I guess technically I played Sonic Adventure DX through Steam, just with a good list of mods tucked in as some sorta 'restoration' of the original Dreamcast release. Ignoring that, though:

Sonic Adventure is, in my own opinion, the best Sonic the Hedgehog has ever been. My love for this game in particular doesn't come exclusively from how fun it is, how great the soundtrack is, or how the story is written (though they are a good part of it). Instead, I love Sonic Adventure for the feeling it gives me. A feeling that no other can replicate, an intense wave of nostalgia, even for a game that I had only first played just last year. The spirit of this game is what had originally gotten me into the franchise as a kid.

Now, obviously I can admit when something isn't perfect. Especially a game like this, camera controls aren't always the best, movement can be pretty finicky in certain scenarios, voice acting is awkward and can sometimes feel a little choppy, if that's a good way to put it. But I'm also willing to admit that none of that hindered my experience nearly as much as you would think. I was willing to look past those, because they truly did not mean that much to me. I could chalk it all up to the game's age, as well as this being Sonic's first big 3D platformer. I was still having fun throughout. That's all that mattered to me.
I'm not playing Sonic for some profound narrative that'll shake me to my core, no gameplay innovations that would rock the modern world over. He's a silly and radical blue rodent that moves fast and says dumb shit to look cool. I can't take him seriously, I'm just here for a good time.
And what a good time this is. I genuinely had no qualms with any character's story, the only ones that might have been a problem are too short to give a damn. Amy's slow and clunky movement only persists for three total stages, and one boss that ends in 30 seconds. Big the Cat has four... remarkably easy fishing levels. The amount of people who seemingly have so much trouble with his story, I feel like I'm being lied to at this point.
Everything else is an absolute blast. Speeding through Sonic's several unique environments for whatever goal is assigned to you, racing that hedgehog in some of those same levels as Tails, scouting the areas for gems as Knuckles, and for all of it to come together in the end, to take down big bad Water Monster and save the city in your new powered up transformation, it's... cartoonishly simple.

That's what it is. Sonic Adventure is a ridiculous story with a cheesy soundtrack played over fantastical adventures spanning a wide variety of anthropomorphic animals, and a robot. It feels, in the most endearing way possible, like a cartoon. This whimsical mix of laid-back and fast paced action is exactly what I look for in a Sonic game, and it's in full force here to absolute perfection. There is no better feeling than seeing the culmination of all of these critters' stories, the creatures that have stuck with me for damn near my entire life. I fucking love Sonic the Hedgehog.

Maybe this is just my perspective as a Nintendo child speaking, but the games catalogue of Insomniac Games always fascinated me from a distance for how...underdiscussed their games seemed to be, despite being regarded as classics. There's absolutely a vocal fanbase for Spyro, and an even more vocal fanbase for their later hit series, yet it was never quite one I was able to get a grasp on the consensus of - there was an understood agreement of quality yet never one true point to really anchor it down. And I hate to be part of the problem, but now with first-hand experience under my belt, I think I get what they mean: The original Ratchet & Clank manages to be a great game despite never truly excelling in any one area of design.

I try, with any game I play, to understand the objective and intent of the designers and artists behind the game during my time playing it - to reach a sort of agreement upon which to draw my analysis. This is part of why platformers are some of my all-time favorite games - their intent is usually immediately understandable as soon as you're given control. Mario is a toybox - games with a character able to do many things, with levels often made purely around the lowest common denominator, yet with a moveset sparkling with potential for freedom of expression. Sonic is a training ground - a set of mechanics that oft feel unwiedly and difficult to use properly, yet one with boundless potential for faster, yet faster times, with a ranking system always at the ready to push you to your absolute limits. Donkey Kong and Crash are an obstacle course - characters with dead-simple mechanics placed in contexts that ask the utmost of your capabilities as a player, of your mastery of every little interaction between the character and their world, with bountiful rewards given to those who can go the extra mile. Yet in my time demoing the original Spyro the Dragon, this sort of distillation felt damn near impossible to get done. Spyro could move fast, yet his levels lacked incentive to utilize it to its fullest. He could breathe fire, jump and glide, yet there's rarely more asked of you to do than those basic actions in isolation. And as I was playing, trying to think of yet one more think to note down...the level I was in had already ended.

And that's when it clicked for me - the secret ingredient.

