I think a term commonly associated with romance/sol animanga and games is “wish fulfillment.” Now, from my experience, it's a term usually met with some level of disdain or condescension. “Wow what a loser, they need this thing to feel good about themselves.” And, sure, I can understand where that attitude comes from, in fact I'm like that sometimes too. But I feel it's not that simple. People come from different backgrounds, places, and circumstances. Sometimes what we need is comfort from something, even if it isn't real.
Clannad, among many, many other beloved visual novels is boiled down to the common “your friends and family are important, your life is worth living” morals, but is it a bad thing to be so commonly communicated? I would assume that Maeda and the many other writers at Key are trying to convey this, and even if they were or not, intention does not always align with found purpose. Tomoya Okazaki, our protagonist, is a great stand in for players like me to some degree. He's still his own character, but I think him being a loner to align with the usual “wish fulfillment” protagonist role really works to its benefit. No matter your background or role, there is worth in finding friends and family, whether it be genetic or found. It finally gives us purpose to those who feel so aimless in life. Clannad is not simply “wish fulfillment” at play. It's inspiring us to fulfill those wishes ourselves, and fulfill the wishes of others.
I’ve seen complaints about Clannad’s core structure before, as for some people the routes are “not interconnected enough”. But is that a problem? In my opinion, anyway, Clannad is an anthology of the multiple “what if” scenarios surrounding Okazaki’s journey in life. While Nagisa’s route is what leads to the true ending of the story, it doesn’t make the other routes pointless. Regardless of what is the “true” outcome of the story, your experiences and how you see these characters develop will always live on with the player. You get to see Okazaki give these people true happiness in life, and by the true ending, he is repaid for everything he’s done. While in gameplay the route system is a little rough around the edges with much needed polish, I think playing with a guide allows for a very smooth experience.
Playing this after my most prior Key visual novel experience, that being AIR, really opened my eyes to how well thought out and executed much of Clannad is. While AIR suffers from an overly ambitious but ultimately meaningless structure, Clannad takes a safer approach and cuts out any filler. Jun Maeda and his team really wanted to make up for the mistakes of AIR, and you can really tell from how much more polish is applied to this game. Despite this being one of the longest games I’ve ever played, Clannad rarely falls victim to artificial padding. The game gives you and makes proper use of the “skip already read text” feature, which makes hopping into your next route a very quick and easy experience. It helps that the game is split into 10+ routes that all vary in length, meaning I don’t think the game can ever burn you out from a scenario. Each route (with two exceptions, one being entirely optional) is very different overall so nothing is samey either. I’d also like to make note of the amount of content on offer, Clannad is not only long from the main game but has TONS of little secrets and extra blurbs of dialogue to discover, it really feels like the team wanted to put as much as they could onto the disc.
And that’s the overall thing I love about Clannad: it’s very polished. Not perfect, but very damn close. Clannad may seem safe or tropey, but it uses those aspects and pushes them to a wonderful and engaging extent. The current top review tries to make fun of fans of this game and I’d have to say that this person probably has never experienced joy in their life. None of the huge visual novels I’ve played so far have been flops, and Clannad is no exception either. In fact, out of the three (Higurashi, Tsukihime, Clannad) I would say this is my new favorite, and knowing that Key still has some fantastic games in their catalog for me to still try out (Kanon, Little Busters!, and Rewrite) has me so immensely excited. But none of those games, or any visual novels in the future will take away what a special experience Clannad was for me. I had taken a long break from reviews and I needed to get out of that slump, and this game was what inspired me to write a little something again, especially seeing how none of the longer reviews about this game on this site are in good faith. I wanted to fix that. Thank you for reading, and if this review manages to get even one person to fully play through this game, I’ll be happy.

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages is surprisingly great. With an asterisk but i'll get to that. The Oracle duology was always a missing piece of my history with this series and now that i've completed Ages, i gotta say, it kinda goes hard.

This is the Zelda game that puts it's biggest emphasis on it's puzzles. The puzzles here feel like a step above Zelda's usual puzzle selection, in fact, i don't think the games get this crazy again in that department until Breath of the Wild. As things stand right now, the game is probably the closest the series comes to the CrossCode level of puzzle quality (though i'd say there's still a big difference between this game's puzzles and CrossCode's).

Veran is an interesting villain if only because she's the only main villain who is female. Rather insane when you think about it. I also want to point out that she looks like an animated Disney villain. The way the time travel works allowed for an improved execution of the Dark World concept when compared to A Link to the Past (and tbh A Link Between Worlds) where both worlds matter instead of just only mattering half of the time. It is also pretty funny that this is the second Zelda game that handles the element of time way better than Ocarina of Time.

Also the soundtrack kinda goes hard. I mean the overworld themes and boss themes are reused from Link's Awakening but nobody told me Moonlit Grotto and Skull Dungeon had banger of a theme. And it was around this point i realized that Zelda dungeon music is usually just noise to me and the two dungeons i mentioned are two of five Zelda dungeons in the entire series where i've gone "oh yeah, this music slaps".

My main gripes with this game stem from the fact that it's a Game Boy game. The tiny 4x4 screen makes the navigation a massive pain in the ass, turning this game into a certified "walkthrough game" and although i had more fun with it than A Link to the Past, another "walkthrough game", at the same time i wonder how the flying hell anyone was supposed to get to Crescent Island without looking it up. Or the entire Rolling Ridges segment. Other Game Boy specific gripes include the constant menuing cause the game only lets you equip two items at a time and this includes stuff that would normally be passives in the other games and the fact that the map screens are useless.

The good news is that this game would benefit tremendously from a Link's Awakening HD treatment. When most of your issues are simply because the console limits your power, that's the mark of a really good game. As it is though, the Game Boy is pretty much the only thing keeping me from giving this game a higher score.

8/10, Switch Hook and Seed Shooter go hard.

So… Meta Ridley sure was a boss fight, huh?

In Metroid games, atmosphere is paramount. The fundamental ability to effortlessly immerse a player into the imaginative planets they embark upon is crucial to their success, and it’s arguably Metroid’s defining characteristic as a video game franchise. Much like its predecessors, Prime succeeds in crafting a captivating ambience that convincingly places the player in the boots of Samus through unmatched realism in both its audio and visual design. This much should be undisputed - the amount of detail encoded into the various lifeforms of Tallon IV should not be overlooked, with every room richly constructed with detailed lighting and natural sonorousness to make them feel like genuine articles. The implementation of a first-person perspective and by extension the scan visor further amplifies the scale of Prime’s scope, literally allowing players to view the world from Samus perspective and unravel the narrative surrounding the world at the same pace she does. As a nice additional bonus, the visor also takes into account minor changes in Samus’ POV - fog can cause Samus’ vision to become clouded, and bright flashes allow players a brief glimpse into her eyes. Overall, Metroid Prime is inarguably a masterclass in terms of how it pushes the technical boundaries of its audio-visual presentation, certainly one of the most beautiful looking games, even today. Given how rushed Prime’s development appeared to be, this is nothing short of a miracle.

What isn’t a miracle, however, is Metroid Prime’s unfortunate pacing problems that distills the illusion of immersion.

Metroid Prime takes a puzzle box-esque approach to its level design, much akin to the likes of Super Metroid before it, fashioning every area as their own self-contained environment which revolves around a particular puzzle or platforming challenge players must solve in order to progress to the next task. This isn’t an inherently poor concept, however most puzzles in Prime demand the acquisition of an item that you’re unlikely to have obtained at that point in the game, mandating backtracking to retrieve said item to bypass the gate only to then be immediately gatekept by another unretrieved item! This scenario is ever-present throughout an average playthrough of Prime, with items uncovered in the second half being conveniently scattered at great distances between each other following the otherwise butter smooth pacing of the game’s first half - this only serves to inflate the runtime beyond what was necessary. Generally, environmental traversal is further worsened by the sluggish movement speed Samus seems to travel at in this game (this is an exception if you know scan dashing - a technique most newcomers and casual gamers would be unaware of).

As aforementioned, Super Metroid did take a similar approach in how it designed its world layout, and does frequently require backtracking for certain items if played linearly. However, one thing that draws a major divide between Super and Prime is that Super is much more open-ended - speedrunners can defeat Phantoon even before obtaining the Gravity Suit, whereas in Prime Samus needs her entire arsenal to even access the Impact Crater without glitches. Super also does have the reduced drawbacks of being a 2D platformer with a run button, as well as less connecting tunnels between every area compared to Prime. Most crucially, however, is that most doors in Super only require regular shots to unlock them after using the required weapon on them the first time - this is not included in Prime, forcing players to constantly swap awkwardly between beams while backtracking for hidden items.

