Recent reviews by Amalia Kalio

This is a PC port of a /very/ grindy mobile gacha game. If you were expecting a successor to the X series, spiritual or otherwise, this is not it. Everything is themed off the X series and the content within them, but so much of the formula has been changed that it should be considered its own thing.

The Good
========
* There's some nice nostalgia here, between remakes of chunks of stages and updated music tracks
* This is probably the first PC Capcom port I've played that didn't have issues with resolutions or framerates

The Bad
=======
* The grind. There are... A heck of a lot of items for you to level in a bunch of ways, but only a (relatively) small handful of stages compared to other similar games that try to do this.
* The scaling. Challenge/Hard mode of levels doesn't grant XP, loot or money. It's intended to be played after you've progressed through a few full chapters of the normal difficulty it seems, but it still just feels like a pointless slap in the face. Likewise, even if you have the resources, you cannot level up anything in your inventory until you've exceeded certain account level thresholds. This is not made clear, you just sort of have to figure it out on your own.
* The inventory. There are items (cards) you can equip to characters. Whatever you do, do NOT obtain multiple of a gold-tier card, as you cannot get rid of them by selling or merging. Despite this, they still count against your inventory limit.
* Wonky controls. They've set it up so Steam will *strongly* encourage you to use a controller if one isn't detected prior to launching the game. However, at least half of the game doesn't work at all with controller inputs. Additionally, it feels as though core mechanics (IE: Double-jump and Air-Dash) have not been properly playtested, as they just don't function as-intended a chunk of the time. This leads to....
* Leftover laziness from janky monetization expectations. There's thankfully no microtransactions or loot boxes in this. However, almost none of the game was really tweaked or redesigned to accommodate for that massive of a core change. What I mentioned earlier about inputs being dropped feels like it was semi-consciously done to encourage you to spend money on more play time, as is a typical practice of mobile gacha games.
* It'll still crash if you look at it funny. I got to a boss fight about five chapters or so in. A scripted stun led to a game crash.
* Achievements are ambiguously tied to unrelated game progress. There are some achievements on steam tied to acquiring certain amounts of gear. Say [x] number of characters, or weapons. However, let's suppose you've gotten 20 characters early on somehow. You'll only receive incremental achievements for obtaining characters of smaller quantities after completing a chapter.
* The aim assist feels more like a burden than a boon. Your character will only face whichever way the game thinks it should. You can move somewhat freely, but you have little to no control over which way you actually face. This leads to frustrating progress blocks that you essentially have no control over until the game decides to cooperate with you. You /will/ miss certain level challenges (such as time) as a result of this.

This may as well have been called "Sonic 4: Episode 3". The trailers screamed this would be the case, and I made the mistake of willfully ignoring it. I *really* wanted to get more than three Zones in before writing this, but the problems just keep getting worse as it goes along. Edit: I've since finished the game. I'll add edits in to reflect. Even on discount, I do not recommend buying this as it is.

Setting aside the general look and feel, the game is filled with obtuse gimmicks that leave you wondering "....but why?"

Emeralds grant wisp-like abilities, which replenish every goal post. This would be fine, if I felt like I actually had a use for them. (I suspect they'll be required later... Or at least I hope they are, to give them some sort of reasonable justification.) Edit: Still mostly pointless save for one or two points.

Levels, including mid-boss fight, are set up in such a way that the inputs required to enter into a movement mechanic will prevent you from getting into the subsequent one it's intended to chain into. A great example is during Zone 2, where there are vines on the wall meant to launch you upward in a diagonally opposite direction. Some have pipes that you need to directionally launch off of (not just time the position of the jump) immediately in front of these vines, leaving you to press against the momentum the vine provides. In other cases where they chain, you have to be nearly frame-perfect to change your direction as you hit them; letting go of the analog stick will not solve your problem.

Boss fights are now damage-gated. One hit makes them temporarily invulnerable and locks them in a stun animation for a period of time that feels longer than necessary. Edit: As it turns out, some bosses continue to have I-Frames even after their stun animation. These last long enough for you to have gotten anywhere from 2-5 attacks in, depending on the boss (assuming it wasn't filtering the collisions to begin with).

The goalpost Bonus Stages are (somehow) a more complicated rendition of the Sonic 1 Special Stages.

