xenorbits
92 reviews liked by xenorbits
rufus is the type of guy that if someone broke his arm he'd put it back in place and smugly say "shinra health insurance... the best insurance money can buy"
The drop system killed my Grandma, okay.
It turns out everyone else in the world is a fuckin asshole too, not just the king. No, my man, it’s not a small, boring, hohum katamari at all. It’s precisely 40 meters long, because that’s what you asked for when I started to roll it, dickhead!
Sonic Superstars
2023
Sonic Superstars is so bad that it has me questioning the narrative of Balan Wonderworld.
Yuji Naka was famously booted off the Balan project by Arzest, an effort that supposedly involved former collaborator and creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, Naoto Oshima. Naka has since alleged that his ouster was the result of speaking out against the unauthorized use of fan music in one of Balan's trailers among other things, but a long history of abrasive behavior and eventual arrest for insider trading has cemented him as the villain in Balan's story. However, to see how poorly Sonic Superstars turned out has given me perspective on another of Naka's accusations: that Arzest was intent on putting out a buggy game and that he was trying to do his best to save it. I think the son of a bitch might've been telling the truth. Yuji Naka is being held as a political prisoner.
On paper, a classic Sonic game produced by series veterans Iizuka and Oshima sounds like a good idea. Even people with more functional neurons than me looked at Arzest's catalog and thought it might still turn out good. Great even. Sonic's pappy is back, it's a real meeting of the minds over there at Sega HQ. I'm sure they're both great guys, but I'm to the point where I think they're about as capable of leading a project as Keiji Inafune, they're so far from their lanes they're driving through a corn field. Nothing about Superstars captures the magic of the classic games or Mania for that matter, but instead parades around in its physics, no better at displaying reverence or understanding for the material it is inspired by than Sonic the Hedgehog 4.
Any sense of spectacle provided by Sonic's speed is dulled by bad stage design and an overuse of set pieces, which are applied cookie-cutter between levels along with gimmicks and enemies, even those that might at first seem bespoke in the way a classic Sonic game ought to be. The creative bankruptcy is astonishing even when viewed in a vacuum, two whole zones reuse the same pinball trope and one of them even has an extra act. The last level's second act is just the first act in reverse, and watching the counter tick down from the seven minutes it took to complete act 1 made my stomach hurt.
Zones have an inconsistent number of acts, with some getting two, some three, and others one single monstrously sized act that can take as long to beat as a full zone. These single act zones play like a gamified lobotomy, with stage elements both unique and borrowed stagnating under their average clear time. Everyone who talks about Superstars likes to bring up how bosses can at times take as long to beat as a level, and this is both a true and fair criticism, but I think it's indicative of a larger problem the game has with its pacing.
You can speed these fights up somewhat by using one or two of your chaos emerald powers, and I do mean literally one or two. Most of these powers have such specific use cases that they're rendered all but useless outside of a small handful of instances, but the rush attack you get for collecting the first chaos emerald is good for getting two or three hits in the second a boss' invulnerability drops. That's my tip to you. Actually my tip to you is to not buy this game, and if you feel compelled to do so, smash all of your fingers with a brick so you cannot.
Superstars doesn't even get music right, man. Tee Lopes is credited among others, and you know how badly I'd love to say he's got another hit on his hands, but the dude just sounds like he's phoning it in on this one. I've never heard a single piece of music Tee has done feel quite so tired as some of what he's contributed to this game. Jun has also broke fucking containment AGAIN and is still pumping out dogwater 10 second loops that sound as close to real Genesis music as La Croix does to flavor.
There's a lack of cohesion across the entire soundtrack which also bothers me. You go from Tee's stuff to Jun's mess and then a bunch of other composers that are churning out crap that sounds like Mr. Blue Sky with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (this joke was submitted by Appreciations, age 9.) At least if you buy this game on PC - which, again, you should not - you can mod the soundtrack so it actually become listenable.
