I loved this game from start to finish, I loved everything about it, the characters, the story, the music to even the gameplay even though its very simple. The story was very emotional and made me nearly cry at the end with how it wrapped up. I didnt expect for the game to be as good as it was but holy shit was I wrong I want to go through the game again and go for 100% completiotion, and i rarely do that for visual novels but I just loved the game that much. It is by far the one of the most unique games I have ever played and I dont think there will be another game like it any time soon.

Thank you to FleeFleet for introducing me to this game!
Damn, I love this game. Um Jammer Lammy pretty much fixes my major issue with Parappa the Rapper, while still being a great game in it's own right. I finished this one in about two days, and I genuinely had a good time for most of the run time. Here's my notes:
This game is completely bonkers. Alot of people have told me that this game's plot is like a trippy fever dream which I assumed was an exaggeration, but nope, this game is NUTS. I'm watching these ludicrous cutscenes wondering what the hell I'm even viewing and I love it. Somehow all the events in this game take place in like 15 minutes which makes zero sense but I think that's the point. Don't ask questions and just enjoy the madness being shown before you.
Also, I really like Lammy as a character herself. She has major social anxiety AND is left handed (just like me fr!), and is generally just a charming protagonist especially for the time. I think I slightly prefer her over Parappa, but both are undeniably great.
Going back to the presentation, this game absolutely digs into that trippy aesthetic, especially with stages 3 and 6. The series art style really feels correct for this game's insanity. The music is also pretty good too! I think I overall prefer Parappa 1's iconic track selection, but there are some BOPPIN tracks here 100%. I like that stage 1 is a spin on Master Onion's rap from the first game, and how it actually predicts all the events that will happen in the game, for example. I didn't find the lyrics as memorable this time, but I'm pretty sure it's because I'm playing a guitar rather than repeating what my "teacher" sings first. Regardless, the lyrics are still as cheesy as ever.
GUYS THE GAMEPLAY IS GOOD HERE. After Parappa 1's ball crushingly strict note timing, Lammy is MUCH more lenient on the input window here, making the game feel more balanced then last time. Believe me, I still struggled, especially on stages 4 and 6, but most of the time I felt my failures were my fault. Another change is that now you can earn cool mode without having to beat the game first. I actually pulled this off in the entire latter half of stage 7 and it was the greatest feeling in the world, I was so happy. It was such a fantastic way to wrap up this journey. This game ALSO has plenty of extra content, with a mode to face off of Lammy's doppelganger Rammy, as well as an ENTIRE campaign to play through stages 2-7 as Parappa himself, with new lyrics and note charting making it a fresh experience.
In short, I adore this game. It's definitely very hard for me still, so I won't revisit it very often presumably, but I'm glad I pulled through this charming PlayStation classic. I definitely recommend playing this one if you liked Parappa 1, or if you couldnt get behind Parappa 1's difficulty and want something more fair on the player. Now I sure hope that I actually wrote this review and that it wasnt just all in my mind.

This was recommended to me by close friend TonySADX after having several months of slight interest in this title. The game itself is a simple bit fun and addicting rhythm game. The music is really catchy, and I like the characters a lot (Yukina and Kasumi my beloved). Unfortunately because of the fact this game takes up so much space on my poor old tablet I wasn't able to play further then a couple hours, but overall I like this game a ton. Give it a shot if you like a cute rhythm game and have decent phone space! :>

Let me fill you in with some perspective. I'm someone who used to HATE this game. I hated the controls, the stage gimmicks, the combat, the obnoxious casino levels, the fact that you had to play the game essentially 4 times to fully beat it, etc. I put it down for years after I beat it and that was the end of it.

But years later when I returned to it, I was willing to try and put in the effort to work at getting better at this game's controls and mechanics, learn speedrun tech, all that jazz. I wanted to see what others saw in this game, and low and behold, after putting a lot of time in to improve at this game, Sonic Heroes has quickly become a game I despised, to one of my favorite Sonic games of all time.

