So… Fall Guys is basically a free game now, I guess. (Well, I’m currently writing this the same day it went free-to-play, so I should probably clarify that in case someone out there decides to read this anytime in the future) It’s been such an extremely long time since I’ve last played. I went and checked real quick and it was essentially back all the way in 2020, or the ending quarter of 2020 to be more specific. Since I’m practically half a year away from having not played Fall Guys for two whole years, I began to think about my time with it as a whole. Well, this whole shift to the free-to-play model has caused me to put my long gone experiences with it into retrospect, really. Multiple seasons of new exclusive stuff had came and went and I never paid attention to any of it. I never went back to try to earn cosmetics, play in new events, try and get whatever achievements that I didn’t get since then, I never had the idea or even the drive to try any of that at all. Clearly something about it put me off to the point where I ditched it and never looked back. I doubt I’ll ever be keen on playing it again anytime in the future, so I just wanted to say something about it just to get whatever it is that bothered me off of my chest.

I didn’t even really notice my issues with the game back when I started playing it, strangely enough. It was just a simple thing to me for some time back then. I started playing around the whole time it took off in popularity. Most people probably remember that era, right? The turbulent tale of when Fall Guys had a brief moment in the spotlight is likely one of the most notable events in gaming during the very perilous first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. Being one of the handful of games that sort of united us in a brief spree of joy during the upsetting year of 2020. The sort of competition it had with Among Us around that time was rather cute in a way with both of their quirky stylizations and quick rises to fame. However, knowing the intense memetic influence Among Us has to this day should give you a good idea of who won out in that. It’s still a tad strange to think on how Among Us is essentially the game that had indirectly taken Fall Guys’ fame from it but it sort of makes sense considering each game fundamentally. One of the main complaints about Fall Guys was that it had very little to it for very long stretches of time. Among Us never really had this as a major complaint though, even with it also having a quaint amount to its name as well, likely due to Among Us working in a much more erratic way. Extensively playing Fall Guys would be much more likely to give you fatigue on the game in comparison, and it seems like I definitely found that out when I was playing back then. My main influence for playing Fall Guys in the first place was to play with a couple of my friends, and since I really didn’t wanna miss out on being with them, I ended up buying the game at full price. It was an impulse decision that I still rather regret to this day, as it never really paid off as we never played together that often with how quickly we fell out of it. Granted, I played it for quite a lot more than they did but my decision to do so wasn’t entirely out of attachment to the game, and more than likely caused me to grow bitter with it in the end.

But first, in regards to the model shift—no, the whole Epic Games Store exclusivity thing that happened with it along with the new free-to-play model is not where all of my issues come from. Sure, it is something that I take issue with in general as I think it’s an extremely aggressive and unnecessary marketing strategy, but I guess it doesn’t even affect me in particular since I still own it on Steam. (Well I need an Epic Games account to even play the damn thing now for some reason but eh I said earlier that I’m not interested in picking it up again so I guess it still doesn’t affect me lol) My issues with Fall Guys as a whole stem more from fundamental parts about the game. Like, it’s mechanics and gameplay and all that. I think I’d rather go on about that a bit later since I’m more on the topic of the whole free-to-play aspect and how it affected Fall Guys because… honestly? I find the changes kind of dire, in a sense? This is more of me going on about the new changes so pardon me if I get something wrong about these here. For the first thing I’m wondering about, did they just… remove the crowns currency as a whole? Apparently every crown you had before the model shifting was converted into kudos, the main currency, which are more difficult to obtain now, even. The crowns just seem to just be apart of crown ranks now, from what I read. In the place of crowns is a new currency obtainable by paying real money or through progression in the season pass. It might be a me thing but I personally find it really lame that they removed an integral currency of the game that made your victories and progression worthwhile with all of the rare collectable cosmetics that you can obtain with them. Now all of the rare and legendary tier cosmetics have been locked behind this new mostly-paid currency which I just find really lame from a progression standpoint, but it also gives me a sick feeling thinking about a whole paid currency type of thing as a whole.