When Superstars was announced, I made a comment that the game looked like some tripe you'd download off the app store. I got pushback over this and changed my tune so I could fit in, a little lie I told because I didn't want to seem like an annoying pessimist. I should've held my ground because Superstar's art direction is pretty flat and its fidelity weak. Some zone have backgrounds that, without hyperbole, look like Nintendo 64 textures. I'm not even sure what I'm looking at here.(source.)
Iizuka recently made a statement that "pixel art isn't viable", and that does speak to an uncomfortable truth about how consumers view sprite-based games. Take a look at the Game Awards, which faced controversy after Nexon's Dave the Diver got nominated for Best Indie. A cynical assessment would be that it got the nom because it uses sprites and sprites = indie which means you can't reasonably charge full price. Counterargument: nothing about Sonic Superstars is worth 60$, it looks bad and plays bad too. I paid 35$ because, true to form, Sega put this out near Black Friday and their games drop in value faster than the coconut that hit me in the head and made me think it was still worth buying for nearly half price. I bought Sonic Mania four times, I'm willing to shell out for sprite games that I think are good, I am straight up mad I paid 35$ once for Superstars and I think I should be allowed to grab Oshima and shake him by his ankles until I get every cent back.
So, yes, you could say I went into this with some pretty negative biases. That's a fair criticism of me, the player. The fool, as it were, stepping in big mud pies for the amusement of everyone else. But somehow, Superstars managed to sink even further below my expectations. I thought I might walk out of this a little poorer, but that I may think the game is a 2.5. You know, mediocre. Didn't think I'd have a great time, but had no reason to believe I'd like it less than, say, Knuckles' Chaotix or fucking Sonic Frontiers. I didn't just step in another mud pie, I slipped on it and fell head first into a ravine. I got a neck brace on and I look all fucked up now.
You hurt me. We're not friends anymore.
Yuji Naka was famously booted off the Balan project by Arzest, an effort that supposedly involved former collaborator and creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, Naoto Oshima. Naka has since alleged that his ouster was the result of speaking out against the unauthorized use of fan music in one of Balan's trailers among other things, but a long history of abrasive behavior and eventual arrest for insider trading has cemented him as the villain in Balan's story. However, to see how poorly Sonic Superstars turned out has given me perspective on another of Naka's accusations: that Arzest was intent on putting out a buggy game and that he was trying to do his best to save it. I think the son of a bitch might've been telling the truth. Yuji Naka is being held as a political prisoner.
On paper, a classic Sonic game produced by series veterans Iizuka and Oshima sounds like a good idea. Even people with more functional neurons than me looked at Arzest's catalog and thought it might still turn out good. Great even. Sonic's pappy is back, it's a real meeting of the minds over there at Sega HQ. I'm sure they're both great guys, but I'm to the point where I think they're about as capable of leading a project as Keiji Inafune, they're so far from their lanes they're driving through a corn field. Nothing about Superstars captures the magic of the classic games or Mania for that matter, but instead parades around in its physics, no better at displaying reverence or understanding for the material it is inspired by than Sonic the Hedgehog 4.
Any sense of spectacle provided by Sonic's speed is dulled by bad stage design and an overuse of set pieces, which are applied cookie-cutter between levels along with gimmicks and enemies, even those that might at first seem bespoke in the way a classic Sonic game ought to be. The creative bankruptcy is astonishing even when viewed in a vacuum, two whole zones reuse the same pinball trope and one of them even has an extra act. The last level's second act is just the first act in reverse, and watching the counter tick down from the seven minutes it took to complete act 1 made my stomach hurt.
Zones have an inconsistent number of acts, with some getting two, some three, and others one single monstrously sized act that can take as long to beat as a full zone. These single act zones play like a gamified lobotomy, with stage elements both unique and borrowed stagnating under their average clear time. Everyone who talks about Superstars likes to bring up how bosses can at times take as long to beat as a level, and this is both a true and fair criticism, but I think it's indicative of a larger problem the game has with its pacing.
