Honestly the only bosses I remember giving me shit were Flying Battery 2, Press Garden 2, Oil Ocean 2, and Titanic Monarch 2. The rest were easy cheesy. And Flying Battery 2 became paltry once I realized I could effectively stunlock him to set up the real hits; the rest generally came down to me losing a few lives before I basically took my time instead of trying to aggressively rush them and hope for the best. No Game Overs or Time Outs, and only three emeralds my first playthrough, and I kinda suck at Sonic games. :v:
I do like the creativity of the bosses. However, from what I've played, I think some are unfair and some just aren't that great. It's a little too hard to dodge the missiles in Studiopolis Act 1. Also it's hard as hell to tell what is even going on. I felt Metal Sonic was a bit unfair as well. On the other hand, I thought the first part of Hyrdocity Act 2's boss was really cool, it was also kind of boring. I just kept waiting for Eggman's bombs to go away so I could suck him up.
The puzzle element to the bosses is a much needed update to the boss formula. Not all of them are executed well and I honsetly think this is the weakest area of the game due to the poor conveyance but considering when making changes like this you're going to stumble on them due to uncharted territory. If there's any advice I could give where Team Mania really needs to be extra careful on is that:- 1. Don't let the player wait around doing nothing for long periods of time because it's tedious. 2. Don't make the boss completely invicible, it's better to impliment stages of high risk as this gives a thrill if you pull off a hit without getting hurt. 3. Do not hide instakills ever. That spiked ceiling in the OOZ boss room is bullshit. 4. If you're going to do a novelty boss, make sure the duration of it is short and sweet so it doesn't wear thin.
What a way to ruin the PC release, Sega :/ I've been looking about that Denuvo thing and sounds hideous, hope it is eventually removed from the game. Well, I finished the game again with Knuckles, and have to say the more you play the game the more you like it. I played each level several (in time attack some of them dozens of) times and I'm still finding new routes and hidden stuff. :D Also some new bugs I run into: -Green Hill Act2: After coming outside at the beginning of the level if you walk to the left the camera shows the empty space under a row of spikes. Chemical Plant Act 2: playing with the water shield and the green jello to see if I could jump higher the Spindash stopped working almost all the time with the button I was using to bounce. After using the second button to Spindash and bouncing a few times around it fixed itself. Spoiler Lava Reef Act 2: landing Knuckles in the edge of a conveyor belt left him frozen there instead of falling. I guess it was climbing and falling in a loop. -If Knuckles is climbing and there is an object aligned with the wall (some Spoiler Hydro City doors for example) he falls in his standing sprite. -In the Spanish translation of the secret menu the texts to enable or disable the options ("Yes" and "No") are reversed. Btw it's me or the pic that is shown when Knuckles Spoiler remembers Eggman stealing the Master Emerald looks quite similar to a certain Enchilada? :v:/>
If the controller supports DInput (been around since 1995, more than likely it does) then Steam can handle the conversion for you. Nuff said. Oh and shouldn't this be in one of the already existing sonic mania threads around here?
So any news on gamepad support? Playing with keyboard on the notebook is pretty fucking terrible. I tried x360ce and had no luck with getting my controller to work. Joy2key won't really helps me either because it seems I can't press forward and down at the same time on the keyboard
I've started my Knuckles playthrough on the Steam version and I've come across a rather strange bug. A couple of item boxes (the last ring monitor in GHZ1, a fire shield in GHZ2, but this is just from one playthrough of those levels so it could be random) are just showing up already broken. I didn't run into this in all my time with the Switch version. Also, on this new build, when you use a completed save file's zone select your score starts at zero (on console, the score counter is preserved for a save file beyond completion) but the game still keeps track of which 50K milestone extra lives you got. Meaning if you finished the game with 420K points, you have to earn 450K points to get your first score-based 1-up.
The controls in the special stages feels too drifty when turning. I wish in a future patch you could slow down and the turning could be reduced or the drift mechanic from sonic unleashed is used but nerfed to not drift a wide angle.
