Much like the OG Town of Salem was for many years, this is now the go-to chilling in VC game and on that merit alone I gotta love it, but it also improves on the original massively by lowering the burden of knowledge significantly (whereas you pretty much had to have the wiki open at all times if you were playing certain roles in the original). There's still a lot of shit and very boring roles and getting neutral evil is the designated handicap mode, but honestly most of my chagrin comes from how other players react to anything you might do. Dep shoots some rando who turns out to be evil? Everyone goes ohh nice shot nice shot even tho it was a wild guess. Vote guilty on some dude everyone innoed despite being sketchy? Chat is now all question marks and your ass is getting hung regardless. Don't have a defense so you don't post anything? Uh uh-huh nice defense XD. It tilts me to no end. But there's just enough magical stupid ass moments to keep me coming back,so I love it.

You could put Eva BGM over the most boring ahh shit and still have it be enjoyable, but they do spin a cute story here which I'd honestly have loved to see developed beyond the confines of being a pretty basic 3 hour VN here but alas. Specially enjoyed the choppily animated backgrounds like all the escalators in the NERV headquarters (I don't know why, they just ooze late 90s PC swag). I just wish I stayed put and didn't check the other endings I didn't initially pick because while one of them was fine, the other one had tits (they really couldn't help themselves huh) and the other other one (which wasn't even in the original version,afaik?) was just legit fucking dogshit.

I really wish I could enjoy this more than I do but after about week on this particular island I'm honestly just logging HOPING there's anything to do and checking out the crusty .png food. Whenever some fucked interaction like Slenderman befriending Charlie Brown or Applejack reaaaally liking apples happens, I can really see it. But for the most part, you're waiting around for something,anything to happen. Character interactions specially seem way too infrequent which sucks because that's what you're there for and anything else the game has to offer is lacking.

I can't imagine the case for this game's eventual sequel/port being anything other than a monkey's paw. They did promise gay relationships in the next entry but that was like, 10 years ago and that's not all they need to add. And frankly, I can't imagine centrist-ass Nintendo adding a drop down menu with "what type of Mii is your Mii attracted to" or "what are this Mii's pronouns". Any way they spin it, the discourse is gonna be obnoxious. The only thing that's completely certain is that it's gonna be one of those shitty 60 dollar live-service style Nintendo games where there's barely anything to do at launch and some ok content 1 year down the line. But the original didn't have much to begin with so lmao

As much as it was only made for the sake of having a safe shelf product to pair up with the maelstrom of Classic Sonic merch that popped up after Mania, this is... good. It might not be as instantly appealing and polished as Mania, but it also doesn't feel as derivative as that game did and I also appreciate that it doesn't hinge so heavily on epic Cybershell references (non-derogatory) and somewhat carves an identity for itself. But most of all, it's just some fun Sonic levels and a really cute new character that'll either be insanely overused in future media or never show up again.

There's a couple of glaring flaws, which is pretty much a given. In particular, FUCK Press Factory All My Homies Hate Press Factory, the bosses are mostly dogshit and range from stupidly easy and boring to stupidly bullshit and frustrating and the Emerald powers are disappointing; I almost never go for the Special Stages in any Sonic game because A) I don't like nor care to get good at them B) getting Super Sonic and trivialising some of the difficulty for the rest of the game never felt worth the time. So when the Special Stages are actually pretty easy AND there's an actual gameplay incentive for each Emerald you get, that's exciting but I never even used most of them over the course of the game (and the ones I did almost felt like a necessity).

I'm sure I'd be way more critical had I actually paid MSRP. The whole debate on game pricing and how much a 2 hour 2D platformer is actually worth compared to a RPG you can easily squeeze 100+ hours out of is not something I feel like bringing up, but I feel anyone can take a look at this game and feel it's not up to a sufficient level of polish compared to like, Mario Wonder, which came out a week or so later. And honestly, Sonic just deserved better, in that sense! Maybe one day we'll get there. Probably not.

The game's systems don't really lend themselves to a VS mode at all so the story mode is a bit shit, honestly. You get stunlocked to kingdom fuck whenever you attack/are attacked and since the pieces are only two segments long, each move doesn't feel impactful enough to justify watching a Powerpoint presentation whenever you accidentally do a chain.

It was only when I played the Game Boy version that I realized the endless mode and the mode where you need to clear a specific number of star blocks are pretty fun so, just play those instead.

After over a decade of watching people talk about it, it was exciting to see none of those videos ever managed to relay how perfectly adorable of a package this game is. From the cutest fucking hub areas to the actual stages, there's surprisingly little I'd want NOT to be in the game. It's just all so precious. This would have slotted in so well with all my childhood games and probably turned me into a better? worse? person for it, but instead I'm on the bad timeline where I played Heroes instead. Anyway, no doubt one of my favorite games this year and I doubt there'll be any Sonic game I have yet to play that I'll enjoy this much.

It sucks. Very early on I thought wow, THIS is the worst Sonic game I've played thus far. The level design is atrocious, graphics are cool but dip into the eye-searing territory too often, cast is interesting but can all pretty much do the same thing and the tether mechanic is annoying and ever so slightly broken.

But it grows on you. Maybe not in a "aw,this is so endearing" way, more like in a "i'm suffering from a terrible bacterial infection" way. If anything, admire Sega for making yet another strange and unconventional Sonic game for a doomed-from-the-start Mega Drive add-on but then only rerelease boring ass CD while Knuckles' Chaotix is relegated to emulation and having it's soundtrack overused in gaming Youtube videos.