I could see a version of SA2's story where Maria doesn't exist and Shadow's motivation is instead more broadly about his home being destroyed. She just works well as a 'not all humans are bad' reminder for Shadow so he can make that heel-turn with Amy on the ARK, even though that's not necessarily a point the game had to make. You could nix Maria and Amy could instead just ask Shadow if all this revenge has improved his life at all, which it clearly hasn't. Like you could do something by drawing a parallel with how Shadow reacts to GUN vs. how Sonic does. On the other hand I think Maria could have worked a lot better as-is if they were just more elegant with the flashbacks. Namely not immediately shoving her dying words in the player's face before Shadow's first level. I'd at least have preferred they start with the quieter flashbacks first. Would establish some intrigue and mystery as to how Shadow got here from there. IDK.
I will never be okay with the fact that they went out of their way to introduce an ungodly amount of control sliders in one update, only to break all of them for the new characters in the biggest update and subsequently not fix them at all. They fixed other stuff, like improving Knuckles glide mechanics. But did nobody at Sonic Team notice that the sliders for Tails/Knuckles/Amy are completely useless?
We have no way of knowing for sure, but there's reason to speculate a set of original levels were made first, before they started to outright lift level layouts. The original levels are interally slotted before the lifted levels (for the most part), and Beta Kronos Island has an unused object layout featuring all of Ouranos Island's stages, most of which are original. Cyber Space was implemented as early as January 2021, the first mention of it in leaks. It could be possible that Cyber Space was intended to have all-original layouts before they switched gears. Spoiler
I guess I'll be fine with this as long as they keep putting out more Dream Teams and Shadow Gens-likes every 2 years or so in-between waits for the big budget open world stuff. Keeps everyone happy and no 4-5 years of nothing for another 7/10.
What Sega/Sonic Team usually do with every new major experimental game design they release, is take the parts that people liked and then streamline it down to that while deemphasizing the parts that got less than favorable reception. We've seen this with the progression from Sonic Adventure to Sonic Adventure 2 and from Sonic Unleashed to Sonic Colors, and I have no reason to assume that's going to change now. What that's gonna translate to for a Frontiers sequel I can't tell, but I expect a little less emphasis on the open-zone and more emphasis on the Cyberspace levels, but I don't see the game really addressing the fundamental issues at the game's core.
Re:Cyberspace and when it was made I still haven't played Frontiers, but given how they mention an iterative improvement process here: They might have decided that the scope of improving the project had reached the point of potentially diminishing returns. It'd be interesting to see whether the levels have any noticeable shifts in style and quality on a zone-by-zone basis depending on if they were made later or not.
I have never liked level music featuring vocals in a Sonic game. I can accept maybe in an opening cut scene such as Sonic CD but not during a playable level. I haven't really played any of the Adventure games except briefly trying City Escape on a kiosk in a store when that came out (and didn't care for it), but I have watched big chunks of the Sonic Adventure games on YouTube. The level music with vocals annoys me in a big way. In fact, even in Sonic CD, I don't like the U.S. version's opening cut scene track (it sounds ridiculously cheesy to me...cringy even; when I first got Sonic CD – U.S. version – in 1994 and the opening cut scene song began to play, my first reaction was 'oh no') but the Toot Toot Sonic Warrior track on the Japanese version has a very solid hook at least so I don't mind as much...although I still prefer the instrumental version.
Outside of SA2 has this ever been done again? Apparently more than 1 of Shadow's levels has vocals, but I wouldn't believe it.
Frontiers' Cyberspace has several levels with vocal tracks, all of the Avatar levels and 2 of Shadow's 3 levels in Forces have vocals, virtually every level in Secret Rings has vocals, City Escape in Generations has it because duh, many boss fights across the series have vocals too.... You could even count Rush, which has sampled vocals in all of its level themes playing constantly. I think the series has typically been sparing enough with vocal tracks in any one game that they never bother me. Teenage me would get embarrassed playing SA2's City Escape or Knuckles levels with family around, but adult me has learned to care less about that. I don't think many other platformer series would be brave enough to have full vocals in levels, and fewer still would be able to back it up with the musical quality that Sonic game exude. I seriously enjoy the vocal tracks.
Edit: Ninja'd, of course The story book series says hello. You may not count Black Knight's as level music, since they only play during boss fights. They're musically wildly different from another.
Sonic Forces also had those. In fact, before Forces vocals in general were abscent since Sonic Colors in 2010.
Hold on, did Unleashed and '06 have vocal tracks during gameplay? Edit: Oh yeah, you're talking about the Storybook games here.
