Sonic Mania Plus SPOILER THREAD with UNMARKED spoilers!

Sadly no. Encore Mode is strictly single player.

This is an Encore Mode quirk. Reason being that when you die, you're instantly swapped over to another character and there's no 'fade to black'.

Yeah... all of the new transitions are great, apart from that one. I suppose they could have had a water jet shoot Sonic up through the ceiling and into the sky, only for the Tornado to swoop in and catch him.

Anyway, I've noticed now that in the debug/level select menu, there's no option to play as Sonic and Tails together anymore. And & Knuckles mode is still the only partner setting. I was really hoping to get to play as any combination of two characters in a co-op experience.

 

Here you go. Animation on Eggman is hilarious/great. DeLaJetSet's playthrough also happens to be the highest/best quality video bit rate playthrough I've seen so far.

Oh that's really cool that you can get to either boss in Encore. Nice find.

Yeah I find it odd that Encore is single-player only. Kind of paradoxical for a mode that has all five characters. I understand why they didn't allow you to swap between any of the five characters at once, because that'd make the mode really easy. But I don't understand why whoever is currently the second character in your lineup can't be controlled by player 2.

I guess it'd be kinda weird for player 1 to be able to swap characters with player 2 when they want to/are in close proximity? (I'd assume only player 1 would have the ability to perform a swap if the mode was co-op enabled.) I feel like most people playing it co-op would only switch when both players wanted to do so and it wouldn't be a problem. In fact people playing co-op would probably like the ability to decide to swap between whoever is currently the main two characters in their lineup. Seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity. I know nothing about coding/engineering--maybe having controller inputs transfer whenever player 1 performs a character swap would be a technical challenge. Dunno.

Oh, thanks for the explanation, that makes sense. I just thought they wanted to go with something different in Encore. Hadn't thought about how weird it'd be for the traditional drowning music to play/end and then the game to just continue.

That would have been slightly better. But yeah hard to come up with a great transition for Hydrocity-->Mirage Saloon. Hydrocity-->Marble Garden is probably the weakest transition in all of 3K, so it's weirdly fitting in a way. (Though I doubt on purpose, ha.)

 

Thanks! I'm appreciative of the job the team did, and absolutely looking forward to getting my copy. For all the weirdness in places, Encore is shaping up to be the definitive way to play.

They probably could've employed the Ruby again for HCZ->MSZ, honestly. But, like - the hard work of the team is delicious enough, and it's a miracle the rest of the transitions - and the improved Metal battle - were done at all, so I'm not complaining.

 

Is it known if the Encore DLC comes with its own achievements?

 

I just found out that the digital version of the game (at least on Switch) becomes unplayable once you've upgraded to Mania Plus physical. Taking the game card out and attempting to boot Mania says that an update is required. But as said update isn't available to download yet, nothing happens and the game doesn't boot. This will be fixed once the release date hits.

 

Actually you can select Sonic and Tails in level select. I've just unlocked debug mode (I never had the digital version of Mania on Switch, so I'm currently collecting all medallions in the blue-sphere bonus stages). I took a quick screenshot:

Press Y to select Sonic, then X to select Tails as Sonic's partner:





I like that Mighty can break the fragile-creates in Press Garden act1 with his hammer-drop. It's nice to have another character who can break the them besides Sonic.

 

Awesome. Thanks for pointing that out. Still wish that there was a way to choose any partner though. And what about a level select and debug for Encore Mode? Both would be fun.

 

On that note--the COGConnected (video) review for Mania Plus (added below, at 1:14) made a critical highlight that you can lose all of your characters if you fall into bottomless pits, because the game cycles out all of the characters the player had regardless where the player's location is; ultimately resulting in the player having to start from the beginning of the level with just one character. Not sure if this was an intended design choice or oversight, but the result feels a bit unfair to me, honestly; and is probably one the reasons why some of the reviewers weren't enthralled with Encore Mode (namely on the difficulty side of things).



(On a smaller note, Encore Mode not supporting co-op strikes me as pretty odd as well, considering the whole tag-team approach with the new lives system.)

 

Yeah, weird that debug-mode isn't in Encore mode.

