#at first I thought I was using the Burst wispon because the game just gave me a fucking flamethrower

[lovelywingsart]

'It's time to face your fear 'Cause when your time has come and gone I'll be the one to carry on And you can throw me to the wolves 'Cause I am undefeatable

I'm hanging on to the other side I won't give up 'til the end of me I'm what you get when the stars collide Now face it, you're just an enemy'

'Undefeatable' - Kellin Quinn (yes- one of the songs from Sonic Frontiers.)

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Ok, yeah, this wasn't initially song inspired, but then I thought about it and it just kinda went there LASFDJSKD Anyway, the boys and their weapons, plus my own little updates to the Asteroid Wispon because I thought it looked cool uwu (i.e. the name 'Asteroid' makes me think of space, so I kept the indigo color and made it look like a lil galaxy and honestly I love it even more)

[nuttyrabbit]

Sonic Forces Thoughts

The title may seem a bit strange, given that the game is 3 years old already, and I’ve given my thoughts on the story plenty of times before as well as shared those of others, but I wanted to make this post because I decided to actually sit down and play Sonic Forces front to back for the first time since the game was on sale on the Nintendo Switch Eshop for a stupidly cheap price (10 dollars as of the time of this post)

Now that I’ve actually beaten the game and seen pretty much all the game has to offer (outside of Episode Shadow), I might as well give my thoughts on it.

On the whole, the best way to describe Sonic Forces is “mediocre”, because almost everything about it is just mediocre. The story, the  music (which kills me to say), the level design, everything about the game just reeks of unfiltered mediocrity.   It’s not terrible, but it’s not good either, it’s just kinda....there.

Now I could leave it there but I actually want to go into detail, so I’ll break it down into a couple of sections to get my thoughts out in an organized way under the readmore, starting with 

STORY:  As I said at the start of the post, I’ve said my piece about the story many times over and agreed with the thoughts of others on that matter, so I’ll keep this quick. 

The story feels incredibly undercooked and doesn’t even come close to fulfilling its potential, especially when it comes to Infinite. Holy shit I could spend 2 hours ranting about how much wasted potential this fucking character is on a story and gameplay level but at this point it’s beating a dead horse.  

The characters and their characterization is generally fine (except Tails holy shit what did they do to you) but like Infinite, they feel grossly underutilized and feel like they’re there for the sake of it rather than because they contribute anything of meaning. 

I don’t have much else to say other than that the story shares a common problem with the rest of the game in that it is very short. Like, I got Forces yesterday and I beat it in the span of what? 5 or 6 hours? As such, the story feels incredibly rushed because of that.  This segues into my next topic 

Gameplay:  This is a bit of a broad topic but I’ll break it down into something manageable, going from general to specific

Difficulty: Starting with difficulty, Forces is, for the most part, an incredibly easy game. The game defaults to the “hard” difficulty but it should really be called “normal” because nothing in this game will give you too much trouble (at least for reasons of actual difficulty). The boss fights, especially the final one, are pitifully easy and simplistic, especially if you use the Burst Wisp. Seriously, that thing destroys all the Avatar bosses with no issue. As such, the incredibly low difficulty makes the games’ length that much more noticeable, which speaking of

Length: The game, as I’ve said before, is incredibly short. I beat it in 5-6 hours but you could easily beat it in around 3 or 4. There’s 30 stages plus the Episode Shadow stuff and some bonus stages you unlock with Red Rings, but almost all of them are laughably short, the longest of them clocking in at around 4 or 5 minutes and the shortest being barely a minute and a half (the bonus stages are ~45 seconds long).  The only time I spent more than 5 minutes in a level is if I repeatedly died on a certain part, which happened only once or twice and for reasons I will get into.   It somehow feels shorter than Mania, a game that was sold for half the price initially and has less levels.

Controls: Next up is the controls and holy shit this is where the bulk of my complaints lie.  I don’t know how, but Classic and Modern Sonic control noticeably worse than they did in Generations or pretty much any other Classic or Boost game.  

