This genuinely might be one of the worst sonic experiences I've had. I enjoyed Frontiers quite a bit, even with all of the fuckin' problems that game had, but the DLC is absolutely something else
The playable characters are mostly pretty fucking boring. Amy was probably the best of the three from a design perspective at least, but I never ultimately had too much fun playing as her compared to Sonic. Her moveset is fine...I guess. Tails' was the easiest to just completely fucking cheese everything with and I was already pretty burnt and I didn't wanna keep playing the game so I just kept abusing his stupid broken abilities he unlocks. Knuckles was by far the worst of the three, I really don't understand how they fucked up his controls THAT much when there's 3 other games he's in where he controlled way better. I really don't have much to say because they really ultimately didn't change much about the game.
The Cyberspace levels I couldn't be fucked with. I played a couple of them and they were....okay? The racing one with the rocket boost was kinda cool, but like the collectible ones with the flickies and especially whatever the fuck 4-E was supposed to be was pretty fucking bad. I'll never truly get why people gas up the Cyberspace levels cuz most of the time they just FEEL kinda shit to controls.
Climbing some of those towers was not really fun. Some of the challenges, I'll admit, were pretty cool, but most of them just felt very punishing. It felt like playing Lost Levels but the pacing was 10x worse. I don't mind climbing the towers again, they just take FOREVER to do.
The first few koco trials were...neat? That one with the strict time limit was kinda dogshit though but the rest were piss easy. The fucking master koco trials are actual dogshit though. Those bosses were not designed to be marathoned and they were not designed with the new parry mechanics. I am not ashamed to admit I cheesed & cheated my way through that shit. If the game's going to waste my fucking time with shit that is not fun at all, I'm not gonna bother playing by its rules.
The Supreme boss fight felt genuinely not different from the original fight. Maybe a couple of things here & there were different, but holy fuck that boss fight sucks so much. The End fight? What a fucking disappointment. The End fight was already pretty dogshit in that game, and this is technically better, but holy fuck is it all the more frustrating. It took me an HOUR to figure out you were supposed to cyloop the fucking thing on supreme's head. The game gave NO indication whatsoever that you were supposed to cyloop it off. Trying to even target that thing was pure aids. The ironic thing is, once you figure all of that out, The End is a pathetic final boss that can go down in like a minute. Once you realize that you're supposed to cyloop, the other cyloops are pretty easy to figure out. QTE before the big finale is kinda cool, and I do think Sonic "going all out" and completely obliterating both bosses because of Eggman was pretty cool, but it was harder to appreciate because of all of the baggage of bullshit it took getting there. Ultimately, I really didn't get much out of this, since the whole point of the ending is to "rework the ending of the game" when in reality you only get this by going through some dinky portal you find at the beginning of the 5th island.
Honestly the story in this might actually be a step down from the base game. I do appreciate making the final boss not anti-climatic, but I genuinely believe they did not need to change it just to keep sage alive at the end. Her death in the original game genuinely got me misty eyed. The post credits show that Eggman DOES bring her back, and it shows a better case of Eggman's humanity. I really don't get why they had to keep her alive? Like...what does that change exactly? Either way she's still part of the series so what's the point?
Like I said, this genuinely might be up there with some of the worst sonic experiences I've had. I can tolerate a lot of "bad" sonic things. Superstars was disappointing but it was ultimately just a mediocre sonic game, Lost World with all of its problems I kinda enjoy, despite all of the baggage Unleashed has I do consider it a good game. I've played sonic games I do not enjoy, like Sonic 4, Forces, Labryinth, but a lot of those games never made me feel outright miserable like this entailed. I don't think I've played ANY video game before that's had DLC that actively made the game WORSE but this actually might be it. If Frontiers was able to make me less cynical about Sonic, Final Horizon was able to make me cynical about Sonic again. If they capped it off at Update 2, I would've been more okay with Frontiers. I already liked the game, and the new additions did genuinely fix some of the issues I had with the game. This 1000% needed way more time to cook in the oven, which I'm really getting fucking sick of saying about almost every new sonic game now.