The absolute greatest achievement of Ratchet & Clank, beyond its distinct art design, immaculate music, charming character writing and thematic core, is that a fast, steady pace is prioritized above all else. Ratchet & Clank, much like its dragonic ancenstor, doesn't truly push the envelope in any one particular area of its gameplay - its gunplay is simple, its jumps and platforming are not much more than fit-for-purpose, and its mobility is never one to truly let the player run freely about. Yet none of what Ratchet & Clank tasks its players with accomplishing ever takes long enough to where one would begin longing for more. Enemies can be defeated as quickly as they appear, and their deaths are punctuated with the oh-so-satisfying sounds of bolts - hard cash in the Ratchetverse - whizzing into the lombax's pockets. Atop every hill lays a new visually distinct, breathtaking vista - and after just four or five of those, you've circled back to your ship, seen a funny cutscene with entertaining dialogue, and gotten a new weapon or mobility upgrade. Particularly with the weapons, there's always something to draw your attention - "maybe I could try the Visibomb here?" "These enemies are all bunched together, maybe the Walloper would be funny to use here?" "Ooh, if I use the Mine Glove and then Taunter, I can draw enemies into the mines!" It's not so much that these creative options for combat are required nor rewarding to solve, but that it all adds to the feeling of the game always having stimulus of some sort at the ready.

It's easy to liken its constant sense of progression to a Metroidvania or RPG, but it althesame feels immensely befitting of the narrative the original Ratchet & Clank tells. The duo are an odd pair in this one, going from somewhat neutral on one another to bickering to becoming more genuinely trusting of one another, yet the everpresent constant that drives the dynamic is Ratchet's own hot-headedness, not in any way moronic yet always leading thoughts with the trigger rather than the brain. The easy comparison to make here would be toward Sonic the Hedgehog, yet for as much of a go-getter as he is, I've always had the impression that he's fully capable and willing to slow down and assess situations inbetween sprints: he's never been restrained in his life and knows when its okay to take it slow. Ratchet, meanwhile, is excited to finally be off his home, finally getting to see the world and let it guide his ship on his first real adventure - he never stops to chat or befriend anyone for longer than what's needed. It feels like a reflection of the game's own pace and structure, as if the environments we explore aren't necessarily seen in their entirety, but only in the pieces that Ratchet himself is willing to go through before being ready to hop off to the next fun world. The persona of a determined delinquent scrapyard mechanic also obviously lends itself further to the combat, as it never stops feeling exciting to mow down fools with the arsenal at your disposal.

If Ratchet is emblematic of the sheer sense of tempo, aggression and power given to the player throughout the game, then I suppose Clank represents the opposite aspects - the details that are easily missed, almost asking one to slow down to be fully appreciated. The absolute scale, atmosphere and visual detail of a world like Metropolis, the effects and animations of every gun and enemy, the differing architecture and sense of culture from planet to planet...though its a world that you can easily and quite enjoyably breeze through, its also one that doesn't shy away from letting the player smell the roses at their own leisure. I feel like this balance seeps into upholding just about every part of the game - the cutscenes are both funny because of the snappy and outright excellent dialogue, yet watching attentively can alert the player to so many little intricacies of how the universe and its people operate. How much a character like Captain Qwark says about the status, importance and exploitation of celebrities, how full-scale warfare sort of just happens in the background in several of the game's planets without any true sense of panic or surprise expressed by its inhabitants - as if its just part of their everyday lives to expect the world to turn upside down at the whims of their rulers. And crucially how, despite being a mechanic and a rebel in spirit, Ratchet remains subservient to a capitalist system - his collected scrap isn't material to craft weapons on his own accord, but currency for purchasing weapons as goods. Like your average punk-rock song, Ratchet & Clank knows, criticizes and shouts about the system that's restraining them, yet relishes in that rebelliousness as an aesthetic moreso than committing to serious discussion on the topics raised. It has important things to say and messages to be dissected by its players, yet the aforementioned Ratchet half of the game sees to ensures that such discussion never bogs down the game's pure intentions of being a fun video game for too long - what fun is punk-rock if you can't enjoy listening to it?

Put rather bluntly, Ratchet & Clank can often feel like a game of many half-measures: much like Spyro its influences are clear to see yet its commitment lays uncertain. Yet all of it is wrapped in an aesthetic, structure and pace that sparks of confidence, a pair of voices shouting at you to always keep going fast yet to also always appreciate the detail and care of the world. And though there are times where those two voices feel thoroughly at odds with one another, for a surprising amount of the runtime they truly do harmonize into an experience that kept me hooked.

Though I may not love Ratchet & Clank, the game feels as if it is truly in love with itself, and I can't help but find that admirable.