Classic Sonic feels incredibly heavy, making each platforming section feel less I’m controlling Sonic the Hedgehog and more like I’m controlling an immobile brick.  That’s not even getting into how badly they fucked up his physics. The fact that this came out months after Mania is laughable.

Modern Sonic on the other hand, feels way too loose.  Whether it be in 3D or 2D, I feel like I’m barely in control of him when I start to gain speed, and there’s been multiple times where I careened off a cliff despite steering him away from it. It’s made even worse by the fact that for some fucking reason, they took away the drift, something that’s been in I think every 3D boost game since Unleashed.

They also gave Modern a double jump, but the double jump is so worthless and heavy that it’s gotten me killed more times than it’s actually helped me. It feels so stiff and awkward to use and combined with Modern’s loose controls, most of my deaths in this game came from Modern deciding to just randomly plummet into a pit because  I couldn’t correct a jump or he just slid off the edge of a runway for no good reason. Stage 27 is the best example of what I’m talking about because holy shit.

Finally there’ the Avatar, and he probably controls the best of the three, so I don’t have too many complaints on that end other than the fact that his jumps are incredibly slow and floaty.

Level design:  As I said before, most levels are incredibly short, being over pretty much as soon as they begin.  The design in the levels themselves is at best momentarily interesting (The 2nd Modern level for instance), and at worst is absolutely atrocious and terrible (Whoever decided to put an autoscroller in a Sonic level is just awful). and most of the time it just evens out to being incredibly boring and forgettable. This isn’t helped by the fact that most of the levels themselves are either throwbacks to previous games,  generic cityscapes covered in white or on fire, or that ugly, ugly jungle aesthetic.  There’s no levels in this game that really wowed me aesthetically or on a gameplay level. Hell, I can barely remember the names of most of the levels 

Music: The music in this game ranges from forgettable (most of the Modern tracks) to skullfuckingly awful (Every. Single. Classic. Song). Though that being said, I did like a couple of the Avatar themes, and the vocal tracks (Fist Bump, Infinite’s Theme, Light of Hope) were all pretty decent, though not nearly on the same level as prior games.  This is probably the most forgettable soundtrack in all of 3D Sonic. Even Lost World had more memorable and interesting tracks than this. 

Avatar:  I already talked about my grievances and thoughts on Modern and Classic in the control section, but I wanted to give the Avatar his own section because it’s easily the best part of the game.  Getting new gear for your Avatar and customizing them is admittedly really fun,  and I had a good time making my new OC Kick the Dog (do not steal).  The Wispons give a decent amount of variety and replayability to the levels that the other playstyles don’t have (Red Rings do dick in this game other than unlock clothes and EX levels which are so insignificant they ain’t worth it) and their levels are easily the most fleshed out and interesting of the bunch.    If I ever come back to Forces, it’ll probably be to replay Avatar levels

Content:  This game has barebones content, with the most pressing things outside of the main levels being Episode Shadow (which is 3 stages long), the bonus levels (pitifully short), the SOS missions (replay the levels again), and collecting the red rings/ silver moons/ whatever (Only unlocks more clothes and bad bonus levels).  Compared to something like Generations, which was also pretty short but had a lot of side content and unlockables that made it worth coming back to, and something like Mania which is packed to the brim with content and replayability, Forces is just kind of pathetic.  

Graphics:  One thing I’ll give the game is that the pre-rendered cutscenes and even some of the real time cutscenes look really damn good, at least aesthetically. Character animations still leave a lot to be desired though. The in-game graphics look fine. Nothing great but not terrible.  Keep in mind I played it on Switch so that could easily affect things, but generally the game looked....okay.

FINAL THOUGHTS:  As I said before,  Sonic Forces is the definition of “mediocre”. It’s a completely unremarkable game from start to finish, and most of what it does is done better by just about any other competent 2D or 3D Sonic game.  The  Avatar is fun and interesting and I want the playstyle to make a return, but that isn’t enough to save the game from being incredibly mediocre and just plain forgettable.   

