having the funniest visual gags, and Imperial China having the best gameplay. The way every story ties into each other is perfect, in my opinion. The set up to that is perfect, it made the stories for each route go from fun adventures to precursors for something bigger and incredibly unique. The music is fucking gorgeous as well, great battle themes, great character themes, stellar boss themes, most especially the final boss ones, and some great pieces to emphasize the emotions of a scene. Game is pretty as hell too and makes use of the HD-2D style to make scenes more unique and dynamic despite what could initially be seen as a limitation from the pixel sprites. This is an experience, getting to go through each route, fighting enemies, listening to amazing music, getting to experience amazing stories, it's all perfect to me and should be gone into as blind as possible. I knew absolutely nothing and walked straight in as a wide eyed child and came out of the experience a traumatized adult. It's perfect.

Flawed in some ways, mostly story related since it isn't as tightly made as 2's and the addition of several new characters bloats the cast. Gameplay wise, the game is great and provides a lot of missions that vary in objective and gameplay style. Sly 2 was more focused on very thief like things such as recon or trading with black market people, but Sly 3 goes harder on providing a lot of unique gameplay segments more reminiscent of Sly 1's abundance of mini games. I think it's a good package overall, and the core 3 are still amazingly written, though I feel they coulda made the Dr. M and Bentley connection stronger.