I think we should start with the control issue, yes speed formation is slippery and finnicky on a first playthrough, but you have other styles to switch to, power and flight. Both of these are slower and have better traction so it's easier to get a handling on the terrain, but once you DO master speed formation, the movement abilities and cool tricks you can do is second to none. You can rocket accel up slopes and ramps to bypass fan gliding sections, use tornado jump as a means of a double jump, slide off a platform and jump before the animation ends to get crazy distance in the air, combining rocket accel with Tails or Knuckles to get crazy distance, it's super satisfying to pull off.

And in terms of the combat, I'll be the first to say that while it isn't amazing, I think it's very interesting and fun to use for a platformer. You have different means of attacks and different strategies for different enemies (like flying metal enemies needing to be stunned by Tails before it can be taken care of by Knuckles). Knuckles straight punches are super effective at clearing hoards of enemies super fast at the cost of being pretty slippery, but you also have the much safer but slower fireball dunk to take care of enemies this way. Faster combat being a trade off for looser control, while the safer option is more slow. Risk and reward design like this is present all throughout Heroes. Another example of this is using the more unwieldy rocket accel to take off shields and flip the turtle enemies (or even use poles) without slowing down versus stopping to use the whirlwind attack and dealing less damage overall. Leveling up throughout a stage also increases your combat effectiveness tenfold; each character can level up 3 times in a stage, with all levels being reset if you die, rewarding skillful play if you keep your characters leveled throughout. max level speed or flight characters can clear a room much much faster than they originally could against Power, with Power formation absolutely slaughtering giant brutes at max level. And then you get team blast which nukes the entire area you're in killing all enemies on screen, and can also have different effects depending on the team you pick. It's usually best to save Team Blast for when you really need it (such as an area full of enemies with a tough bigger brute character with armor), rather than using it whenever you feel like it.

The levels themselves are a blast to traverse through as well. The levels are expansive with different paths and shortcuts to take with a decent length to each level without any of them really overstaying their welcome. Combine this with the excellent movement mechanics in conjunction with the combat and you have a marvelous high speed platformer.

It's not all perfect though, certain issues I had with the game then still are prevalent now. The casino stages absolutely blow. I don't know who was in charge of the pinball physics needed to go up the tables or steer in Bingo Highway but they completely failed at it. The physics are just all over the place and fluctuate on a whim, often times I can be holding a direction and Sonic just refuses to go in that direction and ends up falling to his death. These can make the pinball sections take forever as you can be constantly stuck on the table because the controls just refuse to work with you at all. The special stages are also still awful. The act of getting to them is fine enough (collecting a key locked in a cage and keeping it throughout the level without getting hurt) but the special stage itself controls like garbage and it's near impossible to see obstacles coming in time while moving at such a ridiculous speed. Team Chaotix as a whole is pretty unremarkable as well, with their gameplay being mission focused. Easily the worst out of all the other teams. The game forcing you to play it multiple times can be a turn off but since I love the core gameplay and level design I'm at least somewhat willing to look past this.

Overall I get why people can not like this game I really do. And I also understand if taking the time to master the controls and mechanics and really "git gud" at the game isn't a guarantee you'll like it (heck I did the same for DMC4 and Sonic Unleashed and I still hate both those games), but I employ you to at the very least give it another look at with everything I said in mind. Sonic Heroes is a very weird but extremely rewarding experience. (Also you don't have that stupid Chao raising crap and the upgrade system is gone + no mechs so I consider this better than SA2 by default. Maybe one day I'll try and 100% the game and get Super Hard Mode.)

This feels like a story I will grow on to cherish for eons, its sheer earnestness kinda blew me away and I had a tear running down my cheek during the entire last stretch, which is my favourite ever. Absolutely what I needed to hear.

Bazett is truly the Joker for VN readers.


Spoilers //

Special note has to go to its handling of Shirou's legacy and how the entire thing is essentially about a protagonist who was inspired by his deeds, which is incredibly fitting from a meta perspective for an epilogue like this one.