You can speed these fights up somewhat by using one or two of your chaos emerald powers, and I do mean literally one or two. Most of these powers have such specific use cases that they're rendered all but useless outside of a small handful of instances, but the rush attack you get for collecting the first chaos emerald is good for getting two or three hits in the second a boss' invulnerability drops. That's my tip to you. Actually my tip to you is to not buy this game, and if you feel compelled to do so, smash all of your fingers with a brick so you cannot.
Superstars doesn't even get music right, man. Tee Lopes is credited among others, and you know how badly I'd love to say he's got another hit on his hands, but the dude just sounds like he's phoning it in on this one. I've never heard a single piece of music Tee has done feel quite so tired as some of what he's contributed to this game. Jun has also broke fucking containment AGAIN and is still pumping out dogwater 10 second loops that sound as close to real Genesis music as La Croix does to flavor.
There's a lack of cohesion across the entire soundtrack which also bothers me. You go from Tee's stuff to Jun's mess and then a bunch of other composers that are churning out crap that sounds like Mr. Blue Sky with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (this joke was submitted by Appreciations, age 9.) At least if you buy this game on PC - which, again, you should not - you can mod the soundtrack so it actually become listenable.
When Superstars was announced, I made a comment that the game looked like some tripe you'd download off the app store. I got pushback over this and changed my tune so I could fit in, a little lie I told because I didn't want to seem like an annoying pessimist. I should've held my ground because Superstar's art direction is pretty flat and its fidelity weak. Some zone have backgrounds that, without hyperbole, look like Nintendo 64 textures. I'm not even sure what I'm looking at here.(source.)
Iizuka recently made a statement that "pixel art isn't viable", and that does speak to an uncomfortable truth about how consumers view sprite-based games. Take a look at the Game Awards, which faced controversy after Nexon's Dave the Diver got nominated for Best Indie. A cynical assessment would be that it got the nom because it uses sprites and sprites = indie which means you can't reasonably charge full price. Counterargument: nothing about Sonic Superstars is worth 60$, it looks bad and plays bad too. I paid 35$ because, true to form, Sega put this out near Black Friday and their games drop in value faster than the coconut that hit me in the head and made me think it was still worth buying for nearly half price. I bought Sonic Mania four times, I'm willing to shell out for sprite games that I think are good, I am straight up mad I paid 35$ once for Superstars and I think I should be allowed to grab Oshima and shake him by his ankles until I get every cent back.
So, yes, you could say I went into this with some pretty negative biases. That's a fair criticism of me, the player. The fool, as it were, stepping in big mud pies for the amusement of everyone else. But somehow, Superstars managed to sink even further below my expectations. I thought I might walk out of this a little poorer, but that I may think the game is a 2.5. You know, mediocre. Didn't think I'd have a great time, but had no reason to believe I'd like it less than, say, Knuckles' Chaotix or fucking Sonic Frontiers. I didn't just step in another mud pie, I slipped on it and fell head first into a ravine. I got a neck brace on and I look all fucked up now.
You hurt me. We're not friends anymore.
if you turned off the flowers you are joyless
This review contains spoilers
Well, didn’t think that the Mario game announced three months ago would become my personal GOTY
I mean seriously, it’s not TOTK which had me hyped for it all the way back in 2019, it’s not the RE4 remake which felt like the absolute culmination of all the lessons capcom learned with modern RE, it’s not even Pikmin 4 which was a whole 10 year wait, nope, it’s the 2D Mario game that was shown at the end of June’s Nintendo direct.
Super Mario Bros Wonder is an absolute joyful blast from beginning to end, I enjoyed it so much that I got 100% completion on it, which has never really happened with a 2D Mario game before, not even the best of those ones had me gunning for 100% like this one did, I just had so much fun with it.