But enough of my gripes with the new free-to-play model shenanigans, that’s not where my distaste towards Fall Guys stems from anyways. I really want to talk about how the game plays as a whole and why it’s always rubbed me the wrong way. I’ve called it this several times before in more secluded chatting areas but I think referring to it as some sort of “struggling simulator” is the best way to get across what I mean about it all. I get it’s supposed to try to emulate a wacky game show type of feel but extending your idea to the games own physics was a questionable extent to take the dedication, to say the least. Sure it may be entertaining to watch some streamer fool around in attempts to come out on top and subsequently have their bean man eat shit to some sort of obstacle but being on the receiving end of these struggles is a completely different story. The obscenely sluggish movement combined with any sort of impact with something sending you into a completely helpless ragdoll stun-mode makes episodes a complete chore to sit through, not to mention all of the waiting in between episodes and even individual rounds. But all of this doesn’t sound so bad if you’re just playing it regularly and not expecting the best kind of results each time, right? That’s kind of a thing with battle royale-type games, they’re very spontaneous with how results come out, aren’t they? However, there was one thing in Fall Guys that I wanted to get that completely went against a casual sort of mindset, and upset me to the point of eventually realizing all of this that I disliked here in the first place.

You see, I’ve always been some sort of a nut for achievements and the like. I’ve always enjoyed being a completionist because I liked doing everything a game had to offer, you know. Achievements always gave me a sort of baseline definition for 100% completion for each game that had them. Most of what the developers have to offer and want you to do has an achievement system in place for certain platforms to signify progression status, along with all of the optional stuff like sidequests or extra challenges. I particularly enjoy extra challenges that games want to test me for, but there was one here that went so completely against how the game worked that I just had some sort of revelation about what’s so wrong with it fundamentally and why it’s so draining to play to an extensive degree—Infallible.
The goal of the Infallible achievement is simple on paper yet absolutely absurd on execution; win five episodes in a row. If you’ve ever played Fall Guys before, you should get a good idea of how awful this is. Combined with the many sorts of physics frustrations, the randomness of outcomes with this type of game are increased to an absurd degree. The frequency of the kinds of situations you can encounter that are completely out of your control is absolutely insulting. Team games as a whole are a good example due to a necessity for others to properly cooperate. Hunt games are another example due to the ping of other players not being considered and having very notable luck for objective spawns. But the prime example of a fundamental part of the game that is completely out of your control is one of the main mechanics of your limiting moveset: the grab. If someone takes ahold of you with the grab, you’re completely latched to them and have all of your movement options severely crippled. You can get out of it, but when you do you’re sent flying off in the direction the other player grabbed you from and are put into that same irritating ragdoll stun for a brief period of time. It may not be a long effect, but it can be enough to set you back and even completely screw you over in active situations, and literally any player can do it to one another on a whim. The grab move as a whole is the prime precedent for how huge the issue of player interference is in Fall Guys and how the Infallible achievement completely goes against what the game is trying to be. Sure, there have been easier methods of toughing this achievement out that were implemented later on like getting a squad together to increase your chances of winning episodes, or particularly cheesable episode types like Sweet Thieves, but the utterly dire experience put onto me while attempting it back in seasons 1 and 2 completely killed any and all desire to keep playing as a whole. I’m not underestimating when I say that the Infallible achievement in particular made me find out about everything wrong with Fall Guys.

It’s just disappointing the more that I think about it, really. The concept of a battle royale based on triumphing in an assortment of Mario Party-like minigames was such a cool take on the genre. Everything about it’s concept in general even, the game show like style with the round elimination format and the brilliantly adrenaline rushing original final round theme, there just wasn’t anything else quite like it. I wanted to make special note of the original final round theme—Final Fall—because it’s still honestly one of the most brilliant tracks I’ve ever heard in a game, it’s composed in such a special way that combines the silly nature of Fall Guys with the climactic finality of the ending rounds that gives the feeling of having triumphed over countless others and are just inches away from victory in a heart-pounding rush against the other players you’re pitted up against. None of the other final round themes I’ve heard can even possibly compare, honestly. I really just wish this game was more fundamentally rigid, but I guess that would kind of ruin what Fall Guys is as a whole? Well, Infallible already did just that anyways, so… what's really the point then?



