Around Christmas of 2018, I ended up buying this game on PS4 secondhand and it just sat on the shelf for a while due to being distracted by Smash Ultimate.
Come the 2020 pandemic and the need to find something to distract myself with something, so I figured to finally give this game a shot.
The rest of that year was spent getting the Platinum trophy in every main entry in the series, a tradition which I've continued to do with the various spin-off titles and every game since then.
Safe to say, this game is absolute peak and I can no longer escape the grasp both it and this franchise has had on my life, being one of my first exposures to story-heavy games, media without English voice acting, and just in-general Sega properties outside of Sonic.
This game is close to my heart, and because of that I struggle to find any issues with it and will recommend it to anyone looking for a new game to play.