[Playtime: 14 Hours]
[Key Word: Rapidfire]

As a result of me writing off fps games when I was younger and having parents who would've NEVER let me play a game like this before my teens, I never grew up with Halo.

With my first experience with the series being as an adult a lot of this games' flaws were very apparent. The second half just kinda shits itself with the amount of assets reused combined with how much it spams flood in the last four levels.

Despite that however I had a lot of fun going through the campaign and there is undeniably a lot to appreciate in what it achieves graphically and narratively. There are moments like stepping out of the ship in Mission 2 and the final vehicle sequence in Mission 10 that stick with you just for how cool they are.

While far from a favorite, it's not hard to see why this is still looked back on fondly as a classic two decades later.

There’s a very short sequence in the endgame of Sonic Generations that takes place right before the final boss. You platform across a series of clocks that start to move as the chaos emeralds are placed in each one. It’s not anywhere close as bombastic or detailed as any of the levels in the game, but this sequence was something that always stood out to eight year old me. The weary and rustic look of each of the clocks, the different ways the platforms turn around, the backing noise that’s usually shortened versions of music from the stages being replaced by the sound of ticking clocks. The ambience of the scene mesmerized me in a way that I hadn’t been before. It’s a small instance that’s likely to be forgotten by most players, but I feel that it changed the way I viewed this vast white void to some degree. As I went about completing each of the missions, I noticed the ways that certain aspects of the stage exteriors that had been consumed by stark emptiness had become more lively with each success I have with progression. Seeing these locations come to life outside of when I’m blazing past them. Once all the missions were complete, exploring the hub world and seeing color brought to every corner of it was a subtle but strangely beautiful experience. I feel that this experience was a sort of catalyst for my love of environments in games, what made me want to explore and see what makes these various virtual worlds tick. And to think that this passion came from an empty white void. I suppose it does speak to how you can find your passion for things in the most unlikely places.

Third time's the charm, gamers. Now that I've properly beaten Sonic Frontiers - if only to justify the disgusting amount of money I paid for this game; I'd forgotten just how much $60 actually is - I think I have some more legitimate grounds to review this game on than a spite-fueled (but justified and honestly based) diatribe / retrospective on over twenty years of on-and-off disappointment at the hands of Sonic Team and their inconsistent little media darling. And guess what? I actually dislike the game even more now that the initial, impulsive surge of anger and disappointment has passed. I didn't just spend $60 on a bad game, I spent $60 on a soulless game masquerading as something soulful. It's so fucking bad, but it's bad in an... interesting and thought-provoking way compared to Sonic Forces' absolute nothingness.

Whereas Forces didn't even bother pretending that it had a heart of any kind, Frontiers actively plays a smoke-and-mirrors game with the player, cleverly waving its' superficially stimulating elements in front of your face like a thick helping of wool right over your eyes. Look! Open world! Ian Flynn! Hype boss battles! A cryptic and mysterious trailer! All of these things, dangled in front of the consumer like jangling, shiny keys, made Frontiers very initially compelling. People were finally interested in a Sonic game for the first time in a long time, and these surface-level elements added just enough intrigue to keep its' oft-battered fanbase hooked. After all, when you're a Sonic fan, you'll take anything other than table scraps if it means you might get a decent experience this time. Something is better than absolutely nothing, right? Even if it winds up being next to nothing?

All these promising, eye-catching elements wound up amounting to absolutely nothing all that special. Like... yeah, sure, there's an open world. An empty, barren, lifeless open world that regrettably - but predictably - prioritizes size & scope over substance. Sure, Ian Flynn's in charge of writing (supposedly), but the shockingly underwhelming and undercooked writing is simply not up to snuff this time around, not even close to the intricate, playful dialogue & characters he gave us in both the Archie & IDW universes. Sure, the boss battles have these screaming edgelord metal tracks in the background led by the Sleeping With Sirens guy of all people (Sonic is still relevant!!!!), but they're also a painfully easy collection of convoluted, on-rails button-mashers at best and a jarring, ill-fitting cluster of quick-time events at worst.

And honestly, for me, all of that intrigue and mystery that was hyped up by the trailers wound up going absolutely nowhere. The Starfall Islands wind up feeling like a less-effective rehash of all the Echinda Lore that Ian Flynn is no doubt very intimately familiar with: a once-powerful tribe that tries to harness the Chaos Emeralds and then get destroyed by a more powerful being... like, shit, stop me if that sounds familiar. (The ancient Kocos even look like Chaos in flashbacks!) Sonic and his friends don't interact with the lore or the world around them in any meaningful way beyond how it only faintly relates to them, in a way that makes them feel kinda selfish.

