Oh, black-shelled mighty is easily replicatable, I know exactly what you're talking about. There's also another issue regarding palette errors with Heavy Shinobi during the GHZ cutscenes.
1. Not sure what you mean by “how” since it happens almost every time you go super as mighty on the PC version. 2. Not sure what causes it but the yellow on Shinobi's hands, feet, and chest ends up becoming completely black.
Not really related to the current discussion.. but they really shouldn't have changed the Stardust Speedway, Act 2 boss to the large chaotix Metal Sonic in Mania mode. That bugger is freaken' hard! And my pals are having a lot of trouble with it too. One moment maybe a few attacks can be done and all of a sudden it's total ring loss and then a fall into the pit over and over again. I'll just chalk it up as an unfair boss. The original release boss with the chasing wall was so much fun and in my opinion, quite fair. Just my little tid-bit complaint.
I don't understand why the new version wasn't an encore exclusive change. Encore mode doesn't feel very different as it is and a couple of twists like that would have been a fine. Instead they made it a permanent change to the whole game.
A question I'm curious to know is whether people here think there are actually more bugs in Mania Plus, or would you say the game is genuinely less buggy now - seeing as it's now almost exactly 3 months since Plus' release? Or is there techincally an equal amount of bugs, but just different ones to before?
3rd answer for me. But the game isn't broken by any mean, there's just a few problems here and there.
I've only had black-shelled Mighty occur once in the PC version, and that's when I was messing with debug and zooming through various super/character-switch monitors to see if I could confuse the game. The dark brown Tails thing happened in regular gameplay though. It rectified itself when the second Act started though.
Mania Mode is less buggy; they fixed a few and introduced fewer. The game as a whole is more buggy because Encore Mode has more bugs than they fixed.
Pretty much, yup. Most we can fix are the palette issues via modding, and even that can only go so far.
Yeah, I'm a bit pissed off about that. It's too large of a change to the core game (Mania Mode). It should have been Encore only. This was treated as a big fix, but it was a design change for what was already a “finished” game.
I wouldn't have a problem with that change if the new boss wasn't so unfair... but, then again, so are most of the others in one way or another, so I guess it fits well in the game. =\ Man, I so hope that the next Classic Sonic game gets rid of the "Mettrix boss design flaws" once and for all.
I hope the next game doesn't make us fight a crappy boss at the end of every single act. I wish 3&K didn't popularize the act 1 miniboss idea.
Eh, I actually really like the idea and think that the more bosses the better. Specially with Sonic 3-style long acts. =|
Ya I'm fine with the act 1 bosses. Just some of the bosses in Mania feel off. But this precident was set kinda early on even. Sonic 2 iOS mobile's hidden palace boss was garbage and while it was ages ago there was Retro Sonic's egg garden boss, also iirc Sonic Nexus had a garbage boss too. It's a team of 90% perfect Sonic design, but bosses aren't their strong suit. Not like Sonic bosses have been traditionally great anyway though.
I'd like if they refined the boss system so there was more strategy for each boss. It feels really cheap to get hit once and use your invincibility frames to just pound on the boss, especially since there's no real penalty for losing your rings. I'd like something similar to Sonic 1's end of level Special Rings but for bosses. If you finish a boss while holding onto 50+ rings you get an extra special stage, which would be nice if you had trouble finding the hidden Special Rings during the previous 2 acts. The boss ideas are always pretty cool, but it's let down by an abuse of the game mechanics. I suppose that may not be a bad thing for people who haven't played a 2D Sonic game before though. But hey, despite my desire for a tightened up boss system, I still do abuse invincibility frames so eh.
I actually think that's a good aspect of the classic games. For me, momentum is an important part of Sonic games. And bosses usually break that momentum. Being able to use the invincibility trick to get part the boss quickly is a good thing. Then once you've beat the game, you can set yourself the challenge of doing it properly, so you get the satisfaction of developing as a player. There's a couple of bosses where you can't do the ring thing, and they just tend to draaaag. If it's a multistage boss where the boss/location changes as the fight progresses then that's a different matter. Although I like your idea of being able to use saved rings at the end for an extra stage, as it formalizes the benefits of being a skilled player.
@Prototype There are more than a few examples of bosses in Mania that don't allow 'invincibility frame abuse' though: CPZ Act 2 SPZ Act 1 FBZ Act 2 PGZ Act 2 The first part of SSZ Act 2's boss HCZ Act 1 The first part of HCZ Act 2's boss MSZ Act 1 OOZ Act 2 MMZ Act 1 ERZ That's 10 out of 25 bosses. I personally don't mind having a healthy balance of mindless Sonic 2-level bosses, and difficult strategic bosses. Mania tried a few new ideas, but some of them were criticized because of a lack of proper conveyance, while some were criticized for being too 'hard' (complaints to which I would personally say, git gud). Sonic as a series isn't about it's bosses for me, so I'd rather have a few thought provoking twists here and there, than have every single boss encounter be a chore to figure out. I think Mania almost did a great job with it, and I appreciate the attempt to mix things up.