Unpacking my thoughts about the beta (warning: long review!)

After playing through the few betas, watching some other commentaries and generally getting to know the game again a bit better, I wanted to try to unpack my thoughts about it. I must say that in general, I love this game, and I love the changes that have been made to it. I was always a fan as a kid, playing it on the genesis, as I loved isometric games after I got my hands on landstalker back in the day. To have a game that combined an adventury landstalker like feel and sonic, what could have been better? Well, apparently, this director's cut is!

First, I have to say the changes about movement and attacking enemies, while I feel they could still be refined a little further (I'll explain how later), feel great. I no longer feel such a need for homing attack as a default move now that most attempts work out. It's now easier to feel like a missed jump is the player's fault rather than a design flaw, even though I would still appreciate slightly bigger hitboxes for the item monitors. The flicky radar and UI changes are fantastic, and only losing one flicky at a time is a lot more manageable in terms of difficulty and doesn't hinder progression anymore quite so much. I guess I would have kept Sonic dying if he gets hit with no rings even if he has flickies as I went through the whole game with barely ever dying as a result of always having some flickies with me. Platforming is still a little harder as sonic still feels a bit stiff while in the air, especially from a standstill, and even though he used to go way too far before, he might be a bit too restrained now when at minimum speed.

While we're still on the subject of handling, I would have liked his rolling movements to have gained a bit more speed as well, to line it up with the new speed of the normal running. It would also be great if we could gain speed while rolling down on a slope as it feels very tempting several times in the level design, where it seems to have been designed especially for speed. I was also never a fan of the way the game allowed you to run around indefinitely while in a ball without having to gather speed first, but hey.

Another detail to make the keep the player more in control is the sensitivity to turning. It makes sense for Sonic to have a rate of turning when moving, but when at a standstill, lightly tapping a direction opposed to the one sonic is facing doesn't make you face the tapped direction, but rather turn slightly towards it. The same with spin dash, where there are a few frames where releasing the button will cancel the move. These make the controls feel less responsive. Another aspect of this is when for example moving up, then moving down straight after, sonic will not pivot on the spot but make a turn and as a result be slightly shifted to the side. This takes some control away from the player in terms of trajectory that can make the difference in terms of platforming. I would love to see that tightened in order to really perfect the experience.

In terms of level design, I feel like maybe a good idea would be to remove all the one ways backtrack "traps" where you go through a door or fall down a pit and you have to redo all the level to get where you are. Maybe spawning a bumper, or making those one way tunnels traditional two way ones would be easy fixes for these unfortunate parts of the design (for example, the pits in rusty ruins or the tunnels of gene gadget 1). Those were always the most frustrating parts of the levels, and their only point was a gotcha to the inexperienced player with no real drawback besides grinding back through the level. They never really added anything but frustration and boredom to me.

Now, in more general terms, I want to bring up a more global issue about the new balance of the game. I'm not fully sure whether I like this change or not, but it is quite a deep one and I think it needs to be discussed. The level select screen, which I love, has created a strange situation with regards to the emeralds collecting. Of course, without limiting the emeralds to one per zone, the player would now be able to farm the emeralds in the first stage to win them all by replaying through the level. However, I always felt like the possibility to get all the emeralds early in this game were part of its appeal. And with super sonic, that would have been the case even more. Basically, this mechanic gave a great incentive to explore the levels thoroughly, and also to be careful and save all the rings possible in order to get all these bonus stages. Without this, the levels feel a lot more... mechanical. After getting the first bonus zone, all the other access points to the bonus in the zone become moot, and so do all the rings. It makes for this strange point where as a player, my reward for exploring disappears, and finding Tails or Knuckles turns into this weird excitement for having found them instantly followed by the realisation that I don't need them. To me, it breaks the way I used to play this game. It makes me rush through the levels, running into traps as I don't care about my rings enough (I only ever need 1) only to get the 5 flickies and get out. It also makes for a very frustrating end game for the last two levels where keeping the rings needed for the bonus stages is such a jump in difficulty that it feels odd. I would have liked to be able to mitigate the difficulty of these last stages by running through them with my well earned super sonic form, but alas, I struggle more and after beating the final boss, I'm not so keen on redoing it all over again.

Is it all bad? No, I think it's just different. It removes the exploration a lot, making the game into more of a platformer maybe. It gives the middle of the game a great flow, as these levels can be breezed through without worrying about the emeralds. But it does change something about it. I think I would still prefer to have the choice to go for an early emeralds run if I wanted to, or choose to take my time, and I definitely miss the possibility to exploit super sonic for the end game. One thing that sonic should prioritize is fun, and super sonic is definitely the expression of that. One solution to the farming emeralds problem could be to remove tails and knuckles from the levels when replaying them once completed? The level select screen itself could display all the currently unlocked emeralds in the center in the same way, but they wouldn't be zone specific anymore.

Now the time trials, they are a fun addition, but they are pretty punishing. I'm not necessarily opposed to that as after all, having that kind of long challenge that is only attainable after a great effort is a pretty neat thing to have. However, I think it would feel maybe a bit better if the big rings were already gone and sonic just had to stand on the trapdoors to progress through. And also, because spin dash takes a second to start, it's usually not worth using, which is why I would love a drop dash feature to be able to gain speed without compromising timing! As for the future, I think this developer's cut did an amazing job ironing out the quirks of the original and expanding on it. I would love for more "fun" features to find their way in, so that moving sonic around would be such a joy that running through the levels would be its own reward, like it is in all good sonic games. For that, maybe a bit more fun with the shields would be welcome, some extra moves, some things to take this great game into the twentyfirst century! Expanding the shields could involve a double jump or a forward air dash to help with platforming, some form of ring magnetism, etc. Having the game launch you in the air when reaching the end of an upward slope with enough speed would also feel great, as I think being able to play with physics that feel real is maybe the greatest joy of classic sonic. Having this intuitive feeling that some use of speed will produce a certain result is one of the things that make sonic games so fun to play and exploit. In that regards, because of its isometric design, 3d blast still falls a bit short, but I feel like it could entirely be implemented.

Something else that could find its way into the game, how about proceduraly generated bonus stages? Would that be possible? Maybe instead of giving a life at the end, they could give randomly chosen shield items, or even more rings so we could transform into super sonic after completing one? The problem with lives as a rewards is that lives are basically infinite in this game, and since we can't have more than 9 anyway, there's very little incentive to replay the levels after having the emeralds. Another thing in the bonus stages, the way sonic jumps has always felt a little stiff to me, and I get the feeling that it's because the camera moves with sonic, essentially moving the floor down instead of moving sonic up, and so he visually kind of stays in the same place. Would that be a thing that could be fixed?

One last thing I would love to see is an indicator of the amount of collected medals on the pause screen, very useful when doing the second completionist "get everything" run! If it's a memory issue, maybe it could replace the lives icon and number as we don't need this info on the pause screen? I could still probably nitpick for days, but I've gotta say, I'm incredibly thankful to Jon for making this great rework of this great game, and essentially giving all of us who enjoyed the game so much as children this amazing look back into our childhood, with this definitive edition of this classic. Truely inspiring.