Okay yes this game is a work of art. The original is so much better than it really should be like wtf happened this game feels impossibly rushed.

Why are most of the songs from a single beastie boys album? why did they adjust the physics in such a way that gaining verticality is twice as inconsistent? Why don't enemies show up for the majority of a levels run, but if they do you get locked in a cage where they're barely able to interact with you?

There came a point in the story where you just wander around aimlessly tagging walls until you figure out you have to go to specific rooms to trigger a series of story events, making a first playthrough a bit miserable. A lot of the scripted scenes feel haphazardly cut together, some parts more so than being frustrating or difficult are rather tedious, while scenes like the race and some of the chases feel trivial. You'll find there's moments that are sublime, the incidental beauty and swag of music, gameplay, visuals, rhythm and sound design falling into perfect synchronicity are jsrf's claim to fame, having simple levels, the majority of which wrap around predictably and piss easy objectives in what feel like lonely enemy free walks in the park are where you'll notice this game suffered an immense downgrade from its dreamcast counterpart.

Preferencial biases in favor of the original are something I'd also like to mention, the timer, the color grading, use of music throughout levels, you'll find that as a result of missions being kind of vague and a bit too long to get through at times, the music setlists will loop over and over in a predetermined fashion, there's a lot less unique mixes, and specially the lack of a middle act like what happened in the US stages of JSR deprive this game of a proper middle act.

I'm really glad I finally got to play this after so many years of being obsessed with the og game, and I absolutely set the bar too high going into it, I just didn't actually expect there to be so many things to look down on in a first playthrough.

does anyone remember that xbox 360 demo kiosk sonic game that was available around the blades era that i think was a prototype of this game set in a windy valley kind of level filled with robots like those sawblade dudes, and it had a structure that was a mixture of the segment set in the eye of a tornado, and the second act of that stage where you climb a spiral with spike balls, but with a more spacious layout and with the camera pulled much further away scrolling around the spiral, somewhat like what you see in the hd games' 2d sections. Anybody remember that? I also recall it running at like 60 fps and i swear most of the assets were later reused for this game and i feel like i might be insane cause i can't find any info abt it in news sites or sonic fan sites, nothing on sega retro, just this vague memory i have of stepping through sears' toy section and seeing it on display and sucking complete ass at it, i mean shit for all i know it is indeed a lost prototype or game or maybe it was an unrelated scrimblo from the era that happened to look exactly like sonic idfk i am not crazy somebody out there has to know.