If you really want to try Forces out yourself, I’d recommend getting it at a deep, deep discount. I got it at around 10 dollars and I’d say it’s worth between 10 and 20 dollars. Do not pay full price for this game. 

But otherwise, just skip it.

[semi-sketchy]

Alright, time for my Forces gameplay thoughts. I spoil the bosses and levels, so once again, don’t read below if you don’t want spoilers.

I already went into the story in this post, so here we’re going to focus on gameplay.

I just beat the game for the second time last night and I have the PC port, so I can’t speak for any of the other versions. The game has gotten patches and it sounds like there will be a lot more as well as more DLC in the future, so this might become dated pretty quick. Either way, I’ve been playing the game for 5 days now, so this is my thoughts on it.

Bosses

Alright, gonna throw this out here right now, the bosses aren’t very good. They are the lowest point in the game as most of them is waiting around, barely/not being able to get hit while waiting for the weak spot to show. They drag on and many of them don’t even change the pattern or add anything new once they get lower on health.

Zavok's entire battle was waiting for an opening and dodging objects on a small platform until he showed his weak spot. I heard a lot of people got lost in this fight, although I never got lost, I just thought it was tiresome because it drags on and is frankly uninteresting.

The first Infinite fight was nice. It was an auto-runner where you were jumping over cubes placed around that weren’t too hard to dodge. You catch up to Infinite, hit him, and do it again. However, he changes how the cubes are laid out and has a cloning move you have to homing attack through so it doesn’t get stale too quickly. The boss also doesn’t drag on too long with it easily being beatable in under a minute 40. The boss still wasn’t very special, but out of all the boss fights, this was easily my favorite.

The Egg Dragoon fight was pretty meh and every attack was so easy to dodge. He throws ground at you, but you’re never in any danger. As long as you jump, you literally cannot get hit in this fight. You just stand to the sidelines and wait for him to throw those black rocks you can hit back.

Metal Sonic was kind of interesting with how you had to chase him down, but all you had to do is boost (which Wisps are all over the place as well as robots which give you boost) and dodge this laser attack at one point. There isn’t really anything to the fight.

The second Infinite battle kept you locked in a box and I can say it was at least a bit challenging and had something to do. The fight keeps changing and as long as you are good with your timing, you can almost always hit Infinite. The boss doesn’t drag on too long, but it never felt special.

Now, there are other fights but...they’re not worth mentioning and the reason is they are copy and pasted. Not kidding. Infinite’s third and final fight is Metal Sonic but dodging cubes. The final boss has 3 stages and the Classic part is the Egg Dragoon on a moving platform that can be destroyed, the Avatar is the only unique part where you run around in a 3D space, dodging a few attacks and waiting for an opening while also not wanting to fall off the platform, and the final phase is with all 3 characters and...it’s the Egg Nega Wisp fight from Colors only not as good. That’s really the only way I can put it. Even shares a lot of design elements from the Egg Nega Wisp. I can say I was pretty disappointed in the boss fights in this game. They’re lazy and frankly uninspired.

I was also disappointed we never got to fight Shadow or Chaos. I was looking forward to good beat-down with Shadow and seeing what they could do with Chaos after all these years, but....nothing. It was kinda a let down to have them defeated in cutscenes.

Avatar presentation

For anyone that came to the game for the Avatar feature, you won’t be disappointed. There are tons of customization options for your character and honesty, making Avatars is just fun. I do wish you had a few more pieces of clothing to choose from in the beginning, but it’s not a big deal because as soon as you complete a level with your Avatar, you’ll start raking in those clothes. Clothes are mostly unlocked by missions, although most of them are things you’ll do in the game anyway.

Slide in a Sonic stage

Beat level X

Get an S rank on level X

Use X Wispon

And so on. You shouldn’t ever struggle to unlock clothing.

Missions

Speaking of missions, there’s 3 types: the regular missions, daily missions, and SOS missions.