I think for some background context, I've known this game since around the time of its release before it really blew up online. while that's still late to the party when considering those who followed this game's development for the several years before release, I have known this game for about a year and a half now and from the moment I saw gameplay screenshots from someone in Discord and then watching the trailer on its steam page, I knew this would be a game to really grab me the moment I saw it. I never got to play this game for the aforementioned year and a half, primarily because I had no way to during most of that time, however during it I made sure to not look up ANYTHING related to the game until I played it myself, and eagerly awaited for when I would have a chance to play this.

Thankfully, my effort paid off and I managed to go just about entirely blind for this game. And as you have probably already noticed by my rating, my initial intuition was correct and I absolutely adored this game just about start to finish. This is basically my first review on the site ignoring the random Pokemon review I did ages ago, but I am someone to very, very sparsely give out perfect scores.

So where do I begin with this game? Well, the first thing to truly pull me towards this game when I first saw it was its art style. I'm someone who can be very easily attracted to media if its art style appeals to me, and that's been my main motivation to view multiple pieces of media, game or not. I love semi simplistic art styles and the sketch book-like style this game has is incredibly charming to me. Even when it comes to the sprite work and other overworld assets, this game is great and its environments are excellent, from the pastel, vibrant colors of Headspace, to the more uncanny, off putting visuals when things get darker.

To then go into gameplay, while not my main highlight of this game, I enjoyed quite a bit. Emotions are a fun system to play around with, and help a lot to add further character and personality to everything. This is further emphasized by the chain attack system, which with each interaction a party member has, helps reinforce the idea of this being a close friend group, especially with how each attack changes as the group's bond gets closer. My favorite detail with this is Omori at the start of the game getting hit by Kel trying to pass his ball, and becoming sad, vs near the end of the game, where he successfully reacts and hits the ball at the enemy, and growing ecstatic. If there is some nitpicks I can have about the combat, the main one is that between the emotion triangle, being sad never felt useful in nearly any situation, unless it was forced on the party or the enemy, since from the enemy's side, being sad tends to draw out fights and make the enemy take longer to die, while on the party's side, the fact that it saps away your juice after every hit makes pulling off strategies more inconvenient, as well as just drawing out fights since raw power is significantly more helpful than to prolong a fight by tanking damage, especially since there's multiple options to heal the party anyways.

As for the soundtrack, I don't usually factor them too heavily when evaluating a game, simply because I have very open tastes and more often than not I like a game's soundtrack, even if the rest of the game blows. Not to discredit the soundtrack of this game however with the above disclaimer, because it has some amazing tracks to it. "World's End Valentine" and "BREADY STEADY GO" were two songs I spoiled for myself before I played the game and are easily my favorite boss themes in the game. "Finding Shapes in the Clouds" is an excellent track for conveying the nostalgic small town feel of Faraway Town. "WHITE SPACE" does perfectly to convey the eerie, isolated, yet comforting feeling of White Space. "By Your Side", "DUET", "Good Morning", and "My Time" are all tracks that, while I am likely biased by their narrative connections, especially stick out for the emotional feelings they convey to me.

Finally, the story. Although I saved this for last, I don't want to discuss specific details of what happens, as I believe experiencing this game without knowing is truly special. This is a story that got me to cry by the end, which is an incredibly rare reaction for me. It's not uncommon to be sad, but to cry is something else. This is indeed a sad game, but that sadness would be hollow if it wasn't for how real the characters feel. Aubrey doesn't feel like a character, she feels like a real person who's gone through plausible life experiences and reactions, and this is something I can echo for the other characters like Kel and Hero. Sunny is obviously the main focus, and while I can't imagine (and hope) many people can relate exactly to what he goes through, nothing about him feels exaggerated. The trauma and depression expressed through him is something many have likely felt before regardless of exact circumstances. It's this pure reality to everything in the story that really makes it hit home.

This review went on for way longer than I meant to, but I ramble easily. I'll try to tone it down for future reviews, but I usually can't help myself, especially for games I really like. Please play Omori, if you've ever written it off from the memes of it being yet another Earthbound inspired indie RPG, you've done it a massive disservice. And it's there where I would say that even if you end up not liking it nearly as much as I did, i'd like if you simply gave it a chance, don't write it off, don't go with what the internet wants to echo at that time, give the game a chance for yourself.