Another glancing difference between the progression flow of Metroid Prime and Super Metroid can be observed in terms of how they handle endgame enemies - in Super, players are rewarded for deep progression into the game with strong weapons such as the Plasma Beam and the Screw Attack, which instantly trivialise most common enemies that had previously troubled them throughout their travels on the planet. This is a trend that future games opt to emulate, and often the gratifying satisfaction of steamrollering past what once were annoying obstacles empowers the player as they near the climactic finale of their journey.

In a puzzling design choice, however, Prime opts to go in the opposite direction - enemies introduced later into the game are much more substantial in hit points, with most of them requiring several charged attacks to destroy, and with a number of these encounters being mandatory fight sequences. From a narrative perspective, this makes sense - keen observers of the scan logs in research facilities reveal the Space Pirates are learning to adapt to Samus’ numerous weaponry by enhancing their armor’s resistance towards most of her beams. The fact that they are capable of learning is frankly terrifying and adds to the abnormality of your presence in this hostile environment and leaves you feeling encased in a grueling, bitter fight. Unfortunately, in an ironic twist, their armor has a singular weakness - the beams which share the same colour as the pirates themselves. This results in a very clunky and arbitrary combat mechanism, where players have to once again clumsily flip-flop between different beam configurations to defeat these colour-coded pirates. Additionally, their absurd ability to tank hits, further hampered by the lock-on reticle feeling more like an incredibly rough approximation than a guaranteed hit, makes these fights unnecessarily tedious and much worse, boring. The same can unfortunately be said about the Chozo Ghosts, which despite being a stellar setpiece when first discovered, only serve as another fancy roadblock that’s fortunately rather easy to ghost past (haha).

These aforementioned issues seem much more bizarre when viewing the narrative of Prime’s story as a whole - upon landing in Tallon IV Samus is intentionally heavily nerfed following the tutorial, serving as an effective incentive to motivate players into regaining their lost abilities and storm through this foreign planet quicker. Plopping more challenging enemies runs contrary to the usual narrative Metroid games usually follow, and leaves a conflictive bottleneck in terms of player empowerment by leaving them just as helpless as they were at the beginning, despite being arguably more powerful than before they set foot on the planet!

All this culminates in an endgame scavenger hunt that while on paper is an intriguing premise - a trek throughout previously explored caverns and ruins in search of 12 missing artifacts sounds incredibly fun! Rooms that were previously written off as trivial are suddenly given renewed purpose, and it is up to the player to solve the puzzles enlisted at the Temple to find these cleverly hidden pieces. I’ll be the first to admit that I enjoyed the Chozo Artifact searching. What I very obviously didn’t enjoy, however, was the mind-numbingly tedium of backtracking through unchanged rooms just to reach these specific artifacts. The slowness of your movement, the frequency of long, empty hallways, the repetitive and frustrating enemies, combined with all the previous backtracking you already had to do unless you discovered the Artifact Temple early (which I fortunately avoided because I’m a curious bastard who opens every door I can possibly open first chance) and have to return to it to obtain the second half of the clues which, why, just why, results in the pacing of Metroid Prime coming to a screeching halt towards its climax, which is subsequently followed by an arduous, sluggish crawl inch-by-inch across the finish line. Obviously, this does not have great forebodings on my perception of Metroid Prime.

Nevertheless, it cannot be understated the positive outlook that this game provided, which revitalised public interest in the Metroid series - Metroid Prime, alongside the release of the (much better title) Fusion that same year, proved to be a watershed moment in its long history, resulting in two further sequels being released before an Other M brought the whole brigade down in an embarrassing heap of flames. It still remains a fantastic case study into how detailed visuals and appropriate sound mixing can enhance the atmosphere of a video game environment, and provide maximum immersion into the wondrous boundaries of Metroid’s nuanced environmental storytelling.

Despite this, it should also serve as a warning sign of how poor design implementations can likewise shatter that immersion and disrupt the pacing of an otherwise brilliant game.


Final score: 7/10
Focus: Metroid Prime’s second half and its pace-breaking issues.

You ever end up writing a 3000 word rant on your biggest ever gaming disappointment?



It's August 19th, 2019. My last summer break before I go to high school.

My 15th birthday.

It was an ok day. Some trouble arised and I wasn't able to go to my grandpa's house with some friends like we were planning to, and as such I just spent the day at home with some family members coming over after dinner, nothing special (to the point where some old messages might lead me to believe something bad might've made me think it was my worst birthday ever? Honestly I can't remember, and it doesn't matter).

That is, until around 11PM. While I wasn't aware, gamescom was also taking place at around the same time, and one of the projects announced there would go on to impact me in a way nothing else has since.

As I was wiping out my phone, a youtube notification popped in. "Kerbal Space Program 2 Cinematic Announcement Trailer". I was ecstatic, to say the least. Literally the best birthday gift that I, someone who has always been a bit of a space nerd, at the time thought I had and would ever have. A sequel to one of my little gaming obsessions. A sequel with all the features I could ever want! Colonies? Interstellar travel? MULTIPLAYER? All out of the box? Quite literally the game of my dreams, and it's releasing NEXT YEAR? Holy cow that is amazing!...

3 years, 6 months, and 6 days later. It's February 24th, 2023. I'm now 18 years old, and the second semester of college (and what would then be the lowest period of my entire life up until the moment I'm writing this) had just begun, and as I'm watching the game of 15 year old me's dreams release in real time in early access, what had seem inevitable to me since the system specs had been released is now actually happening.

If you've heard even a single thing about it, you probably know. It's a mess. Hell I'll even say that "mess" is downplaying it. It was awful, actually horrendous. Probably the worst release of an early access game I've ever seen. Content wise? Worse than KSP1 in its beta stage almost a decade earlier. Performance wise? You might as well just break into actual NASA to get one of their supercomputers and even THAT probably wouldn't be able to break 60 fps with a 1000+ part ship. Stability/bug wise? Literally hundreds of bugs found right at release. From locations done by mesh just spawning in completely random locations near the ship, to clipping through the ground constantly, to wings literally falling off planes when spawning into the most noodliest rockets known to man. To the maneuver creator barely working, from orbits just... decaying over time??? I don't think I need to keep spewing hyperbole here, it was truly a mess.

And even ignoring the issues that I just listed given that admittedly those can be solved, what was there was just, very underwhelming? Take the art direction for example, it is genuinely baffling. Everything is way too damn reflective. The parts look like they're made of plastic. The kerbals themselves look more Minionized than ever before. The UI looks hideous and near unreadable (I get it it's supposed to emulate how modern cockpits look, but I think they just took the aesthetic without actually knowing why it is that way? Like the text is all pixelated because it's just cheaper to have low pixel count displays on those, that shit is NOT meant to be on an actual video game UI, and this is just one aspect of it). I guess shit like the clouds and the atmospheric scatter look alright? But I reckon even they know KSP1 mods did it better because they literally hired a modder that was doing a volumetric clouds mod for KSP1. What a shock. And god don't even get me started on the Kurzgesagt-lite tutorial videos like god I'll have plenty to say about the tutorials later trust me.

Needless to say, it was all very disappointing. Especially for me, as up until the system specs were released I was literally IN THE FRONTLINES defending the team from every naysayer, and deflecting every red flag thrown at me left and right with what I can only describe now as excuses. "Oh the Take2 takeover was mostly the fault of Star Theory's management! Most of the dev team still went through to the new team!", "Oh the game getting delayed more and more is a good thing! It's just COVID that messed everything up! (Even though by this point most video game companies have already sorted their shit together)", "Oh the game will not actually run this awful at launch! It's just the Unity Debug Mode that runs worse!". All excuses that I remember spewing to this day. And even after the system specs were released, even after the mess of the launch, I was still willing to give the game a chance, albeit now with cautious optimism instead of blind defending, but even that didn't last very long.

9 months and 27 days later. It's December 20th, 2023. I'm now 19 years old, writing this paragraph in the college hall as I wait for the last class of this semester, as the impending deadline at the beginning of January for the main project and the following exams loom over. I'm a different man. I've played a lot of games. I've read some VNs that might've affected me emotionally in ways they had no right to do. Life could be better but... heh, it also could be worse. Even with all the new worries and things I have to think about, despite all the times I've told myself I would move on from this game, I just... cannot. It persists in my little noggin. I mean, it's no wonder I've decided to write this now, given that the For Science update just released, and like, am I supposed to think it's good?

Like, I haven't played it. Even with all the alleged performance improvements and the nice graphs their twitter account shared, I still doubt the game would break 60 at the lowest settings, so why even bother trying? And as I see ksp youtubers celebrating this update like the greatest thing to ever happen since sliced bread, I can't stop thinking to myself... is the bar that low?

