Sonic Mania has too much replay value?

I cannot fathom a game having too MUCH replay value. Frankly, I find the idea laughable. If you don't want to go through the game as everyone, don't. No one is holding a gun to your head.

 

Replaying levels with other character has never been the appeal for me. The only characters I even find fun are Sonic and Ray so I can just safely ignore everyone else.

 

>>a lot of the time I'm not having fun, I'm mindlessly navigating the zones like it's nothing!

Thats the very definition of NOT having much replay value.

 

The only legit problem here is that there was never a Special Stage Attack mode.

 

I was thinking about this earlier, Sonic Jam had a special stage attack mode and it did it well. surprised Mania doesn't have one

 

Now that you mention it, I kinda am too. Especially with how much of a love letter it is to the older games.

 

I (sort of?) think I know what you mean.

I actually have a special edition version of Mania with encore mode and have not really played it yet. I got the original Mania on PC when it first came out and 100% the game, all characters, etc. So I've been waiting for the craving of classic Sonic gameplay to return before I crack it open.

I can say that as much as Ive enjoyed Mania, there is something about S3K that keeps me.comimg back to it every single year basically. I don't think it is nostalgia. Even more than S1 and S2, I basically plan to play S3K ever so often just because it is the most fun I've ever had playing a sonic game (or any game for that matter). It probably has something to do with the originality and completeness of S3K by comparison maybe. Every time you play S3k you feel like you've truly had a epic journey across angel island to save the day. Mania is mostly old revisited zones that I'd get by playing the classics and can feel kind of disjointed at times (which does have an explanation).


This is not at all a knock on Mania because it is still excellent, the best we ve had in a long time and worthy of applause. This is hard to explain but for some reason I don't feel quite as compelled to return to it like I do S3K.

Also I agree, if I'm going to be playing the exact same levels over and over, I'm just going to pick Sonic every time because he's the most fun character and who I want play as anyway. In S3K knuckles had the novelty of frequent unique paths/levels/bosses compared to Mania, so occasionally I'd do a Knux run and feel rewarded for it.

 

I kind of feel like this is the deciding factor in whether you prefer S3K or Mania: how much you're put off by the remixed zones. I've seen a lot of people who prefer S3K for the same reason you do. I personally am not bothered by it, since for the most part they feel greatly improved over their original incarnations. I'm in the opposite boat as you: as much as I still think S3K is an absolutely fantastic game, I don't think I've touched it since Mania came out.

 

It's you. If you are playing a video game COMPULSIVELY, you are doing it wrong. I've legit put over ONE HUNDRED HOURS into a single RPG and have never thought "Maybe they should remove content from teh game". My advice to you is to stop playing for awhile cause clearly you aren't having fun.

 

These are rookie numbers :v:

Wouldn't it just mean... the game is too easy? 'cause that's a problem I have with Mania too. A lot of zones just don't offer enough challenge so you just blaze trough them without a second thought.
But "The game has too much replay value" is one of the weirdest complain about a game I've ever heard in my life, period.

 

What's your poison? Mine's Xenoblade.

 

No classic sonic game is hard for a classic sonic veteran. Its mastering the game and getting faster and faster times that's the challenge, and the fun.

This topic needs to be trashed...

 

Fire Emblem Fates, currently 700 hours in and I'm still not tired of it.
I need a life

 

Weirdly, I sort of get where you're coming from. When I play Mania, while I'm definitely happy about larger zones and more exploration focus, I find I get Zone fatigue after a while and have to put the game down. I think the one point in the game where my fatigue reaches fever point is Hydrocity Zone. Now, I dunno if it's the slowed down pace of the level due to the bubble navigation sections or whether it just inherently feels weird to me as a Sonic 3 fan to be in Hydrocity Zone that far into the game (it feels like I've made zero progress), but it's always the point where I need to save the game and return to it later.

I mean, overall I think more content is a fantastic thing, and I'm so so happy that the team crammed in so much. There's no real story need to complete the game as every character, so it often just comes down to character/play-style preference, so that fatigue is entirely avoidable. I don't necessarily think it has too much replay value. It's more so that I think the game isn't as tightly focused due to the random smattering of zones. There's no real cohesion to a lot of it stylistically, so it sort of feels like you're just replaying a Greatest Hits CD, albeit a CD that's been enhanced to a gorgeously lush quality. I think there just needs to be more focus on the important elements. But even then, I couldn't necessarily tell you what those important elements are, because Sonic Mania has nearly everything I could ask for in a 2D Sonic game.

I suppose that there's always an inevitable level of diminishing returns when you play a game so much. On a side note, I agree with everyone else that there should have been a dedicated Special Stage run mode.

I will say this about Mania though. Since they pretty much melded together all sorts of level gimmicks and things that were previously disparate across games, any 2D Mania styled game going forward has a damn good basis to work from, and will encourage new level gimmicks and ideas going forward.

 

Wow. Can't have anyone express an opinion you disagree with, now can we?

But anyway, I think he's got a point. I wouldn't have worded it as 'too much replay value' though: 'fake/empty replay value' makes more sense to me. Like whoa, I get to play every zone again except the colours are different and I can swap characters. Cool. I can play the entire game again except as a character that jumps lower, can ground-pound, and has a spike immunity. Wow, really? You shouldn't have.

Somehow this made a little more sense for ROMhacks. Maybe because they were free, and each one was its own little project, so it made more sense to pick and choose only the ones you liked. With Mania, I'm paying for a game I'm going to get bored of before I even experience the whole thing, and this thread proves I'm not the only one that feels that way.

Now, granted, I don't think me and the OP are on the same page: I didn't like the multi-character schenanigans in S3K either. Knuckles at least made some sense, with him getting harder boss variations and the levels often being wildly different, but why the hell would I ever play as Tails? He's just easy-mode Sonic.

It's all well and good to say 'well if you don't like it, don't play it', but some of us prefer to 100% the games we play, to get the most out of them. There's a reason The Completionist is as popular as it is: it has an audience. In the OP's opinion, S3K shows it isn't impossible to make a Classic Sonic game that's fun to complete as all characters, so why is it such a problem for this game?

 

GTF OUTTA HERE. All of you. We live in a world where most 3D games are still trash and make you do all sorts of crap missions tob trully progress in a game. I'm still salty about the 180 damn emblems in SA2 to be able to get to Green Hill. There were levels that gave me motion sickness and as soon as I was done with the Last story, I put the game away forever. Most 2D games don't give us the longevity and the tedium of the 3D space, so Mania was a breath of fresh air as most Of the 2D games were over quickly, once you became an expert. Mania gave us more (except that Special Stage time attack mode). Every couple of months I go back for a run through and it feels great. I've even learned not to hate Flying Battery (took awhile to warm up to the Mania version).

 

For the record, I fucking ADORE the new Flying Battery Zone. Moving inside and outside, and through the trash compactors, or the traditional way... you can tell the designers really had a lot of fun with that stage. Really the only stage that feels off to me is Hydrocity Zone, because it brings back a lot of the weird "slow moving water stage" stuff. To me Hydrocity Zone was all about slick speed in this cool underground water city. Even when I get to the fast paced moments in the Mania version, it just feels off and I can't explain why.

But my earlier gripes aside, I've completed Mania so many times. I would've replayed it today if I could get it working again!