Unpopular Sonic Opinions

She's "The Girl". The one you see in every Shonen Anime series, designed to look cute above anything else.



My unpopular opinion is pretty simple; I think Roger Craig Smith is Sonic's best English voice so far. Feel like Ben Shwartz and his new Prime voice take inspiration from it for a reason.

 

Gonna respond to a few of these before posting my own, where I have something to add.

Totally agree, especially if you set the speed to "fast" in the options menu. Probably helps that I love actual pinball. The only exception is the final boss fight against Robotnik. He doesn't obviously telegraph when it's safe to hit him at all.

Going to respectfully disagree, since I was stuck on Act 2 for a long time as kid. The main issue was jumping across from one sandfall (sand waterfall? .. what are those called?) to another where the swinging platform is. I realize this is a subjective Barrel of Doom-esque "well I figured it out my first try you're just stupid" kinda thing, but yeah.

Whether I agree or not totally depends on what MIDI hardware you run it through. If you use something like a Roland SC-55, it can sound pretty damn good.

I totally agree, but it probably helps that it has music apparently composed by Yuzo Koshiro.

She's also there to prove that Sonic has no interest in romance or anything like that.

My unpopular opinions:

• Rail grinding it stupid and I wish it was never added to Sonic
• Like stated above, I love pinball and would love to see more of it in Sonic games. I love the forced Casinopolis tables and the Collision Chaos boss, for example.
• More Sonic CD style time travel plz
• I don't know if this actually unpopular or not, but I prefer Saturn 3D Blast's soundtrack to the MD/Genesis version's
• I don't like NiGHTS Into Dreams, like, at all

 

Sonic 4 was fine. Not worthy of the number but if it had come out as Sonic the Portable it would not have gotten nearly as much hate (but on the flip side, not nearly as much attention, either).

 

I'm actually gonna be the odd man out here and say that while the director's cut does a lot of nice things, the way it handicaps Sonic's acceleration actually makes navigating the game way less fun. I don't really like 3D Blast anyway, but I wish I could disable just the new controls, cause I actually think they're worse.

Who cares? You just told me that you genuinely believe it's all performative bullshit no matter what I say. See how this works?

To add to this, I still wish we'd gotten Episode 3. Not because I think it finally would've been the game to "fix" Sonic 4 but because I did actually enjoy the games I played before it. I think that episodic games are just a bad idea in general and it feels like so often something goes horribly wrong in development and they end up unfinished, or else get complete and feel like they never should've been episodic at all. The biggest problem in S4 being "worthy of the number" to me was honestly just the fact that both episodes together were only as long as Sonic 3. A third episode would have brought the act count up to 36, the longest of any classic game. I'm disappointed no fan-made projects have really tried to bring ep3 to life.

 

Same boat - I would have liked to see Dimps take a crack at doing a Sonic 3 pastiche for an Episode 3, with Knuckles and Blue Sphere and all that. Would have definitely helped round out the whole package, especially as I thought Episode 2 was a significant improvement over the first game that I’m sure 3 could have been even better.

That being said, I recall there being rumors ahead of Mania’s announcement that Sega would announce an Episode 3, and I’d take Mania over that in a heartbeat.

Edit: digging around now, I wonder if I learned about this at the same time everyone else did and just forgot about it in the years since, but Christian Whitehead was contacted about working on Episode 3 in conjunction with Sega Studios Australia (who did the Castle of Illusion remake), seemingly in lieu of Dimps before plans fizzled out. Interesting stuff. Bums me out a little more that we didn’t get it if Taxman could have been involved, but again, we likely don’t get Mania in that scenario, so c’est la vie.

 

Oh, right. I have an unpopular opinion to share.

I don't like Mighty. Straight up don't get the appeal. I find him to be something of an inside joke I wasn't aware of that got ironically serious or something, because I can't see absolutely any charm in him. It's the Harambe meme in Sonic character form to me.

 

Sonic 1 is a mediocre game and Studiopolis is the weakest of the new levels in Mania

 

IMO, Super Sonic's theme in Sonic 2 sounds a bit too much like a joke to feel all powerful, as I assume was intended. Maybe it's because I first heard it through this video, but I'm not feeling it.

 

It is meant to be that the game becomes a joke once you obtain it, as he’s so powerful. If you listen, the first few bars that elevate in notes also match the special stage music, which is super cool, pun intended.

Sonic is a character that, even when he’s super, shouldn’t be taken so seriously. I think the movie covered this pretty well too.

 

In many cases, I actually prefer how SADX looks. I think that places like Station Square and Mystic ruins had this gross greenish look in the original versions that I just didn't like. There's some oversaturation in some places with what I feel are garish and ugly colors. Of course, I'm not going to excuse all the broken effects and inconsistencies that would only get worse with each rerelease.

 

To be fair, it was composed to be the normal Invincibility theme, so it wasn't exactly meant to sound epic.

 

Amy is the only of the classic core four to have never had a weak design. Unlike Sonic, Knuckles, and to a much lesser degree Tails, Amy has looked adorable in every appearance.