Like, as far as I am aware the update is just... heating that as far as I am aware is worse than it was in KSP1 in certain key aspects (like visually for example, the heating effects look hideous), a "story mode" that is just the missions in the original career mode without the testing part missions and with """"""""""funny"""""""""" dialogue, and a progression system that is just... what the original's was 10 years ago (oh, but now some experiments take time! truly revolutionary and not at all a minor feature of many in the Kerbalism mod of the original, truly impressive Intercept).

And yes, there were a ton of bug fixes and optimization updates too, but there were also allegedly some regressions regarding other issues and... I'm gonna be for real, how much more can this game even BE further optimized?

One of the reasons I stopped defending this game at all is when I found out about something truly shocking, at least for me. One of the main appeals this game as a concept had was the fact that, well, it was an entirely new game! New game then, means new codebase, and if you know anything about the first KSP game, then you know a complete rewrite of the codebase was not only expected, but necessary for this game to run well, let alone handle multiplayer. HOWEVER, THAT WAS NOT THE CASE! As it turns out, data mining an Unity game is piss easy, and everyone quickly found out most of the codebase for the backend stuff was taken straight from a beta version of KSP1 (NOT EVEN THE MOST RECENT VERSION), so I guess this new game is at the end of the day just a glorified KSP1 mod, OOPS! A decision that was surely made at the time to cut cost on hiring actual engineers, has now backfired immensely given that now whoever poor bastard is working on this game over at Intercept has to worry about a decade of tech debt on a codebase made by a guy who wasn't even a programmer by trade at the time, fucking amazing! Amazing gambit sir Nate! Like are we seriously expecting the game that can barely handle a current late game save file at an acceptable frame rate (given a review from a KSP youtuber that I watched that got the new update early) will be able to handle shit that will be expected in a late game save of the game in its planned final state like:

- A lot of colonies running at the same time with multiple logistics paths of resources being transported left and right.
- A ton of interstellar mother ships which will probably have THOUSANDS OF PARTS EACH, WITH EACH PART BEING SIMULATED INDIVIDUALLY ALL THE TIME because yea thats a thing that totally should've been carried over from the first game (and not even mentioning that at the moment every single ship is being fully simulated at the same time regardless of what you're focusing on)
- And on top of all that, MULTIPLAYER, because yea THIS GAME, THAT IS BUILT ON TOP OF A CODEBASE THAT IS INCAPABLE TO HANDLE SUCH THING WITHOUT DOING A REALLY HACKY JOB, IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE MULTIPLAYER REMEMBER???

God what a fucking mess. And like I keep coming back to how they kept the old code base from the og game because... that's just a mentality that permeates throughout the entire game! Remember the noodly rockets bug I mentioned earlier? Well I LIED because it wasn't a bug actually it WAS A FEATURE. Local genius Nate Simpson apparently thought that the noodly rockets of the original game were... part of its identity!! So they kept that! And made it even worse! Together with a bunch of other flaws that really shouldn't have been in this brand new shiny game!! INCREDIBLE!!!

It's like these people are so scared of doing an actual sequel that they instead just default to doing everything the way the old game did, although maybe that's more due to laziness and lack of actual direction and not them just loving the og game that much. And the stuff they change/add... isn't that good either!!! Like the UI, forget how it looks, it's just so clunky and cluttered. Like what was wrong with the part info window? Why does everything need to be locked in a fucking list now that I have to scroll through instead of being able to organize everything the way I want across the screen? Why is the navball in a corner??? Isn't one of the big principles of UI/UX design that the most important elements always need to be at the center of the screen? If you wanted to make space to make it easier to see the rocket you could've just put it slightly to the side but still at the center! Why is the SAS assist command this ugly ass circle with a 3d model representation of your ship's orientation??? I already know what these symbols mean! Put these on a list that takes up less space like in the original! And if someone doesn't know what those symbols mean, then find a better way to do so because honestly i don't see how the way they've done it helps either. It's a goddamn mess.

And the priorities are just so all over the place. Even disregarding the fact that this game was very clearly not meant to be released in Early Access given that they've been working on every feature at the same time until close to launch instead of just building a good foundation first??? There's just so many... baffling decisions. Why are there so many simple QOL features missing? Why did we have to wait so long for a TWR reader in the VAB even though, as far as I am aware, that's literally something you can do in a spreadsheet in like 5 minutes. Or god the tutorials... why are there even tutorials in this early access release??? You know, the period where anything can change at any moment's notice??? Why not do those close to the full launch when everything is already set in stone?? Why waste resources on animations you might not even use by the time the game is feature complete??? And regarding the tutorials themselves they just suck. Disregarding the annoying ass YT Kids sounding narrator they are literally just .mp4's followed by the KSP1 tutorials again. No innovation, might as well just watch a Scott Manley video and learn the game that way instead (which some dudes from the PR team have LITERALLY SAID TO DO WHEN PEOPLE WERE COMPLAINING ABOUT THE TUTORIALS like god have I already mentioned how bad their PR team was throughout this entire ordeal? Genuinely such a lack of professionalism that I rather not get into it). You literally have the opportunity to do... idk?? Cool interactive lectures on physics concepts? You know?? Taking advantage of the fact that this is a VIDEO GAME?? But nah youtube videos have worked up until now let's just do that inste- GOD THIS GAME SUCKS THIS GAME REALLY SUCKS SO MUC

...ok I guess I could talk about stuff I like?? Uhhhh the sound design in general is excellent, props for that. Uhhhh the planets look nice? Not as good looking as some mods I've seen of the original but you know, they still look alright. And I guess being able to build multiple ships in the same workspace regardless of orientation is a good QOL concept? Wish it worked better tho...

... Look, I don't like to be negative, just look at my rating graph in my profile. Like god I literally gave UDG a 6/10 despite the fact that that game by all accounts sucks really fucking bad. Whenever I hate, I'm most likely just being deeply ironic at the main discord server I talk in, it's just not my thing to do unironically most of the time.

So... Why am I even giving more energy towards this game than seemingly its entire management team did? Why am I even bothering writing this 3000 word review about a game in a series that only I care about in all the friend circles I frequent? How many likes is this even gonna get? Five? If that?...

I guess it just comes down to what I said in the beginning. Even after this long, the space nerd kid still inside of me still wants... well not this game but the idea of this game to come to fruition. I want to be able to build giant complexes in distant moons. Building giant motherships which part towards far away stars, as I awe at both the immensity of the cosmos, and the beauty of the small specks floating through its milky vastness of nothing. For some people space might be frightening, but for me it's not. For me this setting itches that primordial instinct of mine that urges me to go out, find things, explore the unseen, and that makes me both afraid, and utterly attracted by the unknown. It's something I really wished to have but, this game ain't it. And I know about games like Outer Wilds and No Man's Sky that are kinda like that (if anyone uses NMS as a counter argument towards my sentiment that KSP2 has no future I'm crushing your skull with my bare hands btw), but... I guess there is simply nothing quite like Kerbal Space Program... I do still need to play those games at some point tho lmao.

Well, I guess there's that, if any aspiring dev teams want to make a name for themselves, maybe make the coop aerospace sim everyone wants! If you start now, maybe you'll be able to announce it in the same week as the inevitable apology from Nate about how multiplayer just "aint possible" and how they're instead just releasing the game as is (aka, soft canceling it and moving on to another fandom to grift).

And to any low level Intercept Games developer that just read through this, I really am sorry. I am sorry that you probably have to tolerate a bunch of passionless, directionless managers as you try to salvage whatever you can of this mess. In a way this is really what's wrong with the current industry. Not predatory microtransactions or buggy early access releases. Nah those are just symptoms. What is truly wrong is how much of this industry is led by people that just do not care for this medium, and only care about filling their pockets while the low level developers pull 24 hour shifts in order to pull yet another broken mess through the finish line. But while I could continue to wax poetic about the systematic problems of capitalism, I guess that's a bit out of the scope of this review.

I think that's everything I have to say about what is undoubtedly my least favorite game of all time, and I really hope I don't need to talk about it ever again (unless they somehow manage to turn this ship over, which as I elaborated, I don't think they will). May y'all have a pleasant day, and to end this review, and I mean this completely sincerely...