Also I held back on talking about the dumb social media management because I honestly couldn’t even care at all regardless of how “cringeworthy” people say it is, but I just wanted to say one thing about it in particular and that is that WHY DID THEY NAME THE SEASON TWO SWINGY THINGY THICC BONKUS WHEN MINCE MEATUS WAS RIGHT THERE. IT WAS IN THE POLL AND EVERYTHING! IT WOULD’VE FIT THE THING PERFECTLY WITH THE DUMB NAMING SCHEME THEY WERE GOING WITH THEN, EVEN. IT FIT THE MEDIEVAL THEME THAT SEASON HAD AND IT WAS, LIKE, COVERED IN SPIKES. MINCE MEATUS WAS THE PERFECT NAME I TELL YOU, BUT NO. THICC MOTHERFUCKING BONKUS.

I don’t know why I’m still annoyed about the results of a dumb meme poll for an obstacle name to this day. I need to go rest, probably.

Do you know personally as to what you would like to get out of a game? Perhaps you have a set list of expectations to have when diving into something for the first time? I’m not too unfamiliar with wondering about the concept. I’ve seen myself dive around all types of games throughout the years so I’m not too capable of setting down any concrete list of games that I gravitate towards. Operating solely on a strange vibe that my mind conjures up is likely a particularly odd way to go about things, but who knows? Maybe others feel a similar strange interest in all sorts of odd little things that they hear about. I know it’s helped shape what I enjoy playing, but I digress. I’ve been meaning to think about platformers in a way like this as it’s been the genre that I’ve been around for the longest time. They could feel like my only real response for when I want to have any concrete answer as to games I enjoy since I, well, really enjoy platformers! Maybe all of my memories with them come in to assist but I know as to what I may like to have in a platformer. Roaming around worlds, maneuvering yourself with jumps, I can just imagine it all in my head. Whether in 2D or 3D, sweet or spicy, it’s a taste I can think of easily. Hell, my expectations may just indirectly shape what I enjoy seeing in games as a whole. I know many platformers have untold amounts of different quirky and colorful stylizations to them, and I know I like seeing wild stuff like that. It may be easy to connect the dots towards what you like to see and what you like to play by keeping knowledge on what you’re familiar with.

A game like Tinykin is something I can hear about and gain interest in with my fairly oddball sense of taste. “Hmm, this game’s a pretty cutely designed 3D platformer that just came out recently, seems up my alley.” Rather simple train of thought, I know. Maybe it’s better to just indulge in what you want to try out, though. I wanted to see what this had to offer, so what could I look forward to with it? I’m not quite sure what to say, really. With all of my silly preamble just to go out on a whim; it’s rather nice! You’re just kind of a tiny guy going around a tiny world with a whole army of tinier guys. A creative concept of creative environments makes for one nice take on a collect-a-thon. I may have looked into this with a different view, but that’s not exactly a bad thing. Not everything has to be in a sort of concrete mold. Perhaps you can just have a leisurely story about a sprawling world made out of household objects. A laid-back little adventure like this can be great too! Hell, after playing several intense precision-based games last month, it can good to treat myself to a quick burst of itsy-bitsy exploration without any weight on my shoulders. It’s good to appreciate the little things, you know?

Some people, however, may have bigger expectations. I’m familiar with the like that are more critical on what they envision in a game, and some of theirs may come up short. For being a fairly recent (as of writing this) 3D collect-a-thon platformer, there isn’t much care put into not falling into pitfalls the genre can stumble into. There’s all sorts of collectables strewn about every stage, in every nook and cranny you see. The expectation of intricate exploration is rather inherently strict, for even with my instinct to fully complete everything I could still see myself entering the annoying cycle of combing through the entire stage all over again for the last few bits of pollen or tinykin eggs I may have missed. It’s a frustration I’ve voiced with games like Kao the Kangaroo: Round 2, and even if the format is more forgiving here it’s still a misstep nonetheless. Not to mention the narrative premise of the tiny world you’re in being stuck together in a noticeably tacky fashion. A whole society of insects making whole modern-like worlds out of everyday objects is one of the biggest creative shines this game has to offer, but the glue of it’s conflicts around a resident they believe to be a god is not composed with a suitable amount of tact. (the fourth world, Lands of Ambrose, is particularly bad with this)

I’d still say I had my fun though. I wasn’t let down by what I wanted to see here, but I could see if someone would see otherwise. Some folks may just be looking for something bigger, but if you just want that occasional sweet little snack then you’ll do well like I did.

