This review contains spoilers
It's an acceptable level of okay. Like there's a good amount of SOUL or good intentions and ideas, but it's not completely polished so there are obvious gaps in some areas. I had fun playing most of it but definitely had some issues. And since this has been rather well received, ideally I want to see it be improved.
On the exploration front, I think it's really solid. But could some refinement. Some of the sandbox platforming breaks its camera and it just doesn't feel right. And I don't really get the point of Challenges limited to night time when (at the point of writing this) there's no real way to better pass time? I found myself standing around a lot just for the same 2 types of challenges. I also don't know why Fast Travel to Portals is tied to doing all Challenges and only the Challenges. I've had at least twice where I beat all Portals and just feels weird to not at least be able to zip around them if I definitely already found them.
I think the game kinda peaks at the 2nd island, and afterwards feels like it starts closing itself more. I couldn't as freely navigate around the islands get the chaos emeralds without following more of the main story, which I feel was either not a problem or less obvious on the first 2.
I'm mixed on Cyberspace. I know people complained a lot about reuse of level design and themes but the level design gave me a funny game of trying to guess where I recognized them. Not fun for everyone, especially for newcomers but they wouldn't care about the design much in the first place. I don't get why there are so few level themes though. Green Hill, Sky Sanctuary, Chemical Plant, and Highway. I'd be fine with the first 3 if they added more of the latter, or at least better correlated with the various stages from Adventure 2 or Unleashed that just get Unleashed slapped on them. They didn't even bother stepping away from borrowing the original/Generations versions of Chemical Plant and Sky Sanctuary and it's just very... weird.
I do think the concept of short-middle length stages with mini challenges is good, just no executed in the most appealing way. I had fun trying to do all challenges in as few runs as possible, restarting and mastering stages to get it all in one sweep.
A major addition is combat which I think is fun but sometimes becomes a mess to deal with. Feel like the input for Sonic's skills just become a mess in my head and I've had some moments near the end where they started executing when I didn't want to. Wanting to Homing Attack on an enemy for a speed Challenge only to end up doing the Homing Shot on all 3. Very cool, thanks. Some skills are also really similar like the Cross Slash and Sonic Boom to where I just defaulted on the former. There are differences but I only care about projectile to make combo go big.
There's a big resource issue where collecting items just sort of stops mattering. I ignored the Auto Combo skill but was well above the price of it and still wouldn't have anything to do with them. Same goes for Memory Tokens, keys, fishing tokens, and gears. You can collect them on and on with the world filled to the brim just in case you don't do Cyberspace but you can't do much else with them. On the last island, I didn't even explore for more Memory Tokens and just used fishing currency to buy a lot to just move the finale along.
Super Sonic boss battles are cool as hell. I'm glad there's still a reason to be concerned about the skills you get and your rings serve the usual purpose as a timer. Though I think a couple fights are just "alright." SUPREME has a big problem of just repeating the same sequence, made worse when the game gives no clue what you're meant to do. Like I get bosses are essentially "repeating the same sequence" but it feels like there's only one way to approach it and if you don't, you get the same annoying cutscene every time.
This is probably the biggest narrative effort since Unleashed and it's just.. alright. Nothing really draws me in as really interesting and even including optional scenes, I gain nothing of note from most of them. I feel like there's a lot the game just assumes I should know and talks like it clearly told me when it very much didn't. Like talk of lore or the Koco just doesn't feel like the game really talked about it? Now I'm open to that I probably missed something or there were subtle hints, not asking for Sonic to look at the screen and tell me every script detail. But feels very weird to just go from one cutscene from the next and Sonic and friends are just fully with helping Koco, getting emeralds from them. A similar thing happens with gameplay, where I only knew of how Memory Tokens "stabilize" everyone because of a loading screen hint. Which doesn't really make sense for Sage earlier one or the final island, but it feels like the game just feels like keeping the formula.
And the "true" final boss just fucking sucks. Very little to gain from doing it besides a really subpar final antagonist while doing a repeat of a minigame, likely after when you just played it to get here already. It's also weirdly not subtitled, so even more pointless if you're using Japanese audio. There's no reason why it's locked behind Hard and I genuinely would just play on Normal just to not put up with that. And still hear Vandalize! Genuinely had I not been told about this, I think I would just leave the game at pleasantly mediocre but now the entire tail end just feels rushed? Weak? Something along those lines.
The game is fine. It could be better but isn't the end of Sonic, or the worst of Sonic, or proof of whatever hysteria people like to feed on. But I wouldn't say "Sonic's back" (he kinda never stays dead) or whatever about a "vision," cause some of that vision is very bad.
And other complaints that don't really go anywhere:
- Feels like at random some objects can't be homing attacked like springs. I thought this would've been tied to whether its a Classic or Modern screen but no they just turn it off at random
- Similarly, can't light dash some row of rings? Or could be due to light dash being on the left stick so it's kind of hard to register in the first place. Light dash kind of sucks because near the end you lose all speed.
- Upgrading yourself with Kocos doesn't provide a clear way of knowing how many you have before you just can't upgrade. Like there's no counter on screen. And you have to do them all one by one. There's no doing multiple levels at a time or something.
