Recent reviews by Easy Pete

Background:
I've been a huge fan of this Sonic and Shadow ever since I was about 8 years old. I think my first game was Sonic Heroes and then I later went back to play all the classics while continuing to play the new games. At 26 now, I've grown really fond of anti-heroes in storytelling and have been craving a more fleshed out game featuring Shadow. With '06 Sonic being the last one really featuring anything like this, I was super excited to get my hands on this and see my boy back putting in that work. As a kid who used to cut out pictures of Shadow from old comic books or magazines and made my own stop-motion videos with sonic toys, let me tell you THIS ♥♥♥♥ SLAPS. (I literally just played the first Shadow level and came to make this review)

Review:
I'll come back to update this review as my playtime progresses, but this isn't no Sonic Frontiers run through an empty open field BS. This is everything you love about Shadow the Hedgehog distilled into a game. Right off the bat, getting to play with the Chaos Control mechanic was AWESOME and opens the door for way more creativity in gameplay than in the original Shadow the Hedgehog game. Having played the original Sonic Generations, I wouldn't think this would go too far into the story of Shadow or bring any significant development to his storyline, but with some of the cutscenes they've already shown, it does seem we might be in for a big reveal here.

Review after first level: 7/7 Chaos Emeralds.

A lot of people are talking about the micro-transactions or the performance, but I'd like to provide what I feel to be a much more pressing issue with the game's core design and function. THE RETURN TO LAST INN SAVE IS HORRIBLE.

I'm someone who played the first game and LOVED it. I have hundreds of hours between playstation and PC and the game was a staple of my childhood/teen years.

Coming into this game, I felt comfortable. I felt like I knew what was going on. I played extremely diligently, searching for collectibles, side-quests and hidden treasure. At the beginning of the game, there is a sequence similar to the first game where you're walking from the starting city to the big capital of the game. After completing all of the side quests I could find in the first area and heading off, it seemed as though the game eventually offers a fast travel to the big city and instead, I chose to go by foot to earn extra levels and experience. After fighting multiple enemies, surviving and camping- I finally got to the big city. By which point, I was already almost level 10 and once I got there, I immediately did the quest to unlock new vocations and switched to the sorcerer. Now we're talking, right? Wrong.

I set out on a journey for another quest, feeling confident as ever before saving and going to bed. The next day, today, I log in to a Cyclops attacking me and my health is a 50% maximum and it kills me. Each time you respawn, you lose more and more maximum health until you rest again. After dying to the cyclops for a bit, my max health was about at 20% and I decided to return to my last inn save not realizing what that literally meant. Sure, this is ultimately MY fault, but why the HELL is this in the game?

Now, at about level 12 in the game and having just switched to a sorcerer, I am now level 2 and it's brought me to a point in the game where I'm forced to fail the timed aid quest in the beginning. Can't start the game over. Can't return to where I was originally fighting the cyclops and just run away. Can't change my mind. And yet for some people, they're justification for game mechanics like this is, "Well you shouldn't have pressed it." Do we ever stop and consider that this was a GAME designed and sold this way? Even Elden Ring, a game generally considered as a pretty hardcore game, doesn't have unfriendly game mechanics like these???

I'm extremely disappointed as a longtime fan of the game and someone who really had high hopes for this next sequel. Unfortunately, This has soured much of the excitement I felt first starting the game and now I just wonder how this will impact end-game play when you're so high level that you don't really "need" to rest at an inn. So then you go play for quite a bit and maybe you want to go further back than your last save but you literally can't without losing potentially HOURS of play.

I just feel forcing people to rest at in inn to save progress in a game with minimal fast travel, dense enemy packs and sparse inns throughout the beginning is an extremely poor choice and hurts the flow and feel of what this game is. These changes aren't 'hardcore'- it doesn't make the game more engaging, feel more realistic or challenging - it just feels unfriendly.