Sonic Mania Plus (Consoles Physical; PC Digital) - Non-Leaks Thread

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I'm glad they changed the Metal Sonic fight, but there were far worse bosses in the game...

 

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No there weren't. Even the spanner boss which kills you in one hit is better, because he gets you once and then you cheese him on every subsequent attempt. In contrast, the Metal Sonic boss was just long, boring, and overall a chore to get through.

 

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The true final boss also needed a revamp... and now feels even less epic after the renewed Metal Sonic fight.

That's still bad game design. It would have been really easy to lower the spikes a little so that they're always visible and don't require luck on first attempt.

Also, there's still no indication that Sonic can latch onto the side bars (or for what purpose) when needed in the weather boss fight, so that's a similar case of "luck on first attempt required" that could have been fixed.

 

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It's important to remember that this should never have come out. We don't have a release date yet for some reason other than "Summer" so there's still some time. Some bosses may just not have been optimized yet, but Metal Sonic's boss fight was probably the most in need of a revamp.

I mean this update sure does look done though. What else might they have up their sleeves besides the obvious Plus stuff no one has yet.

Actually it does look like they might have fixed a problem boss slightly. It looks like the OOZ Act 2 boss can no longer drag you completely to your death when it pulls the platforms under while your standing on them. Now the oil will act as it should.

 

Has there been any word on whether or not they added the "egg reverie pinch mode" song into the game? Because that seems like it would be the kind of thing they would do.

 

I'm pretty sure the Titanic Monarch Act 2 will be remade as well.

 

Heavily Disagree.

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Being a long battle is what made the Metal Sonic battle worthwhile and stick out compared to every other Sonic boss battle which lasts from 15 seconds to about 2 min tops.

It's hard to enjoy Sonic bosses most of the time because they usually are too short and easy which usually makes it unsatisfying. Plus, the long boss fight complements the short stage. The trip to the top of the Eggman statue and gradually revealing more of it was great from a cinematic approach and overall a good challenge of survival by dodging Metal Sonic. When you think you're done and over with it, you're hit with another fight. The Metal Sonic fight was one of the more satisfying fights (and one of the more popualr ones too) in the game, now its a shell of its former self with the leakers beating it easily within 2 minutes. Was the wall chase perfect? No. But it could've been tweaked instead of removed entirely. The checkpoint Star post before Metal Sonic Kai also removes the challenge and ruins the point of a gauntlet boss fight.

I would've been fine with Metal Sonic Kai was added as a new phase instead of removing the original content.

You can disagree with me, but I really don't want to lose the original fight with forced game updates.

 

At least with the original steam release, you can always delete your updates right?

I like the changes overall, but can understand wanting a way to play it as it was originally released.

 

Yup. There is a way to downgrade game's version on Steam. Also it depends if devs are nice enough to give pre-Plus update branch on Steam so you could downgrade that way as well.

Anyway, I'm fairly excited about the changes. Can't wait for the summer, and also the possibility of pre-ordering Sonic Mania Plus physical copy on Switch.

 

I have to imagine someone will create a mod post official update that

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rolls back the Metal Sonic boss fight changes, or at the very least restores some of the boss to how it was originally (Remove the check point, make the second part of the run longer, increase the number of hits, etc etc). Idk 1 boss fight change doesn't seem worth not updating the game at all given all the other goodies being added. Plus I bet after the update comes out mod support for the current version will come to a halt.

Damn it though when will someone data mine this, I want to see Mighty and Ray assets.

 

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The biggest problem with the Metal Sonic boss is the poor conveyance in the Silver Sonic section leaving you unsure of how to proceed, and that bit hasn't even changed.

Meanwhile a lot of the others (Studiopolis Act 1, Flying Battery Act 2, Press Garden Act 1 to some extent, Oil Ocean Act 1, Metallic Madness Act 1) not only do not convey what to do, but fail to do so in a fatal way. Add that to bosses like Mirage Saloon Act 1 ST, where it's incredibly awkward judging the pseudo-3D movement (I swear you have to hit it earlier than you should), and Chemical Plant Act 2, which is an entirely different game that just completely ruins the pace, and you can fuck off if you think the Metal Sonic boss was the worst.

The bosses are easily the worst part of Sonic Mania, and one that's "just long, boring, and overall a chore to get through" is a massive improvement on ones that actively fuck you over, like that fucking FBZ2 ghost bumper and the plane you can for some reason still fall off, even as the score tally appears.

Still, this is clearly an in-progress build so we'll see what happens.

 

First time the Sonic account on Twitter speaks after the leak.

At least they ain't postponing the launch like last time :v:/>

 

I think the one change that alters the original game design is for the better (seems like most do), but I get the preservationist perspective.

Seems like they could include an option toggle of "original" and "new" for that one major change. Keep in mind this seems to be an early build of the patch Sony had for testing purposes that was accidentally pushed--the team very well could have planned on including that option. If they didn't, maybe they'll decide to if they get enough feedback about people wanting the option. And in the worst-case scenario (from the preservationist's perspective) that they don't want to/never do give the option, well, we've now been given ample time to archive the game as it currently exists. I imagine most, like myself, will be fine/happy with the change, though.

 

They made no reference to the leak. Although I made a "don't spring a leak" joke

 

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Dude, Heavy Gunner shoots 3 missiles, one of which:
1 - is a different color
2 - flies significantly slower
3 - IS COVERED IN DUCT TAPE
That is a pretty big signal that something is off with it, and you can try hitting it.

And MMZ1 was the Final Zone redo, right? I don't think I've ever seen people complain about that boss.

I will grant you PG1 and OOZ1, though.

 

At the risk of being pedantic.

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This is Metal Sonic Kai:



It's the original Metal Sonic's main and sub CPUs loaded into a spare body and revived with Dark Ring power. It has a new part installed allowing it to perform the Plasma Pulse Attack.

This form, the final boss...:



...doesn't have any official name that we know of.

 

Should we forbid information from the leak from being added to the wiki? One piece of information related to it was added to one of the pages by another user, and I had to undo it just in case.

 

PG1's boss shows you how to get past its defenses before it's even capable of attacking you.

I don't think it's just the fact that I've been playing Sonic games since 1991, but none of the bosses were difficult for me to figure out. A player shouldn't be spoonfed how to defeat a boss; a little bit of crearivity ought to be required. The only Mania boss that gave me any grief was OOZ2 (and only then without an elemental shield); the rest all struck me as reasonably balanced - all could be defeated fairly easily, although unlike most classic Sonic bosses some were almost impossible to beat without taking a hit.

 

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This is why I want to see the Oil Ocean Act 1 boss get a revamp. We've mainly been talking about things that are cheap and unfair, and the off-screen insta-kill spike ceiling definitely falls under that category and needs fixing. But everything else about that boss fight is incredibly un-engaging, short and easy. A boss that late in the game shouldn't be more of a push over than the Green Hill Act 1 boss.

 

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He's talking about how if you run all the way to the end of the screen as the boss is starting up, you get killed by the piston that rises up to block the path. People made such a fuss about there being an insta-kill hazard in the second-to-last stage of the game that -- congratulations -- it's now a fucking cutscene.

Agreed 100%.