What a joyful experience this was! One of my personal favorite rare things in video games is the moment-to-moment gameplay coming together with the aesthetics to feel "toyetic". It's hard to define, but it's got a lot to do with the mechanical and visual variety of tools given to the player and their utility in gameplay feeling satisfying. Kirby's main gimmick is already the epitome of this, but now there's also everything about the way the Robobot Armor works that enhances the feeling of happily smacking different sets of colorful action figures together, especially with that Patented Sakurai Hitstop™ in combat. I don't know if I preferred stages specifically designed around plowing through them with a certain item or ones that let you go wild with whatever you came across, but the level design and smooth linear difficulty curve made both styles very enjoyable. I'm glad I went out of my way for the Code Cubes because the frantic pace of the EX stages was such a fun step up from the standard levels, the second one in Access Ark being an incredibly cool victory lap.

Really, my only complaint is that there weren't even more forms for the Robobot because I'd have loved to see a Whip variant. Apparently ESP, Doctor and Poison were introduced in this game but only ESP has a robot form? ESP was my favorite one but they missed out on the potential to make Kirby run over enemies as a mobile hospital. Well, that, and also the final boss was a bit tedious, although this can be forgiven on the virtue of the things happening on screen in that fight being absolutely fucking sick.

I never played much of Kirby and it's crazy to think I might've missed out on this completely if I hadn't rushed to fill up my dusty 3DS with games in preparation for the eShop shutdown. This is the type of game I wish I had as a kid, but there's definitely no bad time to give it a spin. Kid me would've probably gotten stuck on like Mecha Knight or something anyway

Once you get past the novelty of rhythm combos, it's not the mechanically deepest game out there, but the presentation is exuberant and the focus on the on-beat fun in every aspect from the gameplay to the visuals and soundtrack never wears off. The inconsistent character designs put me off at first (the game sometimes feels like it can't settle on an art style) and that first trailer didn't do the writing any justice, but this party grew on me a lot over time, with a lot of fun interactions, neat arcs, and really rad culmination of their efforts before the final boss. It just kinda feels like a cool 6th-gen action game I'd have played back in the day so the fact that it brings me the same feeling as an ice-cold Fanta in July is a good bonus.

This is one I literally don't "get" the hype for. The combat doesn't feel great with any of the weapons, everyone's voice acting is monotone, the upgrades are boring and incremental and the stage/boss progression is always the same. The dialogue acknowledging your progress in hundreds of different ways is an impressive achievement but I don't particularly care about what most of these characters have to say. I don't even think most of them are that hot, they look like Critical Role fanart. This was kinda fun to play through but it feels like a roguelite for people who hate roguelites

Sometimes I think "it would be cool if Konami was still putting out weird Yugioh games with unusual gameplay styles" until I actually play one of said games and experience the definition of licensed third-party shovelware. The developers were probably given the terms "Yugioh" and "kart racer" along with a 6-month dev cycle and had to make the most of it, which is why the game's "meta" consists of summoning Sonic Chick and holding on to 3 copies of Rush Recklessly until the final lap so you can stand a chance against the comically overtuned rubberbanding. The game is over in 2 hours and little Timmy's christmas is ruined.

Nothing but respect for games that keep throwing curveballs for the entire duration of the campaign (and more) let alone doing it with a single button. Played 9 straight hours of this dumb click-and-drag romp, exhausted all current content and somehow never got bored because it never lets up on introducing new types of stupid shit for you to do. This game answers the very important question of "wouldn't it be CR4ZY if golf was fr*akin RaNd0m??" with a resounding "yeah kinda" and for that I give a warm recommend.

God damn it. One of the worst experiences to have with a video game is gradually feeling the opposite of it "clicking together". The first few hours of this are downright enchanting, the elaborate prose gets you sucked so easily into the world of this rundown space colony and you get the genuine impression that your build and choices matter in the long run. You're managing the limited time you have the best you can, juggling between progressing quests and keeping yourself alive, start thinking about future runs even before finishing your first one and all of it is a great time.

That is until about halfway through, when the smoke-and-mirrors falls apart and it becomes evident that the questlines never intersect in any meaningful manner, none of your choices matter save for binary selections for the endings, and the tension built up by an in-game death timer actually means fuck all. Which is a damn shame because there's some really nice writing and worldbuilding here - save for the occasional script clunkiness due to it being a small production, the storylines are consistently engaging, character motivations are layered and they do a really good job of conveying how much of a shithole the Eye is. And for a while, the gameplay systems were pulling their weight here too, making you feel like just another cog in the machine; until you hit the point in your playthrough when you're a jack of all trades with an entire savings account at your disposal, and all of the world interaction slowly turns to tedium due to the ultimately meaningless timegate system. I understand the intention was to give the player some room to work on different quests simultaneously as they wait for their primary one to open up, but the closer you get to endgame, the less content there is to warrant these kinds of restrictions.