Before I get into the part where I gush over everything I loved, I’ll just get my minimal amount of complaints out of the way, my biggest problem, in fact a problem I have with literally every 2D Mario game, is the bosses. The bosses in this game are very lackluster, there’s like 8 total and 4 of them are Bowser Jr., though I’ll say this, that first fight with him was pretty good, set my expectations for a good boss lineup, until they did the boss again, and again, and again, sure it’s different arenas but the boss phases and moves are completely the same each time, but you may be asking how are the other 4 bosses? Well 3 of them are this stupid fucking machine inside the airship levels that are even worse than Bowser Jr. since they’re legitimately baby mode easy, you jump on a conveyer belt for like 5 seconds and press a button and that’s it, that leaves one boss, the final boss, which is the game’s best boss by far, in fact I think it’s incredible, it’s not hard but it’s a super satisfying and nice boss to end the game on, if I was younger I’d probably actually struggle on the boss. There’s also the mini bosses sometimes found in the wonder flower sections and I will say, these are a lot better than the main bosses (excluding the final one of course).
I’ll say this, that’s really my only complaint, and even then it’s not that big of a deal to me, Mario games aren’t really about the bosses, the only other thing I would complain about is the difficulty but even then they scratch that difficulty itch of mine with the later levels.
Now let’s move on to me gushing about this game……….I FUCKING LOVE THIS GAME.
Seriously, the word “wonder” doesn’t do this game justice, it goes far beyond that, the gameplay is extremely satisfying and fluid, the animations for everything in this game is incredible, the art style is incredible, the levels are all fantastic, the absolute variety in this game is crazy, it feels like Nintendo actually listened to the problems people had with the NSMB games, cause this completely blows away those games, hell, in my opinion it blows away those older 2D Mario games like 3 and World, I had so much fucking fun man.
The controls in this game are fantastic, they’re super tight and just all around very fun, and it’s definitely helped by the fact that the animations are so much better than in the NSMB games, you can see Mario’s (or whatever character you play as) facial expressions change with your movements, they’re not just stiff pieces of cardboard like the NSMB games, there is actual personality here.
The levels and worlds are also incredible, they kinda took the tropical freeze method of making worlds, where each one is actually unique and not just the “plains, desert, ice, jungle, lava, etc.” way of doing it, even with the worlds that have something similar to that generic world theme, the levels in there are so different form each other that it always feels unique. Every level in the game is fantastic, about like 95% of them feel unique from one another, having different enemies and some different level mechanics, each brought something new, and luckily the levels never go on for too long. A big thing I can compliment is that literally any time before where the level would start to become potentially, they always bring the wonder flower in by that point, which is when all hell fucking breaks loose, you never know what you’re gonna get with the wonder flowers, piranha plants singing? A hard platforming challenge? King Boo singing opera? Fucking anything, it’s so fun since you have no idea what’s really gonna happen when you grab them.
My personal favorite wonder flower parts are the music ones, like the aforementioned piranha plant singing and king boo opera, as well as levels like the Halloween one, the platforming one with the multi colored blocks, and Bowser’s rage stage, which is an incredible level to end the game on.
There’s also the special world levels which ehehehe, difficulty jump, I love how challenging these levels are, each take the general parts in its world’s levels and make a challenge out of them, culminating in the final song level with the return of the singing piranha plants, the final level that is a great platforming challenge, and the final final level which is a gauntlet of the badges used in the game to their fullest, it’s all so good.
Dude, the fucking art style and animation, FINALLY A 2D MARIO GAME THAT ACTUALLY LOOKS UNIQUE, everything is just absolutely full of life, I love it, the art style itself pops out so much and is always so beautiful to look at, helped even more by the animations in the game, they finally made actual animations for the characters doing stuff, Mario doesn’t just stay still when he goes down pipes, he enters and exits them like he’s actually entering and exiting a giant green pipe, none of the enemies just statically walk into you, they have little animations where they react to your presence and attack in some way, everything is just so much more detailed and vibrant, it’s all so fucking good.
Yeah, overall this game is wonderful, I didn’t even talk about everything, it’s all just phenomenal, easily one of the best Mario games out there and my personal GOTY.
