Found the old family gamecube and needed a memory lane trip with a game i have nostalgia for but never soaked my feet DEEP into. I picked Sonic Heroes. (I promise toadstool tour is coming soon Vee)
I liked Heroes coming back to it. It's really flawed, and I don't think the true ending payoff is worth the effort. And the lack of a proper story arc or conflict makes this pill tougher to swallow than many of the more ethos-focused 3D Sonic excursions.
The team gameplay style is genius and maybe my second-favorite interpretation of 3D Sonic design behind Frontiers. Having 3 separate characters to switch to on the fly for different physics and weights is a more satisfying and fluid design choice than people would like to admit. Toggling between them mid-section to keep momentum up is fun to master, and learning the sections you can break by using the wrong character is even moreso. And hell - I just like playing as three Sonic guys at once. These characters drive the series; having a single adventure where they get to cooperate and quip around seamlessly was a Sonic fan treat I didn't realize I missed out on.
I don't have any critiques you haven't heard before from sonitubers and such. Levels are too long. Special stages suck. Getting to special stages sucks. Getting A-ranks feels good but runs are easier to fuck up than ever because of rail and platforming physics issues - again, exacerbated further by long stage length. Half of my hate for this game is that it's excruciating to slip off a ledge at the 6-minute mark of a level and have to limp to the end with an 'E'. It's so fucking demoralizing. And playing through the game 4 times for a milquetoast bossfight is a bigger blue ball than Sonic himself. And why is there all this effort put into the combat systems but no meaningful bosses to actually use it on?
But what's most frustrating is just how easy it would be to make Heroes a great game. Like, I hate being the 'I fixed it, hire me' guy, but the solution to making Heroes good is as simple as taking each level, chopping it into 4 short quarters, and giving them to each team. That's it. Totally unique content for all 4 playthroughs and all the levels last 2-4 minutes, just like the best of the Adventure games. And that fixes the special stage issue too, because now accessing them is as easy with one team as it is with Rose.
Hell - now that I'm being honest with myself, I don't even think the special stages themselves are as bad as people say? You use Power to grab orbs en masse, then Speed to breakneck ahead. You can avoid most mines entirely by riding the ceiling. Don't hold up; just toggle left and right like 2's special stage. I did this and got every emerald on my first try. I wouldn't argue them being 'fun', but 'tubers like Johnny VS created this weird reputation that they're totally impenetrable, broken messes. But cheesing them is way easier than people realize: It's just getting there that's dumb.
Knowing this was a lot of people's first Sonic game, I'm genuinely shocked nobody at SEGA or in the larger fandom has attempted to fix this game. It's arguably the series entry that would benefit most from a remaster. Frontiers tells me Sonic is finally going back to AAA-adjacent experiences - which will probably have 3-5 year dev time between them. Now is better than ever for SEGA's side studios to use gap years to bring back and spruce up titles like this into something really magical.
I liked Heroes coming back to it. It's really flawed, and I don't think the true ending payoff is worth the effort. And the lack of a proper story arc or conflict makes this pill tougher to swallow than many of the more ethos-focused 3D Sonic excursions.
The team gameplay style is genius and maybe my second-favorite interpretation of 3D Sonic design behind Frontiers. Having 3 separate characters to switch to on the fly for different physics and weights is a more satisfying and fluid design choice than people would like to admit. Toggling between them mid-section to keep momentum up is fun to master, and learning the sections you can break by using the wrong character is even moreso. And hell - I just like playing as three Sonic guys at once. These characters drive the series; having a single adventure where they get to cooperate and quip around seamlessly was a Sonic fan treat I didn't realize I missed out on.
I don't have any critiques you haven't heard before from sonitubers and such. Levels are too long. Special stages suck. Getting to special stages sucks. Getting A-ranks feels good but runs are easier to fuck up than ever because of rail and platforming physics issues - again, exacerbated further by long stage length. Half of my hate for this game is that it's excruciating to slip off a ledge at the 6-minute mark of a level and have to limp to the end with an 'E'. It's so fucking demoralizing. And playing through the game 4 times for a milquetoast bossfight is a bigger blue ball than Sonic himself. And why is there all this effort put into the combat systems but no meaningful bosses to actually use it on?
But what's most frustrating is just how easy it would be to make Heroes a great game. Like, I hate being the 'I fixed it, hire me' guy, but the solution to making Heroes good is as simple as taking each level, chopping it into 4 short quarters, and giving them to each team. That's it. Totally unique content for all 4 playthroughs and all the levels last 2-4 minutes, just like the best of the Adventure games. And that fixes the special stage issue too, because now accessing them is as easy with one team as it is with Rose.
Hell - now that I'm being honest with myself, I don't even think the special stages themselves are as bad as people say? You use Power to grab orbs en masse, then Speed to breakneck ahead. You can avoid most mines entirely by riding the ceiling. Don't hold up; just toggle left and right like 2's special stage. I did this and got every emerald on my first try. I wouldn't argue them being 'fun', but 'tubers like Johnny VS created this weird reputation that they're totally impenetrable, broken messes. But cheesing them is way easier than people realize: It's just getting there that's dumb.
Knowing this was a lot of people's first Sonic game, I'm genuinely shocked nobody at SEGA or in the larger fandom has attempted to fix this game. It's arguably the series entry that would benefit most from a remaster. Frontiers tells me Sonic is finally going back to AAA-adjacent experiences - which will probably have 3-5 year dev time between them. Now is better than ever for SEGA's side studios to use gap years to bring back and spruce up titles like this into something really magical.
8 Comments
The emeralds sucked precisely for what you said, they janky as fuck and the PS2 ones are broken beyond belief (if you walk to get them they are piss easy; if you accelerate, they are IMPOSSIBLE because it makes the emerald go insanely faster, not the most intuitive thing)
the conversation with the combat is honestly aggravating, there's actual problems and cool shit available that's possible to talk about but no people wanna beeline to the generalized, YT-fed circlejerk point of "it has health bars so it's bad" when there's only one or two enemies that even remotely applies to
Been meaning to go back to this. There's been so many more uniquely bad Sonic games since it came out, I wonder if I reapproach it now expecting it to be a fairly middling 3D Sonic game if I'll end up liking it more, ditching the expectations that were set up by SA2 and under-delivered on at the time.
I actually never got around to playing this one fully surprisingly, I've owned the PS2 version forever thanks to inheriting my mom's old library of games and never got around to it due to the "PS2 version always stinks the most" problem. I could never tell if I was missing anything with this due to how mixed the reception feels these days.
@BlazingWaters honestly yeah, the whole "Sonic shouldnt have bars because old games did not have bars and 1 more second of agency is bad" thing is hella stupid and limiting
@Vee as a not-so-fan of Heroes, if you don't really care about Sonic consistency/conceptual footshot because who cares about Sonic being consistent lmao, I really recommend to try it someday and this review lights it all up quite a bit too. Maybe don't go for full completion and play with Sonic Team if you feel cocky enough.
Ps2 version sucks shit, your best bet is getting the GameCube version running with a completed savefile so you can run through it once, fight the bonus boss and call it a day
MalditoMur
1 year ago