Written on: 30/05/26

Jet Set Radio

I've played this game before but only completed it recently on PsVita. It felt a lot shorter than I remember but maybe I'm just better playing it now as compared to before.
There's a lot about this game that has already been said, so I won't repeat the obvious and I'll just talk about what I liked and disliked without going into too much detail.
I think the game feel could be better but I don't think it's terrible. The level design in most cases accomodates the float feel of the game and getting into a flow state of hoppinh from one rail to another feels nice but cuz of the jumps being so stiff and hard to readjust, with more precise platforming, I kept screwing up and wasting a bunch of time. I'm not against calling this a skill issue on my part but I do find it annoying when I barely miss a jump, especially jumps over high places cuz you have to go all the way back up there again. Calling out the entirety of grind square and the crane in shibuya-cho in this case. There's also the camera too which is annoying in specific scenarios but didn't bother me terribly. Could have been improved for sure though cuz it feels like I'm fighting against it sometimes.

Besides those 3 things though, I like how the game feels. In spite of the jumps feeling the way they do, when I'm able to string a chain of jumps and grinds it feels really satisfying because of how committal jumping feel. The spray painting stuff is ok too. On the vita it kinda sucks cuz the inputs don't seem to be read properly and I constantly got canceled mid combo. This made playing any character that wasn't Tab, Garam or Slate 10x more tedious that it should've been but that's more of a fault of the port/console than the game itself. I didn't have these issues when I played it on steam before.

Besides Grind Square, which I may excuse since the whole point of that level is to be vertical, contrasting Bantam's horizontal structure, I liked all the stages. Favourite is for sure Benten-cho, I like the vibes there, the music is great and I enjoy going through the underground railway, it's pretty cool. Only grip with that stage is that one jump onto the platform right in front of the entrance to the train station. It's pretty easy to overshoot it when grinding up the incline or just miss it entirely due to not being able to get enough speed by sprinting up it.

Shibuya-cho is alright, I like the big hill section on the otherside of the map and being able to grin up that one slide to get over to that section above the half pipe. Kagane-cho feels the most linear out of the main 3 levels but I enjoy the point A to point B structure of it, made it easier to realise exactly where I needed to go during Slate's tag race without following him there and trying to take over at the last second.

The enemies that hang around the levels weren't as bad as I remember. In that latter half of the game they can be a little overwhelming but they honestly didn't cause me too much trouble. The final boss was kinda fine until the very end where you need to spray paint the dude directly. I spent about 2 minutes trying to grind up the rails leading towards him but could never get enough momentum to actually reach him, not to mention how annoying it was to actually land on it due to the platform constantly spinning. I dunno how that's meant to be done but I only got to him after a well timed jump from one of the debris. Besides that though the fight is cool. A nice set piece and everything leading up to that last part isn't nearly as bad.

Moving on from gameplay stuff, the visuals are good, kinda goes without saying. Cel shaded graphics have made JSR age really well. Closest thing to a critique I could give is that the textures used for the faces are a little pixelated but thats about it. I think all the character designs are solid. My favourites are Piranha, Mew and Yoyo.
The stages all look good, as I said earlier, Benten-cho is my personal favourite. I love the night time visuals, especially the section with the street connecting the little square area to the overpass above the trains. I also like Kagane-cho's look, mostly cuz it is in a constant state of evening sunset. Breaking through doors and walls in that one section by the docks is kinda nice too. Another thing I like about the stages in JSR in general is that, for the most part, they feel like real living locations. They don't come off as areas primarily designed to be skated around, but they still function well as stages in a video game like JSR without it breaking immersion.

Lastly the music in this game is goodgreatawesomeoutstandingamazing. I've come to appreciate it more during this playthrough, especially now that I listen to some tracks whilst skating myself. Best songs IMO are, Bout the city, improvise, on the bowl, Electric tooth brush and lets jump around, shout out to every second of super brother that isn't the middle part too I suppose lol. Nagananuma's work on this soundtrack is good but I think the tracks he put out for Future is better.

That's all I have to say on JSR. I think it's still pretty good in spite of some things about that really annoy me.