Fuck off Nate Simpson

one of my favorite chapters in the game is highway 17 - a chapter that sees you traveling along the coast of city 17 in a little cobbled-together buggy on your way to rescue eli vance at the combine supermax prison, nova prospekt.
there's one section where you have to make a stop and hop out of the buggy to cut the power to a combine forcefield blocking your way.
the underside of that bridge as you make your way to the power station remains one of my favorite moments across the entire franchise. it's not some climatic or action-packed gunfight, or fighting for your life against horrors beyond your comprehension.
just a short trek across the underside of a bridge.
and yet, it allows you to fully soak in just how disastrous the combine's invasion on earth has been. the oceans have been massively drained, the sky cloudy and gray with not a single hint of sunshine to be seen, as you feel the rumble combine train overhead, transporting stalkers barely recognizable as humans, stripped of everything that makes them, to eternally serve the menial tasks waiting for them in the citadel. making your way over burnt corpses that were simply holding their own against a force that brought humanity to its knees in just seven whole hours, and paying the price of failed rebellion. "lab practicum", an altered version of the same alien, droning tune from the game's introduction, sounds off in the background as if to remind you how far you've come since the g-man's initial cryptic wake-up call, but also to put into perspective the sorry state the planet finds itself in.
and to think, what seems to the now adrenaline-and-morphine-fueled, battle-scarred gordon freeman looking over the horizon a week ago, he was running late for another day in the daily grind at black mesa, anticipating when he'd get to clock out and have a beer with barney. now it's 20 whole years later and he's seen his loved ones escape hell and come out the other end tired and aged, the little baby he saw his colleague eli vance take care of now a grown woman leading the charge against the combine's rebellion. and as if to make things stranger, despite having a hand in dooming the world to the husk of a rock it is now, he's now.. this messiah. this one hero all of humanity is pining all of their hopes on.

but hey, among all the confusion and years lost, at least barney remembers he still owes me a beer.

i may not like half-life 2 as much as i do the first game - i think the combat took quite the beating due to the far less interesting weapon selection and incredibly braindead combine AI that sees them thinking walking directly into your line of fire or standing perfectly still are foolproof combat strategies, and some parts of the game do start to wear out their welcome - HL2 does see itself pacing chapters slower on average, sometimes to its benefit, sometimes to its detriment. i think the gameplay could have been a bit better because valve had, in fact, done better before.
but i do still think about that bridge.
as i mulled my thoughts on this game over, i realize that damn bridge and all the other moments like it define half-life 2 far more than its shoddy firefights.

Figure this would be as good a time as ever to make an updated “then vs now” review of Sonic Frontiers since the final batch of DLC has finally been released. Truth be told, my overall thoughts have fluctuated on this game, but only ever so slightly. It basically went from an 8.5/10, to an 8/10, back to an 8.5/10 after the Final Horizon update. Not much has changed on that front. I didn’t mention this in my prior review but to my complete and utter surprise, the director of this game, Morio Kishimoto, had then recently (before the game’s release) created a Twitter account and had been regularly interacting with fans. Not only that, he had been regularly asking for fan feedback on what he can do to improve his product and work. Forget about this being Sonic for a sec, when has a situation like this occurred for any AAA game studio? Let alone one overseas? Of course, everyone bombarded him with the typical “it should be more like Sonic Utopia” schlock which…bleh. But nevertheless, there was some genuine advice for improvement people on Twitter tossed around for Frontiers and (eventually hopefully) future iterations of this “open zone” concept, whether it be aesthetics, mechanics, etc. If anything, I’m just really glad Frontiers has become extremely successful. Maybe not so much in terms of critical reception (it’s decent, sitting at 71 on Metacritic last time I checked but I also stopped caring about Metacritic scores as I’ve often vehemently disagreed with a vast majority of the scores given out, whether for games I hate or games I love) but more so in terms of awards won, sales (currently the best-selling 3D Sonic game of all time), fan reception, and most surprising of all, it helped boost Sonic’s already dwindling popularity in Japan, something that was a personal goal of Kishimoto. I’m just really glad to see him happy that his hard work payed off. I may not be a fan of all of Kishimoto’s work mind you (for every Frontiers and Colors, you get a Lost World and Forces), but I can’t deny he’s a very hard-working leader that genuinely cares about Sonic and strives to improve in everything he does. One Way Dream is emblematic of this. So, I guess it’s time to go over not only my current thoughts on the game now that the quote unquote Honeymoon phase is over, but also each of the individual updates as they came out and how they affected the game as a whole, as there has been quite a few quality of life improvements in regards to these 3 updates.

As for the game itself, I still really enjoy it. Running around the open zone area, chaining moves together to seamlessly leap between grind rails, hills and springs never got tiring. The obstacle courses themselves aren’t anything spectacular (at least in regards to the beginning of the game anyway) but they’re also incredibly bite sized and require at least a fair degree of player control over automation so they’re overall pretty enjoyable. I’ve even started to enjoy the Cyberspace stages to a degree. Like, don’t get me wrong, they still aren’t great and they have loads of problems, but like most Sonic games I guess the fun comes in the form of working around or flat out abusing the jank to blast through the stage as quickly as possible. Still would play Gens and Colors any day of the week over these. Unleashed uhh…depends on the stage I guess because some stages are actually way more fun in Cyberspace. Still think the story is easily the best we’ve had in terms of any of the games, and the soundtrack is still utterly incredible man. Tomoya Ohtani did a fantastic job on everything here, I can’t think of a single song on this soundtrack that I DIDN’T enjoy. Even the cutscene music is great. There are definitely a lot of problems and faults but overall, I still have a great time with this game and it’s still some of the most fun I’ve had with a 3D Sonic game in a long while. While I’m looking forward to what they end up doing with this formula in the future, the official Sonic twitter account (I know it’s called X now but let’s be real nobody is calling it that LOL) announced that Frontiers would get multiple waves of content updates. A lot of it sounded vague and uninteresting (what even would be “new Koco”? Would it literally just be Koco with new funny hats on and that would be it?) but the addition of different challenge modes and new playable characters?? I don’t think we’ve had playable characters with substantially different abilities from Sonic in a 3D game since 2006 (there was Black Knight but even then, not really). Of course, these were all free content updates so I kept my expectations relatively low because of this, but to my surprise these free updates ended up offering WAY more substantial content than I ever could’ve known. Buckle down if you wanna keep reading because this review is gonna be a LOOOOOONG one:

We’ll start with the first update, the lightest one content wise. We got a photo mode, Juke Box, a Battle Rush mode, and a Cyberspace challenge mode alongside a slew of quality of life improvements that I’ll get to in a bit. The photo mode is…meh. Nothing special, but functional; does what it needs to do and that’s really about all I can say about it. From the teaser it made it look like we could have Sonic emote and pose like the Spiderman 2018 photo mode which would be incredibly funny if that were the case, but sadly we don’t get that. We get a few filters and a weirdly kinda restrictive camera, but despite that I’ve seen some really great pictures taken using this feature so I guess at the end of the day it works fine enough. The Cyberspace challenge mode and Battle Rush mode are where the true content lies anyway. Cyberspace challenge is, more or less, exactly like how the Egg Shuttle functions in Sonic Colors: a massive gauntlet of all the Cyberspace stages back to back, trying to beat each of them as fast as possible. Like Egg Shuttle, it’s a fun little side thing to do that I felt the game always should’ve had from day 1 so I’m glad to see it return here. Battle Rush is also a big gauntlet, but this time against every single common enemy, mini boss, and Titan from each island. Due to how limited Frontiers’ combat is I didn’t get a lot out of this, but some enemies I had to figure a roundabout way to take them down quickly for a good rank. It’s also nice that it allows you to refight the Titans as this wasn’t something you could normally do in the base game. Each mode grants you a little bonus upon S ranking each: for Cyberspace Challenge mode, it unlocks the ability to Power Boost in Cyberspace. While this admittedly is pretty cool, I didn’t feel a huge difference using this as the Power Boost in Cyberspace is still a lot slower than it is in the Open Zone (as is the regular boost). Battle Rush S ranks unlock Extreme difficulty, a mode where you can’t upgrade your stats and everything kills you in one hit. It’s a novel idea (basically the equivalent of a DMC Hell and Hell mode for Sonic) but it’s still not really THAT challenging and you don’t even get any acknowledgement for beating it. No achievements, no cosmetics, nothing. Pretty underwhelming if you ask me.