The regular missions are exactly what’s stated above. Little goals in the game you can easily beat without even trying to unlock clothing, although daily missions are a bit different.

Daily missions tend to be more focused on the Avatar.

Change your gloves

Change your lower headgear

I never looked into completing them because I normally complete them by mistake after playing for 5 minutes. Although if you’re going for all S ranks, daily missions will save you. They give you a score multiplier to help boost your rank, I’ve seen it as high as 3.0 and as low as 1.2. You can do daily missions up to two days in advance and the multiplier will activate when you play on that day. It doesn’t last forever though: typically about a half hour and then you have to wait for the next day to enable it again. So if you’re going for those S ranks, look into doing daily missions.

The SOS missions are....ehh. They show up on levels at random and will be either blue, green or red with each color meaning a different thing.

Red means you use another Avatar to clear the stage.

Green means you get another Avatar as a rental Avatar

Blue means you rescue an Avatar which is locked up in a capsule somewhere in the stage. This is also the only one that can appear on Sonic and Classic levels.

If you die at any point in the level, the mission is failed. They never really felt special because you are going through the level the exact same way and you don’t really get rewarded, but the SOS missions themselves are completely optional and harmless.

Classic Sonic Gameplay

Now, gonna put some more negative stuff.... I didn’t like Classic at all. I would see his level come up and be like “Great...have another one of these to do...” The levels themselves have some different pathways although they aren’t fun. Part of this may be that I’m not a classic fan. I didn’t like Classic in Generations (that’s one thing keeping it from being my favorite modern Sonic game) and while Mania was fun, I haven’t really picked it up in awhile because it’s just not my thing. Classic felt very extra and I am so thankful he only had a few levels because I honestly wish he wasn’t in the game at all. His levels didn’t really have good music, the level design was mediocre at best and he was just flat out boring to play as. There’s even a level where there’s auto-scrolling which I thought Sonic was made for speed running so why is there auto-scrolling?

Look, everyone got their Classic fix on Mania and we didn’t need Classic here at all. I know the argument “Forces was in development before Mania” but that doesn’t change the final product and the result. Sometimes in game design you have to cut a part off that you’ve sunk money into and may even like in order to focus on other features for the overall quality and that’s what they should have done with Classic. Just keep the Mania team over there to develop classic games and keep Classic out of the modern games, please.

Avatar Gameplay

The Avatar was something I had very low expectations of and I was expecting the gameplay to be the worst, although I was pleasantly surprised. The level design is not a total straight shot and while 80% of using the grappling hook is automatic, I still found it to be a fun and interesting concept. The levels always feel like you’re doing something and kept the pace up while being pretty enjoyable. I didn’t realize the Avatar could stomp or slide at at all until a reviewer pointed it out because the moves were never utilized in the level design. It was rather odd to include something they never ask of you to use.

The Wispon gave some flavor to defeating enemies and due to the amount you could use, I never felt it got stale. I just wish you unlocked more by going through the main story.

Cube, while being able to take out loads of enemies at once, was sluggish. You would be brought to a total stop, watch the hammer swing and then swing it again to destroy them.

The Asteroid was interesting where it would destroy 5 enemies in front of you, although I felt if I wanted that ability, I would have just used Burst because it could get so many more done.

Lightning was...war flashbacks to Heroes. It’s basically a whip but it flings you in the direction you’re standing in and I felt like I had a lack of control as well as it breaking all my speed.

Drill took me some time to get used to and figure out, but it’s fast and works rather well except you don’t keep any speed at the end of the attack.

Burst was exactly what we saw in the trailers; just hold the trigger button and you have a long-range flame that burns everything without you losing any speed. It was basic but I felt it did the job the best.

Void is one of my favorites. One click of the trigger and enemies and rings were sucked into a black hole. It was very effective at not breaking the pace and also taking out loads of enemies, just the cool down got me a few times.

Hover is basically a shotgun and another one of my favorites. The ability works rather well in 2D sections for clearing out loads of enemies.

