The main thing I want to know now is how this did in sales. Like, hard numbers and chart positions. I know we got some early indications like the game being number one in the UK and on Switch and so on, but I'd love to see something more concrete after the game's been out for a month. Steam is only one section of its sales potential after all given it was released on so many platforms and those platforms first prior to launching on Steam. So 100K on Steam thus far doesn't give us the entire picture. Honestly hoping the game smashes it and Taxman/Stealth are immediately contracted for Mania 2 hopefully with much more original content. I did love the game but the limited original content at only four levels lessened the experience. I wanted much more.
I just want to give my late full thoughts about Mania, since I don't own any of the current gen consoles I was stuck waiting for the PC version, although I got to play through the game twice as Sonic+Tails and Knuckles at a friend's house on his PS4 on the 19th to the 21st of August. Only reason why I didn't give my full thoughts then was because I was rushing through it somewhat and the hype was still fresh, so I wasn't confident in my proper opinion yet. I did however post my first impressions on the Spoiler Free thread and they were essentially that Mania might have surpassed 3 & Knuckles for me, which for context was my favorite game of all time as well as favorite Sonic game in the series. I'll just list off what I love about Mania and give some of my gripes, even though they are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. PROS: The phenomenal level design: Mania still contains the three core elements that I'm looking for in Sonic level design, which consist of: speed, exploration and platforming in no particular order. Every act is massive and distinct from one another in their layout and gimmicks, making them feel like an absolute blast to play through every single time, also helped with the best level flow from any game in the series. There was not a single stage that I didn't have a grand time playing through, not even one, which is something I can't say for any of the classic games. Physics are on point: Everything that made the classic games so fun to control are still present here with some improvements to booth. I love how the bubble shield bounce actually reacts properly to slopes now, and I really like this new exploit with downward slopes, in which you can continuously stick to them if you hold down and jump while rolling to keep gaining speed with every jump, that's really satisfying to pull off. The gorgeous presentation: Everything from the new assets to the updated classics was done masterfully, from the color palettes, animation, shading it all looks beautiful and I have zero complaints about the visuals. The music is amazing as well, Tee Lopes and Falk did a fantastic job on the score, both in terms of new tracks and remixes, there's not a single song that I didn't love. Brilliant new zones: It's unfortunate that there are so little of them but all four were definitely the standouts from the entire game. They're extremely creative and fit right at home alongside the best in the series, Studiopolis and Press Garden are so damn good that I can't decide which one I like more. Fresh remixes to old favorites: I was really happy with the selection of classic stages you guys went with, mainly Hydrocity, Flying Battery, Lava Reef and Stardust Speedway. All of them were expanded and incorporated elements from different zones in a way I could've never expected, yet everything just felt so right regardless of that. These remixes might be the best versions of each zone, heck you even made stages that I didn't care for in their original incarnation like Oil Ocean and Metallic Madness actually really fun to play. Killer bosses: Again like with the new zones the boss fights in Mania were all really creative and fun to fight, they might just be the best bosses in the series for me, I adored every single one of them except for one for how intricate their designs were and how you actually had to think of how to approach some of them in order to beat them without taking damage. Special Stages: I'm repeating myself again, but man, these Special stages are just so creative and most importantly FUN, so fun in fact that I wish there were more of them. I also love the fact that they had a learning curve to them in terms of how to most efficiently control the character's turning, once I mastered that they become extremely satisfying to go through. These are easily my favorite ones yet. Also special mention to the really clever hiding spots for those giant rings, made the levels more fun to explore that way. Callbacks galore: So, so many references to not only past Sonic games but also classic Sega in general, every single one I caught put a big smile on my face. The Drop Dash: I found a lot of use for this move and I can see it being really hard to go back to the older games because they don't have this. The unlockables: Great extra content and features that beef up the replay value of a game that's already chock full of it from the main game. Instant reset in Time Attack: Such a genius feature that leaves me baffled as to why more games don't have it. CONS: Old to new ratio: While yes the remixed stages do feel fresh, the entire game would've been a ton fresher if it mostly if not entirely consisted of brand new zones, what's there is top notch but I really hope that if there's a sequel you guys will get a big enough budged and the blessing from Sega and Sonic Team to create a fully new game. No easy way to replay the Special Stages: It would've been really nice to have the ability to play whichever Special Stage you wanted in Time Attack like you could in Sonic CD, they're so fun so it's a shame that there's no quick access to all of them. Lack of level transitions: One of my favorite things about Sonic 3 & Knuckles was the fact that everything felt so connected because it had seamless transitions to every act and zone. The few transitions Mania has are great, but it's really jarring when they're just not there for more than half of the game, it makes it feel incomplete a bit. Bonus Stages: Now don't get me wrong, I love Blue