Amy witnesses this surprisingly tender, nonverbal scene of love between two Ancient Kocos in the middle of a terrible war (one of the only effective scenes in the whole game), and decides that she wants to spread love throughout the world. As if that's... different from what she was basically already doing? Tails decides that he's tired of following in Sonic's silhouette after witnessing a similar situation with an eager, young Koco, as if they didn't already have this exact arc more than twenty years ago in Sonic Adventure 1. The one exception to the rule is Knuckles, who does at least acknowledge that the islanders' situation is remarkably similar to his own people's... before virtually never bringing it up again after that singular scene. So when the lore isn't a vaguely-boring reprise of the Echidna stuff from the games and comics, the plot rapid-fire rushes its paper-thin characters through "character arcs" in scenes where they're like "I want to change in a way that doesn't actually change who I am" or "I've decided to rehash the same arc I literally already went through" and Sonic replies with a steadfast "mmk" each and every time.

The only genuinely intriguing throughline of the entire plot is the 'corruption' thing that happens to Sonic over the course of the game. Initially, I was liking how the story was only quietly addressing what was happening to him, and I thought the buildup to Sonic's full-on corruption was actually pretty great... until it got resolved in a single scene where the power of friendship randomly cures Sonic of the thing that had been ailing him throughout the entire plot. How... convenient.

In a depressing twist of fate, Eggman can't even salvage this plot. You could honestly write Eggman out of the plot entirely; he spends all of his time dicking around in the painfully-underexplored Cyber Space and just looking for a way out instead of doing anything of any merit. I'm honestly not sure why they even bothered, especially given that the one relevant thing about him in the entire story - the relationship between him and Sage - is, once again, pretty undercooked and underdeveloped in the grand scheme of things. Sage herself is... fine, I guess? A for effort. Her character growth is passable, if completely predictable, and the plot pulls a classic "she dies at the end but doesn't actually die" rabbit out of its hat as if that would impress anyone at all.

See, I've been using a lot of magic and illusory terms throughout this review - rabbit in a hat, smoke and mirrors, wool over eyes - because I think that sums up Frontiers perfectly. It pretends to have soul by borrowing elements from the games that people like. A plot and cast remarkably similar to Sonic Adventure 1, complete with a Big the Cat cameo? Check. Poorly-implemented 2D-3D hybrid sections similar to Sonic Generations, the only Boost Formula game that hasn't come under any particular flak? Check. A painful overreliance on Green Hill, Chemical Plant, and Sky Sanctuary, because obviously fans haven't gotten sick of seeing these exact same locales ad infinitum ad nauseum? Check. I even noticed a handful of Cyber Space levels that copied the level composition of Green Forest and Sky Rail from SA2. They went beyond copying the look of those stages and went as far as to just recreate the exact same levels (I believe it was 3-1 and 2-6 respectively). This is the trick the game pulls on the average player. It presents the illusion of depth without the commitment by either borrowing from games that people like (be it popular Sonic games or Breath of the Wild / Nier: Automata) or presenting bold-sounding ideas that would look great in a review blurb. (Open world!!!!!!!!!)

But it's all so... nothing. All of these discrete, separate ingredients half-heartedly combine together to make a frustratingly bland and shallow dish. Everything feels hollow. Combat is a trivial, button-mashing affair that only deserves credit for the fact that it's sliiiightly better than "boost to win". Running feels awful until you level it up to a properly 'fast' amount (having to level up your top speed feels like the punchline to a bad Sonic joke), and even then, there's no sense of momentum or weight to your actions whatsoever. The open world is a cluttered disaster of banal, samey-feeling activities with rails, springs, and random platforms placed so haphazardly and sloppily around the world that it starts feeling like a randomly-generated Forge / Unity map. And the amount of padding Frontiers managed to cram into its runtime is utterly nightmarish. Frontiers is secretly a four-hour game that painfully, laboriously stretches itself out to twelve-fifteen through the tried-and-true Ubisoft method of making you collect shit.

