Sonic Mania Plus SPOILER THREAD with UNMARKED spoilers!

Wait, the Forces one is meant to be different? I figured the Ruby ended up in the ground in the prequel comic and Sonic ended up in the city in the cutscene with Tails, just at different times because of spacetime weirdness.

Encore mode in general is more of a (relatively) quickly-made bonus than anything else. Everything in Mania just happens again exactly the same way, down to the chunk of land containing the Ruby at the beginning of Green Hill. The intro and ending are different but everything in between is just repeated. You can easily assume that even without seeing it the Little Planet got freed again the exact same way. Or maybe the repeated details of Encore mode were an illusion? Even if it seems to just be manipulating spacetime in Mania mode, Forces established that it can make solid illusions.

If only people who worked on Mania were here to give us a hint...

 

There's a lot of dialogue in Forces which suggests (modern) Eggman created the Ruby. But the comic suggests otherwise. It's very confusing.

To be honest, I don't think even Sonic Team has fully worked out how the Ruby works. Forces seems to have been chopped and changed quite a bit and a result, the story with the Ruby is all over the place.

I think the only the reason the Ruby came back for Encore mode was so they could re-use the Mania Mode cut scenes. I wouldn't be surprise if going forwards, Sonic Team draws a line under it all and we don't see the ruby again.

 

As we now know, the McGuffin in Sonic Forces was originally called the "Valtron".

If you only look at the story from the core Sonic Forces game, it's clear that Eggman created both the Phantom Ruby (after a bunch of prototypes) and Infinite himself.

In fact, Stage 29 has this exchange:

But the ancillary material - Episode Shadow, the Sonic Forces prequel comics (which Sonic Team plotted) and Sonic Mania - firmly establishes that the Phantom Ruby is a pre-existing gem that Eggman found, and Infinite was an ordinary jackal he outfitted with the Phantom Ruby's power.

It's clearly a case of them changing the backstory late in development, but not having sufficient time/budget/inclination to go back and change the parts that no longer made sense. So they put all the revised backstory stuff in the comics and the Episode Shadow DLC. The most glaring part is the Phantom Ruby Prototypes. If Eggman discovered the Phantom Ruby, why would he create lesser powered prototypes, and then try to destroy those prototypes? It's something that only made sense in the originally intended version, where the prototypes were created before the proper Phantom Ruby.

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As for Encore Mode's story, it really is a bit of a shame that the Hard Boiled Heavies didn't get to do anything new, especially after the clever intro with Heavy Magician re-activating them. But I can live with it. The ending was cute. The one thing that does bother me, and I really hope they alter if there's ever another patch, is how Encore Mode's Green Hill Zone intro still has the Phantom Ruby in a clump of dirt pulled out by the crane, when it should be in Heavy King's hand, as per the Angel Island Zone cut-scene that preceded it.

(Wish they would've addressed Angel Island being in the ocean too, but that was an issue with the original release as well.)

 

I think originally the story for Mania was that Eggman was depressed after Sonic 3 & Knuckles and so retired, but the Heavies came to life and continued his schemes. That story would have worked perfectly for Encore and they could have swapped all the Eggman boss sprites with the heavies. In the perfect ending...

Spoiler

...Eggman could have be the one serving ice cream and after hearing about what the heavies did, he comes out of retirement.

 

For some reason, my copy of Mania is suddenly running horribly on Steam. No reason why.

This update on PC has been a complete disaster. Cutscenes running in black and white, terrible slowdown. Etc.

This has to be one of the worst updates I've ever seen in my life. The game objectively runs worse now than it did last year. It's unbelievable.

 

Sorry to hear that Laura. Strange - would have thought an imminent patch would have been pushed by now to alleviate the issues. Last time I checked there was a lot of noise being made on the Steam discussion forums about this so odds are Sega will eventually listen and sort this out. At least one would hope. So persistent issues with the Steam release but consoles unaffected?

 

Quick question - in Time Attack mode, is 14 saved replays the absolute max you can have? I was having a lot of fun going through and trying to record my best times on each stage so I could challenge them later; challenged and beat a replay I already saved but was told I had insufficient space for more replays at the end of it, so wasn't able to save my run. Unless I'm missing something, there was no option to delete another replay to allow me to save that one, either - bit of a shame, as I'd have simply deleted the run I'd originally challenged otherwise!

 

The game seems to work fine in windowed mode, but I find this patch very frustrating

Obviously not a Team Mania problem, but some bonehead in SEGA, but I feel dis-spirited that no one's really making a fuss about this anymore. It's downright atrocious and shout be called out far more than it is.

 

I must be incredibly lucky or something, since I've not experienced a single one of the issues people have been talking about re: the updated Steam release; not encountered any weird lag etc. (even after a lot of toing and froing in Time Attack), intro movie etc. has remained in full colour... you name it.

Did encounter a bizarre minor bug today, though - did a Press Garden Act 2 (Encore) run with Ray, challenging a replay I'd saved previously. Managed to beat my ghost, but at some point it seems my ghost started to display as Sonic rather than Ray! Not sure exactly when - I only noticed it after reviewing the score tally, at which point the ghost was frozen in an ice block and caroming down the final hill towards the goal. Did managed to get a screenshot just as he sped past the goalpost, though - very strange!

 

Glancing at the Steam discussion forums there's a swath of threads making similar complaints - so hopefully Sega are listening. Haven't given Plus a spin yet but this is a shame given that the original release on Steam was near-perfect by comparison. Sales on Steam are modest as it is - so it's sad to see issues pervading the game that could limit Plus' success on there. Hopefully a new patch is imminent.

 

Have you tried looking in Settings.ini? If you see a line that says shaderSupport=n, change it to shaderSupport=y.

 

Encore mode is fun, but the levels don't seem to be that different.

 

The levels aren't that different. It's the character swapping that makes it fun, especially if you're a person like me who gets into a different mindset for each character and hits the swap monitors every chance they get. I'd love some crazy modifiers that forcibly swap characters every number of seconds just to force you to think on your toes a teeny bit more.

 

So, I've scanned almost everything from the japanese Plus edition



The only things missing are the outer box made of triplex paper, and the artbook. I'll scan those eventually. I'll have to figure a way to scan the book while minimizing distortions on the final image due to the binding used.

 

I highly doubt this was intentional, but I couldn't help but notice...

 

I actually think that was intentional. It's way too close, and that was the first thing I thought of when I saw that palette in Mania.

 

Can ya'll believe it's been one year already since the release of this incredible game? :,)

 

Amazing right? Hardly a day goes by before I'm playing it yet again.

What a marvelous game Mania is.

 

Headaches on the PC release aside, it was a good day.

EDIT: Oh dang, 2000th post.

 

Definitely the best Sonic Game of these last few years. Too bad the 3D ones don't seem anywhere hopeful and full of potential...