Current Special Stages take place in an area where you have to essentially vine-swing yourself through a field of floating orbs while chasing an Emerald (or additional medals if you already have the Emerald). The pathing isn't clear, but is doable despite feeling generally bad. Edit: The fifth emerald is notoriously difficult with how it's been set up. About the only saving grace is that you don't have to redo these for the second playthrough as the "secret" character.

Speaking of Special Stages... No matter how many Emeralds you've obtained, it still shows all of them on the clear screen as if you've found them all. This is a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things, but it comes across that they truly don't understand the franchise anymore. Edit: This appears to be a bug, but is not resolved via integrity check.

Edit: As I kept playing, button inputs were being dropped. This, again, was not something I saw on other players' uploaded videos. It wasn't until the final, final boss as Super Sonic that it finally became clear that button inputs were just lasting longer than they were supposed to. Like, multiple seconds after the button in question was released. Though the game was running otherwise smooth, it makes me wonder if it just doesn't like running in 4K or something. This unfortunately meant that revving up a spin dash or attempting to fly as Tails was not feasible.

A 3D sidescrolling Sonic game can be fine. Hell, if we could get a 3D game that behaves like Mania, I think it would go over great. This is anything but that, unfortunately. (Also, requiring Epic integration? Really?)

Edit: SEGA... Do you guys even have a dedicated QA team, or conduct focus group tests anymore? The number of bugs and issues in this is absolutely ridiculous.

A prequel to The Messenger, this game certainly delivers on quality despite changing genres entirely. If you've played The Messenger, there are sorts of nostalgic nods and plot points to explain certain events.

The graphics are gorgeous. It's clear that a lot of love and hard work went into this, as is repeatedly represented by the level of detail. There is a character you obtain late in the game whose sprites not just underline this fact, but bold it.

As I play through, I'm constantly amazed by the sheer amount of content that exists in this game. At almost 30 hours in, I still have areas I need to progress further to gain access to. You will absolutely get your money's worth out of this.

However. There are certainly points where it feels like the game is saying "Hey, I heard you liked mechanics - so I gave you mechanics for your mechanics." Where Super Mario RPG has timed button inputs for dealing extra damage or mitigating some damage mid-combat, this game aims to take that multiple steps further in a way that can only be found though sheer exploration. Some skills can (potentially) chain for as many times as you can hit the frame specific button (while it's being sped up), whereas some basic attacks can hit up to three times if you manage to hit the button at the right time. The game will also frequently prompt you to use specific combos/damage types to prevent an enemy from using a spell. The result is rewarding, but equally sweaty.

The Messenger set a level of expectation for writing going into this, which I feel has been exceeded in its execution. Though there are certainly still some humorous moments, the overall tone is much more serious and there is significantly more lore available to you if you wish to find it.

One interesting thing to make note of, which I know the developers have already been pushing as a key point, is that the game is essentially gridless. There are aspects where you can tell there is /some/ form of a grid system at play, but it's not in the same sense that traditional JRPGs are expected to be. You stop or move through any degree of sub-pixels you wish, and the entire experience is incredibly fluid.

If you like turn-based/JRPG-style combat, pick this game up.

Knowing that mods will ultimately be this game's salvation, this review is based off of the shipped experience. I had to mull over it for quite a long while before I could come up with any solid conclusion. **I fully expect that mods will fix most, if not all, of what I am about to say; that experience would warrant a positive review without a doubt.**

It boggles my mind that, even after it got delayed for a year by Microsoft to fix things, this somehow got by QA. Even setting aside some of the fundamental progression-breaking bugs, there are certain design decisions that just don't make sense. And unfortunately, some of those decisions beget some of the bugs.

