Got this to play it on PCSX2 for RetroAchievements back when I first heard of Unleashed Recompiled, since I was unable to play it on my own PC...but I happened to later play it on a PC that could. A week later, I completed Sonic Unleashed HD and can now return to this one to see how things stack up on a very different take on the game. Although there are MANY cutscenes and they are totally unskippable in this version, but fortunately the fast-forward option and the turbo feature of the controller I could get to try this these past few days can often help with those
Okay so the Werehog feels more fun than the first time I tried it...maybe not just because I played it with a controller now rather than a keyboard, but also because I have got used to HD Unleashed which means I kind of have a better hang on the Werehog gameplay style even if here the controls are different, as I saw there's still a few moves you can use for combos [the Triangle button attack]. Two particular quirks from HD Unleashed's Werehog also carried over: Holding B to autograb to ledges and bars [still useful, more so here with the delay for grabbing manually], and guard cancelling your attacks...which can look very goofy if you cancel the Were-Hammer's attack before it does the follow up...or even before the hitbox comes out.
The cool thing about guard-cancelling though is that you can do stuff like repeating your basic strings faster, cancelling a launcher quicker for combos, and even cancel the Were-Hammer's animation even when you've already landed the first hit of it to instantly do something else.
Oh yeah, the Daytime stages. You probably already know that Boosts are segmented here and are easily lost if you bump a wall most of the time, so boosts can usually be used the most either in big straights or in wide turns where you have your drift timing spot-on to actually keep the boost as you turn. Chun-nan Daytime took me several attempts to get the leftmost alternate path right AND go for the lower waterrunning areas instead of gambling with the high ledges with holes that kill me if I don't jump them in time. That aside, it is cool to boost through water and occasionally being able to properly keep a drift through a few of those long winding paths thanks to the drift.
[11/02/05 - 1am] More to be added here - last thing I did for tonight with this game was deal with Egg Devil Ray [which is manned by Eggman now rather than his robots unlike the HD version]. Bosses take a fair bit longer because you can't speedrun cheese them as blatantly as in HD Unleashed [although I have the feeling someone has been able to do that for this version], but the S-Rank times are lenient enough to account for that.
Use the buttons at the top or click the VMU below to return to the Memory Card menu.
