I didn’t realize this was on backloggd recently but now that I do I can finally give my full thoughts on this…uh…experience.

Sonic Omens is dreadful. I’m not gonna get into the whole Patreon debacle and instead I’m just gonna focus exclusively on the game’s mechanics and level design. Figure I could keep the focus of critiques narrowed that way.

First off, the controls are awful. Sonic’s steering is way too loose and sensitive making precise inputs a chore, His jump arc feels sluggish and slow, and overall there’s just not much to his moveset. It tries to mesh boost gameplay with Adventure gameplay but it just doesn’t work at all. It feels too all over the place and floaty compared to the responsive rock solid controls of Adventure, and it doesn’t have the tight handling and sense of weight and fluidity that the boost games have. It’s a jack of all trades and master of none. The homing attack is terrible because of how you can only use it when the camera faces an object, so often times you’ll be standing right in front of a spring or an enemy hitting the A button (if you’re using a gamepad like I am) but because the camera isn’t fixated in just the right spot, you won’t lock on to it. Sonic has this new enderbeam-esc ability that flings him into the air but for the most part it’s borderline pointless because the airboost is absurdly overpowered. You can no joke just airboost superman jump over like half the stage and the game just allows it because “WHOA LOOK HOW COOL DIS LOOKS SONIC’S GOIN SO FAST BEST GAME EVAR!!!!!!”. The only thing I like with these controls is the ability to continue a homing attack chain after an airboost, but other than that, it’s just not intuitive at all and doesn’t feel good to use. The plane controls are self explanatory with how bad they are, clunky loose handling with boring shooting based gameplay and obstacle courses that don’t lend these controls any favors either. Then you have Shadow. He’s basically like Sonic except he has Chaos powers that you can swap between with the Dpad, but DMC style switching this ain’t. Chaos Dash is probably the only useful one as it can propel you upward and can skip specific platforming sections, although the game never really explains how to pull this off, otherwise it’s a middle of the road airdash that kills your speed, Chaos Blast is only useful in boring enemy rooms (which yes, thank you Sonic Omens, that’s DEFINITELY what Sonic as a franchise needed more of!), Chaos Spear is a projectile attack that’s a nightmare to position and aim correctly and who’s only purpose is to hit switches, and Chaos Control, a time slowing ability that also slows the speed at which your camera turns. It’s pretty hilarious.

The level design is atrocious. A lot of it is big just for the sake of being big without adding anything meaningful to it, giving it the illusion that it’s more expansive than it actually is. For example, there’s a section near the first water running area in Chao Paradise where if you venture off to the right there’s just this entire empty space full of nothing who’s only purpose is to house a single red ring and nothing else. After you get it, that area ceases to have any sort of purpose. The entire game is flooded with examples like this, or moreover the game will have like 2 simple rather primitively designed pathways to choose from but because they’re wide and big you get people going “YEAH I LIKE IT BECAUSE IT’S BIG!!!” The platforming is unbelievably simplistic, pace breaking, and doesn’t work well with these controls at all, the later half of this project has an over abundance of hitting switches and killing enemies instead of the shallow spectacle filled high speed it lures you with in the first half. The giant tree level is possibly the worst level in the entire game no question, confusing layout, awful platforming, boring puzzles, an over abundance of store bought assets copy pasted everywhere with no thought for artistic cohesion, it’s a giant mess.