Design issues:
*Skill progression is counter-intuitive to the intended playstyle in some cases. A perfect example is Stealth, which the game *strongly* encourages you to make use of in various quests to get by unnoticed. However, the only way to progress this skill involves using stealth to get kills instead.
*The world no longer pauses while in a dialog. On paper, this is honestly kind of neat. I also kind of enjoy the realism it adds, to some degree. However, there are multiple scenarios where dialog can start in a hostile area as a result of a scripted event. If the NPC you're speaking with engages in combat, it can soft-lock the game (sometimes to the point that you can't access the console or menu).
*The procedural generation in planets plays against itself. Landing locations seem to generate a localized instance. Though this is fine in most cases, it also means you can prevent yourself from being able to access a planetary landmark if you don't land there directly to generate yet another instance; this applies to having a landing zone directly next to a landmark.
*Following the above bullet, it's fairly often that you'll need to go 500-1500m to reach a location you can see from your scanner, and then will need to travel that distance multiple consecutive times to reach other destinations. Where this was fine in Skyrim or Fallout because there was always *something* to see or do along the way, that's not necessarily the case here. Most of it is barren and may not even have fauna running about. It's left me not wanting to do much exploration, unfortunately.
*You can have a small plethora of houses, but there's no in-game method to properly keep track of them. Keep vigorous notes.
*In a game where you need to scour through star charts, there is no search function. Thankfully there isn't nearly as much to cycle through as No Man's Sky or Elite Dangerous, but this implementation feels less acceptable than the similar system in Mass Effect due to volume.
*Quests for obtaining powers (similar to Skyrim's shouts) just feel lazy. "Go to point, enter temple, kill one simple enemy, likely never return to that planet again." Though the abilities are fun to use, the story tie-ins are lackluster and optional.
*A large number of sounds and animations are reused from Fallout. (IE: You can hear Fallout console sounds when scanning objects, and some of the background combat music is exactly the same.) Though to be fair, this is more a sign of laziness than being a proper issue.
[*Adding this one in post-review: The fact that there are *ten* new-game plus playthroughs and you don't get to retain anything other than memories or perks. All customizations, bases, credits, etc are gone. You will receive new ships and armor each time, but the ships (even when maxed out) aren't worth it.]

Major bugs:
*Some (but not all) menus are coded to run at a lower framerate than the rest of the game. Because of this mismatch trying to interpolate against your framerate setting of choice (in my case, 120), entering into a menu can cause ***the entire game*** to come to a crawl and feel like it's maxing out one of your system's resources. This seems to be resolvable by hitting `Escape` about 80% of the time. Unfortunately, it means that most of the UI is nigh unusable unless you can get a "good" instance.
*One of the main quests will not trigger if you've done a certain amount of progression with any faction other than Constellation. In my case, I was shunted down a faction questline early in the game for stealing half a sandwich and didn't realize this until around 20 hours in. If you're lucky, there are ways around it, but it's *very* random (no two users seem to be able to resolve it the same way).
*The engine is held together by so much bubblegum that even its own console commands don't work right. This is unfortunate, as the current state of the game requires you to use the console in order to progress in some cases.

===But it isn't all bad===
*Though a lot of the game isn't as engaging as I would like it to be, there are numerous spots in the writing that are pretty great.
*The ship building, when it wants to cooperate and give you your full framerate, is honestly really neat. I just wish finding/obtaining ships & parts were tied to your skill levels rather than your character levels. (Though even more ideally, they wouldn't be tied to levels whatsoever.) The relation of availability based on levels isn't clear or explained, it's just something you kind of notice as you play through the game.
*Despite everything, it's still pretty. I think they finally took to heart a lot of criticism about things like Skyrim's rocks or Fallout's various cookie-cutter assets. It's clear that their art team made this a passion project of sorts.

After just under 40 hours and having all but S-Ranked the mission list, I can say that this is overall a good game. A number of the beginner bosses (particularly the first) are designed to tilt you; but with a game specifically designed around NG+ mechanics and wanting you to revisit the same missions, this also brings an absolute sense of satisfaction by the time you've been able to revisit these once-difficult bosses.

Comparative to prior Armored Core titles, this one is simultaneously more *and* less challenging than its predecessors, depending on how you want to compare. No longer being able to drop below 0 credits in your bank is a massive sign of this, right alongside the convenient placement of resupply pods just before bosses and the ability to switch/tweak your AC loadout & reload at the latest checkpoint without a penalty other than your recent death. All of this is unheard of, yet makes this game objectively easier. However, this also led to a fundamental change in how levels have been designed. You /will/ be up against stronger foes and you /will/ get punished more severely for carelessness. Likewise, levels are also typically longer and are more likely to intermix stronger foes in with the weaker ones.

With these fundamental changes, also seems to take a step back from some of the more grand boss designs (with exception to the Strider at the start of the game). The majority of big & heavy bosses /do/ feel more akin to fighting an AC-translation of a Souls/Elden Ring boss. While this has drawn significant criticism, I think it fits in its own idiom. However, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping for a return to these larger boss fights in the sequel to AC VI (assuming this follows the trend of its predecessors).

The game is gorgeous and extremely well-optimized. I understand FROM Soft is using an in-house engine, but other devs should really take note of this. I cannot stress enough just how well this title runs, even against older hardware.

