40.9 hours played
Written 25 days ago
This game is not good, but it is not terrible either. It is a mean spirited experience at the player’s expense. Every, single, thing about that game seems designed to make fun of longtime fans,and even newer fans with its schizophrenic difficulty, controls, and poorly explained mechanics, half of which it barely lets you use. At least rise of lyric was just bad all around, but lost world? There’s a competent platformer in there somewhere; it’s just too well made to be a bad game, but it’s hidden behind walls of malicious, miserable design decisions. Homing attack cursor not show up? You fall into a Bottomless pit. Wanna play the pinball level? Watch 30 lives go down the drain from clipping through the flippers or the launcher sending sonic right down the pit. (The Frontiers one doesn't feel so bad in hindsight). Trying out the time attack mode? This platform is designed to shoot up the minute you draw near, and this enemy is coded to shoot a projectile the minute you’re point blank, forcing you to wait and/or take damage. Not holding the control stick a certain way? You don’t make that jump. Having the audacity to use the magenta rhythm? Bottomless pit. Enjoy the lighter writing of Unleashed and colors? Enjoy the high stakes of past games? Screw you, here’s the most one dimensional villains in the franchise who go down in 2-4 hits each with the powered homing attack, and who’s plans only go anywhere because they decided to make sonic a hyperactive, unapologetic moron with a sorry excuse for a “Think before you act” storyline. Jokes on you, you bought the game. Hey remember that time sonic kissed a princess?
So many of Sonic’s moves work on paper, but almost EVERYTHING is tied to a context sensitive state or scripting, making the game feel like it has a mind of it’s own and that it doesn’t enjoy you playing it. The parkour is genuinely one of the best gimmicks they’ve come up with, but there are times sonic will stick to a wall while holding run, and times he wont. Some times pressing jump while wall climbing will make him jump away, sometimes it won’t. One especially frustrating level wants you to make a ski jump, but if you don’t hit the booster or jump in a REALLY specific spot, you wont make it and instantly get bottomless pitted. All of that, and yet the one place the game asks you to actually learn parkour, not just hit a hidden spring to not just get a red star ring, but get to safety to finish the level is GLORIOUSLY satisfying. Getting all red rings in a world gives you a Chaos Emerald, and do I even need to mention your reward for getting all 7? It makes beating the 100 missions/achievements a breeze. While you get and can carry up to 5 items from these missions, it's truly a "Better than nothing" system with limited actual use.
Yea, one of the biggest criticisms of the game is that it “copies” from super mario galaxy, but that’s not actually THAT bad a problem in practice; the tubey, twisty spherical planets actually work pretty well. It clashes with a lot of the rest of the game but it’s… not the worst thing ever?
Wisps are here. They were never THAT much a problem, even with the weird reason why they were just "Back" but they're just as pace breaking as ever. The game stops once you transform, and stops once the power is used up, and half the time, instead of a power up to open new routes in colors in generations, THIS TIME, they begin to feel more like gimmicks, since each one only appears in one or two levels. At least forces made them seamless, but by then and in Lost world 3ds they were just straight up substitutions for actual level design. They're absolutely harmless, and the eagle one is fun to just fly and get rings, but the magenta rhythm feels like a joke power up, like a kaizo trap, because EVERY TIME I used it in my playthrough the controls locked up, dropping me into a pit.
All in all, what a waste of an exclusivity deal with Nintendo.
So yes, I still recommend checking this game out (preferably on sale) because I want you to see how ugly things could actually get next time you want to whine about no chao garden (I miss it too, but let's let them consistently get the games right first) or how the characters making one callback to sonic heroes ruined your day. Whether sonic is lighthearted or can raise the stakes, come and see what happens when the series can’t even treat ITSELF with respect, let alone comedically or seriously.
I don’t wanna hear it. Yes, Ian’s got flaws as a writer, but at least he knows how to treat a reader with respect, and he’s even given the deadly six some odd depth by doubling down on their cruelty and how much damage they can do given a mere inch. Maybe the rest of SEGA can learn something from Mr. Flynn. I don't know about you, but I'm gonna go play a better game. Maybe Shadow Gens, maybe Freedom Planet, Maybe Cassette beasts or Spark, Idk, I'm out.