And that’s all this game is. It has controls designed for you to skip huge chunks of the stage combined with wishy wooshy “SUPAH COOL” particle effects bloom motion blur and camera shaking to make it look like it’s more impressive than it actually is. It’s the textbook definition of “style over substance”. The bosses are godawful as well, the first one is an arena fight with a boss that takes forever to kill and has egg pawns blindside you because you can’t see them coming with how the camera focuses exclusively on the boss at all times (and thus the homing attack doesn’t even work against these Egg pawns either), the 2nd one is in the plane and it has no intuitive way of knowing where it’s going to attack or when, partially because everything is covered up with a hideous sandstorm effect, and the final one is just “mash A and win” and I’m not even kidding. The voice acting is horrendous, Sonic badly tries to imitate Jason Griffith’s over exaggerated obnoxious performance (of which I’m also not a fan of), and Tails and Shadow don’t even sound like native English speakers, Shadow DISTRACTINGLY so. And please don’t give me the tired excuse of “it’s a fangame therefore you can’t criticize it or be harsh with it” as if fangames are somehow exempt of criticism, especially with how everyone was sucking this game off big time when it resurfaced and claimed it was “da best sonic game/fangame ever!!!”, then I’m gonna judge it as such, simple as that. This one isn’t even worth downloading unless you really want to make yourself physically ill.

This sure is a video game alright

It's weird because control wise it's tight fun and responsive like all the other classic games but level design wise it's a mess. Just this massive hodgepodge of obstacles and enemies with no coherent thought for any of their placements throughout the stage, seemingly thrown together haphazardly just to justify the main gimmick of this game: time travel. You spin a sign to go to the past or present, run and keep your speed going and after all that, you travel to whatever time period the sign you spun indicated. It's mainly the same level with altered design and an aesthetic change, and you only do this to find the robot teleporters in both acts and get the "good future" of the stage. The level design changes and robot teleporters aren't enough of an incentive for me to engage with time travel (and especially because the time stones, which you get by beating the special stages, give you a good future permanently when you get all of them), and the only reward for getting all the robot generators or time stones is a different ending. All these nonsensical obstacle layouts and looping spring pits are there to justify this one gimmick that doesn't really even add much value to these stages for me anyway, and time travel or not, these stages are still either frustrating, awkward, or utterly dull to travel through, Metallic Madness and Wacky Workbench being the worst offender. The backgrounds don't help either, being this barrage of color and busy detail that strains my eyes after a while. I wouldn't say it's as bad as Chaotix, but it's still pretty bad. The bosses are also absolutely pathetic. It's fine to experience once, but it doesn't offer much more than that.

This is such a blast of a game to play.

The rock solid track design, the great and in-depth mechanics that requires solid play from the player, the game having three different styles in the vein of Sonic Heroes, which makes you think strategically which Type of Character is the best to use, and just the overall style to this game is so cool.

However, I wish the game had more tracks to offer. And this game's biggest issue without of doubt is the game not properly teaching the mechanics to the player, which won't be good for first time players, and it's quite a shame because that's what holds this game back. However, once you're able to get a grasp of Riders, the real fun begins.

Despite this game's issues, I still have a blast with it, and I recommend you at least give it a shot.

This game has quite a number of highs alright, it’s a really fun game, no matter what I will say, I think Mario Odyssey is a really fun and enjoyable game that is definitely worth playing if you’re a fan of Mario, or a fan of Platformers in general (that is if you haven’t even played the game at this point).

Positives:

This game has great controls, fun mechanics like the roll, dive, etc., rock solid level design, fun uses of Cappy capturing things and using them to your advantage, etc. Cappy is a lot of fun to use for capturing enemies and doing interesting things with them, or you can use Cappy as an extra jump, which is great. I love the Costumes in this game, basically dress up Mario the way you want him to look, which is nice, and I wish future Mario Games do this, because it’s such a small little detail, but it’s so cool at the same time. Stuff like getting Mario naked is hilarious or Mario being in his Mario 64 Form is really cool and interesting. I also like collecting the Purple Coins, which then you can use to buy Stickers for your Odyssey or other costumes so basically get more decorative, which is pretty neat. I really like this since it rewards you for collecting the Purple Coins and gives you an incentive to look around and explore your surroundings. I also love Balloon World, where you can find Balloons hidden by people online and get more and more Coins the more you find balloons, it feels rewarding to find a Balloon that someone hid in a clever spot. I really love this mode, and whenever I come back to replay Odyssey, I always want to play this mode simply for how fun it surprisingly is. And despite what I’m about to say coming up, some of the Extra Moons in Odyssey aren’t too bad, some of them I’d consider fun to collect and be pretty clever in terms of their locations.