Not related to the rest of your post, that was all gravy, but I just wanted to point out that a heel turn doesn't mean pivoting on your heel from one direction to the other, it specifically means to turn into a heel, with a heel being old school carny-wrestling talk for villain. Heel turn doesn't mean someone changing sides, it specifically means a hero turning into a villain. So Shadow did the opposite of a heel turn, he went from villain to hero in the sotry, which is known as a heel-face turn (a face in old school carny-wrestling speak was hero). Meaning the "heel" turned into a "face."
I'll be honest, I don't really understand it when I've only seen this or similar (more damning) points leveled at Maria specifically, in spite of so many characters in media's history being informed by characters with minimal screentime, if not being absent completely. Avatar the Last Airbender uses the few direct showings of the air nomads incredibly sparingly throughout its entire runtime, with much of the context being provided in the past tense, but no one claims that Aang's foundations informed by them are shaky, in spite of them being the crux of one of his biggest internal conflicts even to the end of the series. I can understand the dissatisfaction when it comes to just wanting to see more of the character, which drives a lot of fan interest and reinterpretations. (and it's not like I don't recognize that some people are ultimately only sold on characters when that kind of stuff is the focus, instead of the two flashbacks we are provided with) And I could also see the dissatisfaction and outright flaw if the storytelling was a more traditional flashback where the point is in how you're supposed to care about the characters and their relationship by the end of the flashback, yielding an emotional climax and actually properly informing the viewer on what drives the character. But SA2 instead completely frontloads the viewer with the emotional climax in a way that completely sidesteps that direction narratively, and then hangs on to the confusion, mystery, and uncertainty for dear life, even to this day with the "is Shadow the same Shadow" angle still being in play somehow. (maybe) I don't think that the direction SA2 had was in line with people's preferences for how these tropes are usually handled, but at the same time I don't understand how that context and angle it did take can eclipse that and become flawed in the way people talk about it. The one scene it did show pre-incident was enough to establish enough of a baseline that a majority of the new Shadow and Maria material feels like it's being directly informed by that cutscene and what we already knew about Maria, which is both enjoyable on my end while also frustrating when the occasional "Shadow is still frowning" comment pops up from time to time...
Sonic 2 is the worst of the classic Sonic games. Too easy (special stages not withstanding). I told my sister the day the game came out I bet I could beat it in one day. She didn't believe me. I did, though, when I got the game in 1993. This was far easier than Sonic 1. I was very disappointed. It didn't even provide as much of a challenge as the Revenge of Shinobi did for me. It was even easier than shooters I'd played on the TurboGrafx-16. I wanted a game that was so giant it'd take weeks. Instead, it was easier than Sonic 1 and the first Sonic disappointed me with how easy it was already. It wasn't like a giant immersive RPG or anything. It didn't even have anything as good as Labyrinth Zone. Even Bonk's Adventure was more difficult. I wrote it off for more than a decade. Sonic 2, however, does have amazing graphics and audio. I think the music is the best of the classics besides 1 and CD. Way too easy, though. I was disappointed with it as a teenager for many years.
None of the sonic games took very long to beat. I beat Sonic 2, 3, CD, and Knuckles the days I got them. In fact, I got Sonic CD Christmas morning in 1993, and by the time my relatives had come by around noon, I had already beaten the game once. Only Sonic 1 ever took me a while to beat, and that's because I was basically learning the mechanics as I played. Once I masted Sonic 1, all the other games I completed without fail. Even Sonic Adventure, I got the game on 9/9/99 without a VMU and beat all of Sonic's story in a single sitting when I got home. Funnily enough, Sonic Unleashed was probably the longest sonic games for me, it took me several days of playing basically non-stop to beat it. I consider that the meatiest Sonic game.
For what it's worth, I have warmed up to Sonic 2 considerably over the years. Especially the remaster with Hidden Palace Zone. Although, I do think it is the worst of the classics, but that doesn't mean I think it's bad (I consider it one of the best games of the '90s); I just feel the others are a bit better. But, this opinion is coming from someone like me who thinks Labyrinth Zone is the best level in the series. Which, itself, is probably an unpopular opinion. :P
Liking Labyrinth Zone at all is an unpopular opinion. One which I share. I wouldn't call it the best level in the series, but I'm also not sure what I would give that crown.
Labyrinth Zone is definitely a good level once you get good at it. It has some of the most diverse paths ever, ranging from platforming through spiked balls on chains on the middle paths, clinging onto poles in the wind tunnels of the lower paths, or just straight up skipping the entire level on the upper path. It has so many options where other levels will merge paths back to 1 in 30 seconds. To put it simply to Labyrinth haters: Skill issue.