Lastly, we have Juke Box mode. I didn’t really know what to expect from this mode, at most I just kinda expected a spot on the islands where you can listen to every piece of music from the game. To my surprise, this ended up being like Sonic Generations, where you unlock a slew of tracks from across the Sonic franchise and can play any one of them while roaming around the Open Zone areas. There are jukebox notes scattered around the islands much like the memory tokens and collecting one unlocks a random song. I think it’s really cool how they managed to implement exploration elements with a silly extra such as this, and it also makes areas like Rhea Island a little less desolate as now there’s a few hidden notes to collect outside of the giant towers. It does certainly change up the atmosphere whenever you play a song from a different game; Seven Rings in Hand in particular goes hard on Ares Island. Also, shout out for putting all the island movement themes to collect as well, so we can play any of our favorite movements on any island we want instead of being stuck on the 7th movement at all times. On top of all of this, there were also a slew of quality of life improvements: one of which being that they finally, FINALLY fixed Elder Koco. Now you can exchange all of the koco you’ve collected all at once and put them into either speed or ring capacity instead of needing to do it one at a time, thank GOD bro that was agony. They’ve also added a button combination to instantly restart Cyberspace levels which is a great feature, and they’ve also allowed us to turn off the Starfall slot machine entirely. I personally think you could still HAVE the slot machine in the game without making it obtrusively slapped into the center of the screen, but whatever I guess, glad they gave us the option. A lot of these were problems that many people criticized and I was kinda surprised they even added these options at all. It really did show that the team was listening to feedback, and given Kishimoto’s statements at the time, it seems we were gonna get a lot more in the next update. Overall this first update was WAY more than I thought it was gonna be to my utter delight. If this was the direction the updates were taking, then the next couple of updates were really going to be something to look forward to.

The next update, as expected was even beefier; adding even more quality of life changes, new challenges and even a brand-new ability, one that Kishimoto himself had been teasing for quite a while now. Might as well get the Sonic’s Birthday stuff out of the way first as it’s the least impactful part of the update, you basically have Sonic in goofy birthday attire and the entire Starfall Islands are decorated like that one Pepto Bismol Walt Disney World cake castle from 1996. Everywhere you go, wrapping paper, streamers, balloons, presents as far as the eye can see. The Koco you collect and your trapped friends still within the haunting confines of their digital prison take the time to put on a cute lil party hat or two. Even the HUD is infected with colorful birthday noise. It’s not something I care for personally but it is pretty funny to look at. The best part about this cosmetic update is that it comes with a new music track that’s essentially a DJ mix of a variety of different Sonic songs not found in the Jukebox update which is pretty cool. I always appreciate Neo Green Hill when I hear it. No, the true meat of the update begins with the Action Chain challenges. Essentially, scattered around the islands are these challenges you activate where the goal is to essentially do as many things as you possibly can within a time limit: engaging with springs, rails and the platforming around the island, battling enemies, doing tricks, collecting rings, all while collecting yellow orbs to boost your score multiplier. It’s a pretty interesting side mode to participate in, and while it is fun, I do have some issues with it. First off: there absolutely did not need to be 10 of these things on each island minus Rhea, that is BEYOND overkill and at times kinda turns these little side challenges into a chore if you wanna do them all. Second, fighting minibosses breaks these challenges in half. If you can build up a decent score multiplier and rush over to a guardian and kill it, it’s pretty much a guaranteed S rank. Still though, I did end up liking the addition and I hope if it comes back for future entries they find ways to improve and innovate off of it. Of course, the challenges themselves are one thing, but if you manage to S rank all of them on every island, you unlock the Spindash. This is something that Kishimoto had teased for quite a while, we even found some leftover data that revealed in game tips about the Spindash back in update 1. Now that we finally have it, uh…I can definitely see why they locked this move behind S ranking all the Action Chain challenges because HOO boy.

The Spindash is completely bonkers broken in Frontiers. It’s like a mix between SA1’s Spindash (in terms of how high and far you can launch yourself with it) and Lost World’s Spindash (where it’s more of a second form of boost in a way). Essentially, it’s like the boost already in Frontiers, just objectively better in every way. It’s just as maneuverable with the ultra-tight turning Frontiers already has, it goes just as fast (if not faster), you can use it whenever you want while moving or standing still (you don’t even have to rev it up if you don’t want to), it has a hitbox and damages enemies, it consumes the boost gauge just like the boost, and the biggest feature of all? You aren’t constantly glued to the ground at all times. When you use the Spindash, you absolutely LAUNCH off of inclines and ramps. You get so much airtime and distance with this thing it’s borderline ridiculous. Now, normally I’m not really that engaged with the whole “fly through like half the stage by going off a ramp” mentality, but I feel it works here for a couple of reasons. Reason 1 is that being glued to the ground at all times was kind of a big problem Frontiers had in general and reaching things like memory tokens in unintended ways is pretty amusing. Reason 2 is that this is essentially an endgame unlockable: something you don’t have equipped by default and something you have to put the work into getting. As a crazy game breaking toy that the game essentially goes “ok you’ve won, have fun now”, I think I can allow it. The quality of life improvements further enhanced this by allowing a slider for air deacceleration and no deacceleration when boosting through the air. While I think this is fun to play around with, this sadly only applies to boost jumps and not your regular jump, which means moves like the drop dash are still affected and jumping after hitting a dash pad still kills your speed. Honestly, and this can apply for the next game too, all I want is the equivalent of the short hop from Gens, Colors, and Unleashed. The ability to keep your speed while lightly jumping to clear small gaps feels immeasurably good to pull off, I dunno why they ever got rid of this ability to begin with.

The final “big” addition this update introduced are the new Koco. Like I said before, I didn’t’ really know what to expect when this feature was teased because…well, what was I even SUPPOSED to think? They gave us nothing to work with at all. However, to my utter shock, these new Koco ended up being the best part of all of update 2. Yeah, INCLUDING the Spindash. These new Koco are big bois with fancy getup and costumes, and when you collect them and turn them into the Elder Koco, it expands your boost gauge stamina. While this feature is kinda negated by just cylooping an infinity symbol and having temporary infinite boost, it’s still a cool upgrade that I’m surprised they didn’t already put into the game prior. That’s not even the best part though, as to get to these Koco, you need to complete the huge platforming challenge tied to them, similar to the platforming challenges already scattered around the island. The difference being that these platforming challenges are way harder to clear in comparison. Some are a reaction-based test, some have tricky moving platforms over the edge of the map, some are miniature puzzles in a way that you need to figure out to progress, some have massive wall running sections with tons of spiked balls and hazards to avoid with strict timing. I had a REALLY fun time acing these, in fact I found them so fun I often ended up going through them again even after I collected the Koco. IMO this is honestly how the platforming challenges should’ve been throughout the game, or at the very least they should’ve thrown them in there from the start and mix them with the ones already in the game. I love a good challenge and while I didn’t find these hard or anything, they definitely had me engaged throughout. Easily the best part of the new update. Aside from the air deacceleration, the only other QOL changes they added were actually also pretty substantial. You got things like disabling the cinematic camera for your skill tree moves, which I didn’t really mind so I kept them on, but then you have the ability to disable the music distortion when boosting in the Cyberspace stages which I was super happy to see added (which, by the way, was a suggestion I offered to a Sonic affiliated person on Twitter back when update 1 dropped. You’re welcome 😉). They also added an island progression screen, showcasing everything you’ve completed on each island and what % you have that specific island complete. It counts everything, from side stories, island puzzles, Cyberspace portals, and yes, even memory tokens. It’s essentially something only added for 100% completion nuts such as myself, and as I’ve already 100%ed everything prior, seeing those completion screens light up was truly worthwhile. What’s more, if you do end up 100%ing every island, you even get a special cosmetic reward for doing so (Sonic gets a crown. That’s about it. It’s literally exactly like Kingdom Hearts and I love it for that)! The extent to how beefy update 2 was, even in comparison to update 1 was nothing short of impressive. All that was left was the final content update, later dubbed “The Final Horizon”. All that was left to do was wait.

And so now here we are, the third and final major content update for Sonic Frontiers. Might as well start talking about the DLC of which this entire Backloggd page is about, right? This DLC is a major rehaul of all of Ouranos Island, as many felt the ending to Frontiers was lackluster and rushed (which I certainly do agree). This update content wise is absolutely monstrous. If you thought the previous 2 updates were content packed, you haven’t seen ANYTHING yet my friend. This DLC, on average, took me about 10 hours to beat, roughly 15 (give or take) to fully 100% it. The fact that this content update (which, I must reiterate, is 100% free btw) managed to be WAY longer in length than freaking Sonic Forces, a paid 3D Sonic game, is mind boggling. There’s so much to do and talk about that I should probably break down the different topics in order from what I feel is the most important downwards. Let’s start with the new playable characters: again, considering this was a free content update I didn’t expect much from them, I mostly just kinda expected a reskinned Sonic with some new moves sprinkled here and there, but no, they did it. They actually COOKED here. I was flabbergasted when playing this DLC man, you have no idea. For the record, I’ve never been against Sonic’s friends being playable again in a 3D space, it’s just that more so every time they’ve tried to implement different playstyles they’ve almost all failed so spectacularly. With this game, I can thankfully say we’re on the right track now.