I can understand the praise that boss fights are getting because they are all very innovative, but I think many of them are very flowed. It seems that in the quest for making every boss fight memorable, the Mania team ignored a few rules that the classic bosses taught us. I have only played until the beginning of Press Garden so far, so here are my impressions of all the bosses I've already seen: GHZ 1: This one is OK, because the part that becomes red first is not the one near you, so you're unlikely to try attacking it first and be surprised when it hurts you instead. There's enough time to see what the danger is. And since both parts look the same, it's safe to assume that the other one could behave the same and turn red at some point. Well done. GHZ 2: That's a pretty scary boss for the very first zone, and it's a bit confusing. With so many moving parts it's hard to tell what's vulnerable and what's not. I simply aimed for the head because that seemed safe, and surprisingly enough I was able to beat it without taking a hit. But still, it looked confusing with so many moving parts and so much action on the screen at once (extending arms, crosshairs, bombs, breaking platforms). I may have to fight it again to look for other vulnerable spots (his butt, maybe?), if any. I also heard there's a time limit (is there a pit at some point?) and that you might get killed when the boss is defeated, which's never a good thing to do just in the name of novelty. Anyway, not terrible, but very hectic for a first zone boss. CPZ 1: This one is fine too, pretty typical mid-boss. Kinda boring even, but that's OK for a mid-boss. CPZ 2: You know, at first I hated when I found out I'd have to play Puyo Puyo, a game I completely suck at, to beat CPZ, but it ended up being easier than I expected. I barely made any combos but still won on my first try. Still, a complete change in gameplay is not something I see with good eyes. I think it would be better if this was just a gimmick before the actual boss fight, and that the outcome wouldn't cost you any lives. Maybe winning the Puyo fight could grant you a shield, rings, or something to help you in the actual fight to come, but you shouldn't depend on winning a Puyo match in a Sonic game. It's bad enough that Sega wanted to pass off an unrelated puzzle game as a Sonic game, but now it's INSIDE an actual Sonic game, so you can't even decline the offer. Not as bad as I thought it would be, but it's not cool to change the game like this. SZ 1: Holy crap this is a bad boss! The worst one for me so far! I couldn't figure out what to do, even though I successfully destroyed a couple of blue missiles. There's so much shit going on in the screen and you have to keep an eye on the way ahead of you, so you don't have the time to see that the missiles you hit go off-screen and return to hit one of the enemies. I simply didn't realize what the missiles we're doing untill I watched a video of that fight. I just didn't realize the blue missiles were coming back and hitting the enemies, it looked like I was just sending them away, so I figured this wasn't the strategy and kept dying looking for another solution. And the physics don't even make any sense, these missiles are self-propelled in your direction, while you run towards them, but they still approach you slowly, they're effectively moonwalking! It's confusing and visually off-putting. SZ 2: This one is pretty cool, with a nice simple formula that's in line with the classics. The only dick move were the spikes on the ceiling, that you can't know are there without hitting them once. A possible solution would be to have you enter the arena from the top, or have the ceiling start low and retract to its final position when the screen locks. Even with the surprise spikes though, this is my favorite boss so far. FBZ 1: This is pretty nice and self-explanatory, and visually pleasing. Very cool. FBZ 2: This one is bad! Not particularly hard, just poorly designed. There's no explanation for it being invulnerable to Sonic, nothing about it's appearance suggests that, it's just impervious to Sonic for whatever reason. And then those rotating poles combined with the auto-scrolling don't result in the smoothest sprite animations when the characters let go of them as the floor pushes them up. The sprites rapidly flicker between grabbing and letting go, it's looks a bit glitchy. Well, there it is. I'm really enjoying the game so far! The levels are huge and really cool to explore! I was afraid that the nonsensical level design (nonsensical as in not like structures you'd expect in the real world) similar to that of Sonic CD would be a problem, but they work surprisingly well! I keep sucking at special and bonus stages, like I always have, so I don't know if I'll ever see Super Sonic in Mania. I'll keep trying. This might just be the first time ever I'll get all emeralds (never did it in S2 or S3K), who knows?
You might be the first person to die to CPZ A2's boss. It's built to lose :P I have multiple times just screwed around and sent no garbage to the other side and it kills itself within a minute or two.
As for bugs, only 2 things caught my eye so far: 1- In the GHZ pools, if Tails is in the water with Sonic and Sonic jumps out, there's no splash for Sonic. 2- Broken monitors falling off trees. I'm not sure if I broke them before or if they're showing up broken the very first time I reach them, but it's weird either way.
It's pretty glitchy and has killed players before by flinging them into a pit post-fight or them getting stuck. And some players have gotten unlucky with Eggman pulling off shit like a 4-chain.
In addition to the above, I also had to: 1- Map all the buttons (they were all blank); 2- Reboot the computer to reboot Steam; 3- Unplug and plug the controller back, otherwise Steam wouldn't realize it was connected. This is pretty weird, and definitely not something I'd call "fantastic controller configuration support", considering how many people are having trouble getting their controllers to work. I know this is supposed to be an improvement, but my controller worked just fine in Sonic CD and Sonic Generations (my only other Steam games), so it was really frustrating to spend 2 hours trying to get it to work through Steam while I could be playing Mania. Real life prevents me from playing as much as I want, so those 2 hours did make a difference.
I've had a few glitches and because I'm playing on a PS4 can record them. Some really odd bits but nothing that's never happened to me in a 2D Sonic before: Music glitch: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n3bTAmZOI_4 Stuck in ceiling: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j59yAPVw3Lc Stuck rolling: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VI32LZS0pqo I also agree that the boss fights can be unfair. Studiopolis Act 1's jumping is too short and the missiles aren't obvious enough first time. Oil Ocean's first boss is only understood once you've been killed, OOZ's second boss can instakill you, Stardust Speedway's Metal Sonic machine fight is just random, and it feels all too often like you're just thrown in with little or no learning curve. Now I've beaten the game they're much easier but I'd be lying if I said I never died on the bosses even now.
I came across the word 'pirate' in Studiopolis 2 and hadn't noticed it before. With the Denuvo garbage still on everyone's minds, I couldn't resist...
Now I feel strong temptation to put it in my signature (no offence Stealth, I've bought this game legally, it's just that I'm annoyed as hell due to this stupid Denuvo-parasite)
