Speaking of, the "wind" bit of Studiopolis is also a bit unfair the first time, since the horizontal pipes can't be grabbed before or after the attack occurs, and nothing suggests that they're more than decorations. Also, on the same subject... if you don't know about it beforehand, there's not enough time to react when the "sunny" attack is warming up and shows the safe spot, and the same happens again with TMZ2's electric charges and Phantom Heavy Magician attacks (just giving the player one more second to react would make things more fair). Once you know this, things do get pretty easy, but this is ultimately the same problem as with the OOZ1 miniboss... or the infamous Sonic 3 barrel. So yeah, it would be really nice if the next game doesn't come with any "barrel bosses". :v:
Err. no boss in Sonic Rush, Sonic Generations, or any of te recent Sonic titles game me as trouble as that boss. I just hate the complete clusterfuck of gimmicks the boss has: - Crushing pillars - Drowning on oil - Projectiles - Laser can hurt you - Laser head can hurt you - Some kind of spear that comes before the laser that can hurt you - Rings that sink in Oil really fast
He forgot to mention the bullet hell when the boss gets exposed. "Projectiles" doesn't make it justice. =P
I don't know about you, but the Unknown final boss in Sonic Rush and the Time Eater Super Sonic boss in Generations were both some pretty high levels of bullshit for me.
Gotta be honest here, I did not find that boss hard at all. I think I beat the boss on my 2nd or 3rd try. The first time it caught me of guard but when you know what he does it's a pretty simple boss. That being said a friend of mine who last time that played Sonic was Sonic 2 on the iPad like a year ago had an harder time with it. I havent really stopped playing Sonic games so nothing in Mania was that hard, except for TMZ.
That's Exception/Egg Salamander. They're talking about the normal final boss, Egg King, which only leaves itself open to attack when you avoid every one of its attacks in a specific pattern. Fail to do so and it keeps on attacking, usually with a different pattern. It has a few insta-kill attacks and gets much faster as the fight goes on, too. Also, rings bounce further away each time you get hit until they bounce so far away they're impossible to pick up, though I think each ring picked up has its own separate counter. Personally, I loved the boss. One of the few bosses in the first Rush I legitimately enjoyed.
In every attempt I've had against the OOZ2 boss, I went all out on it and always took a hit somewhere, but it never bugged me much after the first couple of tries because that's as long as it took me to get the hang of the boss from that angle. Just now, I took a stab at it where, after the platforms were pulled down, I kept alternated keeping a small distance and going in to hit Eggman so that the shots from the gun barrel tentacles wouldn't line up with where I am at any moment, and I didn't take a single hit. It's really doable! It's actually incredibly doable. I'm going to go on record as saying that if you don't believe it's possible for you to dodge the projectiles in this fight, you're being too stubborn in how you tackle it.
Bit LTTP but here are my thoughts on all of the bosses. Overall I think the inventiveness is above average, but the design mistakes are also above average. The main culprit imo is the waiting around; there's a lot of it and for numerous bosses there's nothing fun to do while waiting. It's a mechanism that classic Sonic games often made a point of avoiding, so discovering how much Mania did this was one bad surprise for me. I don't really care much about the bad forewarning in some cases (OO1, SP2) because while it is simple to point to as poor design, it's frustrating once and then gets out of the way. I've labelled everything good, pass, or bad. Not so much in terms of my enjoyment, but more in terms of design choices. GH1: Good. One of the better designs in the game. GH2: Good. Nitpick at the directed rebound but good overall. CP1: Bad. Either you wait out repeated sections where you simply can't attack at all, or you abuse ring loss. Literally anyone is going to just abuse ring loss after the 1 time they might care otherwise. Rings are meant to be something the player enjoys collecting and feels good about when sitting on 200 of them. Facing so much waiting that they can't alter via any other action, the player is forced to question how much they care about rings. Since rings don't trump long waits, the game is actively devaluing its own design with this boss. Really bad. CP2: Pass. Gets a free pass. SP1: Bad. Waiting is (really) long, check. Waiting is trivial, check. You can't do anything else while waiting, check. The boss looks fun but it's a class of what not to do. SP2: Bad. An interesting idea but not good to fight, for contrasting reasons. For Sonic & Tails it's trivial; they can hit it freely. If they couldn't, it would be a massive