Blue Blood, perhaps you could check something for me:

In level select you can also play the new pinball bonus stage by selecting the "special stage 3" option. I played the bonus stage via level select and there was an additional "1-up" item which you can collect using the "catcher". The 1-up item is not in the pinball bonus stage in Encore mode, obviously because of the no-lives system. So does this mean that after collecting all 32 medallions in Mania mode that you can then play the pinball bonus stage in Mania mode (which would explain why there was the addition of a 1-up collectable when I played the bonus stage via level select). I've only collected 16 of the 32 medallions so far, so I can't confirm yet whether this is the case.

 

Oh I assumed that was already known. Yeah, the Pinball Bonus Stage isn't exclusive to Encore Mode. Once you've collected all of the Medallions (not sure if they need to be gold) then you get sent to Pinball instead of Blue Sphere in Mania Mode.

 

Cool! I had no idea.

I'm so glad you can access the pinball bonus stage in Mania mode, as it's pointless going back to blue sphere once you have all medallions.

 

Yeah, it's very welcome indeed. As it's Mania Mode, you only need 25 rings to access it. It's very helpful if you want to try your luck for a shield or since extra rings, just like the bonuses in S3K.

 

Oh wow, that's actually got me really excited to go back to Mania Mode once Plus hits! I was already planning on doing full Mighty and Ray Mania Mode runs at some point - got to get those all-emeralds cleared slots with the two new characters, after all - but knowing that since I have all the medallions already I'll be able to earn bonus items in the pinball stage rather than being sent to Blue Sphere will make doing so all the sweeter. = )

 

Unless it affects the medallion data, which I suppose it doesn't, the first thing I'm gonna do when I get the DLC on Steam is delete all o my mania mode saves and play it with all available character choices starting with the old ones. That way I'll taste all the non-DLC changes, reorganize my saves, and have recent memories of how the standard mode is before playing the new mode. It might be a bit boring in the beginning but it will give me a deeper and longer Plus experience.

Btw, I'll try to organize game sessions and even tournaments in 4P competition mode, so I'd like to know if you think it would be interesting to record or stream that all. Also, I pre-ordered the physical edition for Switch despite not having the console in question, but other people have it and could allow me to use theirs for those sessions, do you find better to play this game with joycons, or gamepads on PC would do a better work? I can try both ways, but I use the keyboard right now as my best controller so I have no idea of what would be the nicest choice to host a competition.

 

Oh my god yes. I'm going to get all the medallions just so that I don't have to play Blue Sphere ever again.

 

I've now beaten Mania mode with Mighty (and gotten all 32 medallions in the same playthrough...)

Look how long I spent in the blue sphere bonus stage, lol




The only difference to Mighty (and Ray's) good-ending in Mania mode is that; the ending-cutscene where Sonic, Tails & Knuckles watch little planet disappearing again (after being set free) now features Mighty & Ray standing with Sonic, instead of Tails & Knuckles.

Nice!

I've uploaded footage of this:

https://twitter.com/TheOcelot01/status/1018612764619636736

 

I'm glad the new bonus stage replaces Blue Spheres after you get all the medallions. I'm not really a fan of most palette swaps in Encore Mode, so it's good to know some of its features are present in Mania Mode. Too bad about character swapping, but I guess that's what mods are for.

Oh okay, thanks. That makes sense. Though now I'm curious if the music gets used when you only have one character.

 

Just tested it. It still uses the SCD sounds.

 

That also makes sense... I mean, not only it would feel inconsistent otherwise but also, what would happen if you managed to rescue another character while the countdown music was playing?

 

So, now that we've ripped almost the entirety of the new RSDK, I've uploaded a clean rip of all five new tracks in a playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-RJHaEhjqqzMVMqOqk_VhyCgYO78riOl


I'd also like to point out that I'm updating the Maniac Editor for support of Plus (with help from SuperSonic16 for adding a byte check for the new GameConfig and adding external object list support) and also RSDKV5_Extract (with help from Slashiee, Tpot, Beta Angel, and RubberDuckyCooly). https://twitter.com/Axanery/status/1018638908438040576 (the tweet has images).