Spheres, it used to be my favorite Special Stage before Mania and I'm happy that it's in here but I wish there was a point to playing them after you've collected every gold medal. It's a bit unfortunate that Mania's Bonus Stages don't give any kind of immediate rewards such as shields, rings and 1-ups like the 3&K ones did. Oil Ocean mini boss: The way that fight is designed isn't too great because more likely than not you'll only find out about the ceiling spikes and the safe spot when it's too late and you're already crushed, at least that's how my first attempt went. I get that the green platforms imply that you'll be going up at some point, but I never really had the idea to stop, hold up for a few seconds just to see if there was anything off screen in a boss fight. Weird performance issues: I'm betting that all of this is purely being caused by Denuvo because my PC is more than capable of running Sonic Mania perfectly, and it does most of the time but not always. The issues include: really laggy opening and ending animations with ridiculously out of sync audio, which leaves them unwatchable. Few second freezes every time an act needs to load, which never happened in any of the classic games nor in the PS4 version of Mania, also I shit you not on my first playthrough of the PC version the game froze for at least a full minute just to load the Death Egg Robot in Green Hill act 2. Also instant reset isn't so instant for me because it does the same few second freeze every time I reset the level, it's really annoying. I also occasionally get random slowdown, which is also annoying. Lastly it's not really a performance issue but I hate that every single time I boot up the game I have to wait for that verification window to load, which takes several minutes and none of my other Steam games do this, it's obnoxious. As of now I've completed the game nine times, twice on a friend's PS4 and seven on my own PC, this includes both full emerald and emerald-less playthroughs with all three characters and yet I'm still not bored of it. After so many runs in such a short amount of time I can safely say that my initial first impressions were correct, you guys did the impossible and topped Sonic 3 & Knuckles in my eyes. Seriously, every single one of you in the development team should feel extremely proud of yourselves for creating such a fantastic game. Hopefully we'll be seeing more projects like this from you guys in the future. Also this whole Denuvo fiasco really sucks because it caused the last minute delay and damaged a lot of good will for the game, I even saw some morons actually blaming you guys even though it's clear that none of you wanted anything to do with this, so sorry you had to go through all of that. Hopefully Sega of Europe will come to their senses and takes this borderline malware out and never uses it again.
Agreed. And once you know to avoid the off-screen insta-kill there's no challenge to the boss at all. He throws his wrench and that's it. I love all the effort the team put into Sonic Mania's bosses, overall they're a lot more engaging and creative than 1/2/3K/CD's were, but that one was just plain outright bad. I don't know what they were thinking.
His unique Act 1 music is fantastic/my favorite track in the game. So good. I also am not very keen on the original Metallic Madness in CD, but feel like they made it significantly better in Mania. Music is incredible there, too, especially Act 2 (probably my second-favorite track in the game). I didn't like the shrinking mechanic at all in the original, but they implemented it systemically way better here, especially with the boss. (Also the art is just cuter/way better done for it in Mania--I wonder who was responsible for the miniaturized character pixel art. My assumption would be Paul Veer but maybe Tom, Keiran, or Midio did it. Whoever it was, wonderful work--as is the case with all the art across the game.) Only thing I was a bit sad about with regards to Metallic Madness in Mania was it not having the beautiful blue good future aesthetic for Act 2 and a remix of Naofumi Hataya's incredible good future JP track (those were the only two elements I loved from the original, ha). Considering Tee's Act 2 song is my second-favorite in the game, though, and how much I like both Act 1 and 2 systemically, I'm glad they made the decisions they did. (And to be fair, the background in Act 1 of Mania does kinda have a good future vibe/aesthetic. Just wish Act 2 had it for the foreground and in an even more vibrantly blue hue like the original.) Also hooray for someone saying something positive about Wacky Workbench! I know most people revile that level, and I understand why from a systemic perspective, but I love the aesthetic/music (particularly the U.S. soundtrack) for Wacky Workbench. "Workbench Workout" is Spencer Nilsen's best work, along with "Stardust (Present)" and "Speedway to Good Future." (As much as I love the JP soundtrack for CD, U.S. has some criminally underrated tracks such as those. Glad Tee seemingly used it as an influence for Lava Reef Act 2, especially with the guitar, and the saxophone in Metallic Madness Act 2. Love those funky Nilsen vibes.) Also rad that Slingerland managed to take the despised bounce mechanic and make it work brilliantly in CPZ Act 2 in Mania. Hmm, probably a dumb idea, but could "Mania" (and other games with time trial leaderboards) somehow ping data from speedrun.com like once or twice a week and update to match it as a way to solve the issue of fake times from cheaters? I have no idea what speedrun.com itself does to combat fake times, but seeing as that's the main site for it and it seems to have good rules in place for times to be posted/verified, it seems like it'd be a pretty trustworthy source of data. (There is a level leaderboard you can access on the left-hand column for time trial records for individual Acts, in case anyone misses it--took me a minute or so to find it, ha.) Or would this only be able to achieve manually? If the latter, I understand why no one would want to regularly have to do that, but maybe someone would be willing to set a reminder to do so every six months or so :P. Like I said, probably a dumb idea--feel free to explain why this would or wouldn't work!
