This game is like getting a drawing from a young child. Objectively, you know there's problems with it, but they're just so darn happy and passionate about what they gave you it's hard to completely trash it. Because yeah, there's audio glitches where the music and sounds went silent or turned into a garbled mess. There's about two good voice actors in the whole game. It crashed on me a few times. Yet, I can't think of a time where I wasn't enjoying what I was playing. This is just a simple platformer with nice graphics that you could probably finish in an evening or two. It's a very, VERY, easy game!

The story was slow in some places, however, I always kept playing to see what was going to happen next. I got so invested in these characters! I took them to every restaurant while they commented on the various landmarks, had drinks at the bar while cheering our friends on as they sang some karaoke. I played baseball, golf, arcade, went back to school, gambled and got into underground go-karting. All while you're trying to help the unfortunates in Ijincho. There's always something to do. Then you get to the combat. It's not bad, just simple. I found myself putting them on auto-battle until I got to a boss battle and because I was doing all the side-quests as I went, I ended up being slightly over leveled for most of the game. Well. At least until one of the last few chapters, when the game strongly suggests you spend some time leveling up, and I, like an idiot, thought “Nah, I'll be fine.” I was not. I beat the game, cried a little and laughed a lot.

Sonic Frontiers was mostly fun. The large bosses were pretty darn spectacular and were a definite highlight. Thank goodness there's options to change how Sonic controls. There's no way I could have played with defaults. The levels were a bit short, but a nice change of pace from the open world parts. The gameplay-loop of getting multiple different types of collectibles was getting a bit tedious by the end. The game has a good skeleton and it would be great to see what they do with a sequel, but I'm not holding my breath for that.

If you have someone to play with, this is a great time! Not quite as good as It Takes Two, a game with more meat and variation to it's game-play, but a still a good way to spend an evening or two.

Did I, someone with no nostalgia for Secret of Mana whatsoever, enjoy this game? Yeah, I did. It certainly feels dated, an experiment between an action and turned-based RPG that never quite gels, but it's short and cute enough that I, mostly, had an enjoyable time.

If you've ever played Sim Tower, that's what Project Highrise is. Build a tower and fill it with offfices, shops and residents. It's not the most deep sim game I've ever played, but I had fun trying to make aesthetic and themed towers. Be careful of your tower crumbling down though, as one service leaving can cause a cavalcade of people moving out. Definitely worth the 5 bucks I paid for it at the bargain bin.