Thanks for the link. Considering there were a few defenders mixed into a thread about which parts of the game suck, that may indicate that the zone is decently well-liked. Anyway, I'm curious to see what the results are for the poll @Londinium posted. Edit: I'm not sure the wording on the poll is the best, considering the term "weak" may make people judge it in comparison to the other levels, as opposed to "suck" which would compel a more instinctual response. Anyway, it's not a report so it doesn't really matter lol.
I like Titanic Monarch. Now. At the time I was angry at it because I was being super dumb in act 2 because I couldn't understand the maze.
I was always surprised with the backlash that zone got. I've mentioned 3&K's Flying Battery before but that's the kind of level I find to be an overly long drag. I think Titanic Monarch has a cool atmosphere and some enjoyable level design. I never struggled with the length and felt the zone was well paced and well designed.
I like Monarch on its own in a Time Attack session, but as a direct follow up to Metallic, it's a drag. I was already checked out of the game by Lava Reef.
I find Titanic Monarch very annoying, but not because it's long as much as because I'll get thrown around back and forth, but the movement isn't interesting at all. It's not like, say, Metropolis -- a stage in which Sonic bounces a lot, but there's danger incoming from all sides. So it's very much about paying attention to the surroundings and effectively stopping Sonic when it's necessary. There's a lot of shit that's made to waste your time, like super long paths that come back to themselves, but the sense of urgency isn't even there either because, again, the stage doesn't feel especially dangerous or engaging, especially since there are a LOT of rings and resources just lying around. It just feels like you should wait until the gimmicks are done with you so you can go on, which makes it all very unremarkable. There's not a single interesting section. It's everything people dislike about Sonic CD's level design, except it's actually true in Titanic Monarch's case. It feels very fangame-y (derogatorily). Sonic Triple Trouble 16-Bit's Atomic Destroyer does everything Titanic Monarch tried to, but much better.
Because it's kind of hard to pull off without 2 screens. Rush's design language is tied directly to the 2 screens it was on and the verticality of them. Even Colors DS is designed with your lower or higher peripheral in mind. Focusing that to one screen ends up being cramped. (If you for some reason wanted to play Colors on one screen, you can... but why would you want to?) I don't really remember what I originally thought of Sonic VS Darkness but now I think it's just kind of flashy and possibly not all that close to a rush successor (plus it went more in the direction of trying to recreate 3d boost) I've kind of thought the only way you'd be able to bring Rush back is to remake it in 2.5d but I still question whether or not that would work with the format.
My issue with Titanic Monarch is that it's building up to nothing. The "final" boss isn't that interesting and Egg Reverie disappointed me because I was hoping we'd fight _the_ Titanic Monarch as Super Sonic. S3&K's Death Egg Robot really set the standard for final Sonic bosses for me... I get that maybe fighting something huge that takes up multiple vertical screen space would be hard, but Egg Reverie already has you having unlimited movement as Super Sonic anyway...
I still think Egg Reverie is epic regardless. Not good as The Doomsday, but it's fun boss (es) to defeat. The "phantom / true" form of Hard Bolied Heavies were disappointing, tho'. But yeah, I know a lot of things were cut from the final boss.
Some people say that the Deadly Six are so much better and such easier to take seriously in the IDW comics and stuff. I honestly have no idea what they're talking about. Zavok is an idiot. Most of the others have either stupid dialogue or are stupid themselves, in both cases being impossible to take seriously. The only one who I see with any improvement is Zeena, though that might be because I hated her so much in Lost World (I just really dislike the character archetype in general) that anything that just managed to not annoy me would be good in comparison.
Doesn't help that the ending is just a short thrown together tie in to Sonic Forces so it feels purposely unfinished and thus unfulfilling. I get it, cold take, but that ending Cutscene stings especially after Sonic Forces dropped.
Actual unpopular opinion, lost world is a great game and people are too harsh because it’s not “sonic” enough, whatever the hell that means.
I think Lost World was alright. I played it once and had no issues giving it a second run to show it to a friend. I think it has some cute gimmicks and aesthetics at points, and think that the obtuseness/difficulty is very overstated. The 3DS one was trash, though. I thought it was a soul-sucking experience.
I like Lost World, but I could like it a lot more. It's interesting in that the HD and 3DS versions are more similar to each other than pretty much any other split Sonic game, and they kind of mask each other's flaws. The 3DS version has dogshit frustrating marathon levels, but it also explains and iterates upon the game's core mechanics better. It even has elemental shields in the stages! The HD version has a lot more varied and interesting design, but it's really unclear about the core mechanics and has levels that go so far off the beaten track that it can feel like the game doesn't have core mechanics. So I guess the game would be great if you cut the 3DS stages in half, removed all the bullshit combat/puzzle sections and ported them to the PC version? Hmm. That said, after almost a decade I'm kind of astounded people still sleep on the sights and sounds. The environments are more vibrant and animated than anything that came after, and it has the single most underrated OST in the series relative to its quality.
Lost World is like the odd lovechild of a 3D Sonic game and Mario Galaxy. That sounds pretty cool on paper but in practice it doesn't do either one of those particularly well, and while I do appreciate the things it does right at times, (such as the parkour system) it's just not enough to really grab me. I can't really say I hate it, but I can't say I like it either. I think part of it is just that the levels are super hit or miss, sometimes the game can be actually pretty fun but the other half of the time it's off doing some wacky (yet boring!) thing. If it had more of those good levels I think I would like it a lot more, but as it stands it's just alright, at least in my eyes.
Lost World is symptomatic of Sonic Team really not knowing what the fuck it's important when it comes to game design. Like Frontiers, it feels like a bunch of unrelated ideas that were in the R&D stage when suddenly they got told it had to be full game by next week. So much of Lost World of needlessly obtuse, complex and unintuitive, whilst also being shockingly underdeveloped. It's good intentions, bad direction. Lost World is that guy that absolutely nails the interview and gets the job as head chef at a fancy restaurant, but within a week he's back to flipping burgers at McDonald's. It's part of the reason I have major concerns about the competency of Kishimoto as a director. The Frontiers aftermath has given me faith that the guy genuinely does care and wants the best, but he also just doesn't have the faintest clue how to get there.
It is kinda sad how often Lost World is dismissed as a Mario Galaxy ripoff when I think it was really trying to be the X-Treme we never got. Not that it succeeds but I can imagine a game like Lost World had been in the cards long before Galaxy was revealed. Just doesn't seem fair when we had Mad Space six years before SMG anyway. If anything it's the other way around, despite how much better-executed Galaxy is lol.