100% Completion:

Let me get this straight with Mario Odyssey, I love the game, I genuinely think it’s one of the most Solid 3D Mario Games ever, however it’s 100% Completion is by far and away, one of the worst in a 3D Mario Game. My issue with Mario Odyssey’s 100% Completion lies with; the amount of Moons and the quality of getting said moons.

The Amount of Moons: So, in Mario Odyssey, a big part of 100% Completing the game, is to collect all 999 Moons in the game, the number alone is more than 4 times the amount of Stars/Shine Sprites needed in 64, Sunshine, Galaxy, and Galaxy 2. So, this alone requires much more play time than 100% Completing the 4 Games I mentioned. Which honestly feels like a chore for doing it this long. While some may say that Odyssey wasn’t designed for 100% Completion, well, here’s my perspective, the reason why I think 100% Completion is so important is because I want to get more bang for my buck and experience the full package, and part of Mario Odyssey’s Full Package is the 100% Completion, so I feel compelled to give my thoughts on it. So, if I think this game’s 100% Completion is flawed, I have every right to criticize the game and lower my thoughts on the game as a whole, end of discussion. Also, keep in mind they spent Development Time working on this extra content, so why not go through some of the things the Developers put into this game, a.k.a. the 100% Completion?

Quality of the Moons: The reason why I just cannot enjoy Completing Mario Odyssey is because the quality of a lot of the Moons are either filler or plainly frustrating. What do I mean by this exactly? Well, let me explain it in this way; a plethora of Moons in Mario Odyssey are some of the most mindless things you can do like walking a dog in a very specific spot so the dog can dig up said spot and find a Moon, or kicking a rock over and over again until it breaks. Now, this would only be a problem if it was few and far between, however this isn’t the case at all, the game ends up having you to repeat these boring and mindless tasks that hardly feel like they have any sense of accomplishment to them several times, this isn’t fun, this is genuinely annoying and mindless. Also, the Mushroom Kingdom has Every. Single. Boss. playable, meaning, if you want to complete Odyssey, part of your journey is to do all the bosses TWICE, I don’t get it why 3D Mario tends to repeat bosses a lot; The Bowser Fights in 64 do this, Sunshine does this, the Galaxy Games, 2 to a lesser extent do this, etc.

This game also has some straight up frustrating and annoying Moons to collect, the most prominent cases to me being the Jump Rope in New Donk City, The Volleyball in the Seaside Kingdom, and the 2nd Face Matching Mini-Games in BOTH the Cloud Kingdom and the Mushroom Kingdom. What’s exactly wrong with all of these Moons in particular? WELL THEN…… let’s start off with the Jump Rope in New Donk City, getting to 100 Jumps requires so much precise timing of your jumps that it can be a bit annoying, and there is thankfully a way to cheese this one, jump and throw Cappy and you’ll land just in time to jump again and be safe from losing the challenge. The Volleyball in the Seaside Kingdom is so annoying and absurdly difficult, since you have to keep up a pace to bounce the Ball back and forth, that doesn’t sound too bad, until you realize just how quickly it does it and considering the speed Mario runs at, it’s just not enough. Again, I managed to cheese this by going Multiplayer and having Cappy do all the work for me, the fact I have to resort to cheesing just to beat these 2 abysmal Moons speaks just how bad these Moons can be, and don’t even think about pulling the “Lul Git Gud” Card, if I see this game has what I think are design flaws, ie these 2 Moons, then I’m allowed to criticize them. The Face Matching Mini-Games are god awful and were the prominent reasons why I never 100% Odyssey for years. You need to be incredibly accurate with your placements, it’s so hard to tell which part of the face goes where, given how the face is blank, and it’s also hard to tell where stuff like the Mustache or the Eyebrows go, and more often than not they end up being placed in incredibly specific spots, which are really difficult to place, not to mention the judging can be very strict and requires near perfection from the player.