I’ll start with Amy first, as she was by far my favorite to play as out of the 3 which is just ABSURD. I can’t believe I’m saying this but they actually made Amy, AMY of all characters, fun to play as in a 3D Sonic game!!!!! I just can’t believe it, I really can’t. Gone are the days of a painfully slow character with boring level design, limited movement and a laughably worthless antagonist chasing after you, and gone are the days of an even SLOWER character with pitiful combat, a momentum killing double jump, and a pointless invisibility technique; all of that garbage is now behind us thankfully. Amy in Frontiers is not only speedy like Sonic (all of them are in fact) but her aerial mobility is second to none. She jumps super high, has a triple jump and can glide after the 3rd jump using her tarot cards. Moreover, this glide also carries your momentum, so you can cross tremendous distances if you were already going fast beforehand. And if THAT weren’t enough, she has a bounce stomp like Sonic, with the difference being this one sends you WAY higher into the air and slows your fall. The amount of height and aerial control you have while playing as her is just absurd and it feels extremely good to just jump around as her. If there’s anything I don’t like about her, though, it’s her combat. All of her attacks are performed using her tarot cards, which feels weird. Like, I’m fine with her tarot card glide and all that, but having her attack using her cards instead of her hammer (which is only used for the quick cyloop equivalent) is a decision I still don’t fully understand. That’s not even really what I don’t like about her though, it’s more so the fact that her combat style was just not designed for this game’s enemies; or at least, not the enemies in The Final Horizon update specifically. Her attacks at a glance are more so constructed to deal with multiple enemies at once, whether it be her multi-homing attack or her card spin attack. Even with her poison debuff parry she still isn’t as good at dealing damage as the other characters. If it weren’t for Sonic’s superior combat arsenal and quick Cyloop, I’d go as far to say Amy would be my favorite character to play as in Frontiers as a whole, which, again, is just crazy to me.

Next up is Tails, and while he is very fun to play he can be a bit of a mixed bag in some areas. His flight is, unfortunately, not as good as it was in SA1. There’s a little delay at the beginning of the flight (though it is cool looking) and it only goes up to a set height depending on what elevation you start the flight at. It still feels good to fly around overall but I do wish we could get the SA1 flight in an open zone environment, that would be pretty cool. His main form of attack is, perhaps unintentionally very humorous. He just sorta chucks wrenches at you. Very angrily. Just add in the metal pipe sound effect for further improvements (thank you to whoever made that a mod btw). The attack functions similarly to the dummy ring bombs from Sonic 06, except these are so much better in every way. For one, throwing them from a standstill feels far less slow and clunky in comparison, you’re not forced into a poorly handled first person view, it has a clear arc with how you throw it, you can throw it just as fast while airborne, you can even effectively block projectiles with it (which is a challenge you do on one of the new platforming challenges). You can later nab an upgrade later to charge the attack and send it flying, creating a cluster of wrenches that not only deals multihit damage to enemies but also acts as a platform to jump on. He has his combat purpose as a fairly mobile flying character with ranged attacks to poke at enemies from a distance. So far, he is fairly fun to play as, though nothing spectacular. However, by unlocking the max ring boost from his skill tree, Tails uses the Cyclone from SA2 and completely breaks the game in half. I’m not even kidding you, this thing is utterly ridiculously broken (in a good way). Perhaps this is why they limited Tails’ flight the way they did, as this grants the ability to freely fly and gain altitude as you see fit, all at incredible speeds. Combine this with infinite boost and you can pretty much skip almost every single one of Tails’ platforming sections with a couple of exceptions. He even gets to use the thing as a laser cannon attack. If only Tails had this version of the Cyclone then maybe the mech stages in SA2 wouldn’t have sucked nearly as much. Unsurprisingly this thing is a blast to just fly around the island. Yeah yeah, it’s broken and kinda throws challenge out the window but again, I’ll allow it. It just FEELS good to fly around the island at mach speed.

Finally, we have Knuckles. He’s certainly still rougher than the rest of them, but he unfortunately isn’t the best of them. He can glide and climb walls as you would expect but both of these aspects to his character come with a big asterisk at the end. Like for instance, yeah, he can “climb walls” but unfortunately only context sensitive walls. He can climb the green surfaced walls that Sonic can, and he can also climb exclusive red walls that only he can climb. That’s about it. With that being said, just like Sonic’s wall running his climbing controls very good and it’s very fast but I still wish you could climb any surface that you’d normally slide down on. He can also glide but the gliding feels all sorts of wrong. He has a huge startup animation before he takes off and his steering is awful, SA2 gliding this ain’t. It’s not as bad as like, the gliding in 06 with how that one gets stuck on walls, is a set speed and loses altitude way too fast. This one, like Amy’s tarot card glide, keeps your speed depending on how fast you were going beforehand, and you can later nab an upgrade that allows him to glide much faster indefinitely without even losing altitude. I just don’t get the point of the delay or the bad turning. There is a funny tech you can do to somewhat alleviate the turning issue, however. If you mash the glide button repeatedly, you spam the startup animation and stay in place somewhat, and from there you can turn in the direction you want to travel in instantly. You can watch footage of me performing it here. That being said though, when it comes to combat there’s nobody else I would want to pick. His attacks at first might not look like the deal a ton of damage, but therein lies his debuff parry that lowers defenses. Combine that with his regular 3 hit combo, stomp and drill attack and enemy health bars in this game absolutely MELT, which is especially impressive considering how much they’ve beefed up the enemies in general in this DLC which I’ll get to later. In hindsight I should’ve expected Knuckles to be the strongest out of all of them but it is very satisfying nonetheless seeing these bullet sponge mini bosses drop like flies when using this guy. Even though he still has issues, I still managed to have some fun using him.

The structure of the Final Horizon is very interesting. Essentially, you start playing as the 3 new characters do a variety of things, whether that be the new puzzles scattered around the island, fighting WAY tougher minibosses, platforming challenges to find either Koco that give you a huge amount of XP to level up your skill tree, or Koco that reveal a large chunk of the map. There are objectives to find for each character but for the most part I explored what I could to upgrade and complete a variety of challenges. The platforming challenges themselves are REALLY well done, maybe a bit messy in terms of looks and aesthetic as they’re fairly obtrusive and blocky, but they essentially brought back the new Koco challenges and ran with the idea for every character. These were all a lot of fun and crafted some fun challenges around each character. The game swaps between each character automatically after a certain number of objectives have been completed. Sonic doesn’t really get any platforming challenges in the traditional sense like the other 3: instead, he gets a variety of new Cyberspace stages to play with and tower climbs that lead to Master Koco trials. I’ll get to the Cyberspace stages in a bit, I wanna first talk about the Towers because oh my LORD. They basically took the tower climbs in Rhea Island and cranked them up to 11. They’re way harder, way longer, and the platforming is even more satisfying than it was beforehand. I played on hard mode throughout the DLC (I heard that some level design elements change with easy and normal mode) and I loved every single one of these tower climbs, they were genuinely fantastic. This can apply to a good chunk of this DLC, but they really toned down the automation and fully expect you to do a lot of the platforming this time around. I will say though that they should’ve provided more safety nets on these towers for people who aren’t that good at Sonic games on easier difficulties, as once you fall off the tower you have to climb all the way back up from scratch. I personally didn’t mind this as I never really fell off apart from a couple of mistakes I made on the final tower. In any case, once you get up to the top of these towers, you need to participate in the Master Koco Trials. These are combat trials against a handful of supped up enemies that you need to complete within a time limit. They were fine, nothing outstanding but nothing too amazing either, just fun to have something new to do. The Tower climbs are really the true standout with Sonic if I’m being real. The Cyberspace stages also got a pretty big change. The Cyberspace stages in the DLC are remixed versions of Cyberspace stages already in the base game previously, with familiar layouts mixed with brand new design, new objectives, and some absolutely incredible music remixes. Like for instance in the remix of 1-7, you play with a ton of cars lined up everywhere for you to bounce on and the entire stage has moon gravity. Or you could play with a bomb on your head and you race against the clock to collect stopwatch icons to slow the countdown, race against a shadow clone of Tails, constantly pick up canisters of Rocket Boosts which works similarly to how boosting used to work (in that it kills enemies). Not all of them are winners, the one that has a speed gauge that increases the longer you boost and makes you explode if you Spindash wasn’t very fun, but these feel like more means of experimentation for future titles so I’m glad most of them are still very fun to go through. The lack of automation also applies to these levels, there’s a lot of ramps you can go off of by spindashing and to my shock even the loops aren’t automated! The camera does the whole fangame thing where it follows Sonic from behind which I’m not really a fan of but regardless it’s very weird to see non-automated loops in a 3D Sonic game. The side objectives are different too. Clearing with an ideal clear time is still a factor of course, but you also have the return of the numbered rings from Lost World and the silver moon medals from Forces. Thankfully the numbered rings aren’t as braindead as they were in Forces, as acquiring all of them in a row can be quite tricky at times. They’re spaced out in an out of order sequence on a series of tight platforming that often you need to go a real roundabout way of getting, and in the case of 4-H, they’re spaced throughout the ENTIRE stage, meaning if you miss even one, you need to restart the entire level again for another attempt. The silver moon medals are also much more challenging to get than Forces, though their structure is more similar to that game, being relatively close together and needing to be collected quickly. There are also objectives where you need to rescue animal buddies but these SUUUUCK. You need to locate them, pick them up piggyback style, and carry them over to the marked area to “rescue” them. Not only are your movement options gone when you do this, which means the jank controls of Cyberspace don’t really lend these objectives any favors ESPECIALLY when platforming over bottomless pits across small boxes, but it completely snaps the pace of the stage in half. I really don’t wanna see these types of missions come back again, I’ve had my fill.