They said there was over 40 Wispons, but there’s not. They give you the same Wispon but with an added perk, like this one gives you a shield at the beginning of a level, this one gives you rings when you die and so on. If I can give one tip: avoid the one that gives you a burst of speed when landing. If you unlock that one, run. It’ll kill you.

The rental Avatar was also a feature and I found it nice, but not really something I used much. I think I’ll find it more useful when collecting Red Rings and taking different paths which require different Wispons, although as it stands right now, all rental Avatars seem to be just made and only have the Burst. I understand not allowing you to rent an Avatar with a Wispon you haven’t unlocked yet, but this did drag and I really only ever used a rental Avatar for an SOS mission.

Modern Sonic Gameplay

Now, Modern Sonic. His levels were pretty short, but enjoyable. It almost felt like a mix between Colors and Generations with how it handled the levels. They were rather linear, but I’m used to that in Sonic. It doesn’t matter if the levels are linear to me; it matters if they’re fun. After all, another pathway is pointless if it ain’t fun. Although, aside from the boost and homing attack, there’s not a lot to do. Sonic has the stomp and slide, but again, they’re hardly used. The slide is never required in this game and the stomp is really only used in one level. There’s not a whole lot more to say as it’s just Modern Sonic with drifting removed and level design that doesn't fully utilize his abilities.

Tag Team Gameplay

The Tag Team stages were interesting, but not my favorite. It was just Sonic and the Avatar with both of their abilities, although the stages were basically an Avatar stage you could boost in as Sonic takes a back seat here. The levels were designed with sections for the Wispon and grappling hook and since your Avatar is almost always in front, it’ll use the Homing Attack and not Sonic. Both can stomp and slide, so there’s not a whole lot more going for these stages. They didn’t feel too special and the double boost was mainly a time to just sit back and listen to Fist Bump as nothing was really happening. I think the issue with these stages falls upon how the Avatar has a quite similar skill set to Sonic with the only thing separating them being the Wispon and boost (double jump too if you didn’t choose the bird). Don’t get me wrong, I like how the Avatar handles a lot like Sonic and when talking about multiple playable characters, this is what I’ve been asking for for years, however it doesn’t hold up well in these stages and that’s mainly based on the level design not complimenting Sonic enough.

Gameplay in General

With that said, I am very glad there are multiple playable characters in the game. I have been waiting for something like this since the Adventure days. I wish Classic wasn’t tacked on, heck if they wanted to go with the whole dimension plot, Blaze is perfect for that. I’d love to see her play in 3D or even 2D since Rush Adventure is one of my favorite games. I feel they put Classic in there as kind of a crutch because it worked for Generations, but I’m at the point I would rather have Classic and Modern stay separate. 

The reason I didn’t put this above is because it’s not just one character; it’s all of them. This is an issue with the physics engine and I feel it could use a little tuning. The characters lack some weight, which while Sonic was pretty heavy in Generations, he’s rather light here. I fell into it okay for the most part since I play the Adventure games a lot, but I had my fair share of deaths on platforms where the character accelerated rapidly with no real good way to break the momentum as well as having a heavy jump. I mostly ran into this issue with the Avatar and Classic, but Modern Sonic controlled much like this too only you were often going so fast you barely noticed. I think if you mixed the weight of the characters from Generations and Forces, you would get some great physics. However, without practice, the slippery controls will nail you down a lot.

I also ran into issues in Classic stages where I’d be rolling, going fast then suddenly the game would be like “shoot, speed cap, better slow you down” and I’d go from 60 to 5 in a frame. It was quite jarring, though only happened a few times.

I wish the level design complimented the character abilities better in this game and designed the levels around that. One thing I always loved about Sonic in Generations was if you got good, you could take some crazy shortcuts with the boost, but in this game, there’s none of that. Sure, you can shave off some time by being good, but not a lot. I don’t think this is a game for speedrunners.

