I've beat the original game twice so I thought, hey better pick up the sequel :] . but it's not really anything like the original. This one is full of really frustrating platforming, starting with when you fight the Immortals in whatchamacallit hills and the skyscraper district, and is way more twitchy than the original. It feels like if you push slightly too hard on the analog stick at any moment you'll accidentally grind onto ten rails in a row superfast and end up falling off the edge of the level. Or you'll just fall off the level, because you need to inch your way along in your rollerblades. The original didn't have anything like that. The controls were still imprecise, but it never demanded that kind of precision or made you slow down like every few seconds to a total stop to figure out how to do the next section. I don't think you even could fall off the edge of the level in JSR/JGR (edit: except in that one level by the water i guess, and the sewers, but that was never a problem). once you figure out that jumping makes you go faster in jet grind radio, that game is way easier.

I'm not saying it's a bad game or that I'm not still having fun, but I'm surprised because people seem to think this game's controls are better than those of the original game and that it's easier to go back to. Idunno, what do you think?

I loved it for the aesthetics and fast paced gameplay. I thought the originals focus on doing these intricate combos to spray your tags really broke up rhythm of skating around and grinding. Being able to tag in motion was a brilliant innovation for the series I think.

That said it is been so long that I can't really speak for how well it controlled. In my mind it's great..but it's been a while.

I really wish they made another one of these.

we can definitely agree on this

You could actually tag in motion in the first game too (to a more limited extent but it was still in there), but I agree that removing the quicktime event based tagging was a good move.

There are also a lot of mechanic improvements to the movement in Future like the boost and handplant that can make navigating the space a lot easier than it was in the first game. Even with those additions though, I do think that both the original and this sequel are hard for a lot of people to go back to because of the controls and some of the unnecessary challenge that comes with dealing with their lack of precision.