Well, despite everything I said about this game’s 100% Completion, I do truly enjoy Mario Odyssey, and consider it among my favorite 3D Mario Games, it’s just the fact I think the 100% Completion really brings it down for me a lot in comparison to other Mario Installments.

So……. Shadow The Hedgehog, this is quite the game alright. I feel I must give my thoughts on this game. I’ll try to go into depth as to why I think the way I do about this game, with things I like in this game, and things I….. do not like about this game.

Positives: I think the Soundtrack to this game is really under-looked at, and is one of the best Soundtracks in the series, most of the people who say that Shadow’s Soundtrack sucks, most of their criticisms is that it's really forgettable, which I question, if you’re someone who thinks the Shadow OST is bland, I highly recommend listening to the Soundtrack outside of the game, cause there are a lot of goodies in this game’s OST. Tracks like Digital Circuit, Lethal Highway, Death Ruins, Mad Matrix, Cryptic Castle, Sky Troops, Gun Fortress, The Doom, Air Fleet, Space Gadget, Black Comet, Final Haunt, etc. are really great. Besides that, uh……. the Shadow Rifle is a fun gun to use since it kills most things in one hit, which is really cool, too bad it’s only available until you beat the game.

OHHHHH BOY NEGATIVES

I'm going to have a field day with this..... I'm going to boil my 3 major issues with Shadow into 3 different sections. The Controls, Level Design, and the Padding in this game.

Controls: So, lemme put in this perspective. The Classics generally controlled well with no problems I have whatsoever, then comes the Sonic Adventure Games and these control near perfectly, if not perfectly (btw, if I ever mention SA1/2 it’s mostly gonna be about the Speed Stages, not the other styles), then comes Sonic Heroes, and you may expect me to say that Heroes Controls like crap, but you’d be wrong. I personally think Heroes Controls fine with the Speed Characters, of course it’s not say SA1/2 Good in terms of Controls, but Heroes Controls fine regardless, and even if you don’t like how the Speed Characters Control, you literally have two other options that control better for platforming sake. Now we get to Shadow The Hedgehog, and what the hell happened here. Shadow The Hedgehog controls like a mess, and has some of the worst controls I’ve ever used in a Sonic Game. Shadow controls as if he has Slices of Butter on his Shoes and runs around on Ice barefoot, and it feels awful. Unlike Heroes, you have no better options to do when platforming, and I don’t know what it is, but I swear to god that Shadow controls miles worse than Heroes Speed Characters ever could. Platforming in Shadow, isn’t badly designed, most of the time it's okay, but it feels terrible to do given Shadow’s Controls, and again, unlike Heroes, there’s no Flight or Power Character to fall back on to make platforming go more smoothly, so you’re stuck with these awful controls that make the bare minimum task of platforming a complete and utter chore like no other in the Sonic Series before or even after. The acceleration is beyond screwed and feels really hard to handle sometimes. However, I can get used to controls over time and they can feel fun to use, however even after Collecting all the Keys, Getting all the A Ranks, and especially doing 326 Routes, I still don’t feel like this game controls well at all, I did get used to it, but it never felt “fun” to control and traverse through the levels. Now onto my next issue with the game, the Level Design

Level Design: Level Design in Shadow The Hedgehog ranges from mediocrity at its very best to downright atrocious and shockingly bad at its very worst. The thing is; Shadow’s Level Design isn’t really anything special, and a lot of the Missions feel like scavenger hunt bore-fests that blend together so much, it feels like you’re playing the same damn thing over and over and over again, it’s simply not fun. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for how the Level Design was paced. I would've actually liked these missions if it weren't for the pacing, that's what kills Shadow The Hedgehog for me personally. However, I’m gonna go over what I believe are the very worst Missions in Shadow The Hedgehog with those being: Cosmic Fall Hero, The Doom Dark, Lost Impact Hero, and Mad Matrix Dark.
Cosmic Fall Hero: There isn’t anything necessarily wrong with the objective, finding the Computer Room is like getting to the goal, so that’s the least of my concerns, my problem with this Mission mostly lies in how Cosmic Fall is designed, the Level constantly forces you to wait on falling platforms, and you can NOT fuck up even once, if so, you’re dead and have to restart over and over and over again, it’s really frustrating, this is a problem I have with Cosmic Fall as a whole, but the reason I chose the Hero Mission over the Dark Mission is because the Hero Mission is longer and more monotonous. Now, onto The Doom Dark