The playable characters are mostly pretty fucking boring. Amy was probably the best of the three from a design perspective at least, but I never ultimately had too much fun playing as her compared to Sonic. Her moveset is fine...I guess. Tails' was the easiest to just completely fucking cheese everything with and I was already pretty burnt and I didn't wanna keep playing the game so I just kept abusing his stupid broken abilities he unlocks. Knuckles was by far the worst of the three, I really don't understand how they fucked up his controls THAT much when there's 3 other games he's in where he controlled way better. I really don't have much to say because they really ultimately didn't change much about the game.
The Cyberspace levels I couldn't be fucked with. I played a couple of them and they were....okay? The racing one with the rocket boost was kinda cool, but like the collectible ones with the flickies and especially whatever the fuck 4-E was supposed to be was pretty fucking bad. I'll never truly get why people gas up the Cyberspace levels cuz most of the time they just FEEL kinda shit to controls.
Climbing some of those towers was not really fun. Some of the challenges, I'll admit, were pretty cool, but most of them just felt very punishing. It felt like playing Lost Levels but the pacing was 10x worse. I don't mind climbing the towers again, they just take FOREVER to do.
The first few koco trials were...neat? That one with the strict time limit was kinda dogshit though but the rest were piss easy. The fucking master koco trials are actual dogshit though. Those bosses were not designed to be marathoned and they were not designed with the new parry mechanics. I am not ashamed to admit I cheesed & cheated my way through that shit. If the game's going to waste my fucking time with shit that is not fun at all, I'm not gonna bother playing by its rules.
The Supreme boss fight felt genuinely not different from the original fight. Maybe a couple of things here & there were different, but holy fuck that boss fight sucks so much. The End fight? What a fucking disappointment. The End fight was already pretty dogshit in that game, and this is technically better, but holy fuck is it all the more frustrating. It took me an HOUR to figure out you were supposed to cyloop the fucking thing on supreme's head. The game gave NO indication whatsoever that you were supposed to cyloop it off. Trying to even target that thing was pure aids. The ironic thing is, once you figure all of that out, The End is a pathetic final boss that can go down in like a minute. Once you realize that you're supposed to cyloop, the other cyloops are pretty easy to figure out. QTE before the big finale is kinda cool, and I do think Sonic "going all out" and completely obliterating both bosses because of Eggman was pretty cool, but it was harder to appreciate because of all of the baggage of bullshit it took getting there. Ultimately, I really didn't get much out of this, since the whole point of the ending is to "rework the ending of the game" when in reality you only get this by going through some dinky portal you find at the beginning of the 5th island.
Honestly the story in this might actually be a step down from the base game. I do appreciate making the final boss not anti-climatic, but I genuinely believe they did not need to change it just to keep sage alive at the end. Her death in the original game genuinely got me misty eyed. The post credits show that Eggman DOES bring her back, and it shows a better case of Eggman's humanity. I really don't get why they had to keep her alive? Like...what does that change exactly? Either way she's still part of the series so what's the point?
Like I said, this genuinely might be up there with some of the worst sonic experiences I've had. I can tolerate a lot of "bad" sonic things. Superstars was disappointing but it was ultimately just a mediocre sonic game, Lost World with all of its problems I kinda enjoy, despite all of the baggage Unleashed has I do consider it a good game. I've played sonic games I do not enjoy, like Sonic 4, Forces, Labryinth, but a lot of those games never made me feel outright miserable like this entailed. I don't think I've played ANY video game before that's had DLC that actively made the game WORSE but this actually might be it. If Frontiers was able to make me less cynical about Sonic, Final Horizon was able to make me cynical about Sonic again. If they capped it off at Update 2, I would've been more okay with Frontiers. I already liked the game, and the new additions did genuinely fix some of the issues I had with the game. This 1000% needed way more time to cook in the oven, which I'm really getting fucking sick of saying about almost every new sonic game now.
While the tower climbs can be frustrating and the final trial enraging, the addition of the 3 new playable character, the new open world challenges, the new Cyberspace levels that are expansive and engaging, and the new music including the new vocal tracks makes up for that in spades, not to mention the new final boss, better ending, and fleshed out story details that just feel like icing on the cake.
I wish there a better idea of what to do, because I find this hard to follow.
An ambitious DLC and I'm glad I got to play it, but the execution left a lot to be desired. I loved the increased difficulty and how creative some of the platforming challenges were, especially the new cyberspace levels. But the new characters are just not as fun as Sonic and the boss rush was so awful and frustrating. New final boss is peak though.