One of the weirdest pieces of obscure Sonic media, and it's a simple puzzle game with not much to do with sonic at all. People often seem to call this a Puyo Puyo rip-off when it's actually more akin to Columns. And, honestly, is it strange that I kinda prefer this over Columns? It might be a bit strange since people really seem to absolutely detest this game for some reason. Yeah, it's a bit mechanically complicated for a "board-based piece-matching keep-away-from-the-top puzzle game" or whatever it's supposed to be called, and I'm not too big of a fan of round or doubt mode but it was still some pretty decent fun to play. However, it suffers from the same overall problem that Columns does, in that it's rather barebones so playing it can get old pretty quickly and it's generally dull aesthetic-wise but I find the latter point less so in comparison to Columns primarily due to it's strange enigmatic status as obscure media. Like, it's that fascinating old and sleek simplicity of it's time as well as that weird and mostly abrasive soundtrack; it really does a lot for for me than Columns ever did. (Seriously that versus song is my favorite kind of awful)

It's also still honestly worth playing to witness the hilarious visual of Sonic punching another Sonic.

All I can really say about Flicky is that it could be a good arcade game, however it has a whole bunch of major frustrations that unfortunately hold it back from it's potential of being a simple yet fun experience like most arcade games.

The most notable issues are how this game suffers really badly from it's slippery controls and poorly designed stages. Your weird sliding momentum could be easily handled with on simple assortments of straightaway platforms, but when all of the corners, steps, and alcoves formed by the walls come into the equation, you start seeing how detrimental the controls can be. All of the bouncing off of the walls you're going to be doing by simply trying to maneuver around the stage gets old very fast and immensely annoying when you have to worry about all the enemies you have to weave around as well.

Yes, you also have to dodge around cats and iguanas in the process of gathering all of your chirps and rushing them back to the start. While it makes sense to have a threat to your goal, it's really difficult to make your way around them simply because of your movement. And in all of these odd stage layouts I often had times where I would have several of their patterns overlap in a way that created immensely difficult to handle situations, especially so when that damn iguana enemy is around since it’s allowed to climb on the walls to chase you down and is still allowed to damage you while doing so. The objects you use to take them out only do so much as you often waste them by jumping to higher areas and you can’t use them to hit something right behind you due to your extensive turnaround. (Trust me, that happened to me more often than I would’ve liked) Also I seem to see where Sonic 3D Blast got the whole “enemies scattering the required collectables on contact” mechanic. I didn’t like it there and I don’t like it here either.

However, even with all of these issues I had, I’d say they make this just an okay arcade game though. It’s still fun in a simple way like an arcade game should be, but it’s just disappointing how all of these issues just add up and prevent this from being something better. I still wonder why SEGA chose this guy to be apart of the Sonic canon, though.

Whenever I think of the Genesis' iconic edge, Vectorman is a prime game that comes to mind. It's radical gritty style is the perfect embodiment of what the Genesis stands for, and man does it go HARD. I don't think I can properly express how much I adore this game's aesthetic, it has the perfect mixture of edge and lightheartedness that I can only describe as "brilliantly radical." I should also mention just how technologically impressive it is for the time only adding on to just how cool it is. It's gameplay is really cool too being a fast paced and high energy run and gun, although it is a bit odd at first with how it has a strange initial learning curve and a less than stellar first impression with the first 2 stages when you're confused on what to do and making things feel rather unfair at first. It's very worth sticking through the iffy start as the game most certainly picks up in the later levels where you've likely figured out how the gameplay works. If you want to know some essential things before you start though, the game has a handy info page in the options menu where you can check out some things you'll want to know, like the TVs that you'll want to break as much of as you can to get those multipliers, extra lives, occasional transformations, and even health upgrades. You won't really need to remember how each transformation mode works though, as they're mostly for context sensitive usage for optional paths that are rather clear for where to be used whenever you get one. It still has some odd bits like the overall screen size, the usage of time limits being detrimental to the whole exploration for goodies incentive, those real awkward gimmick fight stages (that first one is a particular road block for newcomers) and a rather frustratingly difficult final boss but they're not present enough to prove to be extreme issues. In fact, they're mostly solved after you can get over the learning curve. Those gimmick fights in particular are quite literally not present enough to be major issues, they all have only one minute on their time limits because you can easily take them down in less than a minute if you know what you're doing.