The soundtrack is good, but also feels like a minor departure from the composition of prior titles. It feels a lot more action-BGM than it does a soundscape meant to actually convey the grand scale of what's going on. (Go listen to the AC 4/4A soundtracks in particular if you're curious what I mean.)

The difficulty scaling throughout the game still feels kind of wacky and a little /too/ up to RNG sometimes. As evidenced by the first mission or two, the game knows how to throw its punches effectively. But then there are a decent number of scenarios scattered about where you feel like it's almost too easy in comparison, and have been lulled into a false sense of security by the calm before the inevitable storm. The RNG bit is really only obvious when seeing drastically different outcomes from the same boss fight in back-to-back attempts. To some degree this is fine as it keeps you on your toes, but at the same time it makes it much more difficult to figure out how to effectively approach some fights.

The writing for the campaign is still well and true to what we've come to expect from the franchise. I recommend not skipping the voiceovers on your first time through each mission.

Overall, I'd give it an 8.5/10.

UPDATED REVIEW: The developer has since added manual shift and inertial drift. However, 5th gear (manual only) maxes out the revs without allowing you to actually reach top speed. Automatic is where you want to be at if you have any chance of keeping up with the other driver, as the scaling in Manual is simply not up to par. The new inertial drift system just feels like I'm driving on an oil slick the entire time.

OLD REVIEW: They've somehow managed to make an InitialD game without manual shifting, car collisions, or drafting and instead gave it a fairly unreliable dedicated drift button. But hey, there's some instrumental Eurobeat in there.

While not a "typical" metroidvania, it certainly follows enough of the tropes to be considered as one. At the same time, while I've seen some complaints about that specifically, I actually appreciate some of the direction they've taken to branch away from it.

There is a shield mechanic with three ways to refill the bar - either attacking enemies while you have >0% charge, moving to the side and taking a few seconds to recharge a portion of it, or having a fast enough reaction time on a skill-shot bar to fully recharge it quickly. If you have good enough reflexes, this can make the game relatively easy, but it's also worth noting that it's primarily designed around the latter two options.

The sprites, art and overall animation quality are gorgeous. The animations are also just as fluid as the late-game movement mechanics are designed to be and feels silky smooth. This is coupled with a lovely sound score, which has admittedly made me want to listen to the soundtrack separately.

Gameplay difficulty is all over the place. It feels like they had multiple people designing fights without much consideration of progressive scaling or balancing between the boss encounters. While some fights are a definite (but welcome) pain, some others are fairly easy and predictable. The mobs along the way are sprite reskins and don't especially challenge you to learn new mechanics as you progress through the game. Likewise, outside of a boss chamber or specifically-locked rooms, all enemies are considered optional.

Overall, this is a fun game, and it's clear that there was a lot of love put into it. There are a few bugs here and there that can prevent you from completing fights, but it's still a good one-time playthrough.

This is an *extremely* unpolished step in the right direction. It feels like a significant amount of testing and focus group feedback went into the first area, as it felt /amazing/. As the game progresses, that sense continues to wane with some jankiness that ends up preventing proper mobility. If the game could feel like it did in the first area, this would be an easy 8.5/10. However, as it is, this is closer to a 6/10. What it does good, feels freaking amazing. When the new mechanics don't feel good, it can be enough to make you want to put down your controller.

Sonic has four stats, which must be leveled up as you progress through the game. Strength, defense, speed and ring cap. The first two level up at a fairly decent rate by finding items out in the field, primarily dopped either within boxes or by enemies that you encounter naturally on your way. The latter two are raised by collecting a single resource (some not-quite-chao lifeforms) and deciding which stat you wish to turn it into. Unlike the first two, this is not a 1:1 ratio. Starting into the third map, my first two stats are just under 50 while the latter are at 25 and 5 respectively. As a result, I have to question if it's this comparitively low level of speed that makes it feel as though the boost mechanic isn't doing much of anything unless I'm on a rail.

On note of the boost mechanic, I feel like I'm actively getting punished for using it more than half the time as it will either send me flying off the map, or a rail, or launch me into a mechanic to make me traverse backwards. This feels like a major disconnect for a franchise revolving around "gotta go fast."

The writing is... Surprisingly decent. While there are some obvious repetitive cutscenes to skip (entering/leaving a stage, depositing resources, collecting an emerald), I'd recommend /not/ skipping the story cutscenes.

