LIKE A DRAGON GAIDEN: THE MAN WHO THUGGED IT OUT.

Is the game predicated on a plot misstep and everyone in it standing firmly on buffoon business of the Clark Kent variety? Yes. Is it pure bait for suckers like me who eat up nonsense mixed in their GAR plate like peas? Absolutely. But god damn it's ACES from top to bottom. All of what I love about the series is here in spades. K-...Joryu cranks the stoic cool factor all the way up, serving up that satisfying woop-ass straight out the can like its first day out all over again, helping every endearing goofball he can find along the way. Striking character Drama, piercing moments juxtaposed against way over the top set pieces, wacky distractions on every street, and goons at every turn itching to get smacked up by the goa-... sorry, a nameless agent forced to just thug it all the way out in the WORST way for reasons... you know what we don't have time, games too short to worry about all that. Click, bye bye brain I've got pure ludo to bask in. Because that's how we're built. Then we barrel headbutt-first into a knockout ending, might have the best final cinematic yet for the series. Like a cigarette in the clarity of that afterglow I'm winding back down into a 4, but man was it close to 4.5

A respectable effort from Team Ninja to broach the open world genre with another period piece. The familiarly tight and engaging combat elements have demonstrated to become par the course for TN. Regrettably I think they should focus more on shorter, tighter games, as this one started to grate toward the end in a way the Niohs never did. The elements that usually make open-world games fully engrossing have never really been their strong suit (Worldbuilding, game-long character dialogue, deep exploration, etc). So their first foray into putting more thought into those elements didn't rob from the great combat, but also didn't really serve to enhance the experience enough to make the open world choice a knock-out. Still a worthwhile Slashfest through the end of the samurai era.

I would rate this game lower because of some of the art looking a little crusty and the abrupt ending that the average player is likely to get, as well as how poorly explained many of the plot points are, but I'm a big fan of the branching story tree and the fact that it has full voice acting, which is an insane ask for any VN, let alone a fairly niche unknown name like this.

it's creepy and mysterious at times, but does start to buckle under the weight of its story and the choices of its seven(!!!) protagonists towards the end

uno N-bomb @ 3:17

You see these type of “spot the difference” games dont work when sasuga unreal engine farts out visual and audio glitches onto my screen. “Has this room always been this bright? Has the rolling trolley always been silent?” Well these are going to be the most subtle anomalies you’ll come across, and they’re not even intentional. Also thanks for a ‘game over screen’ that is functionally identical to just failing the loop?
Idk, it’s not as bad as my review makes it out to be, but I cant type without sounding mad after playing an unreal engine game.
P.S. the unreal engine info’s source is that i made it the fuck up

This is my first time replaying this since I was a tiny child and uhhhh I guess I don't really like this one all that much.

Sonic controls well enough but there's a certain "walking on eggshells"-ness to Sonic's movement that (barring complete mastery) feels like the most reliable way to play him, I rarely felt confident in using homing attacks to blitz through a level at high speeds as it was almost always more responsive to let your jump slowly reach its apex and then more methodically dash when you knew exactly how Sonic would react. However once you start doing this you'll find that his (and the rest of the playable cast's) levels just feel trivial to play. They're just breezy enough to not be particularly interesting or exciting. That is when the camera, collision and homing detection decides to do what you want, which is most of the time but shit broke frequently enough for me to not understand why someone would give this game a 9-10/10.
Because y'know excellent games generally don't do this.

Music ranges from pretty good to great but it's completely outclassed by SA2 in virtually every way I care about. Like... come on... Metal Harbor...Supporting Me...Aquatic Mine...Pyramid Cave... Get real

To give SA1's OST Some Credit though my standouts are Red Mountain, E102's theme and Unbound for being absolute bangers (the character themes in general are pretty good) and Crush 40 is always amazing.

Unbound and E102's story unearthed a whole treasure trove of nostalgic emotion within me and replaying him was probably my favourite part of the whole thing.

Virtually everything that's good about this game is seemingly better in SA2, although I am prepared to eat my words if that doesn't hold up to my childhood impression either upon replaying. Sorry in advance.