Before I wrap this up, did I elaborate how cool this game's aesthetic is enough yet? Because god DAMN how do you make a game this rad

Well the whole game is cool, but the style dude, it's another level

I think me liking this more than Sonic 2 might be an unpopular opinion, but oh well. I genuinely really like this game! Probably my 3rd favorite of the classic sonic games, only behind 3&K and Mania. The level designs might be a bit wonky at first, but they fit this game's desired playstyle well and aren't as annoying as Sonic 1's levels... well, yeah, except for Wacky Workbench. God that zone sucks. Genuinely the only time I felt the dislike towards this game's level design was justified.

Also speaking of this game's desired playstyle, the main objective of this game is to go into the past of each stage and destroy their respective machines (and Metal Sonic holograms but they aren't as necessary). I found this to be rather fun with how the level designs were built with the exploration in mind. Er, well, I found them enjoyable for the most part (fuck you Wacky Workbench). If you're not interested in searching around in each stage, that's fine! There's another method of getting the good ending in the form of the traditional sonic fare of special stages, and THANKFULLY they got the special stages right this time unlike Sonic 1's and 2's which are complete headache inducers. You still have rather limited chances to clear them akin to Sonic 1 but at least the last zone lets you reach the special stage this time around unlike Sonic 1.

And MAN, this game's presentation is pure bliss. It's style and aesthetic is probably my favorite of any classic sonic game and one of my favorites in any game I've played. And said style is further enhanced by the music. The JP soundtrack is just fantastic. I'm not too keen on the US soundtrack but if you prefer it then cool for you. Also I wasn't expecting to enjoy Tidal Tempest zone as much as I did but CD's presentation and playstyle managed to make me enjoy the water level the most here somehow.

I don't know if it's weird how I liked this as much as I did. I've fully completed this game on both my phone and on PC and had fun doing so both times. My first time was on my phone which was surprisingly better than I thought it would be. I wasn't too keen on the controls for the Sonic 1 and 2 mobile ports but CD's felt better then them on phones. Maybe it's with the controller being a d-pad instead of an analog stick. Ah well, I guess I'll just be happy with my unpopular opinion here.

I decided to go ahead and recomplete this but on the GameCube version this time so I could get access to all of Sonic's Game Gear library in this version, and now I can safely say that this game is still just as goofy and janky as I remembered from my original completion several years ago. In terms of an overall experience, I'd say it's alright though. I can't really speak on the quality of the Dreamcast original because I Have Never Owned A Dreamcast, but I generally feel as this is just a more awkward and less polished experience than SA2. I've generally preferred SA2 over this one since I mainly feel it does everything this does but better. Sometimes that works out in it's own benefit, and other times it really doesn't. It's overall jankiness really does make for quite an experience. Seriously, you can really tell how badly all the clear tape and paperclips are holding this game together, it's kinda amazing in it's own right. It really is just lovably jank... well, until it isn't. I'll get to that soon, however.