It's why I said earlier in this thread that it would be great if he had his own classic style game with the level design based around his abilities, you really do approach the game differently. It heavily reminded me of Sonic 2 Retro Remix in that sense which I consider the greatest rom hack ever created.
I know you all are loving the Knuckles exclusive MSZ act, but can we stop and nominate Sonic and Tails act 1's act transition as BEST TRANSITION EVER? + - That plane crash was AMAZING.
Well, doing a quick google search for charts and I didn't find Mania in any of them... hopefully I missed something
Speaking of that 100K Steamspy sales figure, dex3108 from GAF reported that Mania reached that sales milestone in only three days. Accurate sales number or not, that's pretty noteworthy. Also don't know if this was posted, but Sega threw together this brief accolades trailer thing.
I'm sure we'll get hard sales data in due course dude! Sega are probably waiting for the sales to rack up before issuing some kind of press release. We already know it has done well, we just have limited info on exactly how well at this point. We should hear something soon. Yeah this is pretty notable. I noticed from the Steam Spy graph that sales basically sky rocketed around launch, which I think is mostly due to the game's glowing critical reception from the console releases. As I said to High Fidelity it shouldn't be too long before Sega speaks out and we hear some good news about the game's sales. We know it was number one on launch so we're just waiting to hear more.
I finished an act at 9'59''50... And they gave me a time bonus of 100000 points! I finally beat the 4th special stage and know now how the 5th is; it's not that horrible now that I practiced so much for the previous emerald, but it's still very accurate at taking advantage of my gameplay mistakes, I lost 30 or 40 rings in a row due to bombs and spikes.
When I first played the game, I thought the stages were going to be hell and I'd never get all the emeralds. Now, the stages are actually awesome and I wouldn't mind them returning in the future. Practice definitely makes perfect. What worked for me is staying with the UFO on his exact path, mostly, and collecting as much spheres, rings, etc. as possible while chasing him. Only going off the rails when absolutely needed. Once I had the maps memorized, and moving around became easier, RIP UFO.
I've been playing the Blue Sphere stages, and at one point I could have sworn I left one sphere blue in order to get the perfect, yet after encircling a bunch of spheres elsewhere, the stage ended! A similar thing occured when I had the perfect, and I had 1 blue sphere left to pick up, yet I saw three in front of me! Am I hallucinating, or are there more blue spheres than needed to complete certain stages??
I have to admit I'm a huge fan of this idea, Eggman having some sidekick niece that acts as a act 1 mid boss. It fleshes out Eggman's background and adds a much better dynamic than Eggman's robots. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX4Ir2wBltQ Hyperlink
So the old 9:59 bonus is still there, eh? Cool to know. From what I saw from all of the let's plays and the little details of this game, it's just such a gem. I hope the devs artists and designers aren't through because there's going to be a sequel.
It's a bug, and I'm not quite sure what triggers it. I've run into it numerous times on both Switch and PC, yet I've seen someone get every gold medallion without it happening once. Thankfully it's never ruined a Perfect for me.
It sounds like they may have forgotten to update the value with the number of blue spheres after changing the layout of those levels, in which case I'd be a bit surprised that the game doesn't just count the blue spheres in the map instead, to avoid this kind of problems...
No, otherwise it would always occur on the same map(s) but it doesn't. I've personally watched someone complete all 32 Blue Sphere stages on a fresh save without the counter ever going wrong, whereas it happened to me on two of the stages while playing the exact same build of the game (PC), and one of the stages on the Switch version.
So I guess the problem is in the way they count down from the total number of blue spheres then? Like, when they turn into rings the game's maybe subtracting some extra spheres? Someone should record one instance of this happening from the beginning of the stage so we can see exactly when the count goes weird.