That's right, collect-a-thon fetch quests, everyone's favorite thing about Sonic. Just look at how much people liked the fetch quests in Shadow, or the medals in Unleashed! But Frontiers actually takes it three steps further than its' much-maligned predecessor by asking you to collect an absolutely insane amount of Tokens and artificially withholding the plot from you until you collect these Tokens. There are moments where you deadass cannot progress the story unless you cave in and Collect All The Things, and sometimes your reward for doing so is just a fucking cutscene that basically tells you to keep collecting. At the climax of the game you're expected to collect like over 200 of these fuckers, and lemme tell you, were it not for Big The Cat, I deadass think I would have been driven mad by sheer, unadulterated, tedium-induced boredom. The literal only reason I was able to complete this game in the (painfully long) twelve or so hours I spent playing it was thanks to the fishing minigame you can play with Big, an Animal Crossing-esque button prompt minigame where you can catch fish and then trade in the tokens you get from the fish for Plot Items, including the Tokens you desperately need to continue the story with. This cuts down on the grinding considerably, but it also just feels like a band-aid slapped onto the gaping wound that was the idea to make this game a collect-a-thon in the first place.

The funniest part about that fishing thing I just mentioned? It's unironically the best part of the game, and that's both incredibly sad and incredibly funny. There's something very... Zen about the fishing minigame. You just kick back and relax to easily the best song in the overloaded OST, press a couple buttons, and then smile or chuckle whenever Sonic catches a fish much larger than him or something silly like an alligator or an oversized tire. All of the frustration and tedium just melts away for a few minutes. I was honestly having more fun just relaxing and listening to some chill lo-fi music than I was playing the actual Sonic game I spent $60 for, and funnily enough, that's when it hit me that this game might be a 1 instead of a measly 1.5. I was actively - and repeatedly - playing this minigame in order to avoid having to play more of the janky collection of chores masquerading as a "game" that waited me outside of the peaceful, comforting rivers that Big calmly inhabits. Big makes it incredibly easy to just not engage with the rest of the game, and while I was frankly thankful for that, it also highlights just how trivial everything is. Who cares about exploring or unlocking other parts of the map when you can just put a marker down on the spots where Big is and just run back there whenever you need some Plot Tokens? It actually winds up being faster to do this since the game starts increasing the amount of Tokens you need over time while simultaneously giving you less and less them over time, a bullshit decision that artificially lengthens the game to infinity and dulled me into an upset, uncomfortable stupor.

In conclusion, this is why I'm honestly stunned that some people are so taken with Sonic Frontiers. I'm honestly wondering where all of the heart and soul that people seem to have found in this game actually... is. Frontiers is a boring, dead-eyed trot through an empty, unassuming world that cobbles together a blatantly-stolen BOTW-Genshin Impact aesthetic and a truly garish amount of reused assets/levels/fucking ideas along with capital-M Mandatory fetch quests and the usual game-breaking Sonic jank. When you aren't gormlessly running through a barren and colorless world marred with terrible pop-in and some alarmingly ugly assets just cluttering the skyline, you're making brief treks through old levels you've literally already played before or mindlessly collecting Things to make the artificially broken-up and thoroughly-unassuming Plot actually continue, like feeding coins into a soda machine so it gives you your fucking soda already. It's all so... lifeless, genuinely lacking the same color, zest, and enthusiasm that previous Sonic entries - even the bad ones - had in excess. Soullessness wearing the mask of something soulful. If you're enjoying this, then... good for you? But also, you don't need me or anyone else to hold your hand for you. Sometimes people will hate the shit you like, and sometimes, that's okay, because sometimes that shit is Sonic Frontiers. After five-plus years of waiting, this is what we were given.

So much for redemption.

This game feels like the bad amalgamation of a studio with way too many ideas but no idea how to execute on any of them well, so everything is just spread thin. Not to mention that Sonic is stiff as hell in this game, especially when you jump.

Moreover, this game has the same issue as most open world games seem to in that the open world, or in this case open areas, is a bona-fide checklist for progression, stat increases, etcetera. I would at least be able to stand this if the world at least looked nice, but the world itself has barely any polish, and is largely barren (especially after the first island!). Island design is also extremely questionable in the third island which is where I dropped the game lol.

If there's anything in this game I can say that I appreciate, it's the direction they decided to take the story in: the writing style this time around feels more anime-esque(?) which is something I think works pretty well for Sonic actually, and I think it could be cool if the series kept going in this direction in the future.

Honestly, I couldn't even bring myself to appreciate the Cyberspace levels because they are rehashed level design from previous games, which COULD be fun if Sonic actually controlled well. I'd much rather just play these levels in their original context where they're fun.

