it's been too long since i played to get into specifics but the game is fun and has good accessibility. great successor to the first game

my biggest gripes with the game are:
- Lack of campaign variety between playable characters, meaning playthroughs with different characters feel extremely similar despite the vastly different movesets. This game would really have benefited from stages exclusive to certain characters (e.g. Pangu Lagoon, Aqua Tunnel and Trap Hideout from the first game)
- Completion generally feels extremely grindy. The museum is the worst offender, since filling it out is really just a matter of killing things over and over in a repetitive postgame, but having to play the game 4 times at minimum to see the full campaign makes this worse. Achievements also require a lot of stage replaying
- No-hits suck and feel like a stupid requirement. Bosses are OK, but stages do not at all feel like they're meant to be playable without taking a couple hits, especially considering how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spammy some of them can get
- The game's tone feels like a severe overcorrection from the first's, and most of the time like it's way too afraid to actually linger on any negative emotions for more than a minute or two at best. The Saturday morning cartoon vibe is charming at first but ultimately feels extremely unfitting, even moreso than the first game's serious tone. This would be more acceptable if the game didn't constantly try to undercut its own tone
- The "true ending" feels tacked on and is just generally really, really bad. Aside from the unlock criteria being obviously and blatantly tacked-on (maybe rushed? IDK), the actual content itself just sucks. It's Sonic.exe level of horror with horrible tonal whiplash and a terrible failure to actually meaningfully connect to the rest of the plot, let alone have any reasoning to happen with the unlock criteria gathered. It's completely abrupt, is pointlessly edgy to the point of feeling incredibly tryhardy, completely interrupts and overshadows an actually interesting and important character moment, and tries way, way, way too hard to be cool, scary, and generally be a Kirby final boss. Down to its core, the entire segment is shock value—the ending itself barely changes either, outside of some slightly adjusted ambiguity. It is generally considered not to be a good idea to treat a character as a joke for the entirety of your game's runtime, then suddenly make them the core focus and try to make them threatening and horrifying at the last minute without doing anything to earn that. The only weight this entire sequence has is completely and utterly dependent on the context of the first game; without it, it's just strange, confusing, and a complete detour from the game's established story

It does break my heart to say this, but the levels feel like mazes, ALL of them. while i know this game has more combat, movement options and other things, i feel they really are not explored in an elegant way, freedom planet 1 was really good despite its rough presentation in some sections, the levels while huge made sense and in general designed for all characters. in this sequel they are truly hard to navigate and players do get lost easily.