This main highlights of the game come from Sonic's, Tails', Knuckles', and Gamma's stories. As I cover each gameplay style, I mainly wanna talk about how each of them play normally and how each is affected by their extra stage missions as well. (I like to talk about my experiences not just from casually playing but with doing everything the game has to offer, after all) Sonic is pretty self explanatory, he's the iconic fast man. You run, jump, and spindash through stages. It seems that Sonic is mainly who the game was based around as he has easily the most stages in the game with 10, as the max the others get was 5 iirc. Not sure if it was generally okay to try and build other character's stages off of Sonic stages, as sometimes I feel as certain stages are designed like playing a Sonic stage in a Knuckles stage, or vice versa. This kinda makes most of the stage designs here kinda wonky as they don't really feel as sometime they don't really feel like they were made with a specific playstyle in mind. Speaking of the game being built around sonic, it might also generally reflect on his stage missions as well as his are generally the hardest due to the sheer quantity as well as the strict timers for some of the A missions. Twinkle Park and Lost World are particularly bad cases of this. Twinkle Park has a very strict time limit of 3 minutes for it's A mission, so you have to basically play the level near flawlessly. And Lost World is just generally my least favorite stage in the franchise honestly. It has so many incredibly frustrating bits, and with the 4:30 time limit for the A mission it becomes one real test of how much you can put up with.

Tails might honestly be my favorite story solely on the virtue of how utterly broken it is. Adding in a character that can fly really shows the cracks in this game. Tails can just fucking eviscerate these level designs. There's nothing more hilarious than just skipping the literal entirety of the first stage. The other stages don't get the same mercy either. Aside from Icecap, Tails has plenty of opportunities to soar right past anything the developers intended you to play through legitimately. The only exception to this is Icecap but that's solely because you're locked to a snowboard the entire stage, so I guess this stage gets to feel lucky as it doesn't get to be victim of Tails at his full potential. I haven't even really touched on his other gimmick of racing Sonic/Eggman to the end as you don't even really need to pay attention to them. They're pretty easy to beat even on their A mission variants, and unleashing The Wrath of Tails on them basically means you never really get to see them at all. The fastest thing alive really doesn't seem to mean much when you can just fly past everything he has to maneuver around.

Knuckles is kind of an odd one. He has what might be the one aspect that I feel SA1 does better than SA2, and that's the emerald radar. I'm gonna be honest and say that they really didn't need to limit the emerald radar they way they did there. But I still feel as SA2 does it better mostly and that's mainly due to the stage design. Alot of the gripes I had earlier with the whole "stage design fusion awkwardness" mainly shows in this story. I feel like they tried to somehow make certain stage layout try to work as both Sonic and Knuckles and I don't feel as if it really worked on Knuckles' end, and just ended up being a detriment on Sonic's end. The treasure stages in SA2 to me felt like they were make for the treasure hunting playstyle, unlike here. Aside from those gripes, it's still a rather solid story. Knuckles' A missions can be really annoying though, with the very strict time limits on them combined with the random placement of the emerald shards. I learned you can abuse restarting, as it resets you at the last checkpoint in this game, which for Knuckles is at the last emerald piece he got, so you can scavenge around for the emerald pieces the go straight for them after restarting when you know where they are to potentially make those A missions easier. (i don't remember if this was changed in later rereleases so please don't get angry if it was)

Gamma is another kinda odd one. They have a new shooter-type gameplay style, which went to be expanded upon in the mech stages of SA2. I've heard some people prefer Gamma's gameplay to the SA2 mech but I honestly don't see it. In comparison I feel as the target laser is less responsive and wears off annoyingly fast, and the hover noticeably screws up your momentum when you use it. Like Knuckles I feel as Gamma is still a solid story even with my gripe with it. His A missions aren't too bad aside from Emerald Coast which is another annoying strict one (I only managed to beat that one because of a big combo I got at the very end barely getting me over the time I needed).

And now we get to the parts of SA1 that I really don't like. I've said that this game has alot of endearing jank to it until it doesn't, and these next two stories are where we reach those really low lows, and are what mainly cements SA1 as the lesser game imo. Let's start off with Amy's story. It may only be three stages long but it sure feels like the most exhausting and drawn out three stages I've ever played. God, Amy moves agonizingly slow. Her overall movement feels like such a jarring and sluggish dissonance from the stories we've just been through. Her stage design really doesn't compliment this as well, as they have so many annoying aspects to them that makes slow gameplay that much more unbearable. Her A missions surprisingly weren't that bad but always had that looming feeling that I wasn't sure if I was gonna make it because of how horribly slow Amy was combined with all these annoying stage gimmicks, so that's a relief.