I cannae be arsed to write any more for this, so I'm just gonna say this game majorly disappointed me, especially given that Sonic Team had a LOT of time to develop it, with a longer development cycle than other Sonic games. Sonic Team is better at making Puyo Puyo games lol

You don't owe forgiveness to the people who wronged you in your life, but you still are able to move forward and start anew. The cycle of hatred and tragedy will ultimately benefit no one the further and further it goes on. It's not easy to do all of this alone however, especially if you were mistreated by many people in your life. One day though you will find someone who will sympathize and give you the empathy you've needed for years. They can help and reach out their hand to pull you out of the darkness you've been swallowed up by. The people who did do you wrong and their actions can never be excused and it's understandable if they aren't, but knowing the whole truth and the different perspectives can put everything together. The point is to release, not to destroy anymore.

really wanted to like this but there’s so many design flaws that appear to be antithetical to what this series has accomplished in the past:

-the elephant in the room is the severe lack of environmental design with the various assets strewn across the islands. gone are the days of grinding on vines native to its forests or jumping across grassy platforms that could’ve emerged from the habitats that surround us. across every island we get the same navy blue rails and platforms haphazardly floating in the sky. what i would argue is that the facade of naturally occurring level assets is one of the most significant aspects of sonic gameplay as a whole. the world isn’t made for sonic. unfortunately the reverse of this idea is what plagues frontiers in many areas.

-could not get immersed into the game due to what i’ve said above & how barren and hollow the islands feel. maybe that was the point but… i severely doubt it considering sonic team’s track record. a civilization once thrived on these islands, and all that’s left for us to ponder upon are.. random pillars and “houses” that are no more than areas to hide collectables and not much else. the ruins aren’t even placed around cohesively to give the illusion of a village or somewhere once occupied by living beings.

-minigames were never sonic team’s expertise but i genuinely think frontiers takes the cake for the worst ones in the whole franchise; either they’re absolutely braindead, too easy, boring, or a combination of the three. don’t wanna get into this one too much.

-cyberspace levels almost had me excited at their introductions until i began to realize the level design is all unabashedly recycled from previous games without much amends to them to accommodate frontiers’ different control style. adding insult to injury is the copy and pasting of these levels onto aesthetics that are also recycled! remember green forest and savanna citadel? now their charm and details are completely erased in order to transfer their level layouts onto green hill, chemical plant, or sky sanctuary. it’s a real shame they resorted to this since it was proven they knew how to make engaging level design in the same game! the challenges present in climbing up the towers were some of the most fun i had in the game.

-the gameplay. to give credit where credit is due, sonic actually controls pretty good! unfortunately even this has problems behind it as it was pretty obvious the devs couldn’t craft good enough controls on their own, hence the freedom is given to the player to make the game feel right. anyway earlier i had said that frontiers was oppositional to the idea that “the world isn’t made for sonic.” here, everything is artificially curated for our hedgehog. i wouldn’t mind as much as i do if the assets and sections covering the islands felt natural and were fluently strung together, but nope. minor 5-to-10 second mostly-automated mini sections are everywhere. wholly uninteresting and sometimes irritating when i’m just trying to traverse the island and accidentally touch a spring or dashpad, 9 times out of 10 sending me into a forced 2D section without any way to escape.

after waiting five years… i could definitely say i was disappointed. but! i did enjoy the story & the soundtrack is unmatched as per sonic standard. it’s just unfortunate that there’s such an absence of attention to detail and contextualization despite what you’d think for an open world title such as this. as for the final boss… i’ll say it was probably my favorite part of the game since it steals from a game much better than it.

