Antihero

The insanity continues. Today's a huge milestone! This time, the last stage is Lava Shelter and the ending theme changes to "Waking Up", which is likely my favorite theme from the game. I still have to slog through the first 3 Dark route stages, but the deviation of doing the confusing Central City as a Hero stage, then getting to complete Air Fleet and Lava Shelter was welcome. Still, this is a long way to go. 316 more ways to go. And I bet by the time I'm done, it might just be July or August. Depends on how locked in I am.

So, things are going a bit slow. At most, I usually do 1 - 2 routes a time, but I'm getting to the point of being able to skip through a decent chunk of the cutscenes on the dark path, which speeds things up significantly. I think it'd be beneficial if I go play through these stages on stage select to pick up the keys, but for the moment I'm basically focused on getting 10 endings. On the plus side... at least Lava Shelter is coming up and it's unironically my favorite level in the game? If there is one thing Shadow gets right, it does handle grind rails competently compared to all-time favorite Sonic Adventure 2 and its successor, Sonic Heroes.

4/326. That fatigue is slowly starting to set in. As a plus, at least I don't have to watch every cutscene after I complete levels I'm unfamiliar with at least once, but that's still a long road to travel. I've got 322 routes to go!

Of course ya gotta start with the evil route. I've still got my sanity intact, but a lot of this game's core flaws came back to me. The specific number of adversaries spawned in every level for the "kill x of y" mission types, the lack of a minimap, Shadow's controls being that of a fridge on rollerskates. I've got 325 more of these things, and lord oh lord am I frightened by my stubborn resilience.