The guardian minibosses have been ridiculously beefed up this time. Not only do they hit way harder and attack in much faster, more erratic intervals with brand new attack patterns to boot (Spider Tank and Caterpillar don’t even get their gimmicky sections anymore), but they’re way tankier too. Even with a maxed-out Sonic it took kind of a while to down some of these guardians. The changes to these minibosses are not necessarily the most gracefully handled thing out there though, a lot of them are kind of a goofy mess to fight, particularly the ones that just sorta sit there and vomit projectiles at you endlessly, but Ninja+ was great fun, Tower+ is bonkers crazy and zips around like a bat out of hell, Ghost has brand new fights with the different platforming structures around it (I particularly liked the one where you need to traverse a maze to get to its pillars), I even enjoyed fighting Tank+ for as messy as it was. I also appreciated that they made the Starfall event actually kinda fun this time! Instead of a slot machine blocking your screen and the only reward you get being purple coins, the starfall items are instead replaced with Koco, and Red and Blue seeds of defense, and picking one up gives you a TON of them at once, making this event a must do to instantly max out a character of your choice, or at least getting close to maxing them out. I also enjoyed the story being told here, Sonic using the Master Koco trials to turn his Cyber corruption into a form of power, while his friends end up feeling what he felt throughout the entire game. I particularly enjoyed the side story interactions where they end up explaining a lot of the architecture of the Starfall Islands and what they were used for, and even explained things that didn’t really need to be explained. I particularly found it humorous that the floating rails, springs and platforms in the open zone aren’t really there at all and Sonic is only hallucinating them due to being high on Cyberspace. I guess the only major things left to talk about are the final Master King Koco challenge and the true final boss. You wanna talk about a major difficulty spike? Look no further than the Master King Koco challenge. You need to fight against every Titan boss in the game back to back (minus Supreme for obvious reasons), with a max of 400 rings and no way to refill it, level 1 stats, and the only way to parry their attacks is with a perfect parry (which for this and the final boss on hard mode, is a frame 4 parry window instead of the infinite hold to parry we’ve had prior). This challenge was simply too much for so many people. Even on easier difficulties where the parry window is a lot wider, a lot of people couldn’t even finish this mode. While I was able to beat it on hard mode eventually (I even did a flawless run on hard mode before writing this review), I can definitely see why this game never had a tighter window to parry attacks. Particularly with these Titan fights, their attacks just aren’t well telegraphed to be able to react in a split second at all. Wyvern is especially bad with this. It twirls around in so many different ways before attacking and some attacks just sorta…happen in an instant; and to make matters worse, parrying is the ONLY WAY to deal damage to this guy. I think there should be a compromise if future games are going to have combat systems with a parry: shrink the parry window down to be tight, but not like…frame 4 tight lmao (the one on easy mode for instance would be fine for a regular parry), and for those who hit a perfect parry get rewarded with the slowdown that comes afterwards. IDK, just spitballing ideas here.

All that’s left is the true final boss. The thing this entire DLC has been slowly building up to. You’ve completed all the trials, awakened a new hidden power within Sonic, all of your friends have gathered the Chaos Emeralds, and after a brief match with Supreme (sadly was not changed), The End itself comes down, transforms the Titan into an eldritch multiarmed abomination, Sonic awakens his hidden power, and the true fight begins...

The true final boss is a mess in so many different ways. The camera is probably the worst it’s ever been, CONSTANTLY getting obscured by the trees that are in front of the fight, actively blocking your view of the energy orbs you need to parry. The boss is also weirdly unintuitive (what makes this funny to me is that 100%ing everything in the DLC unlocks…hints on how to beat the final boss). You need to sever the cord from the Titan in order to deal damage and prevent it from regening health, but in order to reach the cord you need to use the dodge button to retarget onto the cord and sever it, which is never really explained properly. In order to go into phase 2 you need to cyloop the center of Supreme’s body when it gets knocked down (not really hinted at what you need to do there either). There’s an attack that drains almost all of your rings if you get hit by too many energy spheres (also not explained well). And on top of all of this there’s still so many more instances of unpolished jank that I haven’t even covered with my brief explanation of this boss fight.

…this is now my favorite final boss out in the entire Sonic franchise.

Yeah bet you didn’t see that coming huh? Despite the moments of irritation and jankiness, I loved the HECK out of this final fight. The anime spectacle is off the charts once again (seriously how do they make Super Sonic so COOL bro he’s literally that guy), the perfect parry actually makes deflecting its attacks engaging because this time the attacks are designed AROUND the frame 4 parry, there’s a decent amount of challenge fighting it, the atmosphere is immaculate and the transformed Supreme is genuinely pretty creepy (especially the way it swats you away, then afterwards you see this massive 4 legged creature towering over the trees scuttling towards you, pretty unnerving for a Sonic game. You even get kinda but not really blood just like in Unleashed!), once I figured it out I had a lot of fun, and the ending afterwards finally concluded Frontiers with a nice little bow on top. I also adore the music during this fight, both the orchestral rendition (though it doesn’t really sound like real orchestra, the beginning of that track gives me straight goosebumps every time I hear it) and the godly Kellin Quinn rendition of I’m Here (though I do wish there was more screaming). Maybe I’m a sucker for spectacle considering how terrible pretty much every Sonic final boss prior to this was (though the Ikaruga shootemup was pretty good), but I don’t care. It’s gonna take quite a lot to top this.

The update as a whole wasn’t perfect, by a LONG shot lmao. The pop in still isn’t fixed (in fact it’s now noticeable in Cyberspace), there are some quirks I had with the minibosses, playable characters and the final boss, and the update as a whole was still rushed to an extent (the characters don’t even move their mouths anymore during the character interaction side stories), but I still had a blast with what I played. I know I also keep mentioning the music, but I’m just gonna come out and say it: this is Tomoya Ohtani’s best work and it’s not even close. From the new character themes, to the boss music, to the open zone themes, to some of the cyberspace soundtrack (there are a lot of composers that work on those to be fair, along with a bunch of other tracks not listed here), there’s so much variety and it’s all incredible. Sonic’s Second Wind theme in particular speaks volumes to not only how immensely talented of a composer he is, but also just to how much he GETS Sonic on a thematic level. Bless you Tomoya Ohtani, and I hope you continue to improve and deliver incredible music for years to come. Now that it’s almost certain they’re innovating and improving on this open zone concept, I can finally say something I haven’t said in years:

I’m excited to see what the next 3D Sonic game will turn out to be.

Sonic fans will always want a game that plays like what they expect from a Sonic game. Momentum physics, stunning set pieces, continuously flowing platforming, high speed action, you know the formula by now.

But has there ever been a game that plays like Sonic?

Super speed is undoubtedly a coveted superpower most people yearn for - but do they really understand the mastery it demands to make split-second decisions in the blink of an eye? Indeed, limitless speed is extremely useful, but it is simultaneously an untamed beast that can drive you headfirst into a barrier at mach speeds. This is how Sonic always views the world, as a disfigured blur of colourful masses where a split-second glimpse of a hazard may be the last image he ever witnesses.

Across every single game in the franchise, Sonic Advance 2 is consistently the best representation of how it feels to be Sonic.

Of course, the most accurate Sonic experience cannot be completed without suiting music and visuals to back up the gameplay. Thankfully, Advance 2 delivers on both aspects, with the sharpest, most striking 2D Sonic sprite to date, complete with cool-looking afterimages to express your dominance and control over the game’s pace. The environments themselves have a sharp edge to them, with contrasting color palettes littering the terrain and background to further push the cool vibes Advance 2 goes for. The visuals go well with the constant high-octane, high adrenaline music, which leaves its mark with a consistent and prominently featured rhythmic pulse beat that constantly urges the player to rush past everything around them.