wait. For Knuckles it's a massive wait. FB1: Bad. Yet again, forced waiting through trivial survival. Curved ground or any gimmicks could have prevented that. If Tails is in play this boss is fine. Easy, but fine. FB2: Pass... but with problems. Excellent idea. Plus you can also get damage on him at almost any time, with non-trivial surviving on the way. However now there's a new flaw, it's collision turns off and on with no indication. This is sloppy, and out of place in a classic Sonic. PG1: Bad. Nice idea, more trivial waiting. Once again the game degrades its own design by forcing the player to dismiss what value of rings they had left... or wait ages. PG2: Good. There is very little time the player can't be aggressive. SS1: Bad. A very plain example of the main problem discussed so far. SS2: Bad. A collection of massive mistakes. The 2 biggest being (1) The Silver Sonic fight is another case of contrasting problems. He is either frustrating with the bouncing-him-around approach, or pointlessly, confusingly easy while discarding 80% of the fight's content with the spin-dashing into him approach. You go from not knowing the trick, to knowing it, and the boss goes from one wrong to another wrong. It's a real shame. (2) The chase + spikey wall scene is just wow. You can't tell when you can hit him. The wall is unquestionably a gigantic help, not a hindrance. It's so bad. What's worse about this boss is that the level itself is drastically reduced in size for it. Disappointing if you liked SS2. HC1: Gets a free pass. HC2: Just pass. Nothing major wrong with it. Its rehashed nature of the 2nd phase is the main complaint with this guy, which isn't a comment on its design. Design-wise, its 2nd phase is tough/impossible to react in time if you haven't memorised the pattern. The waiting also seems longer than before and it's kinda... why even have it. But I'd give this boss a just-pass. The 1st phase gets a free pass and the 2nd phase, apart from the swirling, demands the player to be always switched on. MS1: Bad. Wait with nothing to survive. When the game decides it's good and ready, attempt 1 hit and 1 dodge. Feel out the 3D planes in a 2D game; no clear indication of when collision is on or off. Like the FB2 boss, this sloppy fighting is out of place. MS2: Good. OO1: Pass. This guy has problems but at least not 'the' problem. You aren't forced to wait around. The insta-kill that you can't know until you know is a mistake, but the challenge is so low that he kind of just gets forgotten. He basically doesn't annoy the player after the one and only first cheap kill because he's too easy. Deserves more criticism really but he doesn't get really annoying so I'd give him a pass. OO2: Pass. The attacking itself is a great mix of dodging, staying afloat, and getting hits in, so it's more disappointing than usual that he just shuts off as soon as you start to get your fight on. That is the main problem; the repeated quick exit of the main body telling the player to wait another time. The off-screen appearance is also an irritating idea. The forced waiting to attack is somewhat offset by some actual playing to be done, thanks to the RNG. (Personally I'm not a huge fan of the giant rubber ducky appearances we get. Bosses should be tight and cool and metallic imo, not giant plastic pink badniks. Giant badniks could look cool.) LR1: Pass. The waiting isn't very long or too trivial. The attacking lets you try to maximise damage. Gets a pass. LR2: Good. This guy is tough, but design-wise he's not too bad. Very hard to react to first try. MM1: Pass. Waiting for 1 chance for 1 hit really isn't ideal, but the waiting itself is playable and the 2nd phase's waiting for 1 chance is made less annoying by the fact that it's predictable. I find it a bit annoying/tedious but would give it a close pass. MM2: Good. Finally a great boss. TM1: Good. TM2: Pass. A good example of keeping the player happily occupied while going through the wait phases. Can't really comment on the final boss because it's quite a downgrade after S3&K's six consecutive boss phases. So on my own personal criteria that's: 7 Good 8 Bad 9 Pass Pretty much 1:1:1 for good:pass:bad. Some of the passes are on the positive side, some on the negative side. Bearing in mind that I've labelled a boss "bad" not when it's frustrating, but when I thought it had an obvious and significant design flaw, I'd expect that ratio to be more like 1:1:0 or better.
My thoughts when beating the submarine boss went from "Yes! What a great boss fight, well designed, fun and without unfairnesess..." to "Wait, what now? Why?? D=". Gotta admit that seeing this one and the SSZ1 miniboss, it kind of started looking like they were making a homage to Yoshi's Island.
I pretty much agree with your list except for one thing. How could anyone find TM1 boss to be good. Phase one is a straight rehash, phase 2 is terrible. You have to wait a lot with nothing to do because it feels like the lift goes up 80% of the time.
