I was afraid that coming back to this game would be a little disappointing, but damn did it prove me wrong. What I truly appreciate about this game is that it's uniquely a Dragon Ball game, not Street Fighter, not Tekken, not Guilty Gear, not Marvel vs. Capcom, not Power Stone, Dragon Ball. Dimps perfects Budokai from this point, the gameplay's snappy and I think this aspect might be contentious the Dragon Rush where your character performs this sequence of barrage attacks that turns into a rock-paper-scissors mini-game, along with the beam struggles and Burst Mode clashes are only enhanced by the game's cel-shaded visuals and animation work. It's a PS2 game with 3D models that replicate Dragon Ball so well for the time and the animations are so expressive and cool as hell, it brings that cocky Toriyama attitude to life with ease.

Kenji Yamamoto might have plagiarized a lot of music throughout his career, but his work screams Dragon Ball Z to me and Budokai 3's original tracks are excellent. It's hilarious that the last time I actually got into this game was when I was in my teens, I did come back to it briefly years ago, but even now the controls and tech are engrained in me from the countless hours playing it. Bulma being cut as a playable character is probably the only genuine complaint I have with this game, despite that it's still one of the best Dragon Ball games ever and arguably the best there is.

Unironically had way more fun than I thought playing a game called Pepsiman. The game is fairly short but it's a lot more fun than I had expected to replay levels to get a better time/score. And I don't know why but the Pepsiman theme is amazing.

I think the only major thing that could've been improved upon is the difficulty. It gets pretty hard at the end but a significant amount of it feels unfair with nigh-unavoidable obstacles (especially in the final level!) BUT! This isn't meant to be a masterpiece of gameplay, it's Pepsiman. It's to advertise Pepsi in a funny way and it nails that and is a lot more fun than it should be!

It hurts me to my core to admit that the first Sonic game I played hasn't held up as well as those before it. I still enjoyed myself while playing this time around of course, but there was just so much sticking out compared to SA2 for example, something I don't hold as high as others to begin with.

To start off, the four (five, technically) campaigns are a cool idea and a natural evolution of the last two games in the series. These isolated stories don't go as far character wise as I would like to, ESPECIALLY in Team Dark's case, which is a shame because Sonic 06 of all games might have the best to offer in their department. Even with the lack of character progression, Heroes makes up doubly with the interactions each group has, Team Chaotix specifically being some of the most charming in the franchise as a whole possibly. Ignoring the Story being a slight step down from SA2, I'd still say its the middle child within the first trilogy of Sonics 3D titles, SA1 being way more weak in most departments other than individual character's more memorable dialogue. Nothing too special overall but far from bad or even mid stories to choose from.

Gameplay wise, however, is where Heroes begins to waver as the years go by. Despite what many have told me, Team Sonic and Rose were by far some of the most miserable stages I've had to go through, either because of how long the stages dragged on, or in Rose's case, nothing of substance at all. I mean seriously, her entire team just feels like an excuse for the special stages to exist (of which are some of the worst in the series if you don't know how to cheese them). Team Sonic however suffers from the sheer amount of gimmicks the game feels like throwing at you per zone, instead of sticking to what SA1 and 2 action stages excelled at. Essentially, its trying to be too many things at once, and fails at being what it should be at its core. That being said though the gimmicks can be fun, all things considered tbh. Its funny that I say that, even though Team Dark is by far longer in every stage, but idk their levels just always felt more complete and focused compared to Sonic's. On that subject, Team Dark is definitely my favorite of the 4 rosters to work with, most likely because of how broken their team blast is, being one of like two games to showcase Shadow's abilities through gameplay in the entire series. Even with that in mind, both of these teams (Team Sonic especially), have the exact opposite problems they did in SA2, in the sense of the controls being more competent, but outright unresponsive in the most important moments. The light speed dash is completely broken and doesn't work 70% of the time with Sonic, but for some reason Shadow's is fine? The homing attack is probably the best its been so far but still jank without a reticle to judge who is top priority to the character. The worst addition is the Rocket accel to me, which is the only move in the game that constantly fights with another, being the light speed dash of course. How this got past play testing is beyond me, but there's nothing to do about it I guess, just have to deal with two completely opposite movement options being mapped to the same button. Team Rose an Chaotix don't have this issue of course, and they are almost better because of it. I say almost because as I said earlier Team Rose just sucks level wise and bored me half to death honestly. Chaotix, on the other hand, took me by surprise by how much I enjoyed just fucking around with for their entire campaign. I really don't want to be a contrarian for the 2000th time but yeah, these stages are much more competent than Sonic and Rose's by a landslide to me, despite being the most gimmicky of all. The thing is though, these gimmicks are pretty loosely tied to the plot, and lead to genuine exploration at times in these levels that cleverly hide behind linearity pretty frequently. That and their movesets are the best behind Team Shadow, with Espio being the only thing holding them back (like seriously what do any of his moves do besides the cloak?). The levels themselves are really cool, and in my opinion better than most in SA2 not named City Escape and Metal Harbor. But then again this game also has Frog Forest, which may as well be unplayable without an emulator. Like holy shit this and Rail Canyon expose how rushed the rail grinding was for this era, but at least with SA2 there is still a fundemental skill gap to be had, despite how poorly explained and implemented it was in most stages (except Final Rush), but in Heroes it is either unresponsive or a one way ticket to death. Frog Forest also had the worst use of the light speed dash, and I'm not sure what causes it to glitch out, but my theory is that the camera can reset your momentum if its being flicked by the LSD, but I'm probably wrong on that entirely. But yeah I really wish they'd give this and the adventure formula another go, some real fun to be had thats bogged down by the colossal amount of bugs that lead to unearned deaths, padding game time out probably past twice its intended length. Its for that reason that I can't begin to recommend this game for anything but an emulator, as you can save state as much as you want to negate the game screwing you over for playing it completely right. You didn't hear that from me though, never pirate games that billion dollar companies refuse to rerelease after 20 fucking years.