In his excellent video review/retrospective from around a decade ago, youtuber Derek Alexander of Stop Skeletons From Fighting (formerly the Happy Video Game Nerd) describes Shigesato Itoi's Earthbound (known in Japan as Mother 2) as "criminally underrated" and "one of the greatest games ever made." The first statement is, happily, no longer correct in the year of 2022. Sure, back when the video was made, Earthbound (and the Mother series as a whole) was a more niche title, heck the only reason I found out about the game and decided to give it a go was through Derek and this video. At this point in time, though in the larger gaming sphere its probably still relatively niche compared to titles like Call of Duty and Fortnite, in the JRPG sphere Earthbound is much more well-known and accessible, thanks to it being released on New 3DS XL and Wii U Virtual Consoles, SNES Mini, and Switch Online Virtual Consoles. The second claim is correct, though I found the reasoning Derek provided in the video was lacking. He claimed that the reason that Earthbound was better than most RPGs is that it has a modern setting and you are playing as a normal young boy and not some medieval, chosen hero. Modern settings in JRPGs are nothing new. They were present in the 90s when Mother 2 came out with titles like Shin Megami Tensei (though you could argue that while it begins in a modern setting, it delves into post-apocalyptic territory quite quickly) and Live A Live (though you could also counter that only a single scenario out of multiple takes place in the modern day). RPGs with modern settings are also present in the current day, with series like Persona taking place in modern day school settings since its inception in 1996 and going on to the recent release of Persona 5 Royal in 2019. I would argue that this was and still is not as unique as many tout it to be. The second point, that you play as a normal boy and not a chosen hero, is false in a few ways. Firstly, technically Ness is a chosen hero, as he was prophesized to defeat Giygas by the Apple of Enlightenment. Its not as prominent of a prophecy or as driving of a force in the plot as in games like Dragon Quest, but its still there. Second, while the trope can be oversaturated in the genre, the claim made implies that the chosen hero archetype is not good inherently, which I definitely disagree with. Such a trope is put to excellent use in games like Dragon Quest III, with Loto/Erdrick growing into that role by becoming a more worldly individual (see my DQ III review for more), but I digress. None of this is at all meant to be an attack on Derek or SSFF, they are one of my favorite channels on YouTube and Derek as the HVGN is one of the three people I credit for helping to foster my love for retro gaming (the others being James Rolfe and NintendoCapriSun). His video on Earthbound is excellent and honestly one of the best he has put out on his channel. The reason I go so in-depth in the beginning of this discussion on the reasons why he loves Earthbound is because rewatching his video made me reflect on why I adore the Mother series and Earthbound so much.

To me, Earthbound stands the test of time not because of originality of setting or of protagonist, but by virtue of its central values of love and empathy. There is no other JRPG series I have experienced that has approached its characters with the level of sincere kindness, empathy, and understanding as the Mother series. In Earthbound, and the Mother series as a whole, Itoi rarely if ever characterizes the enemies you fight as being wholly and purely evil. Characters like Frank or Everdred attack you but you get the sense that they are testing you more than anything. Mr. Carpainter and Geldegarde Monotoli are corrupted by idols or money and under Giygas' influence conduct their terrible deeds, but when you remove the influence they are repentant. Animals and other living creatures that you fight are not "killed," they "become tame." While many have jokingly (or not) chastised games like Pokemon for not having the balls to have their cute little animals die in battle, this fact is thematically relevant in Earthbound since the animals and other creatures are under the influence of Giygas and are otherwise innocent, and its telling of Ness and his friends' compassion that they would not outright kill these opponents.

This humanization of villainous characters is seen most poignantly in Pokey/Porky and Giygas/Giegue. Pokey was already quite an annoying child, and under the influence of Giygas he becomes a constant, nagging thorn in Ness' side throughout the entire game, becoming Giygas' right hand man until the end. Yet, from the beginning he is humanized as when you return him to his house next door after the meteor first crashes, you see signs of abuse in his mother and father when you talk with them. Later on, in Magicant, Pokey appears alone on a bench, saying:

"Ness, you're so lucky...I envy you. Let's be friends forever, alright?"

One could interpret this as the true Pokey appearing to Ness in Magicant, revealing that his true feelings underneath all the villainy and evil deeds are those of a boy abused by his family who just wants the love of a friend. This leaves out the fact that Magicant is a place in Ness' mind and the people, objects, and animals there are more like manifestations of Ness' memories of them. This does not discount the above analysis though, as with this context it can be inferred that the Pokey in Magicant is how Ness views Pokey, which not only hints at the greater truth of his character described above yet never explicitly stated by Pokey himself but also further reinforces the empathy that Itoi imbues in this character. Through all the evil antics, annoying laughter, and attempts to sabotage their journey, Ness sees Pokey as just a lonely and sad child, reaching out for love (an idea perfectly bridged into Mother 3, where in his domain in New Pork City we see a collection of nostalgic items and vehicles from Earthbound, showing that even when Pokey supposedly becomes the ultimately evil Porky, he has retained this human desire for love and companionship and is still holding on to the memory of Ness and his journeys).