Like the HC2 boss I wasn't faulting anything for being a rehash; only for design, new or old. I agree with that complaint entirely though. As for the 2nd phase, I hadn't got the impression of it going up so much. Maybe it does and I hadn't noticed, and if that's true it means I found the play in those moments to still be ok, ie., not too trivial. I'd have to play that one again to check because definitely the rehash factor makes this one really forgettable for me. I was still recovering from HCZ Act 2 being so HCZ Act 2. Ending on that miniboss was just salt in the wound. @Apocalyptic Salad I finally beat a whole 1 of your times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNizV-W636A
It's very interesting listening to this now and seeing how much was in Mania's renditions: Tee Lopes - Flying battery Reimagined Some synths are 1:1 but there is more rearrangement / reinterpretation of things at different points in the linked video.
I've finally beat the game yesterday (finished it on my GPD Win, out of curiosity I've launched it on my PC in home, but oh boy, in terms of visuals it looks much worse on bigger screen, but it's for sure much better option for competetive mp... I only I wish I could have someone to play with...). Alas, I feel a bit disappointed. I was expecting, that most of the zones will be re-hashed from Sonic1-3/SonicCD, but the choice almost completely missed my preferences. To be brutally honest, I had some real fun (amongst re-hashed) only with Lava Reef and (surprisingly) Flying Battery - second one was in theory not so far from original, but in some way more appealing to me. Ok, Green Hill Zone was almost ok... But I have allergy on this one, it's so terribly "rumpled/crawled" zone, that even making miracles with it can't stop this feeling. I've noticed that even "borrowings" from other zones were even worse - e.g. Oil Ocean zone with elements of Sandopolis zone, ugh). New zones on the other hand are mixed bag. I kinda liked Studiopolis and Mirage Saloon, while Press Garden looked like poor colleague of one of the levels from Freedom Planet. And this Titanic Monarch (what a dull name), it was IMO suffering on unecessary slow-downs. I can't say that I had too much fun with those magnetic balls appearing over and over again. What was also disappointing, is that I didn't feel anymore the model with rewarding for keeping the upper path in the level - in fact it rarely benefits in any way. Especially in terms of finishing some act quickly - they're much longer than average level in "standard" 2D sonic game. (DISCLAIMER - I'm writing basing on my experience with playing with Sonic only so far). I appreciate the fact, that game looks great, and music is quite nice (aside from some exceptions), but as the game - it's far from something, which was considered as "great come back" of Sonic. Quite good game, but I regret paying (almost) full price in preorder - not to mention about denuvo-parasite in PC version. Conclusion? Definitelly worth to check, but if someone didn't buy it yet - then I would recommend to wait for some discount first. P.S. Is it only me, or those big rings (entries to bonus levels) are so incredibly hidden? I could get to only one in entire game (I've seen two other, but never managed to get to them). P.S.2 - I've found some golden quote on steam forum (regarding the fact that Mania was cracked), I feel urgent need to quote it (user's name was MPM 2.0): I didn't pirate the game. I downloaded a fan-made patch that removed malware from my purchased copy :-)
The crack doesn't remove Denuvo, it just removes it's online check. It still causes slowdown, though.
So last night I finished the game as Tails with all emeralds, rounding out save select screen to one save with each character combination with all emeralds. I do have a minor nitpick, but first I'm going to reiterate again that the game is a lot of fun and I've really enjoyed it! No, my problem is that playing as Knuckles and especially Tails there's a distinct lack of alternate routes and little bonuses for exploring. They're not entirely absent and Knuckles does get his own routes through levels, but there were many times I'd see an opening in the level design then after climbing all of the way up the wall there would be absolutely nothing. This was especially noticeable as Tails at the start of Hydrocity Zone. In Sonic 3, you can fly over the bit with the fan near the beginning and take a new route. In Mania, you can start to find your way there... only to find a solid wall where the path should be. After this, you sloooowly drop down over a bunch of nothing and are forced to take Sonic's path. Hydrocity in particular was frustrating as I'd see landmarks that I recognized as paths to bonus areas in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, then when I went to explore... nope, nothing but empty space between blank walls now. I'd recommend in future works the levels go through another pass or two to add something to liven up areas like this. It doesn't have to be something like a special stage ring, but even like a 10 rings monitor or a shield or even just an interesting ring formation in the air would be a good reward for finding the areas and encourage players to seek them out more. Again though this is a minor nitpick; it drops the level designs from like 9/10 or 10/10 down to maybe 8/10.
