Honestly yeah I think the transition for HYAct2 is fine. I always interpreted it as a timeskip because it reminded me of the Metropolis -> Sky Chase one...particularly in that I always play Sonic 2 as Sonic Alone because it keeps AI tails from wrecking my special stage runs, so Tails really does pop up out of nowhere in my playthroughs* :p thus, the added transition doesn't remove or add anything for me. (shrug) Plus/Encore is fine. I didn't mind playing through levels again with a new mechanic and palette changes, and I actually really like the partner system and specifically how it's entirely random - I like having to suss out on the fly what routes I can take, which special stage rings to go for, with the character I'm currently playing as, and the partners being quasi-lives, with instantaneous restarts at the last checkpoint, makes the game both harder but less frustrating (if that makes any sense). The combi catcher thing is fine in concept, but I think the pinball machine is waaaayyy too simple to justify me going in there unless I'm in desperate need of a shield or lives. *Now think about how frigging weird it is to have Tails show up out of nowhere...flying......with himself....for the Marble Garden Act 2 boss when playing as Sonic Alone in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, which they then recycled for Mushroom Hill's transition...
The final phase of the OG Metal Sonic boss was pretty anti-climactic. You could beat it by just letting the spike wall push you along and exploiting invincibility frames to pick up your ring while dealing hits. I definitely like the new one a lot better. As for the Hydrocity -> Mirage Saloon transition... my guess is they knew they'd NEVER be able to top this transition into a Tornado act.
@Josh ok so ya, there's a decent solution to that transition, why not just do something like that? Oh and the HCZ transition is even extra shit for another reason. It's one of the few, if not the only transition that you can softlock the game. If you hold left after the act tally or potentially are just in the wrong spot, you don't progress at all and because for some reason you can't skip that transition (you can skip other ones) you're just stuck there. So not only is that transition nonsensical, it's also broken.
Personally I'd show the characters exiting Hydrocity back onto Angel Island Zone, where the Tornado has been parked after the opening cutscene. Fade out. Mirage Saloon. Maybe the wall collapse was caused by a tidal wave outside or something, since the island is still in the ocean.
eh, overall I think the boss is an improvement (though an option to play the old one in a side mode would also be nice!) It's far from the first classic Sonic boss with iffy collision, Death Egg Robot in S2 and the Master Emerald laser in S3&K spring to mind.
I'm with Laura tbh. It's very easy to die when you're attacking Metal Sonic Kai because of how his physics work and the bottomless hole underneath him that you have to interact with in order to attack him. It's the one boss I never use super with because it makes it WAY harder due to the precision needed to not die and the way the characters bounce around so chaotically when they're super.
A well timed Drop Dash will hit him reliably every time with the kickback getting you out of danger. I guess that's a little bit more challenging than most of the bosses in the game though.
It's just counter intuitive. In Sonic 3 it makes sense because the logical thing is to jump into the Eggman Robot. If you do that with Metal Sonic Kai, you bounce behind him, glitch up, then die. It's just really badly designed.
Honestly if the floor didn't collapse and Metal Sonic's body was more pass through that boss would have been fine
Remember how the 8-bit Sonic 1 had the map showing your progress through the game? I think it would have been really cool to have a map for this game showing some sort of bizarre conglomerate of worlds, like the white void area in Generations but filled out more. That's how I've always imagined the game world being in this game. Seeing the level chunks fly into place so the world materializes in front of you would have been an incredibly cool opening to Green Hill. I love this game a lot but the presentation feels really glaringly weak in a lot of spots. It feels really indulgent in some areas, like the cheesy music, references, and jokes, and I'm not really sure how I feel about it. On one hand I appreciate the light-hearted tone but in so many ways it just feels like "oh, look at this" but without any real reverence or reason. Hidden Palace showing up for some random circus performer Heavy fight with cheesy music was incredibly off-putting to me. The mirages in the desert were initially a "wow, it's these guys" but then when I thought about it I'm just wondering how much they had to contrive a reason for that reference. Metal Sonic has some weird unfun phase with that weird silver robot Sonic and then they added a new phase where he turns into some ugly robot with annoying collision. The more I think about it, the more I think that 3&k introducing the act-1 boss was a mistake. We were struggling to get good bosses for a single act and now they're more common than ever. Just some rambling.