- Sonic's collision is kind of weird. There's a thing he does on high slopes where he just stops to slide down or when he bumps into a wall (I think?) he bounces back and this also applies to Cyberspace.
On the exploration front, I think it's really solid. But could some refinement. Some of the sandbox platforming breaks its camera and it just doesn't feel right. And I don't really get the point of Challenges limited to night time when (at the point of writing this) there's no real way to better pass time? I found myself standing around a lot just for the same 2 types of challenges. I also don't know why Fast Travel to Portals is tied to doing all Challenges and only the Challenges. I've had at least twice where I beat all Portals and just feels weird to not at least be able to zip around them if I definitely already found them.
I think the game kinda peaks at the 2nd island, and afterwards feels like it starts closing itself more. I couldn't as freely navigate around the islands get the chaos emeralds without following more of the main story, which I feel was either not a problem or less obvious on the first 2.
I'm mixed on Cyberspace. I know people complained a lot about reuse of level design and themes but the level design gave me a funny game of trying to guess where I recognized them. Not fun for everyone, especially for newcomers but they wouldn't care about the design much in the first place. I don't get why there are so few level themes though. Green Hill, Sky Sanctuary, Chemical Plant, and Highway. I'd be fine with the first 3 if they added more of the latter, or at least better correlated with the various stages from Adventure 2 or Unleashed that just get Unleashed slapped on them. They didn't even bother stepping away from borrowing the original/Generations versions of Chemical Plant and Sky Sanctuary and it's just very... weird.
I do think the concept of short-middle length stages with mini challenges is good, just no executed in the most appealing way. I had fun trying to do all challenges in as few runs as possible, restarting and mastering stages to get it all in one sweep.
A major addition is combat which I think is fun but sometimes becomes a mess to deal with. Feel like the input for Sonic's skills just become a mess in my head and I've had some moments near the end where they started executing when I didn't want to. Wanting to Homing Attack on an enemy for a speed Challenge only to end up doing the Homing Shot on all 3. Very cool, thanks. Some skills are also really similar like the Cross Slash and Sonic Boom to where I just defaulted on the former. There are differences but I only care about projectile to make combo go big.
There's a big resource issue where collecting items just sort of stops mattering. I ignored the Auto Combo skill but was well above the price of it and still wouldn't have anything to do with them. Same goes for Memory Tokens, keys, fishing tokens, and gears. You can collect them on and on with the world filled to the brim just in case you don't do Cyberspace but you can't do much else with them. On the last island, I didn't even explore for more Memory Tokens and just used fishing currency to buy a lot to just move the finale along.
Super Sonic boss battles are cool as hell. I'm glad there's still a reason to be concerned about the skills you get and your rings serve the usual purpose as a timer. Though I think a couple fights are just "alright." SUPREME has a big problem of just repeating the same sequence, made worse when the game gives no clue what you're meant to do. Like I get bosses are essentially "repeating the same sequence" but it feels like there's only one way to approach it and if you don't, you get the same annoying cutscene every time.
This is probably the biggest narrative effort since Unleashed and it's just.. alright. Nothing really draws me in as really interesting and even including optional scenes, I gain nothing of note from most of them. I feel like there's a lot the game just assumes I should know and talks like it clearly told me when it very much didn't. Like talk of lore or the Koco just doesn't feel like the game really talked about it? Now I'm open to that I probably missed something or there were subtle hints, not asking for Sonic to look at the screen and tell me every script detail. But feels very weird to just go from one cutscene from the next and Sonic and friends are just fully with helping Koco, getting emeralds from them. A similar thing happens with gameplay, where I only knew of how Memory Tokens "stabilize" everyone because of a loading screen hint. Which doesn't really make sense for Sage earlier one or the final island, but it feels like the game just feels like keeping the formula.
And the "true" final boss just fucking sucks. Very little to gain from doing it besides a really subpar final antagonist while doing a repeat of a minigame, likely after when you just played it to get here already. It's also weirdly not subtitled, so even more pointless if you're using Japanese audio. There's no reason why it's locked behind Hard and I genuinely would just play on Normal just to not put up with that. And still hear Vandalize! Genuinely had I not been told about this, I think I would just leave the game at pleasantly mediocre but now the entire tail end just feels rushed? Weak? Something along those lines.
The game is fine. It could be better but isn't the end of Sonic, or the worst of Sonic, or proof of whatever hysteria people like to feed on. But I wouldn't say "Sonic's back" (he kinda never stays dead) or whatever about a "vision," cause some of that vision is very bad.
And other complaints that don't really go anywhere:
- Feels like at random some objects can't be homing attacked like springs. I thought this would've been tied to whether its a Classic or Modern screen but no they just turn it off at random
- Similarly, can't light dash some row of rings? Or could be due to light dash being on the left stick so it's kind of hard to register in the first place. Light dash kind of sucks because near the end you lose all speed.
- Upgrading yourself with Kocos doesn't provide a clear way of knowing how many you have before you just can't upgrade. Like there's no counter on screen. And you have to do them all one by one. There's no doing multiple levels at a time or something.
- Sonic's collision is kind of weird. There's a thing he does on high slopes where he just stops to slide down or when he bumps into a wall (I think?) he bounces back and this also applies to Cyberspace.