Well, back to the fnaf playthrough
I mean seriously, it’s not TOTK which had me hyped for it all the way back in 2019, it’s not the RE4 remake which felt like the absolute culmination of all the lessons capcom learned with modern RE, it’s not even Pikmin 4 which was a whole 10 year wait, nope, it’s the 2D Mario game that was shown at the end of June’s Nintendo direct.
Super Mario Bros Wonder is an absolute joyful blast from beginning to end, I enjoyed it so much that I got 100% completion on it, which has never really happened with a 2D Mario game before, not even the best of those ones had me gunning for 100% like this one did, I just had so much fun with it.
Before I get into the part where I gush over everything I loved, I’ll just get my minimal amount of complaints out of the way, my biggest problem, in fact a problem I have with literally every 2D Mario game, is the bosses. The bosses in this game are very lackluster, there’s like 8 total and 4 of them are Bowser Jr., though I’ll say this, that first fight with him was pretty good, set my expectations for a good boss lineup, until they did the boss again, and again, and again, sure it’s different arenas but the boss phases and moves are completely the same each time, but you may be asking how are the other 4 bosses? Well 3 of them are this stupid fucking machine inside the airship levels that are even worse than Bowser Jr. since they’re legitimately baby mode easy, you jump on a conveyer belt for like 5 seconds and press a button and that’s it, that leaves one boss, the final boss, which is the game’s best boss by far, in fact I think it’s incredible, it’s not hard but it’s a super satisfying and nice boss to end the game on, if I was younger I’d probably actually struggle on the boss. There’s also the mini bosses sometimes found in the wonder flower sections and I will say, these are a lot better than the main bosses (excluding the final one of course).
I’ll say this, that’s really my only complaint, and even then it’s not that big of a deal to me, Mario games aren’t really about the bosses, the only other thing I would complain about is the difficulty but even then they scratch that difficulty itch of mine with the later levels.
Now let’s move on to me gushing about this game……….I FUCKING LOVE THIS GAME.
Seriously, the word “wonder” doesn’t do this game justice, it goes far beyond that, the gameplay is extremely satisfying and fluid, the animations for everything in this game is incredible, the art style is incredible, the levels are all fantastic, the absolute variety in this game is crazy, it feels like Nintendo actually listened to the problems people had with the NSMB games, cause this completely blows away those games, hell, in my opinion it blows away those older 2D Mario games like 3 and World, I had so much fucking fun man.
The controls in this game are fantastic, they’re super tight and just all around very fun, and it’s definitely helped by the fact that the animations are so much better than in the NSMB games, you can see Mario’s (or whatever character you play as) facial expressions change with your movements, they’re not just stiff pieces of cardboard like the NSMB games, there is actual personality here.
The levels and worlds are also incredible, they kinda took the tropical freeze method of making worlds, where each one is actually unique and not just the “plains, desert, ice, jungle, lava, etc.” way of doing it, even with the worlds that have something similar to that generic world theme, the levels in there are so different form each other that it always feels unique. Every level in the game is fantastic, about like 95% of them feel unique from one another, having different enemies and some different level mechanics, each brought something new, and luckily the levels never go on for too long. A big thing I can compliment is that literally any time before where the level would start to become potentially, they always bring the wonder flower in by that point, which is when all hell fucking breaks loose, you never know what you’re gonna get with the wonder flowers, piranha plants singing? A hard platforming challenge? King Boo singing opera? Fucking anything, it’s so fun since you have no idea what’s really gonna happen when you grab them.
My personal favorite wonder flower parts are the music ones, like the aforementioned piranha plant singing and king boo opera, as well as levels like the Halloween one, the platforming one with the multi colored blocks, and Bowser’s rage stage, which is an incredible level to end the game on.
There’s also the special world levels which ehehehe, difficulty jump, I love how challenging these levels are, each take the general parts in its world’s levels and make a challenge out of them, culminating in the final song level with the return of the singing piranha plants, the final level that is a great platforming challenge, and the final final level which is a gauntlet of the badges used in the game to their fullest, it’s all so good.