The same can be said of Giygas. In Mother (Itoi's magnum opus), Giegue is defeated by Ninten and co through the power of love via the lullaby of Queen Mary, revealed to be Giegue's surrogate mother, Maria, and Ninten's grandmother. In Earthbound, as Giygas, he is torn apart at the reminder of the loss of his mother, and without this mother's love, spirals out of control into an unrecognizable and incomprehensible being of supposedly pure evil, corrupting the creatures of Earth. During the final confrontation, Pokey claims:

"So, isn't this terrifying? I'm terrified too. Giygas cannot think rationally anymore, and he isn't even aware of what he is doing now. His own mind was destroyed by his incredible power. What an all-mighty idiot! Yep, that's what he is! Heh heh heh heh... and you... you will be... just another meal to him!"

Giegue has become Giygas, the all-mighty evil power, and has lost all rationality or agency, needing to be contained by the Devil's Machine...or so the game initially claims. Throughout the final battle, Giygas cries out for Ness, and one of his dialogues is just "...friends..." You could argue that him calling out for Ness is this irrational being still grasping at the last bits of rationality left to focus all of his chaotic evil energy on his goal of defeating Ness to prevent the prophecy of the Apple of Enlightenment, but I see Itoi's empathetic hand in this. Here, Giygas is still wounded from the painful memories of losing Maria, and rather than grow and move forward, he has become distorted and is in many ways like Pokey: a lonely being seeking friendship and love.

Love is the core theme of Earthbound and the Mother series as a whole. There is a reason it is called Mother, after all. The love of not only individual human mothers but Mother Earth permeates the series and is especially poignant in Earthbound. In the same way that heroes like Erdrick in Dragon Quest III mature and become a hero by traveling the world and becoming more worldly, Ness matures and becomes more worldly by traveling all around Eagleland and gathering the Eight Melodies from various "Your Sanctuary" locations, all different places around the Earth. The center of the circle of locations when you bring up the Sound Stone in your inventory looks like the Mother Earth from the logo for the series, further emphasizing Ness gathering the love of Mother Earth to use as his power. Ness gains his power and strength from coming of age: leaving home, venturing off into the great unknown, gaining many friends and companions, yet he always keeps the love of his mother back at home close to his heart, even though he is away. By contrast, Giygas, due to the loss of Maria and his intense pain and anguish, cannot recognize that no matter how far away from him, or whether she is living or dead, Maria's love for him endures. He is too haunted by the pain and loss that he regresses into an incomprehensible mess of emotions, like that of a child, emotions lacking the the logical construction and consistency of maturity. Inside the Devil's Machine, he is a veritable "Boy in the Bubble" of his own regression. A widely circulated fan theory, and one debunked by Itoi himself, is that Giygas' sprite, when viewed in the negative, resembles a fetus. While this was confirmed as not being intentional by Itoi, it fits: Giygas has regressed so much that he is like a fetus, caught in the past of when he was a baby raised by Maria and tormented by the loss that he cannot move forward. Ness and Giygas are perfect foils, and ultimately Ness and co defeat him with prayers sent out to all of your friends and, most importantly, Ness' mother, freeing Giygas from his incomprehensible pain and destroying him with love, in what could be considered euthanasia.

This is what sets Itoi's masterpieces apart from the rest. Earthbound's characters are imbued with such strong love and friendship that you cannot help but love them. Itoi writes his villains with empathy and understanding, not in a hackneyed and overdone "You and I are not that different" manner but in a sincere and vulnerable manner. No other games or JRPGs explore the importance and power of love quite like this one.

Earthbound and Itoi's legacy is not one of quirky dialogue or outlandish difference. It is a melody of love.

What a lot of people either fail to realise or refuse to believe is that the best Sonic games are the flawed ones. The games that try to innovate with bold ideas unbecoming of a Sonic game, or any game. We've had 'perfect' Sonic games before like Sonic Mania or Sonic Generations and those games are great but they can't hold a candle to the way-too-serious tone of Sonic Adventure 2, the quaint but pointless Adventure Fields of Sonic Adventure, the audacity to make half the game a slow beat-em-up in Sonic Unleashed. People love Sonic for its ambition, not its accomplishments. People love games for their imperfections the same way they love people despite their flaws. Sonic Team has, for decades now, dared to do things that are new, bold, and weird. Sonic Frontiers is a continuation of that vision, and to reduce it to petty statements of "open world 🤓 sega hire this man 🤓 serious plot in cartoon rat game 🤓 the controls 🤓 but he's slow" is a pitch-perfect demonstration of how Sonic is doomed to fail. Look at your favourite games and try earnestly telling yourself they're flawless.

Credit to smaench for planting this seed in my brain, actual review when I'm done playing it and can let my thoughts digest rather than spewing unfiltered drivel onto your webzone.