They changed the ranking system back to the way it was in Colors where it was based on your score and not the timer. Your time does play by far the biggest part in your score, but holding onto those rings and taking out a few enemies is what you’ll have to do if you want that S rank. I welcome this change as it helps change the focus from “must go fast all the time” to “maybe I’ll get a reward by going out of my main path”. I missed this kind of ranking system in Generations and I am so glad it is brought back.

Miscellaneous

I did have a few issues with crashing, although Sonic Team is working hard to fix those, so I wouldn’t discount the game because of that. The crashes are mostly at the final Infinite fight and oddly enough, the cutscene that plays after it. Other than that I had some issues with the beginning of Null Space, but I’m sure these will be fixed in due time. The graphics are amazing. The lighting, effects, everything happening in the background, all of it is so beautiful. No matter where you are, there’s almost always eye candy. Alright, now I would be short-sighted to say that I didn’t adore the soundtrack. It really stuck out to me and I’ve basically been listening to it daily. The only ones that were kind of a let down were Classic’s, but again, there weren’t too many. The voice acting was done so well. I didn’t think I would ever like Kirk Thornton as Shadow, but the voice direction and how much the actors have improved, I actually did. There wasn’t a single time where I thought the acting was bad. They really brought life into the characters and spiced up the script when it was dull. Everyone did amazing and I can’t wait to see more work from them in the future.

Now this is a pet peeve of mine with reviewers of this game at the moment and that’s comparing Forces to Mania. I can’t say I didn’t expect Mania to get great scores and people slam Forces for not being Mania, although I don’t believe comparing the two is right as they focus on two different elements. Sure, compare Classic here to Classic in Mania, but Classic is such a small part of the game you can’t compare both games side-by-side. I am so tired of hearing “Mania was better” we get it.

What I would change

I would have scrapped the idea of Classic Sonic being in the game at all. Stop teams from developing graphics and levels for him and have put the time towards making some longer stages or even adding in Chaos and Shadow as bosses.

Had some people with experience design the levels as well as a bigger team. A total of three people designed all the levels and two of them were brand new, never working on a Sonic game before (as far as I know) which might be why so many of them are straightforward and hardly ever reach a peak.

Refined the physics. Characters have a rather heavy jump, but accelerate at an incredible speed. I’m surprised the physics got past the play testers and all the people who complained at every demo.

A way to play through the story without deleting your save file. Most of the game’s story is in dialog said between stages, so having a theater for cutscenes isn’t much. I’ve already collected a lot of red rings and gotten a ton of S ranks as well as Avatars and Wispons I don’t want to erase, but if I decide I want to play through the main story again for the added experience, I have to delete my save file. There are no multiple save slots either. I would have added a “story mode” you could play through after you beat the game. Basically the main story, only your scores aren’t erased and all the Avatar features you’ve unlocked (like Wispons) are at your disposal. Basically like SA2.

Had more game dialog in cutscenes as opposed to radio chat. I like the chatter in-stage, but on the level select where characters just talk, I wish some of that was moved to cutscenes as well as show more of what was happening in the world. What about the refugees? How did Sonic do being held captive? What happened to him? I would have taken a more “show, don’t tell” approach with the story.

Added the prequel comics in. There’s no real excuse for this nor why it shouldn’t be added in a patch. After you beat the main story, you should be able to read the prequel comics because they explain a lot of details. People ask “why is Silver back?” “It’s answered in the comics.” That’s not a valid answer if the comics are stuck back in some social media archive and not in the game itself. Say someone gets this game after a few years. Some plot points won’t make sense and they could only find the answer by digging through forum threads and hearing about these comics and proceeding to find them. Adding the comics for viewing in a in-game gallery should have been there from the beginning.

I knew one thing months and months ago: Forces was going to be a good game. And you know what? I was right. It is good. It’s not a great game and not one I see myself returning to in the future. It’s not my favorite and I don’t believe it’s the best Sonic game, but I like the direction they’re taking the series. The best way I could describe Forces is a stepping stone; not really something to gawk at, but used to get from one point to another. I would be quite pleased to see a Forces 2 where it’s more fine-tuned and the issues are addressed, although as it stands right now, it’s just good.