This is another really solid and fun 2D Sonic game with a lot of fun stage gimmicks, fantastic controls, engaging level design, and endless replayability. In my eyes this would be up there with some of the best Sonic games...if not for a few glaring problems.
First off the elephant in the room is the music. I love Sonic music to an obsessive degree so when I heard this game's soundtrack I often found myself very confused and underwhelmed by some of the tracks and inconsistencies with how each track presented itself. One moment you would have a track with live instruments, bright synthesizers, and atmospheric melodies and the next you have a gritty FM imitation larping on classic Sonic's past with repetitive melodies and questionable production quality. This doesn't mean the soundtrack is ALL bad, but it's by far one of the more forgettable soundtracks from Sonic in recent years.
Second while I do love the level design for most of the game some zones especially leaning into the second half of the game are very strange and their gimmicks become a detriment. You will see yourself going from a homage to Sonic 1 with bumpers and flippers to a floaty automated side scroller or a pretty forgettable and flat stage that plays itself in both directions making it not as ripe for replayability as some of the other stages in this game.
Next the bosses. I've seen many people complain about the bosses in this game and I'm mostly inclined to agree with how lengthy they can get, BUT while this is true the game's emerald power gimmick really speeds up a lot of these bosses and helps to make their design shine rather than being a slog. This doesn't save all the bosses the game has to offer and this games bosses can be seen as the worst we've had if you go into the game doing no emerald runs, but playing off the game's gimmick of emerald powers these game's bosses are mediocre at worst.
One of this game's biggest gimmicks is the co-op and multiplayer modes. While I think the multiplayer is fine and mostly inoffensive the co-op can get really cluttered, especially with 3-4 players on screen at once which isn't great for a fast-paced Sonic game like this. 2-players on the other hand seem pretty manageable for the most part which imo should have been what the game should have been balanced around anyway.
This isn't the most in-depth review of the game I can give, but these were mostly my own observations and what I could type in my own time so bare with me, but Sonic Superstars despite it's shortcomings the core of the game is still a really fun classic Sonic game. If you want to try it out Black Friday is right around the corner and I'm sure by that time some patches to fix up some bugs will be around in that time frame anyway.
First off the elephant in the room is the music. I love Sonic music to an obsessive degree so when I heard this game's soundtrack I often found myself very confused and underwhelmed by some of the tracks and inconsistencies with how each track presented itself. One moment you would have a track with live instruments, bright synthesizers, and atmospheric melodies and the next you have a gritty FM imitation larping on classic Sonic's past with repetitive melodies and questionable production quality. This doesn't mean the soundtrack is ALL bad, but it's by far one of the more forgettable soundtracks from Sonic in recent years.
Second while I do love the level design for most of the game some zones especially leaning into the second half of the game are very strange and their gimmicks become a detriment. You will see yourself going from a homage to Sonic 1 with bumpers and flippers to a floaty automated side scroller or a pretty forgettable and flat stage that plays itself in both directions making it not as ripe for replayability as some of the other stages in this game.
Next the bosses. I've seen many people complain about the bosses in this game and I'm mostly inclined to agree with how lengthy they can get, BUT while this is true the game's emerald power gimmick really speeds up a lot of these bosses and helps to make their design shine rather than being a slog. This doesn't save all the bosses the game has to offer and this games bosses can be seen as the worst we've had if you go into the game doing no emerald runs, but playing off the game's gimmick of emerald powers these game's bosses are mediocre at worst.
One of this game's biggest gimmicks is the co-op and multiplayer modes. While I think the multiplayer is fine and mostly inoffensive the co-op can get really cluttered, especially with 3-4 players on screen at once which isn't great for a fast-paced Sonic game like this. 2-players on the other hand seem pretty manageable for the most part which imo should have been what the game should have been balanced around anyway.
This isn't the most in-depth review of the game I can give, but these were mostly my own observations and what I could type in my own time so bare with me, but Sonic Superstars despite it's shortcomings the core of the game is still a really fun classic Sonic game. If you want to try it out Black Friday is right around the corner and I'm sure by that time some patches to fix up some bugs will be around in that time frame anyway.