feels like i played this alongside my six year old self. we did it lil' buddy, we finally beat the one game we had no chance in hell of finishing without a gamecube memory card

as with sa1, there's really no point in arguing about this series since the detractors have long made up their shitty minds. sa2's an interesting beast though because it manages to excel just as much as its predecessor... in very different ways!

the speed stages are great, albeit nothing like sa1's. maybe you prefer these more linearly driven, setpiece-focused levels, but i might be partial to having a spindash that can blaze me across entire courses in a matter of seconds. i like going places i shouldn't and being rewarded for it. there's some of that here, but it's not nearly the same. that said, there's no city escape or final rush in sa1 so we'll call it a draw

treasure hunting is improved tenfold. i definitely prefer the newly limited radar system (it makes finding shards early super satisfying) and the overall increased difficulty. especially after knuckles' previous story was an absolute cakewalk. rouge is basically knuckles on hard mode and i generally prefer her side more for that. love her music too, though i wish it was more lyrically driven to better contrast knuckles

shooting's a more mixed bag. tails reps one of the best stages but also most of the worst. eggman on the other hand for the most part lives up to gamma's gameplay well enough - especially once he gets his booster. there's def a sense of flow to these that i feel a solid chunk of people don't give deserved credit because they just wanna go fast and grind rails

...which is a sentiment i don't completely identify with because i feel sa2 is more than the sum of its parts. the narrative is genuinely great and actively shifts moods and gameplay styles accordingly. you're always listening to a banger, you're never on the same sort of stage for more than a few minutes at a time - and you're always pushing closer to one of the greatest fuckin' finales you'll ever find in video games. the quality of direction really skyrocketed here. the last episode's preview alone completely solos every single scene in sa1

one strange oddity though: there's a surprising lack of shadow gameplay here. maybe the devs weren't so confident in him as a newcomer and didn't expect him to be such a hit?

if they knew what was good for them, sonic team would've just made a whole ass game where you play as shadow the hedgehog...

EDIT: after careful deliberation (replaying the shit out of everything) i've decided that i have 0 significant issues with this game. i'm not even standing by what i said about the speed stages before. they're all fuckin' fantastic and i think i might actually prefer these to sa1's (granted i need to spend some more time with that game too for confirmation)

on top of all of what i've said - i've still barely scratched the surface of the chao world content and that on its own is pretty impressive for being in an already tightly-packed game to begin with. how the fuck did this get made in two years?

i also learned last night via the extra video that city escape was inspired by sonic team constantly receiving parking tickets while living in san francisco. that's worthy of some merit on its own

and maybe this is cheating to mention since it's largely battle rerelease content, but i don't care: the multiplayer is some of the most fun i've ever had with a 2-player game

you know what - fuck it, 10/10

EDIT 2: got all 180 emblems. basically a perfect game

Writing is really difficult. It's something that I spend a lot of my time trying to perfect, something I'm constantly honing and re-iterating and reflecting on. So it's no surprise that more often than not, I find video game scripts to be... less than great.

Even my favorite game, Final Fantasy VI, has a script that I'm not particularly fond of. I think it's serviceable. It has a few pretty great moments that I like a lot - Kefka's iconic nihilistic speech he preaches to The Returners comes to mind - but overall, I'm not a fan of it. It's easy-to-read and not too obtrusive, though, so I don't think it's worth making a lot of guff about.

The World Ends With You suffers from some incredibly obnoxious writing, though. It's hard to enjoy any aspect of the game, such as the legitimately fun and inventive combat, when absolutely every single character talks in the most annoying way possible. I'm not engaged with any of them but the game regularly asks me to give them my time despite them all being insufferable. The protagonist treats everyone like shit, and I understand that he's supposed to learn and grow from this, but he has literally no redeeming qualities so I'm not endeared to him in the slightest. Everyone else just orbits around him until he decides to stop being an asshole for five seconds and do something. The dialogue mainly consists of characters just yelling at each other in a way that reminds me of Kingdom Hearts (derogatory).

It's a fine enough game, with a slick and distinct style that defines it amongst its peers even if I'm not partial to it and a gameplay system that's incredibly unique. I just can't get into it because the characters are so utterly grating and the dialogue is so annoying in the most bland way possible. The protagonist is insufferable, and the people who surround him are as well, all in their own distinct ways.

I can't say I understand the praise.