TL;DR: Team rankings go 1. Dark 2. Chaotix 3. Sonic 4. Rose, but with a REMAKE, yes I'm going to fall on that for every 3d sonic game pre unleashed, the potential for this game is limitless.

3.5/5 - Good

Disclaimer: for my playthrough of Sonic Heroes, I only beat Team Sonic's story. Most people say that you absolutely have to defeat Neo Metal Sonic to "beat the game", but to me, this was always just a true ending, while the normal ending counts too. Sonic 3 & Knuckles also rewarded collecting all of the chaos emeralds with a secret final boss and true ending and yet I never see anyone say that you have to do that to beat the game, the normal ending is valid too. I just fail to see the difference. I beat Sonic Heroes as Team Sonic and defeated the final boss. And here are my thoughts.

I don't have very strong feelings for this one, so this will likely be brief. I think this game is pretty good. What makes it fun is it's overall solid level design and unique set of mechanics. The gameplay loop revolves around playing as a team and having to switch characters / formations to quickly tackle different situations. I found this gameplay loop to be pretty satisfying. The team mechanic is very unique but actually surprisingly fun - speed formation has fast and flowing platforming moves, flight let's you do more precise platforming, and power can glide but is also good for combat. The most fun way to play this game is frequently switching formations without ever stopping to keep the pace going, and it feels very good when played well. The different characters' moves flow into each other quite smoothly.

The level design supports this: the game has a great roster of stages that are full of wild gimmicks that keep the game fresh throughout the rather short run. I enjoyed bouncing on frogs and swinging acorss vines in Frog Forest, blasting across rail full platforms in Rail Canyon, I could give more examples but you get the gist, it's very memorable stuff. Combat is quite the talking point for this game but I personally found that as long as the enemy health bars aren't huge, it's actually quite fun since you can keep the flow going, rapidly switching formations to combo your different moves together to take out enemies, it's a satisfying loop. Overall, I really don't have anything super exciting to say here. This game is just fun. The presentation is also quite good - the game's art style returns to the stylized cartoony look that the classics used as opposed to the more realistic look of the Adventure games and I think it looks quite pretty for a 6th generation title. The music is also as strong as you'd expect from a Sonic game, and it's full of bouncy, catchy tunes.

Unfortunately, while it's a good game, I'd struggle to say it's a very good one. The game has a lot of issues holding it back. What is likely the biggest issue usually presented with Sonic Heroes is it's controls, and I find myself partially agreeing with this complaint. The game is more than functional, but the speed formation can move too fast and feel slippery, Knuckles' punches can annoyingly send you flying (although I believe some of the other power characters are better in this regard), the rocket accel and lightspeed dash are quite finicky, switching rails barely works at all, and overall the game has a lot of jank and you often just don't quite feel fully in control. When you're going fast and perfectly executing all your moves it feels super satisfying, like it genuinely works, but it feels like the second you miss a bit the duct tape holding the controls together collapses and it suddenly feels terrible as you probably plummet off a cliff. The game has other issues too - while I liked most of the game's levels, some were duds, with the worst of it being Casino Park, one of the worst stages in the entire franchise - it's built almost entirely put of pinball tables that have some of the worst physics I've ever seen in my life, it's abysmal. The combat also starts to really lose me as enemies gain more health and more complicated attacks, as they turn from another obstacle you can skillfully blast through to a pace breaking slog that also doesn't feel all that great.

Overall, I like this game, but it never stuck out to me as anything incredible. It's a fun time with a lot of highs and a decent amount of lows that I overall don't regret experiencing. Maybe I'll return one day and replay it with a different team, but like a classic game, this feels like a replay to me, I see no reason to do it right after my first time. I've had enough Sonic Heroes for now, and I don't regret doing so.