You're not wrong. Here's something I've been mulling about recently. I am not sure if this is adding anything to the topic or if it had been discussed previously, but maybe it'll add some meat to the convo. Is Mania Plus out of print? I only see regular Sonic Mania on shelves wherever I go. I went online to look and could only find used copies of Plus, albeit still wrapped in plastic.
I don't think the downgrade of the Metal Sonic Kai boss and how buggy it is has been discussed enough honestly. I think many of the failings of Plus were brushed over because of the goodwill of Mania's initial release. Now that we have some time away from it I think Plus was largely a failure. So what you see as banal conversation I see as long overdue and fresh.
Well there's fuck all else to talk about these days Sonic wise so I say go at it. It's disappointing there's no new Mania esq news but there's no news period. I've said it before but this is one of the most boring periods ever to be a Sonic fan. And back on the Metal Sonic thing, I don't think the new fight is a downgrade but it's flawed in a different way. The original fight was a mess, that spike wall (really couldn't have just replicated the Sonic CD Robotnik chasing in the laser?) was kinda dumb, plus it was just... strange. You can't hit Metal Sonic in phase 1 directly but you can in phase 3 becauseeee.... why? Least the weak point in the Kai fight made sense. The collapsing floor behind Metal Sonic Kai is very unfair though and the hitbox is a tad odd. I'm surprised though, with all the progress people made with Mania modding I'd figure someone would have reimplemented the original fight by now.
This is my complaint. It's just a mess honestly. The last Metal Sonic phase three was pretty weak too, but it wasn't buggy and aggravating. Maybe this is just me, but I now think it's by far the weakest part of Sonic Mania. And it's really bad to be at the end of Stardust Speedway. I'm imagining newcomers dying because of the game bugging out, going to Act 1 and just not bothering.
That's where a friend of mine gave up lol. Actually FBZ Act 2 I originally time overed. I hadn't done that in so long it took a sec to realize what happened. But ya, not a great 4th zone, it'd of been better if that and Mirage Saloon swapped places but then you'd end up with 3 original zones in a row and they wouldn't be spaced out as well
FBZ2 is strange. I love the the level, but the top path is a marathon and the bottom path is a sprint. I've no idea why it's designed like that.
Nah, I don't agree with this at all. Plus adds in 2 new characters, an entire new game mode, remixed levels, a new act entirely and finishes up stuff missing from the main game (because I doubt we'd have got that patch without Plus). I thought it was worth the money.
...Y'all do know you can just spin dash/drop dash into Metal Sonic Kai's core to damage him, and the momentum will bounce you back to the right side of the screen, right?
Plus was a good QoL patch. Content-wise I don't think it added much of value. Ray's a lot of fun but I honestly couldn't care any less about Mighty. I don't like the new bonus stage. I don't think the new cutscenes are any good. I loathe the reworked boss fight. The only new content that I'm happy with, aside from Ray, would be the Encore mode special stages and the literal one new act—I don't like the palettes or the rotating character gimmick.
The palettes in Encore were overall garbage. Why were they all so dark? It made most levels look like a bad future. And Titanic monarch was like, Dark green and pink? Eww It might be worth saying that while I do enjoy Encore mode, I almost always play with mods. So I'm changing the palettes and swapping out some stages here and there to keep things fresh.
If I may add a bit, I do love the amped up difficulty in the special stages—and it's also harder to find them in the first place, for better or worse. I will admit that I didn't ever really utilize the Chaotix-like character swapping unless I had to, but I did find Ray to be much more fluid in his movements than Tails, so I often swapped him in. And as far as switching out the level palette, it doesn't add much to the gameplay. But I definitely wouldn't skim over the different level layouts or the fact that we got to play a bit of Angel Island (even if it was just for exposition).
Plus let me get rid of Blue Spheres at Checkpoints. It even had the goodwill to let me put in a code to permanently get all the Gold Medallions to do it, so I didn't have to play hours of Blue Spheres just to get rid of it. That alone makes Plus more than a success, for me. But... I rather liked that about them. Shame there wasn't a change to the music, as well. Agreed! Mania has my favorite Special Stages, so it was nice to see not only 7 more of them, but also with an increase in challenge. Just a shame there's no unlockable "Special Stages Mode". I'd lose hours if I could just play all 14 in a row without any fiddling through menus and levels. Despite the level layouts not being monumentally changed, I enjoy having a couple of variants of the stages in Time Attack. The party mechanic is still something I really enjoy using. It's still cool to think about which pair of characters I prefer in each stage; Sonic & Ray for more open and easy stages, Tails & Mighty for more cramped and difficult stages, and Knuckles & Tails in Lava Reef to make sure I get that Hidden Palace boss fight, is my usual go-to. I'd rather that the system weren't so heavily reliant on Item Monitors, though. Honestly, I'd rather they weren't involved in the party system at all.
I like Mighty and Ray. I think Encore Mode is awful, just ugly new palettes with barely different level design. I also think the new Mirage Saloon Act is pretty lackluster honestly . I appreciate the new transitions but I think most of them are pretty lame or in the case of HC actually nonsensical. I agree it's worth the money, but from an artistic standpoint I thought it was a major step down from Mania. Maybe it's just me.
Plus also added the option for up to four players in Competition mode, with proper aspect ratio. That's a great upgrade.
I totally forgot about that! And I agree as well—putting those "swap" monitors in a few hard-to-dodge places usually put me with characters I wasn't ready to use. And while the way lives are implemented makes them a bit rarer (which I won't complain much about—getting 100 rings is too easy sometimes), having them limited to just one character out of the bunch feels more like a suggestion of which one you should use. There's also those extra life monitors that cycle through each one randomly, but I'm usually not willing to sit by and wait for the right one to pop up because it would consequently break the gameplay flow. Hell yeah it is! And the splitscreen option was an amazing idea.
If they did include it, how do you think it should have worked? As it stands, the regular competitive mode is just a matter of hogging rings and getting to the goalpost within a minute of the other players. If a speedrunner comes online, the whole room is pretty much doomed.
Idk add some kinda ranking system, or allow you to invite friends that are online, or just random matches, it's not like you're always going to get a speedrunner. They literally already did this with Sonic 2 mobile. Just do that again but allow for 2 to 4 player matches.
While I agree the new bonus stages were an improvement, I can't imagine being this bothered by a feature that was completely optional and easy to avoid in the first place. Presumably the same way they worked in Sonic 2 mobile. You get together in a room with randos or friends and start a race. You can always join a different room if you don't like the current randos.