The Doom Dark: This level’s objective like many in Shadow is a scavenger hunt where you have to either kill a specific number of GUN Soldiers/Aliens or something that requires destroying a specific number of said thing, which like I said earlier, these type of Missions blend in together so easily. The Doom Dark has you killing 60 GUN Soldiers, the number in itself is pretty damn high. The Level Design for The Doom is pretty maze like and annoying, and this Mission is extremely stop and go, you kill a GUN Soldier or Mech, then go, kill a GUN Soldier or Mech, go, stop and go, stop and go, it’s extremely repetitive and insanely inconsistent in the level’s pacing. However, there’s one thing in The Doom’s Dark Mission that boils my anger, this level is flat out glitched, in the Final Room, there’s a GUN Robot who won’t appear unless you either kill yourself or teleport between Checkpoints, which is dumb. I’ve heard this is an NA Exclusive Issue, but, quite frankly, I don’t care if it’s NA Exclusive, it’s an issue in the game no matter what and is plain inexcusable. Also, in The Doom, it’s possible to go really fast to the point you clip through the floor. Good Game. This was something that happened to me a couple times, which was annoying, although, this doesn’t happen to me much anymore. Apparently there does exist a map in this level…. which is useless, this Map is here to help, but it barely can be seen in the first place, so why even bother with it, and it’s something you’ll only notice if you look very carefully, I just find this pointless. Now, onto Lost Impact Hero

Lost Impact Hero: This is probably the most infamous mission in the entire game and for good reason. One of this Mission’s biggest problems is simply how Lost Impact is designed, everything blends together in the aesthetic, where you have to go on a scavenger hunt in a giant and unorganized maze, and also, this Mission is by far the most stop and go Mission in the game, I can describe what this level is like without any exaggeration to it:
Kill some Artificial Chaos, Go on a slow as hell elevator with Artificial Chaos to kill, get on a Turret, get on another Turret, kill Artificial Chaos that are up an elevator, kill an Artificial Chaos on the Right Door, then go onto the Left Door, travel there to kill Artificial Chaos, before going onto another Turret, kill an Artificial Chaos on another Right Door, then go another Turret, etc. Do you realize something? Do you realize just how much this Mission blends in together, and how extremely stop and go it is? At least with something like the Chaotix Mission in Grand Metropolis in Heroes, it was nowhere near as stop and go, and had much better level design than Lost Impact ever could, and had a much better pacing to it. Similar to The Doom, this level has a fucking map to it. Again, like The Doom, it’s one of my lesser complaints, however I feel the need to mention this, what pisses me off about Lost Impact Hero and The Doom Dark is that they have Maps to guide you, but they're pretty small and also useless that there's basically no reason for them to be there in the first place, it's kinda like the map for Hazy Maze Cave in Mario 64, except the fact Hazy Maze Cave wasn't a confusing mess like these 2 dumpster fires. However, these levels PALE in comparison to the ABSOLUTE DUMPSTER FIRE that is Mad Matrix Dark.

Mad Matrix Dark: This Mission is plain and simple one of the worst things I’ve experienced in a Sonic Game, the objective is to destroy 30 Bombs, but you do this task in a giant maze that’s a complete mess. The Draw Distance in this level is a huge problem, considering this Mission has you going around a huge area that requires you to destroy a certain amount of objects, in an extremely wide area. The camera also sometimes has awful angles that give you atrocious views of where to go, and can flat out be the cause of why you go in the wrong direction, which is terrible design full stop. It's like the game is going AGAINST you, instead of FOR YOU, which is like blatant sabotage. Even on repeat playthroughs, this level takes so long to complete, which just makes it a nightmare to replay.