And then there's Big the Cat. Hoo boy, do I have some things to say about Big. Generally when going back through all the A missions again, I didn't have much trouble with them this time around surprisingly enough. I remember having trouble with some of them back in my original completion but dealt with them in very few tries this time around. Hell, the Sky Chase score emblems were one thing I was dreading from having bad memories struggling on them, and I managed to sweep through them almost instantly this time around.
BIG'S MISSIONS TOOK ME SEVERAL HOURS TO COMPLETE.
ONE OF THEM IN PARTICULAR TOOK ME OVER AN HOUR ALONE.
I wanna get into Big's gameplay and how utterly bullshit it is. It's generally infamous from it being a jarring change from action platforming to... an awkward fishing minigame. But oh god do these stage missions show how bad the fishing really is. Big's main story is just whatever, it's funny on it's own. Froggy barely puts up a fight when you're trying to catch him. But the 1000/2000g fish you need to catch for his B/A missions? Someone decided that a good idea to make them hard to catch was to make them as bullshit as possible. First off, when you hook them, they very often just get a head start on you for no goddamn reason. And when you're reeling them in, sometimes they can just go into an advantage state where your reeling does jack shit and you literally can't do anything about it but let them get further from you. They can just activate this at will too, and the heavier they are, the more keen they are at doing this. You basically just have to pray that they cooperate with you for a long enough time for you to catch them and that the don't just set you back to square one just because they felt like it. Hooking the fish is chore in of it's own as well. You have to try and show the lure in front of them, and you can adjust the lure by tapping left and right on the joystick I believe. But from my experience, adjusting the lure is extremely unresponsive. I could tap in a direction multiple times and it still wouldn't move until like a couple seconds later. These controls aren't just unresponsive in casting, the controls for reeling in fish are genuinely painful. The best method I had was maintaining a rhythm of A presses, what was I supposed to do about that advantage state bullshit though? Did jerking the joystick work? I didn't know, so I tried every time I heard that dreaded bubbling noise, but I still wasn't sure if it was helping at all. I eventually came up with a method that ended up having some sort of noticeable difference. It was where I kept my rhythm of A presses while rapingly spinning the joystick around. Can you believe that? The one time I noticed a sort of difference was the method where I felt like I was literally wrestling with the game's bullshit. I'm not quite done yet though, I wanna get into Twinkle Park Mission A. This is the goddamn mission that took me over an hour to finally clear. When I was doing Big's A missions, I had about 2 of the hidden lure upgrades I believe. I was still able to find 2000g fish even without the other 2. Twinkle Park decided it wanted to be the exception to this however. I spent multiple attempts catching several fish in hopes that a big one would spawn but to no avail and eventually before I caved completely and just looked up what the hell I was doing wrong. Twinkle Park is somehow the only stage where you need all of them to get a 2000g fish. So I looked up where the upgrades I was missing were, then got it and went back to the stage, spent several attempts catching many fish in hopes a big one would spawn, and got very nervous thinking that my game might be bugged somehow. As it turns out, I was missing ANOTHER lure upgrade that I didn't know about. So I go and trudge all the way over there, get the upgrade, and go back to Twinkle Park. I had hope now since the robot fish now started to spawn, so I thought that was a good sign. But even then, I had to struggle catching so many goddamn fish to get a 2000g one to spawn in, all the while through all these attempts before and after I found out about the lures I was missing, I was getting repeatedly teased by the game as it kept giving me fish weighing in 1700-1900g. And the one time I actually net a 2000g fish, IT BREAKS MY LINE. So the stage resets and I have to find one all over again. The total relief I felt once I finally got the 2000g fish was unbelievable. Sorry if most of this review is venting about Big, I just really wanted to go into detail how terrible his gameplay made this to complete.

