So I streamed this last night for 4 hours (who knew it could be longer than that!?
Part 1,
Part 2) and I think it's a great game, although it has some rough edges.
First the good. The game would feel at home on a Sega Genesis. It feels like elements from the biggest hits of the Sega Genesis were mashed together in one nice package. The biggest influence is from Sonic the Hedgehog. You've got animal characters, shield abilities, running, level layouts that feels very Sonic 3 & Knuckles. You have hardcore bosses reminiscent of Gunstar Heroes. You have a air boost ability like Rocket Knight Adventures. And a soundtrack that will have you humming and bobbing your head along to the tunes. Also the game is clearly lengthy. I'm at 4 hours and not finished, and haven't had much trouble except for bosses. The gameplay overall is ON POINT.
Now for the not so good. There are cutscenes between levels that sometimes just feel like filler. For instance, a scene with the characters trying to decide what movie to watch. It really adds nothing to the story or characters and it isn't a short short scene. Also the characters say things to each other like "What? You two like the same thing? I never thought that would happen?" (Paraphrasing here, of course.) even though we have never been told they DON'T like the same things. It is like whomever wrote this game already had a lengthy story or idea of who these characters are that isn't really portrayed to use the player.
On top of that sometimes the dialogue, which is all voiced, seems to be of varying volumes. Perhaps the "auto ducking" used just doesn't work well, or perhaps some lines are just recorded pretty low. Otherwise the voice acting is mostly pretty good, surprising even for this type of game, since it would have never been in a Genesis game.
Bosses. Are. Hard. Period. Seriously, some of these bosses are very challenging, which is a pretty harsh contrast to the levels, which are rather easy. I have a feeling this will turn some players off, causing them to quit the game. I found myself getting pretty heated during a particular boss battle that has you break certain hitpoints on a fast moving character. The combat equates to jumping in the air and mashing buttons and hoping your hits land. No me gusta. Also, the game does a poor job of explaining or encouraging you to learn / use different moves. Later on you'll find it's really important to do a dive kick to cancel out of a spin jump...too bad the game never tells you or teaches you this. Not that the game needs an in your face tutorial, but it def needs some way to get players to learn such advanced techniques.
The story is hard to follow and I'm not sure who the intended audience is. A lot of the names / lore seems to be Asian based, which could be a bit confusing, as it was to me, but eventually I figured it out. Perhaps the game doesn't do a good enough job establishing characters before it expects you to know who they are.
The characters are furries (though so is Sonic), they are apparently children which isn't apparent till half way through the game when they talk about missing their parents or other things associated with kids. There are also some gay overtones, not that this is a bad thing, but it came off as two lesbians trying to seduce a child at one point because we were never told they are all children. While there isn't any actual gay content thus far, and not that there is ANYTHING wrong with gay content, it just felt kind of strange or out of place or forced. Maybe I'm reading too much into it.
So thus far we have child female furries on an adventure with lots of Asian male adults as other characters, and it's pretty kid friendly. Then things happen... At one point a character says something about the panda / Asian named character in anger and says "Stupid panda." This is a racial remark, no matter how you look at it. But it doesn't stop there. A game seemingly fine for children to play suddenly has a SPOILER:
and to make matters worse it is an adult
a child. It felt really out of place, and quite disturbing, listening to the screams during this scene made me highly uncomfortable as well as the people in my Twitch chat.
So really, who is this game for? What is the core audience? Furry lesbian children who don't mind seeing their favorite characters
?
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In conclusion, I'm not finished with the game, there are multiple modes available (Time Attack, Arcade Mode (skips cutscenes)) as well as multiple characters to play as that most likely play totally differently. 2 characters thus far in Story mode and at least one unlockable character to use outside of story mode.
That all being said I'm loving the game, it makes me feel like I'm a kid again sitting in front of my Genesis with not a care in the world, I just wish the difficulty didn't spike at bosses and the story was a bit more defined / clear thus far. This feels like the greatest hits of the Sega Genesis all came together to birth one final hurrah, and it is glorious. Don't let the length of bad vs good text discourage you from playing this game, just I need more words to describe what I feel is wrong with the game. BUY IT! Well worth the $15 asking price.
/RantReview
