by BlueMue » Sat Aug 19, 2017 5:02 am
I've been playing through it in the last two days and it really surprised me with it's size.
Maybe I was just thinking too much about Sonic 4 but I really didn't expect a whopping 12 zones. The acts are also massive, even in comparison with Sonic 3 but I find that to be just a bit too much. It's very easy to get a Time Over when carefully going around to reach the checkpoints with enough rings and looking for special stage rings.
The very last act is really a gauntlet and even just going fast there leaves you with concerns about the time limit.
But they are kind enough to reset the time for the boss.
The graphics, the music, the controls, the general level design... all pretty much perfect. It's really filled to the brim with just about everything from the whole MD lineup. It's amazing how often elements from other stages of the games have been implemented into what they reused. Like conveyour belts and other stuff from Quartz Quadrant in Lava Reef Act 2. Even the remix of that levels tune has strong elements of the former levels US soundtrack.
Of course there are also tons of other details from other games, even other franchises like that Egg Robo that fights like a ninja and uses sound effects straight from Revenge of Shinobi. It's truly a love letter to not just old school Sonic but old school Sega and the developers really did their homework.
What was missing for me personally is a level with switching gravity. With all the things they used it's a wonder they left this out. I really liked how they did this in the Death Egg Zone. While the bosses are extremely creative and diverse I find them to go the Sonic CD route a liiiittle too much. What I mean by that is that they are rather gimicky and less straight forward than the usually much simpler Egg-O-Matics of the first 3 games. I like the diversity but some take too much strategy and too long. I also found the final boss and true final boss to be a bit underwhelming. They are original and nice but they simply don't have the right epic factor, especially compared to what's at the end of Sonic & Knuckles. The music definately makes it seem big though.
I like that they included the Blue Spheres game as a bonus stage and what really neat extra content can be unlocked by finishing them perfect. Getting all of them was a mix of doing it in my sleep and mad frustration on the new ones for me. The bad thing about them is, once all of them are done they don't serve any purpouse in a playthrough any more. No rings, no points, no lives, nothing to keep, nothing that makes them worth the time. From that angle it's a shame they ditched the 3 bonus stages from 3&K and the game is really lacking in this department.
@Telekill: Looks like you left too much of the Sonic & Knuckles blurb and logos. Something humorous about the unlockable "& Knuckles Mode" could go there I guess. And you wrote Robotnik wrong.