I REALLY wish Larian was allowed to make an expansion or something.

This has handily become a Top 10 game for me. Act One is definitely the best part of the game. Acts 2 and 3 are both fantastic as well, but it seems like Act One benefitted greatly from early access as it contains so many things to find and exhibits phenomenal polish that becomes sorely missed toward the end of the game.

Act Two is incredibly strong, making up for the slightly smaller amount of content with a unique and interesting setting and a fantastic villain. If this game ended at the Ketheric Thorm fight, I would easily give it a 10/10.

While I still haven't finished the game, I can definitely say Act Three is the weakest part of the experience. The city looks great and can be fun to explore, but I'm not going to pretend I haven't got lost on occasion because of the size and similar architecture. It still manages to be a great time, but some of the characters and story beats are pretty disappointing after the first two acts. Gortash is a fine villain, but I genuinely can't stand Orin. I really hate how the game handles the Emperor.I feel like the game is actively trying to gaslight me into thinking he's actually a good and trustworthy guy, but it seems like every few hours he reveals he's been lying about something. I still haven't killed Gortash and moved onto the Upper Cityso maybe I'm missing something, but I doubt it at this point. It was incredibly frustrating to find a zombie dragon hidden behind multiple trials, only for this character I hate to walk in and reveal the situation is all about him and he's super important to the history of the world. But my biggest issue with Act Three has to be issues I've had fighting in buildings. Trying to jump in some of these places gets me stuck on nothing and screws up my positioning, and a hidden entrance to Raphael's bedroom actually killed me when I tried to make a jump the game told me was valid.

Even the issues I've expressed here are pretty minor all things considered. Some brief moments of frustration are easily remedied with a hefty dose of quicksaves, and the weaker points of the main story are made up for by the great side quests available throughout the game.

I'd easily give this a 9/10

This game somehow managed to get worse the further I went. Anytime I tried to compliment something about the game it would do something to piss me off without fail. Glitches were thankfully sparse, although there were times when the general jank of the game made me think either collision was broken or elements weren't being loaded in.

As for the open-"zone" game-play, it doesn't have much more depth than one of those fan-made tech demos you see come out on occasion. The platforming related collectibles only serve as upgrade fodder and as such don't feel rewarding to collect, so the random rails and boxes scattered about are easy to just refuse to interact with thanks to that. God-forbid the story put a goal marker in the sky because the sheer quantity of garbage scattered about will make it difficult to even know where to start gaining height.

The combat is boring as all hell. The bosses are mostly spectacle. You have a whole skill tree to unlock, but can be just as effective in combat by spamming buttons. Some enemies will occasionally either have attacks that barely get choreographed or will bottleneck you into using the Cyloop first, limiting what little freedom combat gives you.

The Cyloop is also a somewhat baffling inclusion. It's a gimmick move that you have to use for puzzle solving and the occasional enemy, but it can also just infinity give you rings and certain collectibles? You can genuinely just spam it and get max rings at any given moment if you're a bit patient. I don't understand what the logic is here.

Speaking of cheesing collectibles, Big's fishing mini-game lets you cash in for an odd amount of keys and gears, which are supposed to be unlocked by fighting mini-bosses and exploring the islands. I don't enjoy either of those things, so Big the Cat is a very welcome sight in that regard, though I'd hardly call bypassing game-play via an A-Button simulator good game design. Fishing was the only part of the game I fully enjoyed, despite the overly simple game-play.

Cyberspace sucks and feels stiff. Many stages are reusing older level layouts without shame and not doing anything interesting with them, which is especially frustrating considering these layouts were made for very different game-play styles. Others are just a level dedicated to a specific gimmick or obstacle. Most felt less like levels and more like the Challenges in Sonic Generations, which I suppose could be the point, but if extra content is going to be bad content then I'd rather it not be there at all. Often Cyberspace just comes off as filler material to use as a selling point.