It has been commonly theorised that the Dimps GBA trilogy is modeled from the mainline Adventure trilogy that was released around the same timeframe, and I personally agree with this standpoint. Advance 1 takes a more tamer, simplistic approach that introduces Modern elements into 2D Sonic, much as Adventure brought about the origins of the Modern classification in general. Later on, Advance 3 would also take inspiration from Heroes’ team-based gameplay mechanics with its Tag Action gimmick. This leaves Advance 2 as the 2D counterpart of Adventure 2, and if you observe the design of SA2’s speed stages, you’d notice similarities in how both games play. They both implement a trick system that incentivises players to storm through the level in style, and both have specialised attention to the speed and spectacle of their levels. Heck, SA2’s most iconic set piece has Sonic skateboarding on a constant downhill slope, just like literally every level in Advance 2! That being said, while I do disagree with Dimps’ approach to making every level share the exact same geographical structure, and acknowledge it as a flaw present within the game, the design intention is still apparent. A fast-paced, non-stop hurdle of an obstacle course that offers high rewards in exchange for high skill, filled to the brim with cool set pieces to make Sonic’s conquest of the area as cool as humanly possible.

What sets Advance 2 apart from SA2, however, as well as every other game in the franchise, is its insurmountable yet satisfying to achieve skill ceiling.

While SA2’s trick system focuses on the player’s skill to chain together attacks and usage of the B button, Advance 2’s trick system retains that feel of being Cool As Shit while also focusing on something far more important - movement. Each trick is designed to grant Sonic that extra push of aerial movement he needs to reach a distant platform, and allows him to keep momentum going as soon as he lands on his feet. Combined with the fact that you get much higher vertical jump height by pressing the jump button before a grind rail/ramp launch, aerial movement with the trick system is versatile and incredibly precise to master. The trick system also has the unspoken niche of giving Sonic the ability to interrupt his aerial trajectory, allowing him almost complete control over where he wishes to go without sacrificing boost mode in the process.

Oh yeah boost mode

Boost mode is, in my own personal opinion, the single most innovative addition to 2D Sonic as a formula. Unlike later iterations that made the Boost immediately available and invulnerable towards most enemies, Boost Mode is a reward for expert gameplay, demanding a high level of skill, smart memorisation of the level layout, quick decision-making and free-flowing platforming in order to earn it, while still being vulnerable to enemies to prevent complacency from the players’ end. And much like the later boost games, Advance 2’s obstacle course level design also constantly hurls itself at the player, challenging their ability to maintain this wildly uncontrollable form of speed against wave after wave of hazards and enemies. The ring system also gets some much-needed love beyond being a recognition of the player’s ability to not take damage (an incredibly easy feat if you go slow SMH), with higher ring counts making attainment of Boost Mode quicker. In a way, Boost Mode fully embraces the speedrunning nature of video games, requiring players to master their craft of the trick system, recognise the ideal route for optimum speed, be constantly aware of their surroundings and the hazards ahead, and discovering dash pads that allow them to maintain Boost Mode while weaving past the complexity of the level design.

All three mechanics come together to form an unprecedented sense of resonance and harmony with one another, forming a satisfying feedback loop that constantly intertwines within itself in a short timeframe. Get rings. Faster activation of boost mode. Utilise trick system to maintain boost mode. Up to this point I’ve yet to mention Sonic’s Air Dash, which, with its (admittedly flawed) difficult input, further raises the bar required to master the high speeds of Advance 2. When everything blends together, the end result is a thrilling adrenaline rush which pushes you to the absolute limit. A perfect middle line between Classic Sonic's focus on momentum, fluidity and earning speed, and Modern Sonic's focus on decision-making, adrenaline-fueling thrills and maintaining speed.

In Advance 2, every action and decision is a commitment from the player that can either see them passing with flying colours or crash and burn. With its notoriously high skill ceiling, the average players’ experience is extremely divisive. You either fail miserably, or you run like the coolest motherfucker on the planet. Just like Sonic. Just like those split-second decisions that often decide life or death.

To me, Sonic Advance 2 represents the pinnacle of Sonic as a control character. It simply feels like Sonic. Nothing else comes quite as close.

Never fear the fall.

Final score: 8.5/10
Focus: How Advance 2 represents the peak of Sonic as a playable character.

...but definitely fear the random monkey obscured by the tiny GBA screen.

Ryukishi is a hack and a fraud, I can’t believe I spent 60+ hours on this nonsense of a VN just for it to tell me that life is worth living and trust my friends and not some deep methodical pretentious mumbo jumbo. I hate this game.
That being said I love this game. Ryukishi you madman, how did you do it. I started this all the way back in late July and I’ve consistently been hooked on where the story was going to go next. I really love the characters, the uncanny atmosphere, all that jazz. This review is mostly focused on the answer arcs of the series but the question arcs are undeniably just as important to the overall experience.
The contrast of Meakashi to its successors makes for a really damn engaging opener for the answer arcs. The complete brutality of it all while also forming one of the most morally gray characters so far makes for possibly my favorite chapter in the whole series. It can get unbearably brutal at points, but that just means that it is accomplishing its purpose. It’s a story of how the abused becomes the abuser, and the things people will do for love. It’s a story that shows the real horrors aren’t the demons or curses, it’s ourselves. Easily the most tragic chapter of the VN, and I have to admit I got a little emotional towards the end despite what terrible things our MC did along the way.
Tsumihoroboshi comparatively starts an upwards trajectory of hope after the extremely bleak first five chapters, Rena and Keiichi shine their brightest here, making for some of the most hype moments in the entire story, and ultimately the message that this chapter establishes is rather inspiring, it’s about breaking “fate”.
Minagoroshi is….. complicated. I always see the highest praise for this one but honestly I didn’t really get it? It does wrap up a lot of the remaining questions for the audience which is cool and all, but I found this chapter overall to be a bit of a slog for me to go through. Maybe it was burnout? Not sure. The bigger moments still really hit hard but in the end I still can’t put my finger on why I’m not too hot on this chapter. Still good though.
Matsuribayashi is the last main arc of the series, although I still have Rei to go through to properly cap things off. However, this is still a great finale on its own. A liiiiiitle drawn out, sure, but overall pretty earned? We get insight on the core perpetrator, one last section to gather all our clues together for one final showdown, and… a very good showdown at that! The actual ending itself was a tad underwhelming but maybe I’m an entitled ace attorney brat who wants flashier finales or something. Most of what happened I sort of predicted, which isn’t a bad thing, moreso me not imagining the story could organically end any other way, which isn’t a bad thing.
Woah woah woah, okay we’re not done here, because I still have some things to say before signing off. Despite what that star rating will tell you, I must say that Higurashi is NOT a flawless masterpiece!!!! Sorry Ryukishibros but I still got some choice words to say about this man and his stories. The fanservice sucks!!!! Nothing will ever excuse this and I just need to get this out of the way because it is EASILY the most frustrating thing about this VN and it makes me hesitate to call it near perfect. Also yadda yadda yadda the prose can be repetitive and annoying, it’s a dice roll on if you get a raw line or not etc etc etc. I’ve talked to people who consider Higurashi like, high art, and while I can respect their passion, this is far from the best story ever told. It’s just a really really good one that’s impressive, especially considering the context it was released in. Dunno, can’t look at the maid cafe scenes and be like “yooo this is flawless peak that no other writer can achieve!!!” If anything Higurashi is very derivative of works by other writers (the quirky tsukihime inspired visual novel!!!!), it’s a celebration of stories as a whole, while still being unique in it’s own right. Anyway I hope that didn’t come off as hate, because I genuinely love this game so much, it’s one of my favorite long term video game experiences ever, and I love being apart of this community (seriously WTC shitposting is funny af) but I do NOT think it is free from criticism, not even close.

And so my journey into the odd world of Visual Novels begins. Feel free to block me if I become a pretentious VN elitist because of it. There's so much to see, not just from 07th, but from KEY Visual Arts, Type Moon, Leaf, etc. Words cannot describe how excited I am to further dip my toes into the medium.

Do I recommend this? Well….. I suppose? The first chapter is free on steam so there really is nothing to lose trying this. There are poor aspects of the writing you’ll just have to bear with, moments that will make you go “Ryukishi what the fuck is wrong with you,” but I think if you can brute force those aspects, you have a wonderful story that has earned it’s place in the visual novel industry. I don’t care that the OG artwork is corny, I don’t care if the story gets silly, it’s HIGURASHI: WHEN THEY CRY. It's a genuinely passionately created piece of media. I eagerly await to try Ryukishi’s other works in the future, for When They Cry once more.