Tara

If that's the case, fair enough. The framing just seemed kind of weird.

Like I mean what? Did you expect her to say "Actually, Sonic, I only like you for shallow, superficial qualities that I vaguely admire but will quickly discard as my interests develop with age?"

Ah, true. I hadn't thought of it that way. Yeah, what a weird statement. Perhaps they meant, she never told him in such a way that he would see the sincerity of her feelings? Like, for the most part, Amy's antics are portrayed as comical in nature, so we never really explore the true depth of those feelings if they are sincerely love, just a preteen crush, or what. This is all just speculation, of course, and it would be bad writing, either way. Just trying to think of how the writers could manage to forget the ONLY aspect to her character in the majority of her appearances.

-late- I actually quite like the visuals of this. I kind of felt the 2.5D backgrounds of HGH (and by extension of DuckTales Remastered), made it look like they were inserting assets from unrelated games. They weren't bad by any means, but I feel like the more two-dimensional art looks more natural; although it doesn't stand out quite as much admittedly.

I haven't played Black Knight in many years and so maybe I'm just forgetting the context of the line in question, but I don't feel like the line warranted being taken seriously as actual confirmation of SonAmy being a thing. Amy chases Sonic and forces him into situations he doesn't want to all the time. I feel like I remember interpreting that line as Amy imposing herself on Sonic and calling it a date. And maybe Sonic playing along because she pulled a guilt trip or something on him. And while I agree the continuity of the games has never been fantastic or even remotely serviceable for that matter, I can kind of shrug off the inconsistency between Black Knight and Lost World as products of two different teams with two different creative goals. They're both canon in the same sense that cheesy golden age comics are still considered canon to the modern, edgier counterparts, but it's obvious they weren't developing any game from Colors onward with the previous games as more than a cliffnote in the game's world.

I will at least give one positive. I do quite like that DVD menu track (if that's what it is). Though it for some reason reminds me more of Sandopolis, Act 2 than it does Zombie Island.

I actually quite like the idea of romance being explored in Sonic and think it could be an interesting exploration of character. Just not for ANY of the reasons listed above.

Pretty much. I liked some of the designs of some of the Megas, but in terms of both gameplay and narrative I don't think they added much. Like, there's no limits on them, and for as much as I played ORAS, I never noticed a situation where the Mega Evolution increased my stats significantly enough to turn the tide of the battle. Like, if I one-hit something as Mega Latias, I could probably do the same with regular Latias.

Fair enough. Alolan forms were pretty fun, but I thought Mega Evolutions were kind of... neat in concept but extremely shallow in execution? It's easy to forget about them.

Oh god, I forgot about Zeena. Yipes.

I do quite like the regional forms, though. Very creative spins on the old Pokémon, which is something I wish they'd do more often rather ethan shoving out hundreds of new ones every year.

Indeed, and that's another issue I sort of take with their stance on the matter. They talk as though cutting corners to rush the release of a game is somehow a trait we're supposed to respect. Like, come on. =V

"Good" is a bit of a loaded term. "Good" in relation to what specifically? Generally, any problem I have with the female cast are usually the product of poor writing, as opposed to unintentional sexism or demographic pandering. While most of the characters in the series, male and female, have shown propensity for three dimensional portrayals, it rarely ever sticks. Similarly, while there's a whole plethora of diverse female characters in the series, only one (Amy) has ever had any staying power. For much of the mid-to-late-2000's, the characters in the games were just one-dimensional cut outs of existing character traits ripped from popular anime shows of the time. Today, most of the cast is still one-dimensional, but in different ways, and largely a result of Sega attempting to play it safe with laid back stories and minimal stakes. The only character I ever really took issue with was Cream, and that's mostly due to her voice. They give her this high pitched voice that most people use when they're trying to make fun of girls, but portray her entirely straight and unironic as a character. Not helped that her first playable role is essentially a "so easy you don't even have to do anything half the time" route. I don't know; she always just came across as cynically designed to me. That being said, I thought she was a great supporting character in Rush, acting as a timid, worldly anchor to Blaze's fiery and boisterous personality, so under the right direction even she has good potential. If we had an iota of good writing, and if Sonic Team would stick to developing their existing characters for once instead of creating new ones every single game, then I think many problems in this department could be improved significantly without any real conscious effort given to improving female representation specifically. Otherwise, it's really hard to properly gauge the state of one demographic when all of them are sort of in a rut.

I don't even have a problem per se with the change, though mostly because it doesn't impact me specifically because I don't have Switch Online and am not paying $20/year for it when the service is kind of trash. But I do take issues with Nintendo's faulty reasoning for it. They complain that they need to make new models and animations when anyone who's played the games long enough will instantly recognize many of the models and animations as being direct rips from the 3DS titles. While the game does look fine on its own merits, it doesn't look fine enough to validate the claims that Nintendo desperately needs to cut content to properly polish the game. Even those excuses I would be fine with if it weren't for the fact that nothing about the game has convinced me by any measure that they're going to going to do anything to make the single player campaign a better and more memorable experience. I quite like Pokémon and I'd like to eventually get Sword/Shield, but the staleness of the formula is only made even more glaringly obvious when you take out the one thing it's had going for it since Gen 4. It's less to me about the fact that I won't be able to use the Pokémon that I like, and more about the fact that I won't be able to use the Pokémon I like while I play the exact same game I've been playing since 1999.