Here is what I personally have issue with; *World is ending* Sonic: Wow way past cool! yahoo! go teamwork! Sonic doesn't need to be tone deaf to be cool and his behavior should match what the situation calls. This in my opinion is Forces' biggest blunder. The plot itself is fine but they just take the piss out of everything. It should either take itself seriously or do something more light-hearted. They spend almost no time with the characters to actually make us care. They don't need to be movies but we should at least set the scene with them. If knuckles is the leader of the resistance, I want to see him leading it not just yapping on the radio. If Sonic is in prison being tortured I want to see him hooked up to a treadmill with stone shoes running endlessly past exhaustion. You can still be comical and goofy while being serious. As others have pointed out, galaxy is one of the better mainstream examples of this. Frontiers does these things good enough that I actually enjoyed it and it definitely is a step in the right direction. Here's hoping we don't end up with another Shadow or Forces' and honestly give me an intimidating villain again like Chaos or Mephiles. To end my rambling. They really should show us more character developmental scenes (in-game or cut-scenes) to actually make us care. They should try to set the stage early on (why things are like what they are), and in-universe rules are followed, with a good villain to give Sonic new challenges to overcome.
I never played enough of Secret Rings upon release to remember the plot and the entire concept of Black Knight put my teenage-self off from even reading about it, let alone buying it. I still haven’t completed Secret Rings (I’m not even sure where the disk is - it is holding Colors right now since I don’t know where Colors’ case is!) but I finally bought and played Black Knight this year after enough Zoomer YouTubers broke me down. From what I can tell from videos about Secret Rings, both it and Black Knight are pretty similar in tone. I’d say that while the themes are closer to something like 06 in terms of heaviness (especially Black Knight - while the abusive partner reading of Secret Rings is definitely there and intentional, I don’t think kids will pick up on it), the actual plots and the tone of the storytelling are pretty Adventure-ish and they have nice atmospheres. I really like the cutscene styles as well and having anime girl of the week “sidekicks.” I just really am not familiar with the games enough but I like what I’ve seen of them. Typical Maekawa stuff but I think he benefits from the more restrictive nature of those titles. Overall, I think they’re pretty spot on for how I’d want a side story game to be executed but feel a bit too small in scope to serve as main titles. If only they were a bit more fun to play! I wouldn’t mind a return to the series kicked off with a remastered collection of both games with a streamlined and more “typical” Sonic gameplay. I think they can definitely be made to work nicely in a boost gameplay engine.
