Recent reviews by yesfish

Decent game, amazing artwork, so many detailed animations, a lot of effort went into it.

But there's not really a proper introduction, just a short tutorial that lists the buttons and then you're dropped into the barracks without further explanation. So I'm going to explain best I can here:

Barracks: Despite being behind "New Game", it represents your overall progress and available load-outs.

Campaign: A new campaign is started from the barracks, or resumed from "Continue" on the title screen.
The game is played over multiple campaigns, trying new paths, characters, load-outs and difficulty levels.
A campaign ends either if all characters die on a mission, or upon defeating the final boss. Upgrades are not carried over from previous campaigns, the characters only start with whatever is in their selected load-outs. But it's not that difficult to pick up your favorites most of the time.

Regions: Each campaign has regions that can be played in different order. Each region consists of a number of missions with an additional "Enemy Response" countdown. When the countdown finishes, the region's boss appears and the region is locked for the rest of the current campaign. Don't aim for missions that you won't be able to reach in time.

Mission: Each mission is turn-based strategy. Moving long distances to the dark green squares builds Adrenaline which is the fuel for using Special Actions. When characters are within attacking range of the same enemy, this can trigger sync attacks, causing additional damage. At the top is a health bar called "Reinforcements". If a character dies, they can be revived using a reinforcement. Ammo and reinforcements can be replenished over a campaign by completing specific missions or special events. Ammo can also be bought at the mid-region shops.

Boss: As with any boss-fight, the subordinates are the bane of your existence. The boss must be attacked while defending off the regular soldiers. The bosses do special attacks that completely change the terrain (insta-killing anything not taking cover as instructed) and sync attacks only work on a boss once per round.

Bugs: Time of writing, still game-breaking bugs when it comes to saving/loading during missions, so it's best not to start one if you don't have the time to finish it. There are also other lesser bugs that people are very vocal about.

Overall, the game is very much trial and error, expect a lot of game-overs at first.

I only have one real criticism: Metal Slugs can't jump over gaps. Which is a defining feature of these tanks in the original games and lore. Found this out the hard way.

If you're a fan of Sonic, yes this game is okay.

Imagine a timeline where Sonic Jam's 3D world became the basis of Sonic games. An open world to explore and do whatever you like, with cool set pieces and rings to gather, lots of small missions to complete and interesting enemies to fight. Truly living the dream. There are 4 and a half islands to discover with character dialog to unlock as you progress. The game shamelessly rips of Zelda:BOTW aesthetic and that's okay. The various challenges are very forgiving and even if you mess up you can often try again right away.

Now for the bad. The game has action stages which you're supposed to play through as the main path of progress. They suck. Copy-pasted monstrosities from past games full of slow janky camera-locked-2D sections that lack the fine-tuning of the games where they came from. They are literally copy-pasted together. And only in the style of green-hill, chemical-plant or sky-sanctuary (and sometimes a city theme later). Just terrible.

Luckily a hero from the past comes to save us. Big the cat. He has a fishing mini-game that allows you to trade tokens to catch super realistic looking fish and other novelties in exchange for the keys to progress. No more action stages! And to unlock Eggman exposition recordings. There are 24 in total, catch them all! The fish are so detailed, I wouldn't be surprised if one of the game's many gigabytes of content was dedicated to Big the Cat's fishing and I'm okay with this.

The game progresses smoothly and each island has new challenges and enemies. Despite the rough edges, I was thoroughly enjoying playing. That is until island 3. The third island, it's like the designers who made the action stages had finished their minimal effort copy-pasted horror and had then escaped to ruin the rest of the project. And ruin it they did. The third island is littered with plane-locked 2D sections. They're slow, they're boring and they're completely arbitrary. At any point you'd be running around the island and surprise! You're now plane-locked! Your destination slightly out of reach because you can't move on the Z-axis. It's like walking into a trap. And sometimes when you want it to trigger because it's the only way forward, it doesn't, and you plummet to your death instead. Of course in true 2000s style these sections are all hanging over bottomless pits.

It's like there's two teams of designers, one team determined to take Sonic in the direction it was supposed to be headed, and the other, I assume some veteran team, trying to sabotage everything:

"You see kouhai (it's japanese, they speak like that). Sonic fans don't *want* freedom of exploration. They want everything to be a single almost one-dimensional path."

"Yes senpai."

"Sonic fans don't *want* speed, they want slow platforming with quicktime events that come out of nowhere and drop you to your death if you weren't expecting them."

"Yes senpai."

"Sonic fans don't *want* more of whatever this is you've made, they want mini-games that really don't belong with the current physics engine. Like pinball! Sonic Mania had pinball, and people like that game. So we too shall have pinball."

"Yes senpai."

"But lets make it mandatory. Mandatory pinball. That's what Sonic fans want."

"Yes senpai."

"Now we've got a lot of work ahead of us. There won't be any time to really finish the end of the game. Just sort of make it come out of nowhere, like you're on the final island and, oops the final boss is here and now it's over. We paid for the cutscenes, so who cares right?"

"Yes senpai."


The last boss is literally the space invaders mini-game.

I was expecting a sonic sequel, this is more than that. The game starts off pretty tame and gradually becomes more over the top and intense. Surprises around every corner. Love it!

The ads weren't lying about this game being multipurpose either, thanks to the 2 week delay they spent to graft it to Denuvo. I keep it open in the background all the time to use as a handy wifi indicator!