This review contains spoilers
(For the Trip Story & Last Story)
For a game that was already solid, but had glaring flaws to begin with, the extra modes basically takes that, and shoves it down the toilet and into the BOG. I cannot believe they made this game go from pretty good, to absolute torture with how artificially difficult they make it to be.
Lets start with Trip's Story, where you play as the new character through a seemingly harder version of the game again, when in actually its basically spikes and pits everywhere, bullshit enemy placement, and decent level design thrown out into the garbage in favor of making it "Hard". And do not get me started on the Bosses, which were already weak point in the main story; now they're the epitome of TORTURE, with the final boss, some topping the main final boss for being the worst designed boss imaginable. WHO IN THERE RIGHT MIND THOUGHT IT WAS OKAY TO MAKE 3/4TH OF THEIR ATTACKS INSTA-KILLS???
Finally, Last Story, which keep in mind you have to suffer through Trip's story to get, here you finally get the super sonic boss for this game and the verdict: its terrible, like insultingly bad for a super sonic boss. Again, like all the other bosses, they made it super scripted, unable to hit the boss half the time, and only really gets vunerable for a short and missable amount of time. But NOW, you're actually on a time limit with super sonic, and those rings are scarce as HELL. Sure you got friends that periodically appear to help, but the RNG with that and also avoiding the bosses attacks makss this super unforgiving. NOT TO MENTION the game gives you a dash, but it eats up your rings so there is nearly zero reason to even use it, nearly. Oh, and need I remind you there's a PHASE 2 that also wastes your time even more. Thankfully there is more openings to attack him with his claw attack, but its easy to miss and getting hit will be a major detriment.
Even if you manage to beat through all of that, he has one final set of attacks that sealed my thoughts on this fucking game and its extras: The attack, with no warning or build up to it, askes you to use the dash attack (which keep in mind drains your rings every usage) to home in on its meteors with good timing to reflect back, which is a mechanic that was only ever shown throught the white emerald, for a part where rings stops spawning btw so getting hit is a massive punishment. This whole final attack could have been negated if there was a hint to use the homing attack OR have a button over the QTE like how most other games have it, to better aid the player in something they'll NEVER expect for a game like this to do. After the meteors is a fuck you laser that is pretty easy to dodge, but goes on longer than it should, stalling your rings in the process before you can land the finaly homing attack on it, concluding the boss.
The cutscene for the end was cute, before shafting to Jun Senoue's Credits for thr 3RD TIME (same for the end of Trip's story) I just turned off the game at that point, I don't think I wanna look back at this experience, I generally felt like I wasted my time tortuing myself with artificial difficulty and a pititful sense of accomplishment. Jesus christ.
For a game that was already solid, but had glaring flaws to begin with, the extra modes basically takes that, and shoves it down the toilet and into the BOG. I cannot believe they made this game go from pretty good, to absolute torture with how artificially difficult they make it to be.
Lets start with Trip's Story, where you play as the new character through a seemingly harder version of the game again, when in actually its basically spikes and pits everywhere, bullshit enemy placement, and decent level design thrown out into the garbage in favor of making it "Hard". And do not get me started on the Bosses, which were already weak point in the main story; now they're the epitome of TORTURE, with the final boss, some topping the main final boss for being the worst designed boss imaginable. WHO IN THERE RIGHT MIND THOUGHT IT WAS OKAY TO MAKE 3/4TH OF THEIR ATTACKS INSTA-KILLS???
Finally, Last Story, which keep in mind you have to suffer through Trip's story to get, here you finally get the super sonic boss for this game and the verdict: its terrible, like insultingly bad for a super sonic boss. Again, like all the other bosses, they made it super scripted, unable to hit the boss half the time, and only really gets vunerable for a short and missable amount of time. But NOW, you're actually on a time limit with super sonic, and those rings are scarce as HELL. Sure you got friends that periodically appear to help, but the RNG with that and also avoiding the bosses attacks makss this super unforgiving. NOT TO MENTION the game gives you a dash, but it eats up your rings so there is nearly zero reason to even use it, nearly. Oh, and need I remind you there's a PHASE 2 that also wastes your time even more. Thankfully there is more openings to attack him with his claw attack, but its easy to miss and getting hit will be a major detriment.
Even if you manage to beat through all of that, he has one final set of attacks that sealed my thoughts on this fucking game and its extras: The attack, with no warning or build up to it, askes you to use the dash attack (which keep in mind drains your rings every usage) to home in on its meteors with good timing to reflect back, which is a mechanic that was only ever shown throught the white emerald, for a part where rings stops spawning btw so getting hit is a massive punishment. This whole final attack could have been negated if there was a hint to use the homing attack OR have a button over the QTE like how most other games have it, to better aid the player in something they'll NEVER expect for a game like this to do. After the meteors is a fuck you laser that is pretty easy to dodge, but goes on longer than it should, stalling your rings in the process before you can land the finaly homing attack on it, concluding the boss.
The cutscene for the end was cute, before shafting to Jun Senoue's Credits for thr 3RD TIME (same for the end of Trip's story) I just turned off the game at that point, I don't think I wanna look back at this experience, I generally felt like I wasted my time tortuing myself with artificial difficulty and a pititful sense of accomplishment. Jesus christ.