Hyper's Quest 2 Review

I was asked by the person who made this game to try out their game and give them a review. I finally got around to trying it out today and I'm going to be brutally honest here, Hyper's Quest 2 is incredibly lacking at the moment.
I'm going to split my review up into separate sections, covering different parts of the game, to make things a bit more organized.

Regarding graphics, they look very amateur to be honest, especially level graphics. A lot of the levels use already existing level assets which often do not fit well with everything else. When there are custom level assets though, they lack a lot of shading and look incredibly basic, therefore not making them fit in everything else in the game. This is especially a problem in Club Nicole Zone, where flat and generic tiles are being used next to a Sonic Mania background, which shows a lot more detail than the former. Sprites in the game also clash a lot with each other. With Sonic Mania style player and object sprites, next to flat tiles with no shading, with the occasional Sonic 3 asset here and there, the game lacks consistency in it's art-style. Not to mention, sprites such as Hyper's and the boss' sprites have a lot of banding on them (especially on Hyper's shoes) and it doesn't really give the sprites enough depth to make them look good.

The way the game is designed is honestly also very bad, for a lack of a better word to describe it. Hyper as a character, is just a yellow Sonic, with some accessories, and very inconsistent colours. The character as a whole does not look very well designed. The level design is also a very big problem. The levels in the game are all very linear and lack unique multiple paths to make the levels feel like an actual Sonic level. There are also a lot of bottomless pits which are unfair obstacles that shouldn't really be used in a Sonic level if you ask me. Lastly, most of the levels don't have a concrete gimmick that make them feel unique on their own. But when there is a gimmick at play, like in Club Nicole or Plasma Temple, they're not expanded upon enough in my opinion for them to make the level progressively more interesting.

On a more positive note however, the music in this game is actually very nice, especially in Skadoosh Zone and Plasma Temple Zone. I can't tell if it's completely custom or not, but most of it sounds pretty good. The Genesis/Megadrive instruments here are used well here.

Regarding bugs and glitches, I have only found a couple that annoyed me. Hyper's stomp move, when used under a curve of some sort, completely kills all momentum that you'd think you could get. But instead, you kinda just walk off the slope when you finally reach ground, gaining barely any speed, which felt weird in my opinion. The flying hang gimmick in Club Nicole Zone is also quite buggy. Sometimes I find myself on the other side and struggling to get onto the hang. Instead I sometimes just bounce off of the object, for a lack of a better way of saying it, and end up falling into a pit next to me most of the time. It made getting onto the flying hang a lot harder than it needed to be.

To conclude my review, I feel like Hyper's Quest 2 needs a lot more work for it to be up there with the likes of other fangames out there. With some polish and changes to the design here and there, I think this game could be a lot better.