Lastly, the Padding

Another huge problem I have with this game is the amount of padding in it. Mid-Late 2000s Sonic Games are so obsessed with padding the game out. Whether this be; 06, Secret Rings, Unleashed on the Wii/PS2, etc. Shadow The Hedgehog however? Easily takes the cake with the worst padding in the entire series. In order to even finish the goddamn game, you need to do 10 Different Routes of it, which means you have to do 10 Different Playthroughs of the game in order to get to the Last Story, you thought getting to play Sonic Heroes 4 times was bad? HA, this is leagues worse, and unlike Sonic Heroes, which is a fun game, this game is completely void of any fun to be had at all.

Bonus: Extra Things


Here’s some things that really annoyed me in Shadow The Hedgehog, but I didn't really think we’re bad enough to be in My 3 Biggest Issues of the game.

When Rail Grinding, switching Rails in Shadow is fine, and is the least of my concerns, the velocity you get from the Rails is awfully butchered and beyond screwed as you go way too fast sometimes, this is a minor thing, and I swear, I feel like the only person who mentions this, but if I ever go fast in Shadow while interacting with stage geometry I’ll be sent flinging across in a direction, with like no control whatsoever, which basically discourages you from going fast, in a franchise that puts an emphasis on Speed mind you. As if the level design was even designed to go fast in the first place, due to how stop and go it is. This issue also applies with the Light Speed Dash, the velocity is beyond screwed and again, you can be sent flinging across a specific direction with little to no control whatsoever, WHICH IS REALLY ANNOYING BY THE WAY.

Method of Attacking: The method of attacking in this game is so annoying, the Homing Attack in this game is so inconsistent, it’ll either perfectly target on what you want to hit, or it goes in whatever direction it feels like and sometimes I’ll overshoot, which will result in me dying, and again, it’s really annoying. Not to mention its animation is very slow, which causes the attack to be very slow, and it just feels unreliable. Shadow’s Punches and Kicks are completely worthless against enemies as they have awfully small hitboxes that unless you get extremely close to them, which will probably result in you getting hit from them, will not attack, and even then, they do the most minimal amount of damage humanly possible, so you’re better off Homing Attacking or using a weapon to defeat enemies, however, like I said with the Homing Attack, it’s kind of unreliable seeing how it can be sometimes given its inconsistencies, so your bet is to just shoot enemies, which is…… okay I guess, I suppose its this games form of Combat that a lot of 2000s Sonic Games attempted to do such as; SA2 with the Mechs, Heroes, this game, 06, the Werehog in Unleashed, and Black Knight.

Camera: I absolutely hate the Camera in this game, but like the other bonuses, it wasn’t bad enough to put on the list, although it was dangerously close to coming into the Top 3. It’s difficult to describe the Camera, unless you’ve played Shadow. Now this game is actually the first Sonic Game as far as I know to use full Analog Camera Control, which sounds great on paper, but in execution it’s very wanting. The camera can get stuck on everything all the time, which is really frustrating when you’re trying to look around your surroundings in the Missions like killing all the enemies, which need I remind you, REQUIRE TO LOOK AROUND YOUR SURROUNDINGS in Scavenger Hunt esc. Missions, so the Camera basically goes against you.

Not being able to jump after getting hit: Remember in SA1, SA2, and Heroes where you could jump after being hit? Can’t do that in Shadow, and so many of my deaths in this game are due to this, and I can’t stand it.

Final Verdict: I hate this game a lot. There’s so many issues with this game that holds it back from me liking it; from the Awful Controls, The Extremely Stop and Go Level Design, The Absurd Amount of Padding, etc. If you like this game and consider it one of your favorite Sonic Games, that’s fine, but for me personally, it’s very hard for me to enjoy this game in terms of its gameplay, when I find it mediocre at best, or downright awful at worst. I don’t recommend you play this game, if you were to ask me. However, if you were really curious and wanting to try out this game like I was, I guess go ahead.

Thanks for reading this very long review, have a good day.