Regardless of the meandering gameloop and the incredibly annoying illusion of choice, this was honestly still a good way to spend some 10-ish hours. The writing really brings the setting to life and it was fun seeing these characters evolve and fulfill their goals in a cruel world that doesn't welcome them. I just wish it wasn't constantly being betrayed by the gameplay.

If they had channeled all of the energy of the boss fights and soundtrack into the rest of the game, this could've been an instant classic! Instead we're left with a dozen hours of running around as an utterly momentum-free Sonic through a world that looks like it was made in Halo Forge by a real actual hedgehog and completing banally unchallenging activities to reveal points of varying interest on the Minimalist Yet Panic-Inducing Ubisoft Icon Map. Why this is being lauded as a bold and daring new direction for the series instead of half-assed trend chasing, I don't really understand, but the Battered Sonic Fan Syndrome works in mysterious ways.

The cyberspace stages are honestly like a joke at modern Sonic Team's expense - people that hated the repeated levels of Forces didn't know how good they had it, as Frontiers comes with 30 stages composed of only FOUR themes, three of which are lifted wholesale from Generations to the point of also occasionally having the exact same level design. I don't know if Sonic Team thinks people are still charmed by Green Hill/Chemical Plant/Sky Sanctuary in 2022 or they straight-up just couldn't be assed to make new assets for these, but the exhausting aesthetics combined with the controls taking a shit the moment the stage starts regularly make these the worst part of the game.

I commend Ian Flynn for being the first Sonic writer to give one quantum of a damn about this universe in more than a decade, to the point of actually addressing unresolved plot threads and providing some nice character writing, but the consistently melancholic tone and focus on ancient civilization drama didn't really grab me. If they didn't want me to find everything done with Eggman here corny and lame, they should've probably paced his presence in the game a bit better instead of leaving most of his development in audio logs.

I get that many people are so thirsty for a new Sonic Adventure that they've become shriveled husks which is why this game's story and general structure was like an IV infusion for them, but referring to something this banged-up and drab as a spiritual SA3 just feels wrong to me. There are glimpses of that here, the simple but punchy combat and the aforementioned spectacular boss fights definitely carry the confident exuberance of Sonic's 6th-gen era, but everything else feels like the bare minimum being done with the concept of "Open World the Hedgehog" set in an environment that has more in common with Death Stranding than with Sonic Adventure.

Did I like it? Yeah, I guess enough to finish it. It felt nice when the gameplay loop eventually clicked and the level of challenge went up, but then the game kinda kept going long after it ran out of steam. I definitely have more to say but most of it comes down to "this absolutely isn't as soulful as it's being praised, but there's neat stuff in it". I hope whatever's next in store is a refinement of the formula presented here, so that we can eventually look back at Frontiers as a janky, pop-in-infested tech demo for the Definitive Sonic Renaissance For Real This Time You Guys.

I don't care that it's intended for 2v2, imposing designated RPG roles (tank, support, assassin, dickmongler etc.) onto fighting game characters is some of the most obnoxious and contrived shit I've seen in the genre. The monetization is heinous and all the music sounds like you're about to go on a family-friendly educational adventure with Mickey fucking Mouse. If this is "the future of free-to-play fighting games" I'd rather stay in the prehistoric age!!

A whole star for the genuinely creative movesets though. Every character's series is portrayed extremely well in their attacks - especially Tom&Jerry, a puppet character that fights itself during a match is a slam dunk of design. Could've gone without Shaggy being a reference to a 5-year-old meme but I guess it paid off for the marketing

Some really weird consensus with people who like this writing is that it's akin to a 2000's anime? I gotta say I don't remember people in s-CRY-ed talking like a Twitter thread about anime character PNGs imposed over popular text posts but whatever floats your boat, just don't try convincing me that it's good. I was more attached to the F key than to any of the Neons.

Game looks and sounds fantastic though!! The aesthetic is the actual part that feels dragged out of the early 2000's, what with the whole "sleek edginess" aspect of it, especially the mission intro screens. The gameplay is very fine-tuned for what it is, although it would help if it was a bit less floaty in places. Not nearly as gimmicky as it comes off at first and could probably do with a level editor somewhere down the line. Big fan of everything here other than when the characters are talking!!