Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus

Oh man I had such strong nostalgia pulling me back to play this game. Replaying it I realized many things. One, I definitely never finished it. I maybe got to the 2nd world and that's it. Very typical.

Second, it is not that good of a game. Don't get me wrong it's good. Like it's got some really fun parts. But intersparsed in there are tons of really not fun parts. They have all these minigames and instead of making them optional they make them obligatory to pass to the next world. It's also pretty damn challenging. There's lives which you can run out of that you then need to grind to farm. You die if you take 1 damage. Save points are rare in some of the more difficulty levels meaning you have to do the whole thing in one go flawlessly. Kind of reminded me of Ori a bit in that sense. But unlike, Ori, it's not that tight of a platformer. There was a section where you need to swing between rings and I kept hitting the O button when I was close as possible to them. This meant I would miss somehow. You have to hit it suuper early. So in trying to make it easier they actually made it harder. Dumb.

I will say I like the visuals of the game. I like the structure of the platforming levels. It's simple but works. I loved the boss fight with the Alligator where it's basically DDR.

But yeah in the end it was just so frustrating at so many parts that I legitimately was contemplating quitting-- strongly contemplating-- on at least 3 times that come to mind. Oof. Apparently the series gets better and I'm looking forward to that