When I first saw previews of Mania, and saw that rotating Sonic head island, I had this mental image of a Mode 7 style map screen where you have to fly the Tornado to different islands. This was prior to hearing about the Phantom Ruby macguffin, so I was wondering how they'd tackle going from South Island to Westside, etc. Still would like to see that idea implemented even in a fangame.
Yeah don't get me wrong, I agree. My strategy depends on the fact that I always use Sonic too so I bet the boss is even clunkier with the other characters. It's definitely poorly designed, I just figured out a way to keep it from bugging out on me. Counter-intuitiveness is a criticism I'd level at this game's boss design as a whole. Sonic 1-3 have that golden rule of always attacking Eggman's cockpit and it randomly doesn't apply here sometimes. I like the Flying Battery boss now but it took me a minute to realize where I was supposed to begin with that one.
That boss feels so bad as Mighty. It's really easy to recoil off the spikes to your death. I can't stand using Mighty against Press Garden 1's boss because his spike protection mechanic stops me from so easily damage boosting the boss to get it over with.
You want a good Hydrocity 2 transition? Have the wall burst and the characters run through it, the Tornado sweeps in being flown by whomever you're 'not' playing as (Knuckles, Tails, or Sonic). If it's Knuckles, he jumps out of the cockpit onto the back as Tails jumps in and Sonic jumps on top. If you're 'playing as' Knuckles, Sonic and Tails are already there and you jump on the wing. If you're Mighty or Ray, or Tails, Sonic and Knuckles are already on it and you just jump on top. Granted, this would've still been a complicated transition to make... and it would NOT work for the all new act in Encore mode either (you'd need the characters to hop onto a moving train instead). The different act in Encore mode and the complex scenarios leading into the next stage are likely why the transition is so generic. There's too many variables to program in. I'm not happy about it, but I can understand why this ended up the way it did.
To avoid the player character issue (especially given Sonic and Tails are the only ones we know of who can fly the Tornado canonically iirc), the Tornado could just be washed into Hydrocity with the tidal wave that breaks through the wall. It’d be a little dumb, but if you really want that neat bow of getting from one place to the next... Anyway, I don’t think the subversive boss design of Mania should be considered an inherent weak point. The FBZ boss is fun precisely because it does something different to what you’d expect from a Sonic boss. It’s recognisably a bout of hitting Eggman’s cockpit, but turns that on its head by having that action lead to a different outcome that plays with that concept, and it allows the boss to not be a game of waiting for Eggman to be accessible.
Many of Mania's boss fights range from poor to just plain bad, and that's a criticism I had on day one. I feel like I'm alone in thinking that running boss fights are usually terrible.
That's the thing though, bosses in previous games rarely devolve into waiting for eggman to be accessible because there was always a way to reach him and even score multiple hits if you understood the game well enough. You can stay on top of the pillar the entire time in aquatic ruin's boss and take as many hits as you want if you're careful. Mania is the opposite. The bosses usually have pretty strict cycles and vulnerability windows since they like to disappear from sight or can only be hit under special conditions. Heavy gunner can't be attacked through normal means and once you do get a missile to use against him, it's not like the game lets you take another hit. He disappears and the screen is wiped clean so he can get another cycle. The spider is better than most of the bosses in the game imo because there isn't really much of a cycle to it, but it's an exception.
that is exactly what it reminds me of. The mechanics of recoil to Not Die was established in literally Sonic 3's second boss too. Eggman is floating over a bottomless pit, and you need to use the hit recoil to make it back to safety (or, AI Tails will ruin your life and you pass right through his invincibility frames and die instead...). Mania isn't necessarily intended for new players, being largely marketed and conceived (in its Mania form at least) as fanservice, so it's not out of the pale to expect a player to have played Sonic 3 past the first level.
The FBZ boss is awful, for the simple reason that you have to fling yourself from one side of the screen to the other towards a spike wall, and sometimes Eggman ISN'T SOLID AND THE GAME DOESN'T TELL YOU WHEN Mania's bosses are by far the worst part of the game.