Chaotix and Saturn 3D Blast have the best special stages, with only Mania coming close.

I love Big and his Big ol' fishing adventure.

 

- Advance 2 was the best of the Advances, with Advance 1 being fine and Advance 3 being middling at best. Even then, I think Advance 2 is superceded in its entirety by Sonic Rush, which is basically Advance 2 But Better In Every Way, including having good special stages.

- The Advance games absolutely have both the worst special stages and the worst ways to get into them out of the entire series. ALL OF IT

- I don't think making Classic Amy playable in, say, Mania really adds anything. Even in Advance 1 her greatest trait was trivializing the last stage's platforming by being much slower - her hammer immediately murders her momentum when used as an attack and her high jump was impractical (keeping her vulnerable while giving her extra height means that it is both easy to get to different areas AND get murked by an enemy offscreen which would send you plummeting back to the ground if not down an outright bottomless pit). Ray and Mighty in Mania are both just as fast as the other side characters and have useful movement mechanics and/or immunities to hazards, and IIRC the only game to make Amy remotely like that was Advance 2...which you had to unlock by navigating that game's terrible special stages multiple times anyway. Smart, DIMPS! /s

- I think Blaze is a far more interesting Token Female Character than Amy is, not just because she actually has a backstory like a person but also in terms of design and abilities.

- Blue Spheres is the best special stage type with Mania's coming very close. What I like about Blue Spheres is that it mixes reflexes with puzzling in a way that has logical rules and makes sense, as opposed to trying to have gotchas like bombs appearing around curves in Sonic 2 or the general disorienting nature of the ones in Sonic 1. CD's are fine but I feel are inherently limited by their medium (and the UFO collision has always felt off, and made worse in the remake), while Mania's are just SO GOOD.

- I think Sonic Adventure 2 is overrated (though, like I said in another topic, I have 100% that entire game on GameCube so it's not like I dislike it) and Heroes doesn't get enough hate for all the mechanics and flaws it introduced to plague Sonic games all the way to and possibly through Unleashed. The "slippery controls" critique, overly spongy enemies, extremely chatty characters in levels, and padding the games with needing to play the same content to complete the story over and over (Shadow has, what, like, over a hundred possible story combinations that you need to fill in to get the true ending?) all showed up in Heroes first. And yes, while characters in SA1 shared levels, their mechanics are so radically different that it doesn't matter - whereas in Heroes the only team to have changes like that were Chaotix and...that sucked super hard because they never bothered to change any of the level design to accommodate it, so you literally ran the levels in laps to accomplish your objectives.

- Perfect Chaos is still the best 3D Sonic boss because it doesn't throw any new mechanics or movement at you immediately out of the gate. For instance, both SA2 and Heroes had a final boss that involved suddenly also having to move in the Z-axis, which is kind of a nono (introducing new mechanics way, way too late in the game's cycle). Also I think the stakes in SA1 made that boss more cathartic - Biolizard and Metal Overlord all take place before their cataclysm, whereas Perfect Chaos actually managed to do it before you beat him, the madlad.

- I think Open Your Heart is better than Live and Learn even if its rhyming scheme makes no sense and not a single one of the vocal themes in any of the Sonic games after it has come close to it, or L&L. Open Your Heart has a kind of edge and urgency to it that isn't really there in later songs (or are trying way too hard like everything in Shadow) and Live and Learn is one of the most solid Sonic themes to exist - just tightly written, sung, and performed. It's a great power rock track, not "just" a great Sonic track, but the general feel of Open Your Heart (...and that "throwing yourself headlong into danger, damn the consequences" chorus) wins out for me.

- Sonic 3 & Knuckles is still the best 2D Sonic game and I have no idea if anyone will ever top it. Mania came close but S3&K is just the complete package.

...is that it in terms of the kind of adversarial stuff I kind of hold? I can come off as intense but this came out as a long methodical post as opposed to someone angrily bashing their keyboard. Rather, I might disagree a lot but none of these are things I'd get mad at people about for disagreeing.

My favorite thing about the S2 Super Sonic theme actually is in the Simon Wai proto version/Masa Demo version, which has sirens in the intro! Prepare To Die, by fuzzy gold hedgehog.

 

Oh I got another one kind of in response to that.

SA2’s final boss isn’t that much of a problem as far as new controls and such. I almost instantly grasped it was the same mechanics as swimming with Knuckles.

 

Here's some more.

-Crush 40 is only good in the context of Sonic. On an objective level, their music is schlock. The best Sonic vocal themes are With Me and Dreams of an Absolution, because I would actually listen to those on their own.

-An accelerator would do wonders for Sonic and I can't stand the idea that he should be controlled solely with the analog stick at all times.

-The homing attack was a good solution to a problem in 1998 but is outdated now, I don't think the countless attempts at "making it work" in fangames work as well as other moves would be, and I honestly want it gone from the series.

-CD's special stages are the best in the series, because they have an incredibly high skill ceiling.

-Sonic 2 has better level design and pacing than Sonic 3&K.

