Freedom Planet (2014)

Great, fast paced action platformer that's satisfying for both long time Sonic fans as well as people like myself, who never played the classic Sonic games.

The game keeps things moving constantly, through great levels that most of the time end in a climactic boss fight. However, prepare for a lot of retries and game over screens on your first play-through: the bosses are very difficult and will require a lot of pattern recognition. I know that's what they were going for, but it can still be very frustrating.

Luckily, the game is very much aware of that. After a game over you restart at the latest checkpoint, making lives kind of unnecessary, and you can change the difficulty halfway through the adventure if things get a bit too frustrating for you (something I did for the final boss because the second to last one dragged me through 7 or so game over screens). That being said, because they are so difficult it's extra satisfying when you finally do take them down.

You get to play as 3 different characters, each bringing different abilities to the table. They all have a few character specific levels, but most levels will be played by all three characters. However, since they all have their own ways of travelling through these, things don't get too repetitive.

As for the presentation, this is where this game shines. The pixel art for both characters and backgrounds is just stunning, the voice acting is great and the plot is very entertaining. Don't care for the plot? Just choose classic mode and you will go from stage to stage without ever seeing it. The music is fantastic as well, though I've heard the boss themes enough by now due to my many many retries.

If my rambling hasn't made it clear yet, I really like this game and I highly recommend giving it a try. The levels are very well made with many different pathways to explore and lots of secrets/collectibles to discover, while still being fast paced and action packed. There's a lot of original and challenging (mini)bosses, the music and sound design are top notch and the game is very pleasing to look at.

Freedom Planet is well worth your time if you're a lover of platformers.

Reached end credits as Lilac

• Played stage 1-7 on Easy
• Played stage 8-9 on Casual

Final thoughts: Wow I'm REALLY impressed with this game, more so than Sonic Mania! My only nitpick is these are like the most difficult of boss fights in the history of boss fights I've played, especially the Stage 8 Mid boss. I had to tone down the difficulty. Otherwise, I'm blown away from the visuals and music (and I personally really liked the cheesy cutscenes), and it's cool to see how the game forms its own identity even with Sonic DNA in its roots.

This isn't a bad game, but it's not good enough to recommend either. Movement feels floaty and 'slow' for a Sonic-wannabe. The graphical style doesn't really work for me. There's too many cutscenes. Before you get to do anything there are three different cutscenes. I skipped two of them because they're so uninteresting.

The main problem is that the gameplay isn't as fast and smooth as Sonic, nor does it require precision like The Lion King, and combat is a rather dull affair. It's all a bunch of meh, with a side of who cares.

An excellent improvement upon the Sonic 3 / Sonic and Knuckles game mechanics. I absolutely loved these two games, and this game improves upon them in almost every way.

• Less getting stuck on walls
• Easier to go up walls (no need to do a spin dash, just press right)
• Interesting combat (you get to do more than just jump on enemies)
• Health decoupled from the collectables
• Taking a hit doesn't stun lock you or push you backwards
• Fluid movement in the underwater sections
• Wide variety of stage themes
• Interesting boss fights
• Incredible pixel-art

It also has good voice acting and a fair bit of story scenes in between each stage. They are very anime-esque, which isn't my thing. Luckily you can press the action button to skip through the dialog without listening to each line. Additionally, the pause menu will let you skip the scene and go directly to the next stage.

Unfortunately, I had to stop playing on the stage 8 boss. Even with the 15 lives I had amassed up to this point, I was unable to beat it. The boss was annoying enough that I didn't feel like continuing. I would have appreciated a way to skip to the next stage (maybe at the expense of forfeiting all the trophies/achievements). I wish I would have played on the PC so I could've used a trainer to skip past this one boss (I would have loved to experience the remaining stages). I played on the PS4 because the PC version would not recognize a controller when used via SteamLink.