The best. I can only imagine what it things would have been like if this had come out in 2003 in place of Sonic Heroes.

The daytime stages are an adrenaline rush and simultaneously super charming, like a hybrid of platformer and QTE that feels incredibly punchy and satisfying. That's not to say the werehog isn't any good. That couldn't be farther from the truth in fact, having a very platforming oriented focus, even kinetic, with arcadey combat. I'd say that even on their own the werehog stages would have been potentially a classic. (At least had it not been a Sonic game, as bearing the Sonic in the title seems to attract negativity toward anything that doesn't involve speed.) These stages are even complemented with the best bgm in the entire franchise. Lastly, it would be a crime to leave out mention of the puzzle rooms (easily qualifiable to be considered the game's third stage type) which are a fantastic addition that I adore.

Having the towns be implemented as menus drastically helped in making the overall experience much smoother than that of the disastrous PS3 version of Unleashed.

I take it back, the game is not THAT good. I mean, the crash campaign sucks no matter what and has too much copypasta, but aside from that this is one of PSP's greats, or at least that's what I thought. But after revisiting and playing through the game, I've come to realize that the physics are hideous (almost as bad as the graphics), and the races are dull and don't pose any challenge whatsoever. There's rubber banding but toward the end of a race the AI tends to mostly just trail you from behind and let you win. Everything in this game is either easy or annoying. Pretty much all the difficulty comes as the result of overly oppressive gold medal requirements in all of the Pursuit events and some of the Road Rage events. The Road Rage events are the funnest and the most addicting part of the entire game, ironically enough. The game would be nothing without them.

The game is not terrible, per se. It's enough to keep you busy. But there are better racers on the system.

The game that flawlessly translated Metroid gameplay to 3D. And when I say Metroid gameplay I mean using the scan visor on every pixel to unlock doors remotely, literally download items, and read data logs on every single enemy and piece of foliage in the entire game. Didn't you know? Those things are what Metroid was always about! Oh yes it was. Now hush and take your sedatives.

P.s. Tank controls in an exploration based FPS. I mean, due to the Gamecube's controller design there wasn't much of a choice (and due to everyone around that time generally not knowing anything about how videogames will be played in 3D, case in point Dreamcast and Xbox controllers) but hoo boy. Hoo boy. Controlling Samus was like constantly picking up and setting down a tripod.

Oh, and I'm not done yet. The soundtrack sucked. The presentation sucked. The boss design is basically glorified puzzles. Morph ball bomb trick physics were nonexistent. Okay, now I'm done. I'll be here, eagerly awaiting your fan letters.

Okay, so Makoto. Is basically a minigame. That you can spam over and over. Yessir. But I end up being fixated on the corner of the screen where the QTE appears while seeing the actual gameplay only with the corner of my eye, which is kind of funny because it results in situations that are like.. "oh good, I won!" or "oh, I wasn't knocked down yet!" So I rather wish the QTE appears above my character or something.

Same with Platinum. (As in the other Blazblue character besides Makoto.) I guess I'm supposed to look at the color of her staff and memorize which color means what? Still the issue of ammo, though.. damn it.

Story mode is still a thing here. Minus a few stars for that. Abyss mode can ALSO go suck itself. What do you mean, I fight the AI and all of a sudden it goes "Here comes a new challenger" and makes me fight a different AI??? So I had to play the beginning of a match for nothing? And so long as I keep playing, it will just keep happening again, and I will never see it coming unless I figure out the pattern and keep count of my matches. Whoever thought of that, please go kill yourself.

How has there not been a romhack yet that automatically fires a subweapon instead if you try to use a spell after depleting your magic?

I'd figure that would be more important than the graphical fixes. I mean yeah the sprite has issues and it's good there was effort made to fix it, but it wasn't my primary concern back when I had played the game. I was constantly going to the pause menu to swap back and forth between subweapon and magic, even and especially in the middle of boss fights, when it's something the game ought to have taken care of it on its own.

Phantasy Star Portable 2 is better, one might as well skip this. But if you do go for it, just two warnings.

1) Being that this is a direct sequel to Universe, to the point that it feels like a downgraded port slash content pack, this game uses that game's PP system wherein PP is tied to your weapon rather than your character. It's a strange way to do it since it applies to spells and melee weapons too, not just ranged weapons, but I nonetheless found it very fun. You will find yourself constantly cycling through weapons as they're depleted and using PP replenishing items heavily, which kinda made me feel like a gun toting badass, burning through ammo magazines as I was mowing down enemies. In fact I grew to like it so much that I was kind of disappointed to see it was changed in Phantasy Star Portable 2, but that game's system admittedly does make more sense.

2) There is no longer a protagonist a la Ethan from Universe, instead you get to make your own character who never speaks and is never shown outside of gameplay (which, once again, was something I found disappointing at first but admittedly makes a lot more sense for a game of this sort) and the story is instead centered on your partner character who in effect becomes the face of the game. This is not in itself a problem except that here the partner has the cringiest voicework in existence. (Her design is also laughably ugly) The story really banks on you feeling empathy for this character, so it is not a good thing. Granted, there are people who find the partner character in the sequel annoying but I found her to be a massive improvement and found the story in the sequel to be a lot better.