Now I want to talk about something SADX disappointed me on; the Chao Garden. I was such a huge fan of the Chao Garden in SA2, and was excited to try it out here, but ended up finding out it was just kinda... really awkward in comparison to it's SA2 counterpart. I've said that alot about part of this game, but this one was just kinda disheartening honestly compared to the rest. Playing with Chao just didn't feel as good here. There are some other things about SA1's Chao Garden that kinda annoy me as well, like with certain limitations making it feel really inferior like the absence of a school making it hard or impossible to check your Chao's stats and teach it non-animal activities, the lack of a Skeleton Dog making me assume that animal parts are just permanent on your Chao (Which is a shame as the only way to make your Chao stronger here is through the animals), and other stuff like that. I'm not sure if I'm wrong on those but I really hope I am.

And lastly, I wanna talk about mission mode. It honestly just generally feels like padding for completion. You just search around for mission prompts (which is particularly annoying as Amy or Big) and just do them. They have a very awkward difficulty imbalance too. A great majority of them are really easy and forgettable, some are a bit annoying, and then missions 53 and 54 are on new layers of awful. An annoying trend of these missions are having the objectives being quite a ways into or near the end of a stage. These two in particular are right at the end of Icecap, meaning if you screw up on them, you have to go through the same minute and a half of snowboarding just to get another attempt at it. Mission 53 is really bad because you have to do three super precise ramp jumps all in succession, but mission 54, oh mission 54. This was the one mission I was dreading rebeating and for good reason. You have to get 13 flags laid out right at the end of the stage. First off, grabbing the flags are easier said than done because their hitbox is so small, combined with how wonky the snowboarding controls are and your small hitbox as well makes missing them a very frequent occurrence. "Well maybe I can slow down for them and maybe even jump my way back up if I miss one." Unfortunately you don't have such luck, as since you're playing as Tails for this mission, YOU ARE TECHNICALLY TIMED ON THIS AS WELL. Sonic is really keen on darting past you with no regard for any objective you seem to be going for, and if he beats you to the end, THE STAGE JUST ENDS PREMATURELY. And since you don't have the luck of being off of the snowboard, you won't get much opportunities to get distance from Sonic. Ugh, I'm just wondering if this was even playtested. Hopefully I never have to do mission 54 ever again, for real this time.

Damn this was longer than I expected it to be. I guess I just had alot to say. SADX is janky, goofy, and awkward as hell, but I think it's pretty neat for all that. I'd say it's worth experiencing with how dumb it is. It's still a lesser experience than SA2 in my eyes, but it's still one hell of a ride on it's own. Also I wanna talk about how bad these cutscenes are, practically every single one of them are the best worst things I've ever seen and I honestly think SADX's cutscenes are up there with the CDi Nintendo games in terms of hilarious awfulness.

"That's Eggman! I Wonder What Happened To Sonic?"

A great improvement from the first game in ALMOST every way (remember that "almost" for later). Gone is the issue of half of the game being lacking, pretty much every zone here holds up better than the first game's zones. Even the weaker zones like Metropolis and Wing Fortress are better to play through than the likes of Marble or Labyrinth from the first game. The game also flows together better too thanks to the spin dash and better level design in general. It is a bit too strict on the final bosses however, with how they don't give you any rings.

HOWEVER. Remember that "almost" I said earlier in regards to this game being an improvement over the original? Back in my Sonic 1 review I went into a bit of a rant over the special stages and how dumb they were. But good GOD, I have no clue how they made the special stages worse here but they did it. They might have looked cool for the time but my oh dear lord they way they play is TERRIBLE. They might as well come down to sheer memorization with how the Genesis runs these. It's just not feasible to react to some of the rings and obstacles in time, and they can get really strict with the ring requirements too! At least you get more chances for these here and a worthwhile reward in the form of Super Sonic (and the good ending on top of that), but please, use save states or a rewind feature for these to preserve your sanity.

If you don't care about completion or missing out on Super Sonic however, this is a really great time! Much more worth playing this over the original.

Neat little meta action game. The combat feels pretty fun even though I really didn't need any of the unlockable skills the game had. I will say though that I have some problems with the narrator. He really just sounds awkward for the most part. Comparing this to something like The Stanley Parable and it's night and day with the quality as the narration in TSP is iconic for it's direction and here it just feels off.
The music's pretty good though.

Also the dash is really goofy, you can just spam it whenever you're not in combat and just fly all over the place lmao