Dude, the fucking art style and animation, FINALLY A 2D MARIO GAME THAT ACTUALLY LOOKS UNIQUE, everything is just absolutely full of life, I love it, the art style itself pops out so much and is always so beautiful to look at, helped even more by the animations in the game, they finally made actual animations for the characters doing stuff, Mario doesn’t just stay still when he goes down pipes, he enters and exits them like he’s actually entering and exiting a giant green pipe, none of the enemies just statically walk into you, they have little animations where they react to your presence and attack in some way, everything is just so much more detailed and vibrant, it’s all so fucking good.
Yeah, overall this game is wonderful, I didn’t even talk about everything, it’s all just phenomenal, easily one of the best Mario games out there and my personal GOTY.
Well, back to the fnaf playthrough
playing moon is akin to seeing a weird disturbing cartoon once late at night when you were a kid whose name you forget but is so crystallized in your plasticine hippocampus that it directly affects every decision you make and occasionally paralyzes you with a sudden fear of being young and afraid but also like you’re the only person that sees certain arcane patterns in the world, but like, if that experience lasted for 10-15 hours
More of my favorite game of 2022, but honestly even adding more of what I could have wanted.
The towers have really good challenging platforming, the three characters are fun to play around with, the 40ish new songs are excellent, the mini bosses actually take effort to beat and ones that were gimmicks are now more traditional fights, the new final boss is kino (I still prefer the og The End fight a bit tho, it’s much better than Supreme though), and seeing all the soul and effort put forth and Sonic being his 2000s rawkino self again has brought me more joy than very few other things have. Frankly just playing the game, walking around the map exploring going from objective to objective with the movement system, blending spindashes and boosts and using the environment and characters' movesets to cheese different objectives and obstacle courses best I could was just such a fucking blast.
But its time to cover the part of the update that I feel the most strongly about, the cyberspace stages are legit some of the best fucking 3D sonic levels ever imho. They so excellently test your platforming skills by being more challenging than the base game stages, they have an absolute metric fuckload of different paths to take, good usage of the spindash will let you soar through the air like its an SA1 stage, the music is incredible, and there's a shitload of collectibles and objectives in every stage that encourage replayability, and there's also next to no 2D sections at all (I dont have a huge problem with 2D stuff personally but fans have desperately wanted thsi). This is everything that people have been asking for out of 3D Sonic stages and nobody's talking about it, its such a shame. This is what I need more of in the future of Sonic, if they take this level design ethos into the next Sonic game, we could have some of the best Sonic platforming we've ever seen.
There’s some issues, increasing Knux’s speed too much makes climbing challenges way too finicky, and the boss rush near the end is goofy and should’ve been an optional thing, there's definitely some bugs like jump deceleration being decreased affecting the other three characters negatively, etc
But if you like Frontiers it’s more Frontiers, and I fucking love Frontiers and I certainly enjoyed having more of it.
The towers have really good challenging platforming, the three characters are fun to play around with, the 40ish new songs are excellent, the mini bosses actually take effort to beat and ones that were gimmicks are now more traditional fights, the new final boss is kino (I still prefer the og The End fight a bit tho, it’s much better than Supreme though), and seeing all the soul and effort put forth and Sonic being his 2000s rawkino self again has brought me more joy than very few other things have. Frankly just playing the game, walking around the map exploring going from objective to objective with the movement system, blending spindashes and boosts and using the environment and characters' movesets to cheese different objectives and obstacle courses best I could was just such a fucking blast.
But its time to cover the part of the update that I feel the most strongly about, the cyberspace stages are legit some of the best fucking 3D sonic levels ever imho. They so excellently test your platforming skills by being more challenging than the base game stages, they have an absolute metric fuckload of different paths to take, good usage of the spindash will let you soar through the air like its an SA1 stage, the music is incredible, and there's a shitload of collectibles and objectives in every stage that encourage replayability, and there's also next to no 2D sections at all (I dont have a huge problem with 2D stuff personally but fans have desperately wanted thsi). This is everything that people have been asking for out of 3D Sonic stages and nobody's talking about it, its such a shame. This is what I need more of in the future of Sonic, if they take this level design ethos into the next Sonic game, we could have some of the best Sonic platforming we've ever seen.
