This is my first time replaying this since I was a tiny child and uhhhh I guess I don't really like this one all that much.

Sonic controls well enough but there's a certain "walking on eggshells"-ness to Sonic's movement that (barring complete mastery) feels like the most reliable way to play him, I rarely felt confident in using homing attacks to blitz through a level at high speeds as it was almost always more responsive to let your jump slowly reach its apex and then more methodically dash when you knew exactly how Sonic would react. However once you start doing this you'll find that his (and the rest of the playable cast's) levels just feel trivial to play. They're just breezy enough to not be particularly interesting or exciting. That is when the camera, collision and homing detection decides to do what you want, which is most of the time but shit broke frequently enough for me to not understand why someone would give this game a 9-10/10.
Because y'know excellent games generally don't do this.

Music ranges from pretty good to great but it's completely outclassed by SA2 in virtually every way I care about. Like... come on... Metal Harbor...Supporting Me...Aquatic Mine...Pyramid Cave... Get real

To give SA1's OST Some Credit though my standouts are Red Mountain, E102's theme and Unbound for being absolute bangers (the character themes in general are pretty good) and Crush 40 is always amazing.

Unbound and E102's story unearthed a whole treasure trove of nostalgic emotion within me and replaying him was probably my favourite part of the whole thing.

Virtually everything that's good about this game is seemingly better in SA2, although I am prepared to eat my words if that doesn't hold up to my childhood impression either upon replaying. Sorry in advance.

A game with a story that's half yakuza 3 and half yakuza 6 is a mostly enjoyable time

Erm...kyoudais... wasn't this game supposed to be about Ichiban...?

Hawaii's alright. I take issue with how they utilize it more so than the location itself on paper. It has hardly any distinct locations that are utilized in main story scenes, which makes it a lot harder to build a mental image of this 3D space. However, I must add, every enemy NPC speaks in generic 'guy we grabbed off the street' ps2-core english one liners and it is brilliant. I was smiling from ear to ear every time an American yelled "I'LL SUE YOU" to me or when a bleeding enemy said "I JUST DONATED TO A BLOOD BANK!" etc. It felt like I was in America. I've never seen a more damning example in favor of how non-English battle lines should be subtitled in English (why aren't we doing this yet? 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim did this 5 years ago)

This game is very odd. It's a good time. I love a lot of it, but the stuff I don't like is unusually frustrating and I haven't been annoyed at a story in this series (wait does Lost Judgment count . . .) since yakuza 3 or 5. The Yakuza 3-ness of the story structure is really funny actually, trust me. In both games I thought to myself "Ok now the story is going somewhere" before realizing two chapters remained until the game was over. Also one of the central antagonists is maybe some of the worst shit the series has ever seen, I love it.

Virtually everything except the main story is a clear step up from Yakuza: Like a Dragon. It's so good that the game is worth playing despite the main story, even in a game genre I primarily play for its sense of adventure across its main storyline. There's still a lot of narrative enjoyment to be had, primarily in everything they decided to do with Kiryu's nostalgia-core gameplay systems as well as the optional added characterization of your party members. I'm also finding it harder and harder to be pissy about Kiryu's story not concluding by Yakuza 6 (a game I love) when they decide to add even more excellent closure with every new title that features him.

Yamai is the best guy ever, he is the true number one and I love him.

I'm excited to see how the nuanced story of Wong is developed in future installments!

IT'S GOOD

It's a well-known fact that anyone who ever talks about a Final Fantasy game either hasn't finished it or is just misremembering massive chunks of it from their childhood, so I am here to bravely and selflessly lay down the law to the haters and lovers of FF7.

First of all: It is okay to call Cloud a moody protagonist. No it is not something exclusive to Advent Children and no it is not untrue just because he says "Let's Mosey" 25 minutes before the credits roll.

This isn't a bad thing! I liked Cloud a lot and his story is one of the best parts about this game.

Second of all: Can we please stop saying this isn't a dour and self-serious narrative? It's possibly one of the bleakest settings in the series and the narrative tackles various internally and externally apocalyptic subjects. That's not a bad thing! I just don't think we have to pretend that having incidentally silly or stupid moments like a chase sequence with a giant cartoon furby in Gold Saucer, a snowboarding sequence right after a serious and heavy plot development and being able to race chocobos as the doomsday clock is ticking aren't just tonal issues with the game rather than some deliberate attempt to make the game feel silly and light-hearted.

The game's inconsistent tone is one of the bigger things I take issue with. Also anything involving the Huge Materia is very shoddy and probably shouldn't have been in the game.

Also this isn't really the game's fault but my face button inputs were fucked for bad reasons during my entire playthrough so I was stressed and confused during most minigames

The dog is the best character he's awesome