The music is great, and harkens back to some of the pre-Crush40 days with a more modern feel. The overall soundtrack has somewhere around 150+ songs, so there's plenty of decent variety.

Amidst the open-world areas, are stages that can't seem to decide if they want to be more like it was in Generations; some feel more 'Classic', some feel more 'Modern', some are... A strange hybridization between both. Completing objectives in these levels unlocks vault keys, which you need to gain emeralds. However, the weight of the objectives feels slightly off. Each stage has a rank based on nothing but your time to get through it, all other objectives be damned. While there is one objective to get a high rank, and stages can be repeated without penalty to get the other objectives, it just feels bad when you've gone out of your way to get the other objectives completed and feel like you're being punished for it with an otherwise low rank because you had to spend a few seconds here and there doing something. Additionally, there doesn't seem to be a wide variety of stage themes. Mostly I'm seeing references to Green Hill Zone and Sky Sanctuary (in the case of 90% of these so far), but there are occasionally other references thrown in such as Chemical Plant Zone.

Big the Cat is back, and so is fishing, but it actually feels like it has some amount of use. Sonic's the one fishing, and you can use this to /drastically/ reduce the amount of resource farming on your current map. It's also used to unlock a fast travel mechanic between resource deposit sites, so it's best not to ignore.

The graphics are gorgeous. There's also a large sense of scale making it feel somewhere between Breath of the Wild and Shadow of the Colossus.

The camera locking is excessive and will lead to your death, if not a sense that you have none of the freedom they've tried to give you. The third island in particular seems to be the biggest culprit of this so far.

Grab it for the story, the graphics, and those moments where they've truly done something right. Just be prepared to take breaks.

Overall a decent game. However, there are a few sections that still feel like they need rebalancing. The first bird boss, for example, just feels like it's built around burning items than it is to allow you to do anything technical.

Graphics are beautiful. I've seen a few complaints about stuttering, but it ran fine on 4k@165 for me (borderless).

Having only one song for combat is... Tiresome.

D.U.M.A. (a drone companion you receive) gives a new perception on how to take combat, though it does feel repetetive quickly. What never really clicked to me through my whole playthrough, was why my action point cap would fluctuate up and down mid-combat. When it was on the smaller side, and I felt like I needed to use D.U.M.A., I found myself without enough action points to use all of my skills.

When you fast travel, there's a slightly deceptive dialog that appears, claiming you may miss out on story and/or cutscenes. At times when the game truly wants you to take a specific path, fast travel is already prohibited, leading me to believe that it's just some character interaction dialog that may be getting missed while moving about the open world.

If I could give a "Maybe" instead of a "Yes" or "No", that's where it would currently lie. It only /just/ goes towards a Yes, but it could go so much further with some small tweaks from the devs.

For reference, if you buy the premium pass and rank it all the way up, you'll probably still not get everything in the main loot pool. That being said, it's all cosmetic and duplicates will grant you currency that you can spend to buy items you haven't yet rolled, but the chances of having enough of that currency after maxing out the pass to have enough just to buy a legendary skin or a cool portrait are still extremely slim. It feels like they should grant more of this currency per duplicate item, maybe at a 2-3x rate of where it is now. (This is taking into account that maxing out the pass gives you free tickets for the lootbox, as well as additional coins to spend on more rolls.)

There are some absolutely /amazing and comparatively overpowered/ units currently locked behind either the duplicate currency or a premium pack that you can purchase. While it /might/ be more acceptable to tie some of these units to a battle pass rank, it's made an incredibly imbalanced pay-to-win scheme in comparison to F2P players. This is not okay. The ideal thing to do would be to release all units for availability. This isn't to imply that they cannot be countered with a free unit if someone knows what they're doing, but they do make playing certain free units a little pointless.

All that being said. The game can be fun, but matchmaking still needs work. At time of writing this, matchmaking is actively being adjusted, which is fantastic, but it's not quite where it needs to be yet. Ranked matches are about as sweaty as one might expect them to be, but casual matches are typically chill.

It's clear the devs are actively working to fix the issues in this game, and I'll make an update after some of these changes come out down the line.

Pros:
-Graphics and sounds are great
-Some cute sprays/stamps
-Decent variety of pilot voices to pick from

Cons:
-The lootbox system, primarily with the rates
-Lack of balance between free units and paid units
-Units should ideally be free to everyone upon release