There’s some issues, increasing Knux’s speed too much makes climbing challenges way too finicky, and the boss rush near the end is goofy and should’ve been an optional thing, there's definitely some bugs like jump deceleration being decreased affecting the other three characters negatively, etc
But if you like Frontiers it’s more Frontiers, and I fucking love Frontiers and I certainly enjoyed having more of it.
My review got deleted probably because i was too aggro lol sorry about that.
Anyways this update is what I've wanted from Sonic and it's probably my favorite 3d experience since SA2, definitely my favorite past heroes. To all the people complaining about difficulty I genuinely implore you to explore the difficulty options.
In my last post someone commented about the easy difficulty not dealing with people's issues, which is just wrong. Unless I am mistaken people have issues with
-The towers (springs, balloons, pads and more are added in easier modes)
-The trials (damage and health are affected by difficulty so they will be objectively easier)
-The Elder Coco Trial (In easy and normal the window for perfect parry is much much bigger, alongside damage and health changes. If you still have trouble the stomp in this game is op as shit so abuse that)
-The final boss (again the parry window is changed drastically alongside the normal difficulty changes)
With these in mind I loved my time on hard mode, aside from changing it for the elder coco and final boss challenges because frankly I am not good enough to do the hard mode perfect parry. The towers were fun challenges and made me actually struggle like I haven't done since 100%ing SA2. A game having challenge on the hardmode difficulty is not an issue, and you don't see people complaining in games like Celeste which add an insane challenge for more story content, especially considering the fact that there are actually difficulty options in this game.
It isn't all great with this DLC however. The frontiers issues I had before still apply mostly, with the addition of the spin dash being a massive saving grace. My favorite parts of the base game were the cyberspace levels and these ones fucking killed it so so so happy to have these. My biggest issue is probably the new characters. They feel sort of shallow and in some cases (knuckles) way worse to play than previous versions. Frankly you are going to play as sonic most of this DLC, so I was able to just look past them and see it as fun bonus content (which it is) hopeful that this is setting a good baseline they can work off of in the next game.
Genuinely fantastic.
Anyways this update is what I've wanted from Sonic and it's probably my favorite 3d experience since SA2, definitely my favorite past heroes. To all the people complaining about difficulty I genuinely implore you to explore the difficulty options.
In my last post someone commented about the easy difficulty not dealing with people's issues, which is just wrong. Unless I am mistaken people have issues with
-The towers (springs, balloons, pads and more are added in easier modes)
-The trials (damage and health are affected by difficulty so they will be objectively easier)
-The Elder Coco Trial (In easy and normal the window for perfect parry is much much bigger, alongside damage and health changes. If you still have trouble the stomp in this game is op as shit so abuse that)
-The final boss (again the parry window is changed drastically alongside the normal difficulty changes)
With these in mind I loved my time on hard mode, aside from changing it for the elder coco and final boss challenges because frankly I am not good enough to do the hard mode perfect parry. The towers were fun challenges and made me actually struggle like I haven't done since 100%ing SA2. A game having challenge on the hardmode difficulty is not an issue, and you don't see people complaining in games like Celeste which add an insane challenge for more story content, especially considering the fact that there are actually difficulty options in this game.
It isn't all great with this DLC however. The frontiers issues I had before still apply mostly, with the addition of the spin dash being a massive saving grace. My favorite parts of the base game were the cyberspace levels and these ones fucking killed it so so so happy to have these. My biggest issue is probably the new characters. They feel sort of shallow and in some cases (knuckles) way worse to play than previous versions. Frankly you are going to play as sonic most of this DLC, so I was able to just look past them and see it as fun bonus content (which it is) hopeful that this is setting a good baseline they can work off of in the next game.
Genuinely fantastic.
missing an arm and leg, my body is caked in my own blood
"S-skill issue!"
"S-skill issue!"