The Ancients suck. I'm not opposed to having ancient aliens because we've pretty much already done that but the game barely explores their lore. Saying the Chaos Emeralds are from space and arrived with those aliens is incredibly stupid considering this game seems to want to establish a firm canon that includes things like Adventure and Unleashed. I guess it can work but it just feels especially jarring because apparently the Master Emerald was already on Earth? Why? They just drop this information without explaining any of it. My bigger issue is potentially attempting to alter lore established in Sonic Adventure by making the Ancients look nearly identical to Chaos. What really aggravates me is that they're vague about it. Chaos being a mutated Chao and essentially just a scared and angry child is an important part of the impact of that game's ending, so I'm not excited for the idea that they're retconning that. As for the larger lore surrounding the Ancients: I don't care. They aren't given much personality because every flashback with them is their race going extinct, so anytime they try to give snippets about their technology and culture I just can't find any ♥♥♥♥♥ to give about it.

When the story wasn't revolving around the Ancients, it was still bad. The characters are either talking about how weird things on the islands are or going through some small inconsequential arc. The biggest issue really is that everyone just feels wrong. None of the characters feel like themselves because the whole time they're either confused about the circumstances they're in or are taking things far too seriously. Also the whole cyber corruption thing just kinda happens? Sonic's idle animations show him in different stages of exhaustion but I don't recall it ever coming up in any conversations before the big group sacrifice scene.

Speaking of sacrifices, what the ♥♥♥♥ is that ending? This big, devastating enemy that wiped out the Ancients through their advanced tech and planning is... the moon but red? And the fight itself is just a rehash of a bullet-hell mini-game from earlier in the game while the creatively named "The End" monologues the most generic "I am death you will die" nonsense you can imagine. They build this enemy up as something unimaginably powerful but then it's just a circle that says a bunch of nothing and then dies when Sage suicide bombs it with one of the mechs it was supposed to have defeated in the past. Also, why did she suicide bomb it? She like knocks Sonic away like he was about to be killed and then flies straight through The End, but nothing was even happening.

I like Sage in concept and design, but this game's writing does it's best to make me want her gone forever.

I don't want to come off as hateful towards the VAs, but the acting definitely wasn't helping matters. It's 100% on the direction here as even actors we've gotten great performances from in the past just sounded either off or like they weren't really paying attention. Roger Craig Smith's new take on Sonic is definitely the worst I've heard because it's just Roger but deeper now. I've never felt like Roger had the necessary energy for Sonic, but this new direction is even further off the mark than before.

Before Update 3, there a couple miscellaneous issues I want to just list off. One island has a giant bridge you have to lower that you can run up at full speed, but despite having enough speed and height to cross the gap, there's an invisible wall in this open-"zone" game to prevent you from doing that. The initial launch required you to upgrade attack and defense one level at a time, which isn't the case anymore but I'm reviewing what I played and that was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ infuriating. Sometimes Sonic will stick to terrain when you expect him to launch off into the trick system, while sometimes the opposite is the case, either way it lead to unfair deaths more than once.

♥♥♥♥ Update 3. There's a difference between difficulty and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ design. Perfect Parry is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mechanic considering you're expected to nail frame-perfects with an otherwise generous mechanic that you can beat the original game without using more than once or twice. The final fight also wants you to target the neck but doesn't let you unless you hit the dodge buttons and that just doesn't seem intentional. Knuckles is back to Sonic Boom with climbing being restricted to designated walls and an infinite height exploit, with the added bonus of his glide having a delay at the beginning. Including the Sonic Adventure 2 mech for Tails is cheap fanservice and also seems to allow infinite height that makes his standard flight redundant? Amy is like easy mode with both a triple jump and glide at the cost of lowered speed. All around none of them control different enough from Sonic to make this worthwhile aside from Tails, but that's just because he can just fly around freely. Platforming sections were color-coded and I still felt like I was able to just break things without trying as any character because they're so similar. The story also wasn't really changed. They basically just removed Sage's fake-out death and had Sonic unironically say "Forgive me master, but I must go all-out just this once."

I'm out of characters but I have so many more issues. In short: ♥♥♥♥ this terrible mess of a game. Why does everyone seem to think it's peak Sonic?