-The boost formula has greater potential than the Adventure formula in terms of gameplay depth, the devs just keep fucking it up.

-Sonic being the only playable character is perfectly fine. I do not understand why Sonic fans are fucking obsessed with the idea of multiple playable characters being in every game, let alone them having their own gameplay styles. Mario (along with almost every other platformer in existence) gets away with having one playable character just fine. Odyssey wouldn't be improved by shoving Peach and Luigi in there. There's a reason it doesn't do that.

 

Since I can't say "Colours is trash and the fact it exists has damaged Sonic more than it's helped him." (cos this is for unpopular opinions and that opinions only getting more popular), heres another.

ShTH doesn't get enough credit for only having 1 gameplay style in a time when Sonic fans were begging the team to just focus on one style. Just take out the guns, crank up the saturation and swap out Shadow for Sonic and most people here would love it.

 

I feel like a bit of Perfect Chaos is underwhelmed compared to those two by the actual execution, due to the laughable kinda dreary cutscenes that don't pack the same punch that the later games do. I think if it had been made on those later better resources (and also kept Open Your Heart going all the way through) it might have been more memorable indeed. Sonic X kinda gave a taster of what a better animated more impactful take on the same build up would be like (even if they kinda ruin the actual climax by having Sonic just completely humiliate Perfect Chaos instead of a proper showdown).

Also I really feel like SA1 could have used more actual gameplay to break down the long marathon of dialogue in the last story. Even if not the usual 'every character bands up' formula level like those games, then one of Sonic making his way through flooded Station Square before meeting Tikal could have been a cool way to keep the momentum going and break up the endless exposition.

(I kinda feel like this was SA1's biggest flaw really, I get the feeling there were meant to be more levels transitioning between certain areas of the story because there's several times you're just walking from cutscene to cutscene.)


I do have to say though, I think Sonic Adventure 1, despite it's cheesy low budget execution, was the best attempt at more intense Sonic story than the later games, even Sonic Adventure 2. My reasoning is that Sonic Adventure 1 still feels fundamentally like Sonic lore wise. Sure stuff like the human cities are there, but the core of the story is still stuff like badniks and Angel Island and the echidna tribe, while I feel like the Shadow era of games were trying to appeal to new trends and make the world building less like Sonic itself, a bad habit MANY 'darker' takes on Sonic tend to fall into. It's more like inserting the traits of the writers' favourite 'hardcore' franchises into Sonic without much added to keep it true to the original aesthetics (weirdly enough it's FORCES that felt like it was trying harder in that regard, it at least had Sonic-styled ancilary characters and backdrops despite the laughable 'grit').

All that said, I think the simple classic style cartoony storytelling is underrated, especially the Mania teams' animations which are incredibly charming and don't even need dialogue to give everything tons of personality.

 

*Sonic CD is a shit Sonic game, gameplay-wise. Japanese OST aside, the level layouts are a fucking mess and aren't suited for a coherent, fast-paced platforming experience like that of the other classic titles. It just plays like ass.

*Sonic 2 is overrated, to high heaven. It's a haphazard mess that gets too much praise and love when it was never fully realized into what they envisioned for it in the first place. Hill Top is just a palette swapped Emerald Hill with some lava. Transitioning from one level to the next is not believable at all. You just spring from one theme/biome to the next that makes little to no sense at all. Sky Chase onward has natural transitions through the endgame that make perfect sense. Most of the level order makes no sense in the state it was put in. Since no visual transitions exist like in S3K to explain anything, I would think this order would make more sense naturally.

Emerald Hill > Aquatic Ruin > Hill Top > Mystic Cave > Casino Night > Chemical Plant > Oil Ocean > Metropolis > Sky Chase > Wing Fortress > Death Egg. But what do I know, right?
Can someone make a simple level reorder hack of Sonic 2 with this order? With the level select also rearranged with respect to it? That would be nice.

Sonic 2 just feels like a prototype of S3K. S3K is and accomplished what S2 was envisioned to be in the first place. Which is why, to me, it can be erased from the trilogy and you will have lost nothing.

*Sonic Colors also sucks gameplay-wise. I just played it for the first time on PS4 when rereleased and it just handles bad. It feels lifeless and boring. I couldn't bother playing through half the game.

*Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, overall, is the best kart racer ever made, period.

*Team Sonic Racing is one of if not the best kart racers that's come out in recent years, even better than Crash and MK8. It's extremely solid and the experience feels so much more nuanced as a simple arcade-style racer. MK8 has too many reskins/babies and the anti-gravity gimmick sucks. Crash has too many characters most people have never heard of and don't care for and doesn't feel as fast paced... oh and microtransactions up the ass. Yeah, it doesn't have anywhere near as many tracks and characters, but to me everything it offers is all quality for the quantity.

*Sonic & Knuckles Collection's standard FM Synthesized variation of the OST is the best version of the entire soundtrack to date.

*Sonic Generations' classic gameplay was pretty awful, from the clunky jumping to the slow running start and the OP spindash. It didn't flow well together. It felt nothing like the classic.